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- 06/25/2021
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Poetry posted in this category are works of fiction. Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are created by the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
Lorca's "Ode to Walt Whitman" - Prologue. Prologue
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Pride is about celebrating who we are today and recognizing the pioneers who blazed the way to make things easier. Sometimes this requires the reclaiming of Gay works of art the repressive straight society has twisted to suit its own ends of repressing us; of keeping us divided from ourselves, and of keeping us under-educated about our own culture, history, politics and heroes.
The great Spanish modern poet Federico García Lorca came to America in the 1920s. He published a collection of poems about his experiences here in 1927, and arguably the marquee poem from the set is Oda a Walt Whitman. This is an interesting date, for just at this moment, an American publisher was tried and convicted for publishing pornography. His 'crime'? Bringing out Radclyffe Hall's groundbreaking novel of a female couple finding a happily-ever-after. It was this part of the story – not any of the English woman's language – that was condemned as obscene. And English courts agreed, as Hall never dared publish the novel in her homeland. (It, like all the best literature of England of the day, was published in Paris.)
The oldest translation I can find of Oda a Walt Whitman printed in the U.S. dates to 1955, when Poetry Magazine ran one. However, the version they published was totally misleading, twisting the poem so it reads as a diatribe against Gay people; ignoring the fact that Lorca was one 'of them' and not inclined to hate on his own. Nevertheless, this was – and has been – the only way the Oda has been seen in English since 1955. What BS.
Lorca's poem is a great spoken-word tribute to Walt Whitman, and acknowledges the icon-status Gay people have always felt for the man who was out in the middle of the 19th century. Lorca's tone is one of ironic embracing of all the shades of the LGBT+ Community he saw vibrant and alive in New York when he was there. In fact, the poem presents New York as Whitman's living body sustaining all his children – us. In the poem, he shames those who would try to shame us.
Here, at last, at nearly a 100 years after it was written, is a proper rendering of Lorca's tone in the poem, as well as his line lengths and all the varying metre he gave to this epic discourse of queer life in 1920s America.
I present this great work of Gay Pride in celebration of Pride weekend 2021. Please enjoy.
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Thanks go to @JACCfor his initial encouragement of this project.
Textual Note: Because of the poem's length, I won't provide the Spanish with my translation, but you can reference the compete Oda here: https://archive.org/details/poesiavolumen300fede/page/112/mode/2up?q=walt
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Thanks go to @JACCfor his initial encouragement of this project.
Textual Note: Because of the poem's length, I won't provide the Spanish with my translation, but you can reference the compete Oda here: https://archive.org/details/poesiavolumen300fede/page/112/mode/2up?q=walt
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Poetry posted in this category are works of fiction. Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are created by the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
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