Through Spanish and Latin American poetry,
students learn about society and themselves

 

Ugalde holds a painting by Rhoda R. Robles, illustrating Nicolás Guillén’s poem “La Muralla (The Wall)."

Modern Languages Professor Sharon K. Ugalde finds Spanish and Latin American poetry to be “a powerful tool” in leading her students to a fuller understanding of history and society, and of themselves as individuals.

Gen. Francisco Franco

In her research and publications, Ugalde has examined Latin American authors’ portrayal of dictators and poetry inspired by the social injustices resulting both in Spain and Latin America. She recently completed an anthology of work by Spanish women whose poetry reveals the social, political, and gender problems they encountered under the repressive Franco regime.

“Ideal womanhood meant that women stayed home and raised children and had few legal rights, but somehow, in spite of obstacles, they managed to write and make discoveries about themselves, their surroundings, and their art,” Ugalde asserts.

Ugalde’s students make discoveries, too, within the poetry. If the students are at first skeptical of the poetry’s relevance to a Texas classroom, they soon encounter universal themes ranging from honor, justice, and freedom to hope, love, and death. Related examples from their own lives leap to mind as they read, Ugalde says, and they recognize a human experience that crosses cultural boundaries.

Federico García Lorca

She points to student reaction to Spanish poet Federico García Lorca’s 1927 poem, “Prendimiento de Antonito de Camborio,” about the Spanish national guard’s arrest of a young Gypsy, not because he commits a crime but because he is a Gypsy.

“The students pick up on the theme of injustice towards marginalized groups like Spain’s Gypsies,” Ugalde says. “They relate the poem to the plight of minority and immigrant populations in the U.S., who often feel like outsiders. They also compare the Gypsy experience to well-known incidences of social injustice in Central and South America.”

Sor Juana	Ana Rossetti

Students put women’s experience into perspective by studying two poems written in Spain some 300 years apart, Ugalde continues. In the feminist poem “Hombres necios (You Men),” the 17th-century nun Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz accuses men of a double standard in demanding that women succumb to their pleas for sexual favors yet be chaste, an impossible mission for women to fulfill.

“Sor Juana’s poem reminded one student of her own experience working in a battered women’s shelter,” Ugalde relates. By contrast, Ana Rossetti’s 1985 poem of desire, “Chico Wrangler,” celebrates a woman writer’s new freedom in post-Franco Spain to express all facets of her life by describing her attraction to the man in a Marlboro cigarettes poster. “The poem is both humorous and serious as it explores women’s evolution – a theme that women and men in many cultures can relate to,” Ugalde says.

Greta Garbo	Marilyn Monroe

Ugalde puts the poems into context by giving students the opportunity to hear online recordings of the poets reading their works. She also shows related photographs and movies and asks students to find film images that relate to the poems. “If Greta Garbo is mentioned, a student will find a pertinent clip in a Garbo film and tell how the image was used in a poem,” she says. Students also analyze a poem titled “Ballad to Norma Jean,” which tells a story of Hollywood’s manipulation of Marilyn Monroe. “Students connect very much to this poem because its references are familiar to them,” Ugalde says.

As a semester project, Ugalde gives her students the opportunity to write their own original poems, an exercise she terms crucial to students’ growth in understanding themselves and their relationship to society.

Pablo Neruda

“We might study the odes of Pablo Neruda – for example, the whimsical ‘Ode to a Pair of Socks’ in which the socks are valued because they’re handmade and keep your feet warm. When the students write odes, they begin to consider their own values and what is worthwhile. Among the group, there will be a few humorous poems but most of them try to come to terms with what is valuable, and often it’s interpersonal relations and family. Students write love poems, or to grandmothers, or about their uncertainty about who they are and where they’re going. A father-to-be recently wrote an ode to his unborn child; other poems are concerned with social injustice in the U.S. and Latin America, and some poems go back to one’s particular roots. For example, a student of Cuban ancestry wrote about his heritage and his memories of singing and playing guitar with his grandfather.

“The assignment causes the students to think about themselves and their relationship to society, and I don’t think they could fulfill the assignment if we hadn’t been reading poetry throughout the semester and seeing what other poets have done,” she says.

In some classes, students analyze poems and interpret them in original paintings and musical compositions. “I’m lucky that I’ve had students who play guitar so that sometimes they compose music for their original poems,” Ugalde says. As an example of painting, she shows a student’s work illustrating the García Lorca poem “Romance de la luna, luna,” about the moon bending down to carry away a beloved dead child.

Gloria Fuertes

Tomás Rivera

Tino Villanueva

“I love to teach poetry, to entice students to the genre so they see that poetry is not something that necessarily has to be difficult or hard to read,” Ugalde continues. “For example, the Mexican-American writer Beverly Silva uses food imagery in a love poem that the students enjoy. In it, she says, ‘When you’re not around, it’s like enchiladas without the hot sauce.’ And the Spanish poet Gloria Fuertes, who wrote in the 1950s and ‘60s, used very colloquial language in order to reach a wide audience. One of her poems, roughly translated, says, ‘I deliberately write bad so you’ll understand me well.’ Her poetry is easy to read, yet it plays with language and sound and has depth and esthetic value.”

At some point during the semester, Ugalde and the student s read the poetry of two well-known Hispanic writers who are also Texas State graduates – Tomás Rivera (1958 BS-Education) and Tino Villanueva (1969 BA-Modern Languages). Rivera, former president of the University of California-Riverside who died in 1984, was perhaps best known for his prose work, although a volume of his poems is available. Villanueva is professor of Spanish literature at Boston University.

“I like to include these poets because both of them experienced some of the elements of social injustice that we’ve seen other poets address. They were both migrant workers when they were young, and they come to terms with that experience in their poetry.

“I also like to include Rivera and Villanueva in hopes that the students will realize that they, too, are capable of becoming poets,” Ugalde says.