Poetry
The Earth Is a Satellite of the Moon
La tierra es un satélite de la luna
Leonel Rugama · 1978
Synopsis
A posthumous collection of the poems Leonel Rugama published at the end of the sixties in the literary supplements of Managua and in the university review Taller, in León. The verses speak of the hunger of the poor districts, call out to vendors, shoeshine boys and the unemployed, and borrow from biblical language to speak of the struggle. The title poem sets the rising cost of the Apollo missions against the hunger of the poor.
Context
The collection appeared in León in 1978, from Ediciones Taller, then in 1983 in Havana from Casa de las Américas and in Managua from Nueva Nicaragua, in an edition compiled by Julio Valle-Castillo and accompanied by an essay by José Coronel Urtecho. A bilingual edition, translated into English by Sara Miles, Richard Schaaf and Nancy Weisberg, appeared in 1985 from Curbstone Press. Critics note in Rugama the influence of Pablo Antonio Cuadra and his own on Ernesto Cardenal.
Who it is for
For reading the poetry of revolt of a very young poet from Nicaragua, in Spanish or in a bilingual English edition.
Prizes and reception
E. Romero Figueroa shows how his poems take up the form of biblical genealogies to tell present-day history.
Sources for this page 8
The pages consulted to check this page.