| Friday, April 27, 2007 4:43PM | | | | NEW YORK, HISPANIC-AMERICA (III) | Posted By: Claudio Iván Remeseira
|
| Tags: César Vallejo, Clayton Eshleman, Anselm Berrigan, Mónica de la Torre, Cecilia Vicuña
Mariela Dreyfus, Forrest Gander, Anne Waldman | CÉSAR VALLEJO'S POETRY ILLUMINATES SAINT MARK'S CHURCH
From the perspective of Spanish-language literarture, the highest point of the Festival was probably reached last night with the Tribute to César Vallejo, an event that is likely to be rembered as a pivotal moment in the recepetion of the great Peruvian poet in the US.
The Tribute, organized by The Poetry Project & Poets House and co-sponsored by PEN World Voices and the U. of California Press, took place at Saint Mark's Church.
Saint Mark's santuary, the venue of the traditional January 1st Poetry Marathon, was full to the brim with a bit more of 200 people, a figure that according to Stacy Szymaszek, Poetry Project Program Manager, doubled the average attendance of any major reading usually held at Saint Mark's. "By any standards, it was an outsanding turnout."
The audience, one could reasonably guess, was largely composed of American poetry lovers and practitioners. What is the reason for this keen interest among Americans in a Peruvian poet whose work, although revered as one of the cornerstones of 20th- century Hispanic-American literature, is still considered by many Spanish-language readers, almost 70 years after his death, as a poetry of baffling perplexity?
"I think that Vallejo's work resonates with the way poets works today --said Anselm Berrigan, Artistic Director of The Poetry Project-; the way he deals with language, the things he does with syntax and vocabulary, turns him into a prime reference for contemporary poets. He was ahead of his time, and now we Americans are catching up with him."
The event was also an occasion to celebrate Clayton Eshleman's translation into English of Vallejo's complete poetry, a 700-page lvolume published earlier this year by The University of California Press. The first edition, of 3,000 copies, was sold out in three months.
The readings were divided in three sets with three readers each. Starting each series, Mónica de la Torre, Cecilia Vicuña and Mariela Dreyfus read the original Spanish version, followed respectively by Edward Hirsch, Forrest Gander and Anne Waldman, who read Eshleman's English version of the same poems. Sam Shepard, Jayne Cortez and Eshleman himself closed each set by reading poems in English.
TO BE CONTINUED
| | |
|
1 Comment | Add a Comment |
| |
| 5-21-07 10:39PM: Remeseira said...
Thanks profacero. Please give credit as: Claudio Iván Remeseira, Director of the Hispanic New York Project, American Studies Program, Columbia University
|
| |
| Post a Comment: |
| | |
|
