Poetry
Tropical Town and Other Poems
Salomón de la Selva · 1918
Synopsis
The poem that gives the book its title paints a small town with blue, pink and yellow houses, with its cemetery, a starving dog, vultures in the sky, the cathedral bell rung by a blind man and an ox cart, with nothing to break the torpor but the Easter festival; the poet, far away, says he comes from there. “A Song for Wall Street” sets against the financiers what a penny buys in Nicaragua. Other pieces sing of love, pray for the United States or accuse it, torn between admiration for the adopted country and anger at its contempt for Latin America.
Context
The book appeared in New York in 1918 from John Lane Company, a house associated with the Bodley Head of London, just as the United States had entered the war while occupying several countries of the region, among them Nicaragua. Its author, who could not serve in the American army without renouncing his nationality, enlisted soon afterwards in the British uniform, thanks to a paternal grandmother of English descent. A second English collection, dated 1919, is attributed to him, of which no poem has been found. Arte Público Press reissued it in 1999, with an introduction by Silvio Sirias.
Who it is for
Poems in English, not translated into French, in rhymed verse and in varied forms, accessible to anyone who reads English.
Prizes and reception
His publisher presented the author as the poet of Pan-Americanism; the 1999 reissue brought him into the Hispanic literary heritage of the United States.
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