An early 20th-century modernist returns, in his “Back to the Village.” Writing this poem while in jail, Vallejo described his native village. After three days on muleback with a friend who later described this journey, the men knocked repeatedly but no one answered; at last someone opened the door. But this account has been disputed, and Vallejo’s horseman is alone. This a mostly close translation of César Vallejo’s poem LXI in Trilce (1922).
Reginald Gibbons on "Back to the Village" |
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What Sparks Poetry:
Maud Casey on Joanna Klink’s The Nightfields
"I read from The Nightfields most mornings for the vertiginous pleasure of scale, for the sense of intimacy and infinitude, in order to feel my insignificance in the world. Our relative insignificance, our like-it-or-not interconnectedness, Klink reminds us, is not such a bad thing to feel." |
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