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A review by viragohaus
Dark Times Filled with Light by Juan Gelman, Hardie St. Martin
It's difficult to reconstruct what happened, the truth in one's memory fights the memory of the truth'
from Under Foreign Rain
Argentinian poet Juan Gelman's work is inextricably intertwined with the politics of the homeland he spent so much of his life in exile from.
When the military seized power in 1976, Gelman's son and pregnant daughter-in-law were 'disappeared', that too elegant synonym for murdered while hands bound.
The son's remains were only discovered in a concrete drum in 1990; his daughter-in-law's have yet to be. We do know that she was kept alive long enough to give birth and that the child was given to a pro-junta family to raise.
The bare-bones horror of this would break most of us and Gelman stopped writing for years, returning in calm anger and rageful sorrow in 1980s.
The plainsong of Gelman's poetry casts a clear light on its subjects, be they grief, state violence, lost friendships or the tango.
Even though the translation here by Hardie St. Martin reads as a little too safe, Gelman's unstinting belief in the salvation of work is steadfast and, finally, uplifting.
from Under Foreign Rain
Argentinian poet Juan Gelman's work is inextricably intertwined with the politics of the homeland he spent so much of his life in exile from.
When the military seized power in 1976, Gelman's son and pregnant daughter-in-law were 'disappeared', that too elegant synonym for murdered while hands bound.
The son's remains were only discovered in a concrete drum in 1990; his daughter-in-law's have yet to be. We do know that she was kept alive long enough to give birth and that the child was given to a pro-junta family to raise.
The bare-bones horror of this would break most of us and Gelman stopped writing for years, returning in calm anger and rageful sorrow in 1980s.
The plainsong of Gelman's poetry casts a clear light on its subjects, be they grief, state violence, lost friendships or the tango.
Even though the translation here by Hardie St. Martin reads as a little too safe, Gelman's unstinting belief in the salvation of work is steadfast and, finally, uplifting.