- Paperback
- 150 pages
- The Sun Unwound: Original Texts from Occupied America
- Dorn & Brotherston
- English
- 02 January 2017 Dorn & Brotherston
- 9781556432927
The Result Of A 20 Year Collaboration Between Poet Edward Dorn And Scholar Gordon Brotherston, The Sun Unwound Gathers Together The Disparate Voices Of Oppressed Americans Through The Centuries The Hymns, Songs, And Prayers Of Mesoamericans And Other Native Peoples The Verse Of Eight Latin American Guerrillas Of The 1960 S And Works By Three Of Latin America S Most Important Avant Garde Poets Of The Twentieth Century The Native Americans Saw Their Cultures Obliterated, Most Of The Guerrillas Died In Their Struggles, And The Modernists Have Faced Persecution, Prison, And Torture For Their Left Wing Convictions Previously Untranslated Or Unavailable To Most North Americans, Their Poems Offer A Striking Counterpoint To The Colonialist, Capitalist, Anglo Saxon Ethos.
It was a privelege to read ancient South American texts and poems written by guerillas and revolutionaries The Aztec, Mayan and Inca texts plod a bit and take some figuring out but they had surprisingly relevant messages amongst the stories of Gods, sacrifices and white invaders It was cool also to be able to read the original texts they were translated from The guerilla poems were my favourite, as they were very powerful and emotive, with rousing messages, dedications to dead friends, love for the landscape and cool imagery and colloqualisms for example, I didn t know gringos were also called coyotes in South America There was even a bit of dark humour It was also great to read a poem by the legendary Che The contemporary poems at the end, however, I didn t get on so well with There were great lines and great poetry, but it was very abst...
I can t believe I had never read Cesar Vallejo before this I feel humbled by my own ignorance There are many other fantastic and surprising pieces in this collection I particularly enjoyed the inclusion of the illustrated work by Patricia Galvao but Vallejo is wh...