The Answer/La Respuesta

Selected Poems

Introduction In making this brief selection of poetry we were guided on the one hand by our interest in the Answer and, on the other, by our desire to offer at least a glimpse of the range of styles, themes, and tones in her repertoire.1 Sor Juana’s plays and poems incorporate many registers and styles of language. She reproduces the foreign accents of nonnative speakers of Spanish (that is, of African, Basque, Nahuatl—indigenous—and Portuguese origin) as well as the erudite cadences of clerics in the Latin church; she writes in the tradition of widely produced dramatic authors and the poetry “academies” of Madrid and Seville. Her idiomatic and elite nuances reveal both the silent pages of the enormous numbers of books she read and the turns of phrase she heard from people in every strata of Mexican society (servants, priests, enslaved laborers , aristocrats). All these elements grace her lines. Sor Juana’s intellectual development occurred in a kaleidoscopic world, at once sensual and stark, earthbound and given to flight. Baroque Mexico saw the clash and meeting of cultures, the incomplete destruction of one empire and the mimicking importation of another (the Spanish monarchy was brought across the ocean as the colonial viceroyalty). Sor Juana’s poetry mirrors the richness Selected Poems 1 See “Poet-Scholar: Sor Juana’s Writing” (pp.15–18), for a survey of Sor Juana’s range of styles. Not represented in this selection are her verse dramas, which would have to be so briefly excerpted as to distort the work. The source for all poems is OC, and the poem numbers used here come from that edition. Some of the poems have headnotes (in brackets); these are probably not Sor Juana’s, but additions made by the first publisher. 144 Selected Poems Selected Poems 145 of that world’s artistic and religious visions. Her work exudes humor , irony, and wit even when expressing sorrow. Spontaneous and variegated, some poems remind us of colorful marketplaces in the central plazas of Mexican towns and of refrains in boisterous popular songs. Her verse is also sumptuous and highly crafted, like the churches where her villancicos were sung and the royal chambers where her plays were performed. A Note on Meter and Rhyme Spanish verse counts syllables, stressed and unstressed.2 When one word ends with a vowel and the next begins with a vowel (or silent h), the two vowel sounds blend and count as one syllable. A convention imposing a two-beat ending governs words that do not conform—adding or subtracting an “imaginary” final syllable where necessary. Each line bears two heavier beats that vary in placement. Spanish rhyme is of two kinds. Assonantal (rima asonante) repeats only the vowel sound or sounds, beginning with the final accented syllable in a (usually even-numbered) line: the final a–e of santiguarme, triquitraques, dictamen, Extravagantes in the first two stanzas of poem 49 (included here), for example. Consonantal (rima consonante) resembles what English verse considers true rhyme, repeating the entire sound of the final syllable(s): the final -ado, -olo, -ida, for example, of osado, bañado, Apolo, sólo, atrevida, vida in the last six lines of poem 149 (also included here). Popular and learned forms have persisted in Spanish poetry since the Middle Ages, often practiced by the same poet. Both types employ the common elements of versification, though the lines of popular poetry, originating in oral traditions, are shorter—eight syllables or less. Romance / Ballad: Prólogo al lector / Prologue to the Reader of These Poems The Romance, a narrative Spanish poem corresponding to the English ballad, has an octosyllabic (eight-syllable) line. Alternate lines (second, fourth, etc.) rhyme assonantly. Like the ballad, the romance sprang from traditional popular origins and was put to literary use. While critics have paid more attention to Sor Juana’s “serious” lyric productions than to her burlesque verse, many occasional and dedicatory poems like this “Prologue” reward our attention 2 For a brief presentation of the principles governing verse forms and their subtleties , see Nelson, “Spanish”, pp. 165–76. with a piquant mix of popular and polite cultural elements. Sor Juana frequently uses the romance or ballad form to underscore her own work as drawing not only on prestigious models but also on the marginalized world of street criers and broadside songs. Despite her years at the viceregal court and her privileged position...