Poetry
Terredad
Not translated into English
Eugenio Montejo · 1978
Synopsis
The collection bears a neologism coined by the poet, preferred to "terrenalidad", to express the mysterious condition of our existence on Earth. Its poems seek immediate contact with life "in earthly form", far from the modern city: in "Terredad", man travels on a planet in motion, almost adrift; in "Labor", poets stay up late over old notebooks to keep the song of the earth; the last, "Un samán", unites the poet's voice with tropical nature.
Context
The collection was published in 1978 in Caracas by Monte Ávila and reissued in 2008. Guillermo Sucre reads in it the search for spiritual immediacy with the world, and Nicholas Roberts the move from nature in general to the Venezuelan and tropical nature that Trópico absoluto would develop in 1982. Poems by the author have appeared in English in the anthologies The Trees (2004) and Alphabet of the World (2010), but the collection has not been translated on its own into French or English.
Who it is for
For readers of meditative poetry, attentive to what links man to the earth, to the tree and to the song of birds.
Prizes and reception
The poet Raúl Gustavo Aguirre welcomes this word, preferred to terrestreidad, to express the earthly as opposed to the heavenly.