Latino Children's Poetry Week

Latino Children's Poetry Week: The Value of Poetry for Latino Children

This week, we're happy to dedicate our site to Latino children's poetry and the valuable role it plays in their literacy development and appreciation of their heritage. We're pleased to begin with the following article on a brief history of the role our heritage has played in poetry across time and places, followed by a short poem just for children as written by the talented poets and writing team of Alma Flor Ada and F. Isabel Campoy.

Spanish Influence On the History of Poetry

The first written testimonies of our language were verses. They were called jarchas, verses written in Spanish at the end of poems in Arabic. What powerful symbolism! Poetry has been a great contribution of our culture to the World, and Hispanic culture has been formed by fusing many others.

Our oldest poetic expressions were created orally. The Poema del Cid, celebrates the deeds of a warrior who was also husband and father, kind and generous. Mothers and grandmothers have put their babies to sleep with beautiful poetry, fragments from Medieval romances, kept alive for centuries through this oral transmission.

Spanish voices reached international acclaim during the Spanish Golden Age when poets like Garcilaso, Cervantes, Lope de Vega and Góngora were recited, quoted, and imitated throughout Europe. Soon after, on the other side of the Atlantic, new voices began using the same language to express different realities.

None stronger than Sor Juana, both extraordinarily gifted and learned, who wrote the most daring verses of the XVII century: “Hombres necios que acusáis…”

Silly, you men, so very adept
at wrongly blaming womankind,
not seeing you’re alone to blame
for the faults you plant in woman’s mind.

Spanish voices have used melodious words and powerful rhymes to share their convictions: Con los pobres de la tierra quiero yo mi suerte echar [I will share my destiny with the wretched of the Earth] assures José Martí; also to express their pride in their ancestry, as when the Cuban Nicolás Guillén and the Puerto Rican Palés Matos sing about their African roots; poetry used to invite all children to hold hands in a “ronda de niños” as Gabriela Mistral writes from her native Chile; written also to express the nuances of love, and exalt both the magnificence of Macchu Picchu and the quality of the smallest of things, as Pablo Neruda did from Isla Negra. Poetry has also found a way to make the world see Spain, through the delicate gypsy eyes of Federico García Lorca.

The Value of Poetry for Latino Children

Some of the most important poets of all times have written in Spanish. Our children deserve to know them all. Poetry is children’s best friend. Once a poem is memorized it stays with us forever, a wealth no one can take away, a companion ready to give comfort, hope, laughter, inspiration whenever needed. Poetry can broaden children’s vocabulary with new words they will remember supported by rhymes, rhythm, imagery and feelings. Let us try saying, whispering, sharing, singing a new poem tonight, under the stars!

~F. Isabel Campoy

Unexpected Holiday

© 2013  Alma Flor Ada

It seemed a day like any other,
but hotter.
The air-conditioning not working well.
Boring
 -nothing to do,
no one to play with,
the TV so dull,
as if I‘d already seen
everything it had to show
between those ads
for cars or drinks
shampoos or beauty creams.
might as well get
on with my homework.
I open the book
my teacher made me choose
yesterday
at the library
and
without knowing
what's happening to me
I’m lost in a jungle,
traveling up to the sky,
worried and concerned--
frightened, even--
for a boy and girl
determined to save each other
from the greatest of dangers.
Where did the boring day go?
      An unexpected,
      and fantastic,
      holiday
      had been waiting all along
      inside the covers
      of a book.