I read today someone (in LA Review of Books) trying to show Longfellow as a key figure in establishing "whiteness" in American literature. Then I remembered I had a book half-thought out on translation of Spanish poetry before the 20th century, in which Longfellow plays a significant role. Longfellow was amazingly multi-cultural for his day, and one of the main translators from romance languages (including Spanish) into English, instrumental in the history of my own discipline in the US.
Do I love Longfellow's poetry? That is beside the point. I do have a fond spot for a few things of his, and dislike others. What I wanted to do in this abandoned book was to look at this earlier culture of translation and contrast it to the one that emerged in the twentieth century, which began with Pound, but then abandoned Poundian poetics quickly after that. I am interested in that break between metrical translation and free verse translation.
I wish I was two people, because I cannot write this book and also write the Lorca and music book. After I write the latter, I'm not sure I'll want to return to this other topic, on which I did enough research to come to interesting ideas.
In a literary ambience in which whiteness simply was the water in which almost everyone was swimming, it doesn't make sense to make some lame anachronistic argument about his promotion of whiteness per se. These are the same two people who have made an argument about Amanda Gorman being an important moment in poetry in the US, so this is strike 2 for them.
10 comments:
wtf? Where do you even find these treasures of modern verse?
[...so you see, there really is such a thing as bad poetry]
I'll never be the worst poet no matter how bad I try.
News flash: this is just too good. The press the poet was going for has published Amanda Gorman in Spanish. And look, here's a really bad poem: https://www.nuevayorkpoetryreview.com/Nueva-york-Poetry-Review-2941-60-poesia-mexicana-jorge-contreras
So, removed texts for reasons having to do with discretion, and project is on hold. But I *should* work on Longfellow, for these reasons, he's an interesting example of what goes on in the 19th century, US identity eats everyone, it's carnivorous, in a milder version of what happens in Lat Am.
OK. He's trying to sing songs of the new USA, and he's creating whiteness insofar as he's starting with the Pilgrims and so on (he is closely related to several famous ones). But all these writers are trying to do something similar, the 19th century is just so fascinating
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