Cuando veas a mi madre, sácala a bailar (Los Tres Mundos)

by Joan Baez, Elvira Valgañón (translator)

Por primera vez, la legendaria artista y activista comparte su poesía en una colección que recorre toda su vida.

«Tiernos y con un aire de diario íntimo, estos poemas son sinceros, vulnerables y apasionados. El lector también profundizará en las diversas facetas de la niña, la madre, la música, e incluso la fóbica y la soñadora…» Sophie Auster
«Su legado es haber sido un vehículo para la protesta social, un consuelo y un rayo de esperanza para la gente.» Patt Smith
«Joan Baez es una mujer de espíritu firme, con un alma verdaderamente independiente. Nadie podía decirle lo que tenía que hacer, hacía lo que quería. Aprendí muchas cosas de ella. Jamás podría devolverle su amor y entrega.» Bob Dylan
«Un icono estadounidense que echa la vista atrás y recupera su historia.»  Vanity Fair
«Poderoso y revelador.»  The Boston Globe

Aunque Joan Baez lleva décadas escribiendo poesía, nunca la había compartido públicamente. Poemas sobre su vida y su pasión por el arte se habían acumulado en cuadernos y trozos de papel. Ahora comparte, por primera vez, algunas de las experiencias vitales más importantes que dieron forma a un icono, y ofrece una mirada inédita a los recuerdos y reflexiones de una gran artista.

  Baez escribe poemas sobre sus contemporáneos como Bob Dylan, Judy Collins y Jimi Hendrix, pero también dedica otros a su infancia o su familia, e incluye piezas acerca de su hermana menor, la cantautora Mimi Fariña. Esta colección, que se presenta en edición bilingüe, habla de las personas, los lugares y los momentos que más han influido en su arte para convertirse así en un emocionante e inspirador diario personal en forma de poesía.

  «Tiernos y con un aire de diario íntimo, estos poemas son sinceros, vulnerables y apasionados. El lector también profundizará en las diversas facetas de la niña, la madre, la música, e incluso la fóbica y la soñadora…» (Sophie Auster). Artista de una influencia que trasciende fronteras y generaciones, «su legado es haber sido un vehículo para la protesta social, un consuelo y un rayo de esperanza para la gente» (Patti Smith).

Genres: Poetry, Music, Nonfiction, Audiobook, The United States Of America, Memoir

292 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 2, 2025

About the author

American political activist Joan Baez sang folk.

People know highly individual vocal style of Joan Chandos Baez, a writer. This soprano features a three-octave vocal range and a distinctively rapid vibrato. Her topics deal with social issues.

People best know her hits "There but for Fortune," "Diamonds and Rust," "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," and to a lesser extent, "We Shall Overcome," "Love Is Just a Four-letter Word" and "Farewell Angelina." After the 1960s, her music strayed considerably and encompassed everything from rock and pop to country and gospel.

She also performed "Sweet Sir Galahad," and "Joe Hill" at the festival of 1969 at Woodstock. Her passion, notably in the areas of nonviolence, civil and human rights, and the environment in more recent years lasted even longer than well-known early relationship with Bob Dylan.

She performed publicly for nearly a half century, released more than thirty albums, and recorded in at least eight languages.


Baez, a writer, especially in the mid-1970s, most often interpreted work and covered Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, the Beatles, Jackson Browne, Paul Simon, the Rolling Stones, Stevie Wonder, and myriad other persons.

In more recent years, she interpreted diverse writers, such as Steve Earle, Natalie Merchant, and Ryan Adams, and found success.

Reviews

[Ness]

I love Joan Baez so goddamn much id read her shopping list if I could

[Hazael Madalinski]

i loved baez’s ramblings and find it almost unjust to rate this book so low. some days i felt poetic enough to consume her work and other days i found it hard to relate to her writing. she’s girlish and writes about the mundane with grace. i like other poets more and feel like baez is an aspiring mary oliver. definitely worth the read and was great to bring to the beach. :)

[Mike]

3.5 stars. A collection that highlights Baez’s strengths and weaknesses as a poet. Her verse about landscapes (both natural and personal/interior) sparkle with clarity and insight, imbued with a rhythm that carries the poems forward in ebbs and flows – rather appropriately, since images of water, waves, and “softly rolling seas” abound in this collection. On the other hand, the poems written about some of her famous peers (fellow musicians including Jimi Hendrix, Judy Collins, and Bob Dylan) fall flat, rarely rising above the surface-level observations of journal entries punctuated by staccato enjambment.

The one exception is the poem inspired by Leonard Cohen, "Dear Leonard," which successfully unites inner landscape and outward remembrance. It is also written as a prose poem in letter format, avoiding the uneven line breaks of her other musician profiles, and is credited to “Joan and Yasha.”

In her introductory note, Baez discusses her psychoanalytic struggles with dissociative identity disorder, and the fact that some of these poems were “co-written” by these “inner authors” as a way of coping with her trauma. And so in that sense, these are truly “landscape[s] of her past,” to quote a line from “The Rosy Trumpeteers,” another work credited to Yasha. Some of these co-written poems are the strongest in the collection. Especially noteworthy are Baez's remembrances of her close family members – parents and sisters – that stand as gorgeous meditations on love and loss.

Worth a look if you are a fan.

[Sophia Eck]

yes her poem to Leonard Cohen made me shed a tear or two

[mareasola]

I am absolutely clueless about how to rate this book. Do no trust me. I love Joan Baez and I found her writing delicate and tender. However, I also think if I had not known her music, I would not have liked her poetry. I remembered that sentence in Diamonds and Rust in which she sang “my poetry was lousy, you said” and I could not help but think that he might have been right…

If you like Joan Baez’s music, I recommend it. If you have not listened to Joan Baez, you may want to listen to her music, I think that is the real deal.

[Carolina]

Chicas me encanta Joan Baez pero me quedo con su faceta de cantaurota más que con la de poeta... las imágenes que evoca tienen una sensibilidad especial que lleva su marca, y la relación con su familia, la infancia y la naturaleza que los acoge me emociona un montón. No me disgustó la antología, pero a veces hay demasiadas libertades con el verso libre que me dejan indiferente.

[Pablito]

"My poetry was lousy you said," Joan says of Dylan, in her paean to their fated romance, "Diamonds and Rust." And to be fair, most of the works in When You See My Mother, Ask Her to Dance: Poems fall between musings and observations, not poetry.

Still if you're a lifelong admirer of the Queen of Folk Music and Conscience of her generation, as am I, you might just relish Joan's takes on Judy Collins, Jimi Hendrix, Leonard Cohen, and Bobby himself. Not to mention her tender, enchanting tributes to her sisters Mimi and Pauline and to her parents.

The title poem reveals Joan at her poetic best, I believe. It describes a fantasy evening between her 18-year-old mother and a Swedish opera star, twice her age, that captures Joan's deft ear for music and rhythm and her ability to marry whimsy with a pure heart.

I love Joan Baez, have loved her from the age of 14. If you, too, have been touched by her music and/or her activism, this small book by Goodine, one of the finest bookmakers this side of the Atlantic, will only bring you closer.

[christina]

met her at a signing for this over the summer and just got around to reading it now. i only got into joan baez around 2 years ago, but her work keeps popping up in my life when i need it. im not really a poetry person but i read this entire thing in one day, thank you joan <3

[jo]

Unplanned, I walked into the bookstore today and found this. It was a real enjoyable and easy read:) beautifully written.

[George Rashbrook]

6/10
It’s no ‘Diamonds and Rust’

[eden]

as when you see my mother, ask her to dance progresses, and moves through the life stages, it slowly becomes centered around grief. and not just grief from joan's loved ones dying, but grief for the people that have left her life but remain in her memory. though it does discuss death, and explores how joan sees 'eternity'. basically, it was devastating but beautiful. the poem about her mother's death ("vivian") is now, I think, one of my favourite poems of all time.
my favourites:
- lily
- little fellow
- colleen
- vivian
- dear leonard
- silence
- queen of the mountain
- into the ether
she said I hear my mother calling me and I asked what is she saying and she answered in a singsong voice the way you call a child home from down the block at the end of the day Lor-ray-ain Lor-ray-ainnn and again real slow Lor-raaaay-ainnn which was her mother's name (from "vivian")

[rara ➶]

THIS BOOK IS BELOW MID. the poems are literally just diary entries. SO YEA BRI IM CRITIQUING THE MEDIOCRITY OF THE BOOK, which is fully allowed in a reviewing platform last i checked. reporting my previous review, and GR ofc silencing me and taking my review down?? ALL FOR A MID BOOK. people are allowed not to like books 🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️

1) 3 stars is not a low review, tho this deserves less
2) poetry was below mid
3) why did that weirdo take my review so personally as if i didn’t like HER writing???
4) joan’s work has poems about “activism” in but i dont like the writing of someone who talks about woke when she dehumanizes certain groups 🙄
5) YOU CANT CENSOR ME ILL TYPE THIS A MILLION TIMES IF I HAVE TO

xoxo, go piss girl 💋

[Haley Bee Bird]

my beloved close personal friend joan baez🌷

i love this woman so dearly. her music is one of the best things i have discovered in my adult life so i was obviously thrilled to find out she had a poetry collection! the poetry was beautiful, it was very approachable writing, but still so visceral. joan writes on nostalgia, grief, family and friends with such care. some of the poems were heartbreaking and some were just funny and sweet, and i think that’s important too. absolutely loved it.

fave poems:
lily
kissing you
gabe at three
colleen
planet easter
birdsong
on the other hand
nowadays
queen of the mountain
granny and the tree

[Jocelyn Schartiger]

I would rate this book 3.5 stars. I am a fan of Joan Baez's songwriting so I figured I would be interested in some of her poetry. And for the most part, I was! Although I do still prefer her songs to this book.

I always applaud vulnerability in art. I think that's what makes good art. And in Baez's case (an aging woman in the public eye, most famous for her relationship with a man, with a later in life mental disorder diagnosis), it's beautifully disconcerting.

[leni swagger]

“So, when you see my mother,
ask her to dance!” (Fine! But don’t ask mine…)

[Anna Howard]

Phenomenal. Simple, beautiful, thoughtful, honest.
Some really nice writing in there about friendships, sisters, moms, daughters that was just raw, honest, open, and transformative.

I can’t stop thinking about her poem A Scant Grace about the painting American Gothic. Life changing.

Some other favorites:
Afraid
Phobia
Ravenous
Dog death heat

[Paula]

2,5*

sin ubicar a joan baez, en una semana me he leído su poemario y me he visto su documental. lol. de aquí me quedo con 'a sudden deer' y 'jimi'. pero en general un poco meh.

pd. chuli que fuera edición bilingüe.

[Lainey]

4.5

[Joshua Garvelink]

“Silver Bells” is one of the most affecting poems I’ve ever read and maybe enough to make me buy a copy of this.

[Rebekah]

'I look at the way
my father stoops and I want to put my hands on his shoulders

and say, 'There, Pops, stand up tall and fill your chest with air,'
but he mistakes my caring for criticism, and he hates to be

criticized. He thinks then I don't love him. But I do love him,
he who did it all so right, in his shining days, in his

shining way? I forgive him because, I suppose, his way is
the way of his mother, whom he remembers as perfect,

but who was, in fact, a tyrant. Yet, how can I forgive my father
but not his parents, who were surely as wretched

as their parents before them, caught as they all were in a web
of generational evil? I truly believe they all remember nothing

of that web.'

[Özgür Baltat]

GÜMÜŞ ÇANLAR

Tamamen korunmasızdı o.
Ama ben görmedim, görmedim.

Orada odasındayken
onun yanındaydım, ama sanki bin mil ötedeydim.
Kısık sesini duydum, ama dinlemedim.
Belki dinleseydim,
duymuş olurdum
küçük gümüş çanlar kadar tatlı olanı.

Ama nasıl dinleyebilirdim ki
onun miniminnacık isteklerini?
Ben bambaşka bir yerdeydim, kafamın içindeki
vızıltıları ve vınlamaları tasnif ederken.
Daha tanımadığım sesler.
Daha tanımadığım sesler.

Affet beni, benim canım oğlum.

[Lynn]

Poetry Collection

A nice collection of prose poetry. I enjoyed reading them and found the well written. If you love Joan Baez, this is a nice addition to her work.

[Natasha]

"Ravenous

Quoth the raven:
'I am ravenous.'
And he pecked out
Edgar Allan’s eye."

[Akseli Koskela]

Hmmm… quite naive..

[Sharon N]

Poetry isn’t a genre I go to usually but this was a reading prompt challenge. I enjoyed some more than others.

[Giselle]

3.25 I don’t usually read poetry but I’m glad I chose this to fulfill a reading challenge prompt. There was some really beautiful prose and then some that I was left thinking huh. I especially enjoyed her poems that focused on nature, her mother and her son.

[lily]

3.5

[Alex Juarez]

Prose poems about nature & family from a beloved musician & writer 🫶🏼

[Rachel Zilkey]

Really enjoyed this! I marked 'Writing' and 'Big Sur' as a couple of my favourites. I look forward to reading this again!

[David Wilson]

I have loved Joan Baez's voice, and vision, since I was a very young man. Musically, she has been part of my life for many decades. This was a different look, a wonderful look, into her thoughts, what inspired her, some of those she knew and loved and remembered. I think it started a little slowly, but two poems very much stuck with me... "Queen of the Mountain," about her sister... and the title poem. You don't encounter talent like this many times in your lifetime. Some older generations share theirs, but she shared mine, and I am so glad I listed to this - will absolutely do so again and buy the hard cover to mark up and remember...

It is narrated by the author, which makes it that much more special.