Poetry
Sobrevivo
Not translated into English
Claribel Alegría · 1978
Synopsis
Confessional poems written far from Central America, in which the anguish of distance mingles with the voices of the dead who come to visit the poet. The long poem “Sorrow”, which takes up nearly a third of the book, is dedicated to the Salvadoran poet Roque Dalton and summons with him Che, Sandino, Víctor Jara and García Lorca; the survivor sets herself the task of keeping their memory alive. The poem that gives the collection its title says she survives, in a coined word that mingles joy and treachery.
Context
The collection continues the turn taken by this poetry since the mid-sixties, when the author, living outside Central America, began to write the reality of the region from exile. The couple then lived in Deià, in Majorca, next to Robert Graves, of whom they translated one hundred poems together. The book appeared in Havana in 1978, in the series in which the Cuban institution publishes its prizewinners each year.
Who it is for
Short poems in Spanish, in a direct, confessional language; no French translation of the collection, only anthologies.
Prizes and reception
Casa de las Américas poetry prize in 1978, awarded the same year to Gioconda Belli, it closes, according to critics, the first stage of its author's work.
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