Poetry
Let's Go!
Vámonos patria a caminar
Otto René Castillo · 1965
Synopsis
A collection of poems in which love and the struggle for the country go together, love being an affirmation of life against injustice, sadness and death. The poem that gives the book its title calls on the homeland to set out, at the price of self-sacrifice, alongside the peasants and workers and against the colonels. Other pieces speak of hunger, evictions and prisons, and attack the intellectuals who keep aloof from politics.
Context
The title poem predates the book: it received the Autonomía Prize in 1956. The book, which the Omegalfa edition dates to 1965, had a posthumous edition in Mexico City, from Yoloxochitl, with a prologue by César Montes. Margaret Randall translated it into English in 1971 under the title Let's Go!, and F&G Editores reissued it in Guatemala City in 2017. Writers such as Luis Cardoza y Aragón and Roque Dalton have praised the poet, and the collection has been the subject of academic studies, among them an article in the review Dissidences in 2014.
Who it is for
For reading, in Spanish or English, a Guatemalan poet who combines loving tenderness and the denunciation of injustice.
Prizes and reception
In the review Canigó, in 1973, J. M. Figueres compares to Brecht this poetry of hunger, injustice and the refusal of indifference.
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The pages consulted to check this page.