Casí Toda La Música y otros poemas
by Ángel González
0-916727-29-7 Cost: $16.00
Trade Paperback , 96 pages
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Critical Praise for Casí Toda La Música y otros poemas
- It's a rare time — and this is that time — when a sterling poet and a remarkably gifted translator join forces. Ángel González has, for years now, been recognized as a strong and alert Spanish poet; and now that the wonderfully gifted E.A. Mares — his phrasing so consistently elegant and accurate — has brought him to us in English, we can be uninhibitedly glad at the fact that González and Mares have jointly delivered a fine gift to us, one so engaging and instructive that we can't help but cheer at its delivery.
— James Hoggard, poet and translator, former President of the Texas Institute of Letters, former Poet Laureate of Texas
- Quienes tuvimos el privilegio de convivir con Ángel González, sabemos de su gran conocimiento y devoción por la música. Fueron muchas las veladas con Angel, quien con guitarra en mano confirmaba el parentesco entre Dios, la música y la poesía: "Dios existe en la música" nos dice en un memorable poema, aunque es un Dios que se esfuma, o tal vez que se esconde detrás de la música: "Cuatro compases más, y otra vez solos", concluye el poema. Hay que congratularnos por la dif'cil y acertada tarea de Tony Mares al poner ante la mirada y el corazón del público norteamericano la palabra de uno de los más importantes poetas de la lengua española.
Those of us who have had the privilege of spending time together with Ángel González know about his great knowledge of and devotion to music. Many were the afternoons with Ángel, who, with his guitar at hand, confimed the familial relationship between God, music, and poetry: "God exists in music," he tells us in a memorable poem, although it is a God who vanishes, or perhaps hides, behind music: "Four more measures, and once again solos," the poem concludes. We should be pleased with the results of the difficult and accurate task of Tony Mares in placing before the eyes and hearts of the North American public the words of one of the most important poets in the Spanish language.
Enrique Cortázar is the acclaimed Mexican poet and former director of the Mexican Institute in San Antonio. At Harvard University, he was a student of Octavio Paz. His books include Life Written with Bad Grammar (1983) and Variations Upon a Nostalgia (1998).— Enrique Cortazar
Reviews
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Words on Poetry
The New Mexican
Reviewed by Miriam SaganÁngel González is one of the prominent poetic voices in Spanish poetry. Born in Spain in 1924, he grew up during civil war and Franco's dictatorship. Since the 1970's, when his political poems found him hard pressed, he has live in his homes in both Albuquerque and Madrid.
Now there is a gift to readers of poetry in the bilingual edition of González's poetry entitled Casi Toda la Musica (accent over u) y otros poemas/Almost All the Music and other poems. (Wings Press, 2007). The translator is E.A. Mares, a well-known New mexican poet in his own right. Charmingly, this is a collection of poems about music. For González, music is the most primary source of art, celestial even. In this he partakes of the Renaissance idea of the purity of music--and simply his own love of it.
Some of the poems seem to be not so much /about / music as an expression of it. Through The Window, Love reads like an old song, although the overt reference to the nightingale at the end adds to its musicality:
Through the window, love dressed in white, discerns. It sees the afternoon, how it turns its light and color. The begonia, lacking fragrance, stretching its green leaves to see what it can through the window, sees love: spring flowing from the beak of a nightingale.
Many of the poems are based directly on music heard, over-heard, and remembered. For example, in Late Afternoon Waltz
the grand pianos bump against swarms of violins and violas. It's the waltz of women alone the unmarried with their charms, the waltz of marriageable girls, seizing, like great gusts of wind, their threadbare hearts as it whirls.
Night gives way to morning, and in Dawn Tango
There is a light moment when people dance. There is a murky moment during which I faint. There is a broken moment when everything is weeping.
And the poet's musical frame of reference includes Louis Armstrong on trumpet:
How beautiful was the sound of the trumpet when the musician drew in his breath and the air of all the universe free now of obstacles entered the tuba! How lovely was the shudder produced by the friction of hurricanes against the metal, of the hot winds from the South, and then the frozen austral coursing around the world.
Translator Mares has written a modest note of introduction, but in truth much of the power of the book resides in him. His translations are both literal and figurative--no small feat--and he captures and replicates the lyricism of the original. The only thing missing from the book is a chronology of the poems—it would be interesting to know if they were selected thematically over many years or all written recently.
The last section of the book, And Other Poems is really about poetry, which although it may be a step down from music in terms of purity after all is the work of the poet. For as this poet writes exquisitely: For my name to be Angel Gonzalez (accents A and a) for my being to have substance on this earth, it took a wide geography and a long time:
(...) I am only the result, the fruit what is left, rotten among the remains: (...) Discouragement in all its deranged strength.
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Criticas
Salwa JabadoUpon reading the prologue and preface of this slim volume, we understand immediately that we are in the hands of a major contemporary Spanish poet; González has won everything from the Prince of Asturias Literary Prize to the Federico García Lorca International Prize for Poetry. A humorously heretical story explains the book's theme. God, upon hearing the music of the cosmos, turns up the volume to help finish the work of creation. Similarly taken with music, González tries his hand at recreating the universe and ends up with poetry.
Although the poems here are in free verse, the section Almost All the Music is filled with musical themes waltzes, tangos, sonatas, elegies, odes, and scales and uses lyrical tactics such as repetition, alliteration, and refrain; some poems even have musical instruction, as in the end of "Revelation": "Four more measures, and then solos." In "Dawn Tango," the song interestingly takes on a life of its own: "The woman sings./ I know you won't/ returnÉ/// The song flees,/ drunk and sobbing,/ towards the street." The section closes with "Epilogue," a short, haunting poem that reiterates González's belief that God exists in music: "When the musician stores his cello/ in its black tomb,/ God's corpse smells of resin." The "Other Poems" of the volume focus on González's poetics: he scoffs at obscurity and aligns himself with the popular and the true. The playfulness of poems like "I've Had It with BartókÉ" is better understood in the original, but notes from the skillful translator ensure that not all meaning is lost. Highly recommended for music lovers, libraries, and bookstores.
About This Author
Read more about Ángel González HERE.