I am reading “La ciudad deshabitada” by Ernesto Cardenal and the translation by Steven F. White, in Poets of Nicaragua. Cardenal’s long lines, and long thoughts, are very beautiful, mind-expanding to encompass. Ciudad deshabitada: anti-colonialist, utopian, revolutionary. Though I am an atheist I am also enjoying reading about his utopian/consciousness-raising/cooperative colony, Solentiname. I can’t read Cardenal’s poems thinking of religion either… I just think about science fiction and space, moody novels of failing space colonies, dystopian warnings about technological solutions to social problems. I wonder if that is outrageous? Anyway, I’d like to read the entire book La ciudad deshabitata to see the poem’s context for Cardenal and what else was going on in his mind at the time. Solentiname sounds a bit.. touristy now… Huh.
Meanwhile, I’m thinking of going back to translate more poems by María Eugenia Vaz Ferreira. The thought of tackling something long form attracts me. Maybe something from the Cardenal book, if I can get my hands on it. I still wish I could find more poems by Nydia Lamarque. Someday I’ll go to Buenos Aires and find them in a library in crumbling old literary magazines…