Boston Poetry Mailer for 7 vii 10

An email magazine with events, links, and commentary.

The Boston Poetry Union offered a successful poetry appreciation seminar last summer, and is putting together several more for this year. I'm pleased to announce the first: "A Brief & Incomplete Introduction to Spanish and Latin American Literature." The moderator, Michael Healy, writes:

"I do my best to formulate difficult and intriguing questions about texts that readers have deemed the best works produced in these various national traditions. Why has history been kinder to Quevedo than to Góngora? How do their respective writings represent very old breeds of impulse that we’re still struggling with? What made Machado return to the fields of Castilla? What did Lorca, Neruda and other poets of the Spanish language learn from Whitman? What makes Neruda so universal and yet innovative? How and why has Borges haunted so many who have come after him? To what degree is the “magical realism” of García Márquez, inaugurated by Alejo Carpentier, actually magical at all? What is most strange, mystical, and/or Mexican about Octavio Paz?
Or rather, what is most Pazian about Mexico?

"I intend the format of these seminars to be informative but informal; part lecture, and part discussion where digressions are welcome. We may even laugh quite a bit. At these seminars, you ought to feel among equals or else with some who are just a few steps ahead, beckoning you forward. ¡Que nos veamos pronto!"

More information -- dates, reading topics, and registration information -- can be found at http://bostonpoetry.com/seminars.

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At his blog for poetry and translation, John Oliver Simon has posted a journalistic profile piece about two Costa Rican poets. About Osvaldo
Sauma: "At the closing ceremony of the international poetry festival in Medellín, Colombia, before 5,000 people at the outdoor amphitheatre on the slopes of the Cerro Nutibara, most of the poets read from their published books, but when it was Osvaldo’s turn, he pulled a couple of sheets of paper from his back pocket and began reading a typed poem.
When he finished the one page, he realized that what was on the other was something completely different, and he broke up. 'I shat with laughter, me cagó de risa, y toda la gente se cagó de risa.' A woman came up to him afterward and said 'Venite, come with me.' 'It was that gesture that captivated her,' says Osvaldo. 'My helplessness.'"

And about Ana Istarú: "'See, it’s not as if we created a utopia in Costa Rica on purpose,' Ana Istarú (born 1960) explains to me. 'It happened by default. We’re a biological corridor, a land-bridge.' At the weakest extension of Aztec and Inca influences before the Conquest, in colonial times Costa Rica attracted the second sons of second sons, who had to roll up their sleeves and work, since there was no treasure. There were practically no Indians left, no slaves.
The Black population on the Atlantic Coast came from Jamaica just a hundred years ago. Nicaragua was much richer, with its factional wars between the Conservatives in Granada and the liberals in León. 'We heard about Independence by mail,' Ana laughs. 'We showed the typical Tico reaction: do nothing, wait and see.'"

Read the full piece at
http://johnoliversimon.wordpress.com/2010/07/06/costa-rica-2-osvaldo-sauma-and-ana-istaru

Footnote:
This is but a tiny excerpt from this most impressive e-mail newsletter that I received today from Zachary Bos of the Boston Poetry Union. When I explained to Zach that the newsletter was miles too long for my blog he made the following link available so that readers of this blog can view it online. Poetry lovers will find it fascinating, loads of news and information. Link here.