With time on my hands due to the coronavirus pandemic quarantine, I was
digging around the corners of the internet the other day - two different
corners actually, when I came across a couple of poems which I thought
might be of interest to readers of this blog which concerns itself with
all things Louise Brooks and Lulu. This is the second installment.
Unlike Frank O'Hara's poem featured in the previous blog, I don't know anything about Emilio Vasquez's poem, "Kutinijata Wa, Lulu!"
All I know about it is that it was published in the July-August 1929 issue if Amauta, a significant avant-garde journal published in Peru (though read around the world). Is this Lulu poem is some way about our Lulu, Louise Brooks? It is hard to say. It was published a few months after Pandora's Box debuted in Germany, though a few months before the film made its way to South America. (Pandora's Box was first screened in Latin America in December of 1929, though coverage of the film began appearing the previous month.)
Here is a poor translation of the poem, via the google translation function. Words in bold I could not translated. Can anyone suggest a better translation, or suggest a meaning for the words in bold?
KUTINIJATA WA, LULU
So under those past moons
as kelluncho mananero
pecked in your eyes in my waters
Today looking for you in his cabin
my suicidal loneliness gallops desperately
Song of kena soledana
my voice calls yelling at you
kirkincho rose from your ears
Your sneak like recent wikunite
and only the wind burns me with its kiss
My eyes lacewing you in false
Why do you throw me up to kiss the earth
But
you will return at dawn of fresh milk
like the puqu-puqu to its nest another day
We will start later in song and dance
the same waynu started a sowing day
Your green skirt turns wonder
our path will set afire again
There is little online about the author, Emilio Vasquez, who is unfamiliar to me. However I did find a passing reference to him on the web which mentioned he is considered an Andean modernist. That led me to pull my copy of Dudley Fitts' 1942 New Directions collection, Anthology of Contemporary Latin-American Poetry, and I found this brief biographical blurb.
I emailed a scholar of Latin American poetry, but have yet to hear back.
Coincidentally, the Blanton Museum of Art (at the University of Texas at Austin) along with the Museo de Arte de Lima (in Peru) just organized a new exhibit, The Avant-garde Networks of Amauta: Argentina, Mexico, and Peru in the 1920s, which relates to the very magazine in which I found this poem. The exhibit description reads: "The 1920s were a period of rapid modernization and artistic innovation across the globe; magazines played an integral role in disseminating bold new ideas and movements. The Avant-Garde Networks of Amauta: Argentina, Mexico, and Peru in the 1920s explores this history in Latin America through the magazine Amauta, published in Peru from 1926 to 1930. With an expansive network of collaborators, Amauta captured major artistic and political conversations of the decade including international discussions of the avant-garde, traditional craft as innovation, the visual identity of leftist politics, and the movement of Indigenism. The exhibition has more than 200 objects — including paintings, sculptures, poetry, ceramics, tapestries, woodcut prints, publications, and ephemera — that richly evoke the milieu of this radical period."
The musuem webpage has a rather nifty virtual tour of the exhibit, which to my eyes, suggests the influence of German expressionism on the Amauta artists. So who knows? Perhaps Emilio Vasquez was hip to what was going on in Germany, especially the considerable amount of coverage given Brooks and her role as Lulu in Pandora's Box, and was inspired to write a poem? Who knows?
Unlike Frank O'Hara's poem featured in the previous blog, I don't know anything about Emilio Vasquez's poem, "Kutinijata Wa, Lulu!"
All I know about it is that it was published in the July-August 1929 issue if Amauta, a significant avant-garde journal published in Peru (though read around the world). Is this Lulu poem is some way about our Lulu, Louise Brooks? It is hard to say. It was published a few months after Pandora's Box debuted in Germany, though a few months before the film made its way to South America. (Pandora's Box was first screened in Latin America in December of 1929, though coverage of the film began appearing the previous month.)
Here is a poor translation of the poem, via the google translation function. Words in bold I could not translated. Can anyone suggest a better translation, or suggest a meaning for the words in bold?
KUTINIJATA WA, LULU
So under those past moons
as kelluncho mananero
pecked in your eyes in my waters
Today looking for you in his cabin
my suicidal loneliness gallops desperately
Song of kena soledana
my voice calls yelling at you
kirkincho rose from your ears
Your sneak like recent wikunite
and only the wind burns me with its kiss
My eyes lacewing you in false
Why do you throw me up to kiss the earth
But
you will return at dawn of fresh milk
like the puqu-puqu to its nest another day
We will start later in song and dance
the same waynu started a sowing day
Your green skirt turns wonder
our path will set afire again
There is little online about the author, Emilio Vasquez, who is unfamiliar to me. However I did find a passing reference to him on the web which mentioned he is considered an Andean modernist. That led me to pull my copy of Dudley Fitts' 1942 New Directions collection, Anthology of Contemporary Latin-American Poetry, and I found this brief biographical blurb.
Coincidentally, the Blanton Museum of Art (at the University of Texas at Austin) along with the Museo de Arte de Lima (in Peru) just organized a new exhibit, The Avant-garde Networks of Amauta: Argentina, Mexico, and Peru in the 1920s, which relates to the very magazine in which I found this poem. The exhibit description reads: "The 1920s were a period of rapid modernization and artistic innovation across the globe; magazines played an integral role in disseminating bold new ideas and movements. The Avant-Garde Networks of Amauta: Argentina, Mexico, and Peru in the 1920s explores this history in Latin America through the magazine Amauta, published in Peru from 1926 to 1930. With an expansive network of collaborators, Amauta captured major artistic and political conversations of the decade including international discussions of the avant-garde, traditional craft as innovation, the visual identity of leftist politics, and the movement of Indigenism. The exhibition has more than 200 objects — including paintings, sculptures, poetry, ceramics, tapestries, woodcut prints, publications, and ephemera — that richly evoke the milieu of this radical period."
The musuem webpage has a rather nifty virtual tour of the exhibit, which to my eyes, suggests the influence of German expressionism on the Amauta artists. So who knows? Perhaps Emilio Vasquez was hip to what was going on in Germany, especially the considerable amount of coverage given Brooks and her role as Lulu in Pandora's Box, and was inspired to write a poem? Who knows?
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