Rhina P. Espaillat

November 30, 2020

“Solitude Is a Life’s Work” by Belén AtienzaPosted by

Belén Atienza

SOLITUDE IS A LIFE’S WORK

Give me back the hours you swore mine forever
and take away this grief hidden in my wardrobe
and when you remember me, do not whisper my name
nor think of me as yours, though yours you know I was.

I shall be asleep and forget the scent of you
I shall awaken alone, as then, before, in your bed
I shall find consolation, tender, in silent poems
in songs of long ago, lost in oblivion now.

Solitude is a life’s work, a life’s work, as is grief.

 

—translated from the Spanish by Rhina P. Espaillat

 

LA SOLEDAD ES OFICIO

Devuélveme las horas juradas para siempre
y quítame esta pena escondida en el armario
y cuando me recuerdes no murmures mi nombre
ni pienses que fui tuya, aunque tuya me sepas.

Me quedaré dormida olvidando tu aroma
me despertaré sola como antes en tu cama
me consolaré tierna con versos silenciosos
con canciones antiguas olvidadas del tiempo.

Lo soledad es oficio, como oficio es la pena.

—from Rattle #69, Fall 2020

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Rhina P. Espaillat: “From my very first acquaintance with Belén Atienza and her work, I spotted her as a poet who deserves to be better known by readers of both our native Spanish and our second language, English. I find her poetry moving without sentimentality, beautifully crafted, accessible to the reader, and profoundly universal in its thematic scope. It does what good poetry is best at: it defies difference and teaches us, quietly but persuasively, how much more we human beings have in common than whatever it is we imagine divides us. I hope to translate much more of her work, and am delighted that this poem of hers is appearing, in my translation to English, in a publication I so respect and enjoy.”

Belén Atienza is a Spanish poet and Associate Professor of Hispanic Literature at Clark University, in Worcester, Massachusetts. In 1998, she was selected by Toni Morrison and Gabriel García Márquez as one of the twelve bilingual Spanish/English writers to participate in their atelier about narrative. Prof. Atienza has published two volumes of poetry: Mi tierra es una lengua (El Salvador: La Chifurnia, 2020), where she narrates the experiences of her family during the Spanish Civil War in Spain; and Saltaparedes (Pontevedra: El taller del poeta, 2011). As a cultural historian, she is also the author of El loco en el espejo: locura y melancolía en la España de Lope de Vega (Rodopi: Amsterdam, 2008), a monograph about the history and representations of madness in Baroque Spain. This is the first time that one of her poems has been published in English, in a translation by Rhina P. Espaillat.

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August 13, 2020

“Familiar Faces” by Rhina P. EspaillatPosted by

Rhina P. Espaillat

FAMILIAR FACES

Familiar faces you can seldom name,
in thought, as in some supermarket aisle,
rush toward you, then goodbye—always the same.

At first, alarm; and then a flush of shame
because you’re not sure who’s behind that smile:
so many faces now that you can’t name!

They nod, as if establishing a claim
to be remembered here and now. Meanwhile,
you wonder if they’re wondering the same,

doing the alphabet—that silly game
in which you flip through memory’s tattered file
hoping some letter will retrieve a name.

Sometimes it works. Sometimes the social frame
almost succeeds: That was the Juvenile
Books author you once read with on the same

panel, or … the junior-high “old flame”
who exercised his most transparent guile
to kiss you. But how could you lose his name!

Sometimes you sense what distances they came
to visit you in dreams, wearing the style
of other decades, calling you by name.
It’s you, you think—but who? and still the same!

—from Rattle #38, Winter 2012

Rhina P. Espaillat: “I fell in love with poetry at the age of four or five in my grandmother’s house in the Dominican Republic. She was a poet. She never published anything; she used to write mostly for family events, birthdays and things like that. But she was good. She had real grace with language, and she used to have a lot of friends who would come to the house and tell stories, and play the guitar and the piano, and recite poetry. So I heard poetry before I understood it. I didn’t know what the grown-ups were doing, but I knew I wanted to do it, because it looked like so much fun.” (web)

 

Rhina P. Espaillat was the guest on Rattlecast #53! Click here to watch …

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March 5, 2019

“Out of Focus” by Rhina P. EspaillatPosted by

Rhina P. Espaillat

OUT OF FOCUS

“Denouncing ‘Wolves’…,” New York Times, 2/25/19, p. A12

Upright above their lush emerald bed,
a squad of crimson tulips, row on row,
without a field to muster on. Instead,
figures—two rampant dancers—and below,
a man before a counter.
  What I’ve seen
in today’s Times comes clear, but only after
I find my glasses: priests, in their green
vestments and red caps, at Mass!
  Laughter,
of course, greets now-familiar things:
an altar—it’s in Rome; the Pope kneels there;
angels are spreading their triumphant wings
over all those entrusted to their care.
Wings, prayer, denunciation: hardly powers
to match the wolves that hide among the flowers.

—from Poets Respond
March 5, 2019

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Rhina P. Espaillat: “This poem was inspired by the photograph that accompanied an article about the recent gathering in Rome to deal with the persistence of child abuse by priests. I was first struck by the fact that on noticing the photo without my glasses, I mistook it for a flower bed in a strange setting, and was later deeply disappointed to read that nothing substantial had been accomplished to solve this painful and criminal issue.” (web)

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April 2, 2018

“How Tiresome” by Rhina P. EspaillatPosted by

Rhina P. Espaillat

HOW TIRESOME

How tiresome, this dying, not at once,
you think, but incrementally, as year
by year—or, as of late, every few months:
this spate of thefts by those who leave us here.

A lifelong friend takes half your youth, then some
old dear pilfers the rest, and then your spouse
makes off with all the life there was to come,
till nothing’s worth the chores around this house
that you inhabit—that you are. But when
new sprouts throw off the weight of last year’s leaves—
February’s wreckage—it seems right again
to feed and water them. You know they’re thieves,
the young already plotting their goodbye.
Nevertheless you think, Just one more try.

—from Rattle #58, Winter 2017
Rattle Poetry Prize Finalist

[download audio]

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Rhina P. Espaillat: “Why do I write? At first, in my native Spanish, I did it for the simple joy of dancing to my own words. Later, in English—the language in which I grasped the not-simple that underlies the music of speech—I learned to write to celebrate what I love, feel my way through experiences I can’t manage to think through, mourn losses, give thanks for what’s left, and prepare for the possible loss of more.”

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September 29, 2017

“Here” by Rhina P. EspaillatPosted by

Rhina P. Espaillat

HERE

Everything’s here, unused, but orderly,
as if ready for use: a mint or two;
his nail clipper; the little scissors he
trimmed his moustache with; scribbled things to do;
his watch; a neatly folded handkerchief
that spills a scattering of change; the pen
that leaked into his pocket now and then.
I almost hear him now: Don’t touch! as if
I were pilfering his tangled hearing aids; 
this snarl of keys; his red Swiss Army knife
hiding its tiny arsenal of blades
like legs tucked under. Glasses, wallet, wife—
each item’s here. Though, useless as it is,
I don’t know why. Except that it was his.

—from Rattle #56, Summer 2017

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Rhina P. Espaillat: “What a comfort to believe, as the Romantics seemed to, that shared settings and common possessions are somehow sympathetic and attuned to our losses! But the experience of, for example, widowhood, forces us to acknowledge an internal solitude, a human absence, that only sentient beings can understand or allay.”

 

Rhina P. Espaillat was the guest on Rattlecast #53! Click here to watch …

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March 24, 2017

“The Sharpened Shears He Plied” by Rhina P. EspaillatPosted by

Rhina P. Espaillat

THE SHARPENED SHEARS HE PLIED

The sharpened shears he plied
hang useless on the wall,
now that he’s gone away,
almost as if they sense—
and mourn—the difference.

The shrubs he used to trim
have swelled, shapeless and dense,
and weeds he kept at bay—
creeper, tendril and limb—
run rampant through the fence.

But no, tools don’t recall
the gardener who died,
and these green things don’t care.
No thing remembers him.
How difficult to bear.

—from Rattle #54, Winter 2016
2016 Rattle Poetry Prize Finalist

[download audio]

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Rhina P. Espaillat: “What a comfort to believe, as the Romantics seemed to, that shared settings and common possessions are somehow sympathetic and attuned to our losses! But the experience of, for example, widowhood, forces us to acknowledge an internal solitude, a human absence, that only sentient beings can understand or allay.”

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March 7, 2016

“Work in Progress” by Rhina P. EspaillatPosted by

Rhina P. Espaillat

WORK IN PROGRESS

He showed me some, and asked for my advice.
I pointed out a line that wouldn’t scan,
a pair of rhymes that cried for a divorce,
and commented—but briefly—on the quotes
in foreign alphabets, unglossed. “Of course,”
he said, and nodded, and took notes,
as if OK with all of it.
And then
I added, “Put back every the and an
and a. It’s almost nothing, what they do,
but articles make what they say ring true.”
You never know what buttons not to touch,
which almost nothing’s going to prove too much.
This morning he submitted work again,
but brusque, defensive, with a hint of spice.
Only fool goes for walk in minefield twice:
next time I’ll tell him poem is very nice.

—from Rattle #50, Winter 2015
Rattle Poetry Prize Finalist

[download audio]

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Rhina P. Espaillat: “As a workshop instructor, I comment on a great many early drafts by poets, and know how tricky it is to do so not only diplomatically and truthfully but also effectively. This poem is a fictionalized account of one such effort. It ends by illustrating, with humor, the point I had failed to make with my rather dry advice to the poet. In this instance, my teaching was just as much a ‘work in progress’ as the poem I had been asked to comment on.”

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