* Author of the Month *
The Alphabets of Latin America
Author: Abhay K.Publisher: Bloomsbury
ISBN: 9789389867909
138 pages, Paperback
Organized alphabetically from A-Z, The Alphabets of Latin America, a collection of poems written by poet-diplomat Abhay K. during his
travels across Latin America between 2016-2019, takes you on a roller
coaster ride to one of the most culturally and geographically fascinating
continents, known for its legendary Maya and Inca civilizations, sizzling Samba
and Tango, the world's biggest carnivals, labyrinths of Borges, magic realism
of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, great poetry of Ruben Dario, Pablo Neruda , Gabriela
Mistral, Cesare Vallejo, Octavio Paz, fascinating art of Frida Kahlo and
Fernando Botero, among others. As you flip its pages, you will find yourself
swimming with pink dolphins in the Amazon river, watching the sunset in Martian
landscape of Atacama desert, kissing the heights of Machu Picchu and admiring a
thousand rainbows at Iguazu Falls.
The noted Cuban poet V├нctor Rodr├нguez
N├║├▒ez writes –“Latin Americans must be grateful, today and always, to Abhay K.
and this fundamental book. Armed with intelligence and sensitivity, with
calculation and passion, The Alphabets of
Latin America is a love poem that honors us as a society and culture. In
these pages, poetry, as a way of thinking and a response to adversity, reaches
breadth and mastery, depth and splendor. Our region’s past and present are
approached not only as reading but also as experience, with the knowledge of
cause and the authenticity of memory. What’s more, in these texts, narrative
and lyric, intellectual rigor and formal play, description and reflection
happily shake hands. Likewise, identification predominates over
differentiation, and an essential link is established between Indians and Latin
Americans: “A people, a tribe, a nation is destroyed, / only to reincarnate in
another form.”
Atahualpa
I,
Atahualpa, the last Inca emperor,
born a
sovereign, died a prisoner
mercilessly
strangled by a garrote
under
the cunning friar’s watch
then
burnt without a dignified
Inca
burial, to prevent my rebirth.
Spaniards
brought a strange disease
to the
Andes, that killed my father
his
successor died soon, plunging
the
Inca empire into a succession war
Huascar and I fought for years,
subduing
him, I emerged victorious
soon
armed intruders entered my empire
with
sixty-nine horses and a hundred more men
being
ingenuous and benign, I called them
for a
dialogue falling into their trap
the
deceitful friar offered me a breviary
asking
me to convert to Christianity
disgusted
I threw it down in rage
Pizarro
ordered his men to charge
a
handful of them, heavily armed
butchered my army of five
thousand
none
of them was wounded or killed
they
captured me alive in the battlefield
to be
set free, I offered to fill
my
cell with silver and gold
but
Pizarro conducted a mock trial
and
sentenced me to death by fire.
Huascar: half-brother of Atahualpa
Favelas
Party-coloured
islands
in the sea
of an indifferent
humanity
suffering,
celebrating
the carnival
i.e. life.
Zocalo
In the
middle of this vast square
I
stand alone, meditating—
racing
back and forth in time
hearing
jeers of the victors
silence
of the vanquished
all
swept away by time’s broom
does
it matter who loses, who wins a war—
a
people, a tribe, a nation is destroyed
only to reincarnate in
another form.
Octavio
Paz
‘History is one thing, our lives
something else...I have survived,
that’s enough…’
– Octavio Paz
Staring at a draft of shadows
I straddle between two pasts
my feet on two boats
I keep afloat composing poems
I am alone in a library
reading forbidden books
I lose my faith reading Voltaire
the library crumbles in front of my eyes
I am happy
I have survived
I come across godemiches in Paris
don’t know what are these
embarrassed, I ask a surrealist,
who whispers in my ears—
‘these are objects to overcome
profound human loneliness.’
I think all fighting is absurd
but cannot tell it to anyone
so I go to see Neruda
he calls me a traitor
then embraces me affectionately
calling me—‘son.’
Meeting Buddha in India
on the footpath, I ask—
‘what is Self?’ Buddha smiles
and turns
into a pile of stones.
Abhay K. is the
author of a memoir and eight poetry collections including The Seduction of Delhi, The
Eight-Eyed Lord of Kathmandu and
The Prophecy of Brasilia. He is the editor of CAPITALS,
New Brazilian Poems, The
Bloomsbury Anthology of Great Indian Poems and The Bloomsbury Book of Great Indian Love
Poems. His poems have been published in over 60 literary journals
across the world including Poetry
Salzburg Review.
He
received the SAARC Literary Award in 2013 and was invited to record his poems
at the Library of Congress in Washington DC in 2018. His poem-song 'Earth
Anthem' has been translated into over 50 global languages and is performed
across the globe. He has recently translated Meghaduta and Ritusamhara
of Kalidasa.
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