Small Hours of the Night: Selected Poems of Roque Dalton
by Roque Dalton edited by Hardie St. Martin translated by Jonathan Cohen
Northwestern University Press, 1996 Paper: 978-1-880684-35-1 Library of Congress Classification PQ7539.2.D3A6 1996 Dewey Decimal Classification 861
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
Selected from 10 of his collections and two posthumous manuscripts, Small Hours of the Night is an English-only edition of the poems of Salvadorian revolutionary Roque Dalton. Written from exile and in prison, Dalton's work deftly balances love, death, revolution, and politics, with compelling language and seductive verse. The volume includes introductory essays by Dalton's friends and contemporaries: Ernesto Cardenal, Claribel Alegría, and Hardie St. Martin.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Roque Dalton García (San Salvador, El Salvador, 14 May 1935 – Quezaltepeque, El Salvador, 10 May 1975) was a leftist Salvadoran poet, essayist, journalist, and activist. He is considered one of Latin America's most compelling poets. He wrote emotionally strong, sometimes sarcastic, and image-loaded works dealing with life, death, love, and politics. In 1975, he was executed by members of the People's Revolutionary Army (ERP) after getting into a dispute with their leader. He is remembered for his bohemian lifestyle and the jovial, irreverent personality reflected in his literary work, as well as his commitment to social causes in El Salvador. Dalton's writing includes almost 15 poetry collections, a novel, a personal testimony, and a play, as well as short stories, critiques, and essays on both literature and politics.
Hardie St. Martin was one of the most prominent Spanish to English translators of the last century, receiving a Guggenheim Fellowship, a P.E.N International Translation Award, and an ALTA award during his decades long career. He died in Barcelona in 2007.
Jonathan Cohen is a poet, translator, essayist, and scholar of inter-American literature
REVIEWS
"Finally and gloriously here are the poems of Roque Dalton, one of the most compelling Central American poets it has been my privilege to read."
—Ariel Dorfman
— -
"How amazing to talk of love and death in the same breath. Small Hours of the Night is a collection of seductive verse. Roque Dalton's poetry celebrates man's desire to live in this hemisphere. This man's work hits me harder than springtime."
—E. Ethelbert Miller— -
"[Dalton's poetry illustrates] his profound conviction that the poet can and must, in his life as in his work, serve as the finely-honed scalpel of change, both in word and deed..."
—Claribel Alegria
— -
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CONTENTS
PREFACES
I Remember Roque, Ernesto Cardenal
Roque Dalton: Poet and Revolutionary, Claribel Alegría
Love Falls Like a Generous Rain, Hardie St. Martin
THE WINDOW IN MY FACE
Study with a Little Tedium
The Crazy Ones
Time for Ashes
Hating Love
Monday
My Horse
Listen
Poems-In-Law to Lisa
Dream Far Away from Time
Vernacular Elegy for Francisco Sorto
Minor Chorus of the Fifth Cell
THE INJURED PARTY'S TURN
The Decision
Island on the Fifth Floor
Storm
Stillborn Parable
The Bad Example
Because I Spoke Out
I See
Insomnia
The Disciple
The Tropics
Naked Woman
María Tecún
The Art of Poetry
Madrigal
Words in front of the Sea
The Sixth Commandment
What a Crazy Man Said to Me
Megalomania
The Pope
Old Woman with Small Boy
Another Dead Woman
César Vallejo
Vanity
Small Hours of the Night
The Bureaucrats
Mariano the Musician Has Died
Epitaph
TerribleThing
I Wanted
THE SEA
The Sea
THE TESTIMONIES
Juan Cunjama, Sorcerer
Overlook
The Desert
Rite for the Birth of a Flower on the Great Pyramid
The Deer
Pine
Homage to Sage
Relative
MINOR HELLS
My Country's Far Away
Forgetting
Middle Age
Leaves
Passing the Factory
Now You See Why
When Death
Tied Down to the Sea
I Remember When I'd Talk of Lisa
A Dead Girl in the Ocean
Memory
The Prodigal Son
German-American Hotel
TAVERN AND OTHER PLACES
I. The Country
Latin America
27 Years
Fear
Soldier's Rest
The Captain
In a Fit of Anger
The National Soul
The Law Enforcer
The Sure Hand of God
II. The Country: The Foreigners
Sir Thomas
Samantha
Matthew
The Bishop
Lady Ann
The Firstborn
Sir Thomas
Matthew
Sir Thomas
Matthew
Samantha
Lady Ann
The Firstborn
III. The Country: Poems from the Last Prison
Prison Again
Preparing the Next Hour
Independence Day
Summer
Your Company
I Smell Bad
Bad News on a Scrap of Newspaper
Permission to Wash Up
Some Longings
Number 357
Six Prose Poems
The Morning I Met My Father
History
The Young People
A Not Exactly Optimistic Tragedy
Springtime in Ievani
The Social Being Determines Social Conscience
In Case of Doubt
Love Story
50th Anniversary
Tavern
LOVE HITS ME HARDER THAN SPRINGTIME
Love
Zdena
What's Missing
35 Years
Sunday Morning
Seeing You Naked
Date
A SLIGHTLY REPELLENT BOOK
Therapeutics
Saudade
Epitaph
Tense Conversation
Trick
No, I Wasn't Always This Ugly
TOADSTOOLS
VIII
IX
Notes
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
Small Hours of the Night: Selected Poems of Roque Dalton
by Roque Dalton edited by Hardie St. Martin translated by Jonathan Cohen
Northwestern University Press, 1996 Paper: 978-1-880684-35-1
Selected from 10 of his collections and two posthumous manuscripts, Small Hours of the Night is an English-only edition of the poems of Salvadorian revolutionary Roque Dalton. Written from exile and in prison, Dalton's work deftly balances love, death, revolution, and politics, with compelling language and seductive verse. The volume includes introductory essays by Dalton's friends and contemporaries: Ernesto Cardenal, Claribel Alegría, and Hardie St. Martin.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Roque Dalton García (San Salvador, El Salvador, 14 May 1935 – Quezaltepeque, El Salvador, 10 May 1975) was a leftist Salvadoran poet, essayist, journalist, and activist. He is considered one of Latin America's most compelling poets. He wrote emotionally strong, sometimes sarcastic, and image-loaded works dealing with life, death, love, and politics. In 1975, he was executed by members of the People's Revolutionary Army (ERP) after getting into a dispute with their leader. He is remembered for his bohemian lifestyle and the jovial, irreverent personality reflected in his literary work, as well as his commitment to social causes in El Salvador. Dalton's writing includes almost 15 poetry collections, a novel, a personal testimony, and a play, as well as short stories, critiques, and essays on both literature and politics.
Hardie St. Martin was one of the most prominent Spanish to English translators of the last century, receiving a Guggenheim Fellowship, a P.E.N International Translation Award, and an ALTA award during his decades long career. He died in Barcelona in 2007.
Jonathan Cohen is a poet, translator, essayist, and scholar of inter-American literature
REVIEWS
"Finally and gloriously here are the poems of Roque Dalton, one of the most compelling Central American poets it has been my privilege to read."
—Ariel Dorfman
— -
"How amazing to talk of love and death in the same breath. Small Hours of the Night is a collection of seductive verse. Roque Dalton's poetry celebrates man's desire to live in this hemisphere. This man's work hits me harder than springtime."
—E. Ethelbert Miller— -
"[Dalton's poetry illustrates] his profound conviction that the poet can and must, in his life as in his work, serve as the finely-honed scalpel of change, both in word and deed..."
—Claribel Alegria
— -
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CONTENTS
PREFACES
I Remember Roque, Ernesto Cardenal
Roque Dalton: Poet and Revolutionary, Claribel Alegría
Love Falls Like a Generous Rain, Hardie St. Martin
THE WINDOW IN MY FACE
Study with a Little Tedium
The Crazy Ones
Time for Ashes
Hating Love
Monday
My Horse
Listen
Poems-In-Law to Lisa
Dream Far Away from Time
Vernacular Elegy for Francisco Sorto
Minor Chorus of the Fifth Cell
THE INJURED PARTY'S TURN
The Decision
Island on the Fifth Floor
Storm
Stillborn Parable
The Bad Example
Because I Spoke Out
I See
Insomnia
The Disciple
The Tropics
Naked Woman
María Tecún
The Art of Poetry
Madrigal
Words in front of the Sea
The Sixth Commandment
What a Crazy Man Said to Me
Megalomania
The Pope
Old Woman with Small Boy
Another Dead Woman
César Vallejo
Vanity
Small Hours of the Night
The Bureaucrats
Mariano the Musician Has Died
Epitaph
TerribleThing
I Wanted
THE SEA
The Sea
THE TESTIMONIES
Juan Cunjama, Sorcerer
Overlook
The Desert
Rite for the Birth of a Flower on the Great Pyramid
The Deer
Pine
Homage to Sage
Relative
MINOR HELLS
My Country's Far Away
Forgetting
Middle Age
Leaves
Passing the Factory
Now You See Why
When Death
Tied Down to the Sea
I Remember When I'd Talk of Lisa
A Dead Girl in the Ocean
Memory
The Prodigal Son
German-American Hotel
TAVERN AND OTHER PLACES
I. The Country
Latin America
27 Years
Fear
Soldier's Rest
The Captain
In a Fit of Anger
The National Soul
The Law Enforcer
The Sure Hand of God
II. The Country: The Foreigners
Sir Thomas
Samantha
Matthew
The Bishop
Lady Ann
The Firstborn
Sir Thomas
Matthew
Sir Thomas
Matthew
Samantha
Lady Ann
The Firstborn
III. The Country: Poems from the Last Prison
Prison Again
Preparing the Next Hour
Independence Day
Summer
Your Company
I Smell Bad
Bad News on a Scrap of Newspaper
Permission to Wash Up
Some Longings
Number 357
Six Prose Poems
The Morning I Met My Father
History
The Young People
A Not Exactly Optimistic Tragedy
Springtime in Ievani
The Social Being Determines Social Conscience
In Case of Doubt
Love Story
50th Anniversary
Tavern
LOVE HITS ME HARDER THAN SPRINGTIME
Love
Zdena
What's Missing
35 Years
Sunday Morning
Seeing You Naked
Date
A SLIGHTLY REPELLENT BOOK
Therapeutics
Saudade
Epitaph
Tense Conversation
Trick
No, I Wasn't Always This Ugly
TOADSTOOLS
VIII
IX
Notes
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
It can take 2-3 weeks for requests to be filled.
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE