Dominican Republic / All works
Poetry
There Is a Country in the World
Hay un país en el mundo
Pedro Mir · 1949
Synopsis
A long poem about a country placed “in the same trajectory of the sun”, an improbable archipelago “of sugar and alcohol”. The poet first speaks of its lightness, its clarity, its fruits and rivers, its three million inhabitants, its four mountain ranges and its two great bays; then the land slips from under the feet of the peasant, who dies without owning an inch of it. Born “of the night”, the poet asks for the time and the courage to sing.
Context
The poem was written and published in Havana in 1949, with the subtitle Poema gris en varias ocasiones; it was reissued in Mexico in 1955 and was not known in the country until 1962, after the fall of the regime, according to El Día. It is its author's first book of verse and, for Dominican critics, his masterpiece. Jonathan Cohen and Donald D. Walsh translated it into English in a bilingual selection published in 2018.
Who it is for
In Spanish, translated into English; a broad, rhythmic poem of celebration and denunciation, made to be spoken aloud.
Prizes and reception
The country's most famous poem; its author was named national poet, in 1982 according to Britannica and El Día, in 1984 according to Biografías y Vidas.
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