Dominican Republic / All works
Poetry
Mi Pedro
Not translated into English
Salomé Ureña · 1897
Synopsis
A mother speaks of her young son, Pedro, and begins with what he is not: he is not a soldier and does not covet the laurels of Caesar or Alexander. She celebrates instead his precocious intelligence, his taste for study and for progress rather than for war, and the love he already bears for his homeland, the portrait of a child whom his mother already sees turned towards books.
Context
The poem is among the last verses of its author, written for the second of her four children; it brings into a body of work until then turned towards the homeland an intimate subject matter, which is ranked among her autobiographical themes. The child became Pedro Henríquez Ureña, critic and philologist. The correspondence of the two spouses, published by El Nuevo Diario, shows the attention they paid to their children's gifts.
Who it is for
In Spanish; a brief, accessible poem, best read knowing who the child it addresses was.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as one of the most tender poems by the woman known as the mother of Dominican poetry.
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