Literary Journal Review

The literary journal that I chose to review was the International Poetry Review for Spring 2008. This edition was the Hispanic/Latino issue. It is published in the spring and fall of every year. It was founded in 1975 by Evalyn Pierpoint Gill and is dedicated to her idea that "the world will be a better place as we cross language barriers to hear the voice of the poet in in different countries". International Poetry Review is a complilation of poems from contemporary writers in all different languages. Each international poem is provided with a translation on the opposite page. There is also a section in each issue that is dedicated to work written originally in English. It is published by The University of North Carolina, Department of Romance Languages. It also contains a web based edition at http://www.uncg.edu/rom/IPR/IPR.htm. However, it is also located in ODY library here at St. Lawrence and can be found in the American Humanities Index on EBSCO.

International Poetry review contains almost strictly poems, although there is a book review in the back of every edition. For the Hispanic/Latino edition the book reviewed was Selected Poems of Luis de Gongora: A Bilingual Edition by John Dent-Young. It was reviewed by Paul Carranza from The University of North Carolina. The poems however, are not limited strictly to poets affiliated with The University of North Carolina, in fact The International Poetry Review encourages a diverse group of poets. The idea behind the journal is to introduce English speaking poets to the diversity and beauty of international poems, by providing both the original and an english translation. As an international writer or a poet of another language, publishing in this literary journal would expand your audience, to allow your readers not to be confined to only those who speak your language. As a reader of this literary journal, you are expanding your conception of technique and style to other countries and languages. It would help to push your limits and introduce you to the new and unexpected.

For this specific issue, a collection of hispanic/latino poets were featured. The editor, a latino poet himself, provided an introduction to this issue describing the difference between latino and hispanic poets and what it meant to be a latino poet. The chief attributes of latino poets are that they include sociopolitical concerns in their work, demonstrate an wareness of others and difference, allude to the influence of the great tradityions of Spanish poets and poetry, and most importantly contain at least an occassional overflow of Spanish vocabulary and phrases into their predominantly English texts.

My favorite poem, was actually a poem from the foreword, and though it was orignally written in English and did not need a translation it still nexemplifies many of the traditional qualities of Latino poetry. The poem is pretty long, so i won't include it all, but here is an excerpt of it:

What I Mean

"So many words when what I mean is only
that I have forgotten the ancient places in my soul.
Will they know me, these places when i return?
Will they receive the child climbing broken walls
into the garden? A strange boy, something
of the Jew, the Lithuanian, the Spanish, something
of the Indian eyes that saw the Irazu volcano
burst alive, and the river Maranon
mix the violent cocktail of different bloods."

I loved this poem because I felt it was perfect for the introduction. It features the idea of being tied to a language. The author is limited in his emotions because he himself, is lost in translation. The english langauge isn't adequate to adress his latino heritage, an idea many of the poets in this issue adressed.