Aleph to Zed

Page 14 American Book Review radio, like messages to uninhibited planets, or a bellowing in the lunar void. Not only are works such as “The Word” reminiscent of Whitman and Ginsberg, they also illustrate a deep multiplicity of influence: science, art, emotion. These elements constitute Cardenal’s sagacity, and this final section is marked by complexity and the stylistic grace Cardenal has achieved after continually refining his poetic voice for more than fifty years. Nowhere is Cardenal’s mastery more evident than the title work of the section, “Pluriverse,” in which we see a thorough demonstration of Cardenal’s complete poetic arsenal, the apex of the poet’s successful journey to a strong, distinct voice, in tune with all the universe. With some notable exceptions, such as “Room 5600” and “At the Grave of a Guerrilla,” Cardenal’s overtly political work is insightful and provocative, but not as consistently engaging nor aesthetically pleasing as the rest of the work in Pluriverse: New and Selected Poems. However, one does perceive an overall sense of a “narration of maturation” from the earlier works to the new poems at the end of the collection, and the diversity of the work serves to enhance the overall experience. It proves a worthwhile journey to witness Cardenal’s impressive body of life work unfold, as it could only be told through the unique perspective of priest, poet, philosopher, and revolutionary, Ernesto Cardenal. Joseph Haske is a poet, fiction writer, and translator. He currently serves as the English Department Chair at South Texas College in McAllen, Texas. Haske continued from previous page Overall, this second section in the book contains consistently notable work, characterized by Cardenal ’s maturation as a poet; he successfully constructs a mythology of his own, a world of his own, from multiple sources: Christianity, local traditions, pagan spiritualism, and NativeAmerican customs, to name a few. Ernesto Cardenal’s life’s work has certainly warranted his place of distinction in Latin American letters. The third section, entitled Lights, highlights Cardenal’s poetic output during 1970–1985. Much of the work in Lights is characterized by its political nature; it is sober, tense, often prosaic, matter of fact, and verbose. One might note a similarity to some of the politically themed works in the beginning of the book but with a stronger, more developed, poetic voice. At times, it seems that the impact of Cardenal’s diction in Spanish is lost in translation, which is an all-too-common problem when trying to recreate a romance language poem in English. The employment of raw, simple language in Spanish typically creates a more stark contrast with traditional flowery, poetic language, creating an effect that captures the reader’s attention. Since English is already a harsher, Germanic-based language, it proves difficult to capture these subtle distinctions, especially since such diction has played an integral role in British and US poetry written since the early part of the twentieth century. The language is the real problem; the translation is done as well as it could be, but the effect of shifting from Spanish to English removes some of the “poetic feel” of the work and makes some of these poems feel more like reported speech than poetry. For example, “The Arrival” is missing some of that poetic feel that one finds in the original poem, “La llegada”: We get off the plane and we go, Nicaraguans and foreigners, all mixed together toward the huge lighted building—first stop Immigration and customs—and as we approach, passport in hand, I think of how proud I am to be holding the passport of my socialist country, and of my satisfaction. Still, despite all that is lost in translation, these poems are meant to be heard in English, as well as other languages, because of the message that Cardenal needs to convey to the US and to the world. In these cases, politics either takes precedence over style or commands a style in which the primary concern is political in nature. The concluding segment of the collection, Pluriverse, spans a period that includes much of the poet’s most notable recent work, from 1986–2005. This section is characterized by...