Legacies: Selected Poems: A Bilingual Edition

by Heberto Padilla

Legacies is the author's own selection from his work, and represents the many facets of Padilla's his lyrical love poems, his almost Audenesque meditations on other poets, his deceptively simple verses about history. This edition presents the English translations and original Spanish poems side by side on facing pages.

Genres: Poetry

192 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1984

About the author

Heberto Padilla was a Cuban poet, and the center of the so-called "Padilla affair.". He was born in Puerta de Golpe, Pinar del Río, Cuba. His first book of poetry, Las rosas audaces (The Audacious Roses), was published in 1949.

Padilla was a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Farrar Straus & Giroux published several editions of his poetry, a novel, En mi jardín pastan los héroes (translated as Heroes Are Grazing in My Garden), and a book of memoirs, La mala memoria (translated as Self-Portrait of the Other).

He was the Elena Amos Distinguished Scholar in Latin American Studies at Columbus State University, Columbus GA, 1999-2000

Reviews

[Steven Godin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have said goodbye to fogged houses
huddled at the edge of mountain passes
like haystacks in Flemish paintings,
said goodbye too to the women
who moved me, more than once
—most of all, those with malachite eyes—
and sleds abandoned like gargoyles
in the windows
now shuttered.
For the sun has cured me.
I do not live in remembering any woman,
nor are there countries living in my memory
more intensely than this body resting at my side;
besides, the best ground
for a man to be on
is his own ground, his garden, his own house,
away from the morbid souls who hunt on the docks
the rotten meat of nightmares.
A new day comes in through the window
—sparkling, tropical.
The mirror in the room multiplies its brilliance.
I am naked beside my naked woman,
enclosed in this aquarial light;
but this one that hurries across the mirror,
in overcoat and muffler,
rushing downstairs,
hastily greeting the concierge,
going into the crowded dining room
and sitting down to watch
the facade of the train station
like a dunghill
devoured by winter
with its dreary rain—
this is my last reflection,
which now the sun has cured,
the last symptom of that sickness,
thank heaven, transitory.

[Yvonne · Rating 4 out of 5]

A varied collection. I think anyone with an appreciation for poetry can find something to like here. Even moreso, if one appreciates the context for the author's poems, such as this one:

Sometimes I Plunge

Sometimes I plunge into the ocean, for a long time,
and emerge suddenly gasping, breathing,
and swim as far as I can from the coast
and see the distant line of the shore
and the sun making the oily water boil.
The shoreline drowns in the vapor
and I close my eyes blinded by the light.
Then, a handsbreadth from those waves, the country appears
that for so long we thought
we were carrying on our shoulders: white, like a warship,
shining against the sun and against poets

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book of self-seclected poems is one of my favorites of Padilla's. No two poems are the same- a sign of his skill at both writing and selecting them- and each one takes me to a certain beautiful place: Moscow, London, Rome, Havana, heaven, a vinyard, the garden in which Padilla's grandfather works. Padilla writes about history, politics, freedom, love, adventure- anything worth thinking about- and he does it with great care and a feeling of impressive concentration. I love that there are poems here that are long and lyrical and others that are concise and tight, leaving nothing out of place. This man is a master.

[Leonardo Rodríguez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sobre Heberto Padilla en Letras Libres: http://www.letraslibres.com/index.php...