Poetry
Rosas negras
Not translated into English
Porfirio Barba-Jacob · 1933
Synopsis
Poems written over thirty years of wandering from one country to another, gathered by a friend in a printing house in Guatemala. The man who speaks announces his own death almost on every page and gives his instructions for the day it comes. Recurring are the grandparents' village to which he will not return, the cities crossed and left behind, drugs, desire for boys, a gaiety he calls mad. The author opens the volume with a preface in which he says he wished to express, in broad strokes, his conception of the world and the virile robustness of his soul in the pain of living.
Context
The poet never published anything himself: he revised endlessly and dreamed of a volume of perfect pieces that he never assembled. Three collections appeared in his lifetime through the efforts of friends, and a fourth after his death; he felt a helpless horror at them, being able neither to rework them nor to destroy them. This one came off the presses of the Guatemalan capital, with a prologue in his own hand and an appendix by the Guatemalan writer who had taken him nineteen years earlier as the model for a famous story, and with whom he had founded a newspaper.
Who it is for
About a hundred pages in Spanish, with no French translation. Resonant poetry, made to be spoken aloud; its author's life is everywhere in it, and it is worth knowing beforehand.
Prizes and reception
The most frequently reprinted of the three collections published in the poet's lifetime, and the title under which his work continues to be published in anthologies.