https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/profile.php?id=100010003787483<\/a><\/p>\nIn Bien Querer readers of Spanish will find a wonderful collection of poems from a new Andalusian voice. For those who don\u2019t read Spanish, find someone who can and have them translate it for you. Be sure, though, they read you the Spanish even if you don\u2019t understand it: the beats and sounds of the lines are strikingly beautiful.<\/p>\n
Bien Querer is the first venture into poetry by Isabel S\u00e1nchez Heras, a friend of mine and native of Benaoj\u00e1n, a gorgeous hamlet in the Sierra de Grazalema. The technical precision of her poetry and the surprising breadth of her vision, inspired by this landscape, have nothing of the ing\u00e9nue about them. The eye, ear, and passion of her writing show experience in spades. <\/p>\n
In several poems, the attention goes deep into the mysteries of everyday life. We get sharp detail and resonant questions side by side. \u201cMi perro,\u201d for example, begins, <\/p>\n
Miro a mi perro
\ny me dan
\nganas de llorar.<\/p>\n
I look at my dog
\nand I
\n\twant to cry.<\/p>\n
My English translation can\u2019t do justice to the music of S\u00e1nchez\u2019s Spanish. We\u2019re not told what the dog looks like: we only see the poet looking at him and the effect he has on her. In the next lines she thinks of the trust in his gaze. He trusts her to feed him well, to never give him poison or stones. In return the writer entrusts her thoughts to the dog during their daily walks. In the last line she worries over those thoughts: <\/p>\n
Espero
\n\tno
\n\tcontaminando
\n\tcon ellos.<\/p>\n
\tI hope
\n\tI\u2019m not
\n\tcontaminating him.<\/p>\n
The mediation on the beloved pet\u2019s feeding turns into worry that the speaker\u2019s thoughts might be veneno\u2014poison. You feel her intense awareness of every word and the thoughts they stimulate\u2014hopefully for good although she acknowledges they\u2019re beyond her control and could end up being for ill. But the portrait of woman and dog is so benign and boundlessly well-intentioned that the fear of unintentional \u201cpoisoning\u201d is remote and sits on the page like a joke. This subtle sense of humor that lightens up real sadness plays throughout the book. <\/p>\n
\u201cLa Cocina y yo\u201d starts with a portrait of the writer and her relationship to traditional feminine work.<\/p>\n
\tNo s\u00e9
\n\tcocinar.
\n\tEl hombre
\n\tque amo
\n\tcocina
\n\tpara mi.<\/p>\n
\tI don\u2019t know how
\n\tto cook.
\n\tThe man
\n\tI love
\n\tcooks
\n\tfor me.<\/p>\n
The straightforward diction and rhythm spell out the situation in precise terms. But the next lines complicate things: Her man cooks for her even as he knows the way to her heart isn\u2019t through food but a lifting and \u201cfilling\u201d love. Again the last lines give the turn of the screw:<\/p>\n
\tY puede
\n\tque
\n\tnunca
\n\taprenda
\n\ta cocinar,
\n\taunque hasta
\n\tmi madre
\n\thaya intentado
\n\tque yo
\n\taprendiese.<\/p>\n
\tAnd maybe
\nI\u2019ll never
\nlearn
\nto cook,
\neven though everybody since
\nmy mother
\nwould have
\nme
\nlearn.<\/p>\n
The short, sharp lines suggest learning to cook is less important than learning to love; but the man who knows this, by cooking anyway, shows his affection for the woman who can only love him in return. <\/p>\n
Isabel S\u00e1nchez\u2019s depiction of herself as mother appears in what for me is the high mark of the book, the poem \u201cHija, el mundo\u201d\u2014\u201cDaughter, the world,\u201d where the speaker presents the world to her daughter. After listing ordinary things of nature and home, the poet calls on her daughter to pay attention:<\/p>\n
\t\u00a1Hija!
\n\tel mundo
\n\tse desbarata
\n\tcada dia,
\n\tpero
\n\tla Naturaleza
\n\tes obstinada
\n\ty a cada rato
\n\tse recompone.<\/p>\n
\tDaughter!
\n\tthe world
\n\tbreaks down
\n\tevery day,
\n\tbut
\n\tNature
\n\tis obstinate
\n\tand repairs itself
\nat every turn.<\/p>\n
In \u201cLa Prosperidad\u201d the weightiness of thoughts of death and afterlife are lightened by the poet\u2019s sense of humor that brings everything back to earth:<\/p>\n
Quisiera
\nque la finalidad
\n\tde la vida
\n\tfuese
\n\tla transformaci\u00f3n,
\n\tno la prosperidad.
\n\tSaltar
\n\tal vac\u00edo y\u2026:
\n\t\u00a1Savarnos!<\/p>\n
\tI would wish
\n\tthat the end
\n\tof life
\n\twere
\n\ta transformation,
\n\tnot a move toward prosperity.
\n\tJump
\n\tinto the emptiness and\u2026:
\n\tSave us!<\/p>\n
Who or what would save us from the leap into nothingness is left undecided. The poet concludes in a laughing voice that time is nothing, so there\u2019s no reason to fear the end. Time amounts to the clocks somebody created in order to prosper (in earthly time). Responsibility for salvation at the end of life lies in one\u2019s own hands: through imagination, passion, and a saving love of things as they are right here before us, in Andaluc\u00eda, in New York, London or wherever you happen to be.<\/p>\n
Isabel S\u00e1nches Heras\u2019s first poetic venture stretches the mind and lifts the heart in wonderfully original moves. \u00a1Bien Querer, bienvenidos al mundo!\u2014welcome to the world! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
January 10, 2023 For the past five years, I’ve been working on a novel, The Translators, which will hopefully be finished by summer. Based on the historical Robert of Ketton and Hermann of Carinthia, it’s a story about the pursuit of hidden (and forbidden) knowledge, of love and friendship, and the kaleidoscope of spiritualities in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-991","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marylawlor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marylawlor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marylawlor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marylawlor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marylawlor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=991"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.marylawlor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/991\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4327,"href":"https:\/\/www.marylawlor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/991\/revisions\/4327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marylawlor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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