CAN­TO AL VIEN­TO BEFORE THE MYS­TER­IES OF POET­RY AND LIFE

MY FIRST READ­INGS of Aris­tides Acos­ta González’ Can­to al Vien­to (1993), were when I was in my teens and writ­ing my ear­li­est poet­ry and I even remem­ber writ­ing gui­tar music to the poem Can­to el Vien­to, for a song that I nev­er sang to any­one. Thir­ty years lat­er, after a life­time of schol­ar­ly and lit­er­ary endeav­ors, I read these com­plete work of poet­ry and am tak­en back to my hap­pi­est child­hood mem­o­ries with my grand­par­ents in Chi­nan­de­ga. And to my oth­er ear­ly read­ings of poet­ry name­ly Pablo Neruda’s Twen­ty Love Poems, that I found in our Papi’s per­son­al library, and Ruben Darío. I also remem­ber count­ing the syl­la­bles in Dario’s poet­ry for class assign­ments, like all the gram­mar school chil­dren in Nicaragua have to do.

I also real­ized again how the poet­ry in Can­to al Vien­to influ­enced my own works. Need­less to say that I was deeply moved and also pro­found­ly hon­ored to share this poet­ry with a new gen­er­a­tion of read­ers and a new world, at a time when Nicaraguan his­to­ry, lit­er­a­ture, news (as well as my old social media and email accounts, a few of my com­put­er hard dri­ves, and even a pre­vi­ous draft of this fore­word) have been wiped by what can appear to be cyber­crim­i­nal­i­ty attacks or the nat­ur­al blun­ders and decay of life and the Inter­net, and our homeland’s bor­ders are report­ed­ly closed off to many of us, for the most part.

The for­mal struc­ture and style of the poet­ry in Can­to al Vien­to is char­ac­ter­is­tic of tra­di­tion­al post-Ruben­dar­i­an or post-mod­ernists like Salomón de la Sel­va, Azarias H Pal­lais, Alfon­so Cortés and Sal­vador Car­de­nal Argüel­lo. The poet­ry in Can­to al Vien­to, employs postt-Ruben­dar­i­an stan­zas and his clas­si­cal rhyme schemes to estab­lish a beau­ti­ful and har­mo­nious appeal. In Acos­ta Gón­za­lez’ Ram­blings (Diva­gan­do) we can observe vari­a­tions in verse length, includ­ing octo­syl­lab­ic, hen­deca­syl­lab­ic, and hep­ta­syl­lab­ic lines, that show­case the poet­’s skill­ful use of post­mod­ernist meter to cre­ate a nuanced and engag­ing rhyth­mic pat­tern like in De la Selva’s La Bala, or H. Pal­lais’ Aviadores.

Yo quiero ser espi­ga en los tri­gales
sur­co fecun­do de siem­bras soñado­ras,
el agua pura de claros man­an­tiales
o luz tenue de plá­ci­das auroras.

Hen­deca­syl­lab­ic Lines: While the pre­dom­i­nant verse length is octo­syl­lab­ic, the poet occa­sion­al­ly uses hen­deca­syl­lab­ic lines, con­sist­ing of eleven syl­la­bles. This vari­a­tion adds a touch of com­plex­i­ty to cer­tain lines and con­tributes to the over­all rhyth­mic diversity.

Saber que lle­van por den­tro las angustias

Hep­ta­syl­lab­ic Lines: There are also instances of hep­ta­syl­lab­ic lines, con­tain­ing sev­en syl­la­bles each. These short­er lines cre­ate a brisker rhythm and add a con­trast­ing ele­ment to the over­all structure.

o inyec­tar vida y calor a flo­res mustias.

The poet may employ oth­er vari­a­tions in verse length through­out the poem, con­tribut­ing to the dynam­ic and expres­sive nature of the composition.

Y sen­tir los esflu­vios que allí moran

We can observe that these dif­fer­ent met­ri­cal lengths rep­re­sent a depar­ture from the more strict forms in Ruben Darío’s mod­ernist poet­ry with all its Alexan­drine vers­es, Romances, Sap­ph­ic Stan­za, hen­deca­syl­lab­ic and tra­di­tion­al Son­nets, Déci­mas, Ode, Haiku, Terza Rima, Vil­lanelle, Qua­train, and even free verse. Azarías H. Pal­lais employs a free verse struc­ture in “Mi alma,” char­ac­ter­ized by the absence of a strict meter and rhyme scheme.

Instead of adher­ing to tra­di­tion­al poet­ic con­straints, Pal­lais opts for a more flex­i­ble and open form, allow­ing the con­tent and emo­tion of the poem to dic­tate the rhythm and struc­ture. This choice aligns with the post-mod­ernist ten­den­cies of break­ing away from estab­lished norms and exper­i­ment­ing with poet­ic form. The poem’s pow­er lies in its explo­ration of com­plex emo­tions and philo­soph­i­cal reflec­tions, unbur­dened by the con­straints of tra­di­tion­al meter and rhyme.

Aris­tides Acos­ta González’s Love and Beau­ty (Amor y Belleza) is a a Petrar­chan son­net, also known as an Ital­ian son­net. This form con­sists of an octave (eight-line stan­za) fol­lowed by a ses­tet (six-line stan­za), and it typ­i­cal­ly fol­lows the rhyme scheme ABBAAB­BA for the octave and CDCD­CD or CDECDE for the ses­tet. In this case, the rhyme scheme of the octave is ABBAAB­BA, and the ses­tet fol­lows the CDCD­CD rhyme scheme.

The poem A mi Esposa is a romance in qua­trains, a nar­ra­tive and lyri­cal poem with a AABB rhyme scheme, that express­es affec­tion and devo­tion through metaphors relat­ed to every­day actions. The speak­er com­pares cook­ing, serv­ing cof­fee, and tend­ing to plants to the cre­ation of vers­es and poems for his beloved. The repeat­ed desire to serve the wife and the dec­la­ra­tion of want­i­ng to see her live, because of her del­i­cate health and the life of med­ical treat­ments that it meant to her, tes­ti­mo­ni­al­ize a deep and self­less love.

Anoth­er beau­ti­ful expe­ri­ence that I like to rem­i­nisce when read­ing Can­to al Vien­to, was see­ing my grand­fa­ther recite poet­ry; the first time I wit­nessed the ancient rit­u­al from the orgin of Man, was when I was six years old and we were all togeth­er in Mia­mi cel­e­brat­ing their 40th Anniver­sary, I was mes­mer­ized and thought it odd that every­one had to keep qui­et and lis­ten to what was undoubt­ed­ly A mi Esposa. I remem­ber because the sto­ry was that our Grand­moth­er, Mami, com­plained that he had writ­ten poems about all the girl­friends he had in his youth and hadn’t writ­ten a poem about her.

The sec­ond time, was at the Coro­na de Oro Restau­rant in Chi­nan­de­ga, and that real­ly took the cake! There was all kinds of poet­ry there and an open mic. Julio César Icaza Tigeri­no, José Anto­nio Tigeri­no Altami­ra­no, Hugo Asta­cio Cabr­era, Tino López Guer­ra, Nico­las Navas, Erwin Arauz, and scores of oth­er poets. They would scream, and they would cry, the post-mod­ernists along­side the avant-garde and although in Nicaragua polit­i­cal ten­sions can be extreme, as can be seen in SOMOCIS­TAS 78, La Deca­da Fatal, and Así Esta­mos don Toño, tol­er­ance and mutu­al respect reigned supreme.

The qua­train “PUETAS” is a good exam­ple of the aes­thet­ic dif­fer­ences among poets in the lit­er­ary land­scape. This medieval form of French ori­gin is sel­dom used in poet­ry, and in this case, it is employed more in the man­ner of Robert Frost than as a for­got­ten trou­ba­dour from the old con­ti­nent. In this instance, the lyri­cal speak­er, far from cel­e­brat­ing hero­ic feats, com­ments on what he per­ceives as a lack of effort in con­tem­po­rary poet­ry, empha­siz­ing the chal­lenges and ded­i­ca­tion required to excel in the craft. The reg­u­lar rhyme scheme and con­sis­tent syl­la­ble count con­tribute to the rhyth­mic and play­ful qual­i­ty of the poem.

Acos­ta Gon­za­lez’ Shake­speare­an (or Eliz­a­bethan) son­net, EL BEO­DO in con­trast, is an exam­ple of how these love/hate kin­ships among bohemi­ans can take a trag­ic turn. The use of the son­net form, tra­di­tion­al­ly asso­ci­at­ed with love poet­ry, con­trasts with the theme of the poem—depicting the strug­gles of a drunk­ard seek­ing com­pas­sion. The speak­er reflects on the beg­gar’s con­di­tion and presents the beg­gar’s own words in which the recon­struct­ed down-trod­den voice goes as far to claim that his true self doesn’t exist anymore.