Poetry
El gallo de la alquería y otros compuestos
Not translated into English
Óscar Ferreiro · 1987
Synopsis
Compuestos, long romances in octosyllables in the manner of the narrative poems that the Paraguayan people pass on orally. The first follows the night of Saint John at the Chacarita, a poor district of Asunción at the foot of the cathedral and the prison: the saint arrives on his white mare amid the fires, the musicians and the dancers. Others have a mother and her son talk under the threat of the urban guard, or recall Pancha Garmendia, killed with a lance in 1869. The characters, ordinary people who usually speak Guarani, are given a plain Castilian.
Context
The collection appeared in Asunción in 1987 with Arte Nuevo, with an introduction by Hugo Rodríguez-Alcalá, who regarded these romances as the most precious part of the work and urged the author to write more. Ferreiro had first published surrealist-inspired poems, collected in 1977 and 1982. Jacobo A. Rauskin sees in his compuestos a traditional metre put to the service of an observation: the failure of a traditional society in matters of justice, freedom, tolerance and respect. The name compuesto designates in Paraguay oral narrative poems related to the Spanish romances.
Who it is for
In Spanish, never translated; narrative poems that read like tales, sometimes violent. It helps to know that the Chacarita is a working-class district of Asunción, below the centre.
Prizes and reception
Regarded by Hugo Rodríguez-Alcalá as the most precious part of its author's work.
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