THE LATINA BOOK CLUB

Poetry is like a song, like a psalm, like a prayer.  Poetry is different things to many people, and April being Poetry Month, The Latina Book Club  is celebrating by featuring Latino poets all month long. Today we share poems from some of the Leading Latino Poets of our time—all award winning poets, but better yet, they speak to our inner soul.  Happy Reading! GABRIELA MISTRAL First Latin American writer to ever win Nobel Prize for Literature. This poet and educator wrote about love and desolation and tenderness lost. PABLO NERUDA Also a Nobel Prize for Literature winner, he was best known for his romantic poetry. JULIA DE BURGOS Leading Puerto Rican poet, she often wrote of her homeland and how much she missed the land, the people, the river. OCTAVIO PAZ Another Nobel Prize winner, his poems were heavy into surrealism and we loved it. READ LATINO! READ LATINO POETRY!

   Poetry is the language of love, of revenge, of despair, of hope, of the people.   Here is a Top 14 List of Latino poets we should all be reading more of.  Among them we have the FIRST Spanish American Poet to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, an inaugural poet and two Poet Laureates.  I've tried to find websites for all the poets and, where there isn't any, I've posted a link where you could get more information on them.   Happy reading! --mcf TOP LATINO POETS Gabriela Mistral 1.     Gabriela Mistral (First Spanish American to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature) "Song of Death," http://www.poemhunter.com/gabriela-mistral 2.     Pablo Neruda, "Cantos Ceremoniales," http://www.fundacionneruda.org/en 3.     Julia de Burgos, "Rio Grande de Loiza," http://www.juliadeburgos.org 4.     Richard Blanco (Fifth Inaugural Poet of the U.S.), "For All Of Us, One Day...

   I like you when you’re silent Because it’s as if you were absent Far away and hurting As if you had died One word then one smile is enough And I am happy Happy that it’s not true.   – Pablo Neruda I first read this book in 2011 when it was titled, AS HAPPY AS LING.   Even then the genius of this book shone through.   The new title, HAPPY THAT IT’S NOT TRUE, is taken from a Pablo Neruda poem.   In the author’s own words: “this is a story about human sorrow, inspired by the war in Afghanistan and the spiritual war that tears at every heart.” But, believe it or not, this novel is also a love story; unfortunately, not one with a happy ending.   The husband finds a love letter from his wife to another man.   He contemplates killing the other man, but he can’t take the man from his children who remind him so much of his own.   So the heartbroken husband decides to leave his family and Cuba, and travel to America on a raft. He...

Chilean poet Pablo Neruda was often referred to as "The People's Poet."  He was world reknown for his poetry and writing, and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971.  Neruda also always wrote in green ink, as it was his personal color of hope. To honor Pablo Neruda and in celebration of National Poetry Month, this month's book selection is his INTIMACIES: POEMS OF LOVE.  Below is one of my favorite Neruda poems.  Please share your favorite poem with us by leaving a comment below.  ---mcf ALWAYS I am not jealous of what came before me. Come with a man on your shoulders, come with a hundred men in your hair, come with a thousand men between your breasts and your feet, come like a river full of drowned men which flows down to the wild sea, to the eternal surf, to Time! Bring them all to where I am waiting for you; we shall always be alone, we shall always be you and I alone on earth, to start ou...

Adults will love this young adult book too. It’s a fictionalized account of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda’s childhood. Munoz Ryan has a beautiful, whimsical, lyrical style that enchants and entrances the reader immediately. And, the illustrations by Peter Sis are brilliant and magical and happily make Munoz Ryan’s words dance and spin off the page into reader’s hearts. A LITTLE BACKGROUND : Munoz Ryan went on vacation to Chile and happened to visit Pablo Neruda’s house. She was back in the states at a book signing when a fellow author told her a story about how Neruda always carried a little sheep, which was given to him by a secret friend across his backyard fence. Neruda had that sheep for a long time until he lost it in a fire, and thereafter, wherever he went, he would look in shops and toy stores for another little sheep just like it. That story so intrigued Munoz Ryan that she began researching Neruda’s childhood and soon the idea for THE DREAMER took hold. Observant readers...