Claribel Alegría Vides Quotes

I talked about what had happened in my country and the horrible assassination of Monsignor Romero. And soon after that, my cousin, Vides Casanova, then Minister of Defense, sent word that I should never come back to El Salvador, otherwise, he would not be responsible for what happened to me. That was a forced exile. I did not go back for 11 years.

I came before the boom. I consider them my friends, yes, but I am not part of the boom...Culturally speaking, I belong to that generation, the generation of Cortázar or Benedetti, or Vargas Llosa or Carlos Fuentes.

Times were both wonderful and terrible. You were fighting all the time, you were really thinking the country was going to have a fantastic revolution and that things were going to change for the poor. You were utopic, and so very deeply into that, that you didn’t have much time to look deeper into your psyche, or your culture.

What do I hope for this next century? That the human race thinks deeply and puts aside hate, that we end all discrimination.

I hope we go back into our Indian roots in the next century, bring them to the surface, study them. There is only an elite that knows of the great richness and wisdom in the Popol Vuh (The Book of the Dawn of Life), we are going to get as much from this as we do from our Spanish heritage.

The poet celebrates humankind, the universe, and the creator of the universe. It is impossible for one to remain indifferent to the turbulence that our planet and its inhabitants suffer through: war, hunger, earthquakes, misery, racism, violence, xenophobia, deforestation, AIDS, and childhood affliction, among others. In the region from which I come, Central America, we love poetry, and at times we use it to denounce what is happening around us. There are many fine testimonial poems. The poet, especially where I’m from, cannot and should not remain in an ivory tower.

Before we are poets we are human beings, and we do have compromises as human beings. You get horrified at the injustices, at the violence, at all of the terrible things happening in all of the world. And that is reflected in your poetry, because it has touched you very deeply. But you are not putting your poetry in the service of politics.

It’s wonderful to read what we have now, fantastic, but don’t forget the classics. They have all the riches in the world, and they help us a lot.

For me, Spanish is one of the greatest heritages the Spaniards gave us, I adore my Spanish language. It would not be honest if I were to start writing in Nahuatl. I was born with the Spanish language; I was fed by the Spanish language. I could not write in any other language, Spanish is my mother language—I think in Spanish. When I am mad, no matter where I am—I would express myself in Spanish. (laughter) I would really like to study Nahuatl and I haven’t, which is my fault; it’s a beautiful language, but I could not incorporate it; I would not write in Nahuatl. But I would like our children to learn from this other richness of ours and take advantage of it. We have always submerged the Indian.

I am so grateful for poetry...Poetry sustains us.

poetry to me is something sacred. If you want to be a poet, it’s very difficult. You have to listen to that voice, follow that voice. Never put poetry to the service of anything. No! We are at the service of poetry, and you have to read a lot to feed off of other poets. You have to get fed by other poets, to write all the time, even if it’s one line a day. You have to be disciplined and humble.

Words are sensual. They seduce us and spark our imagination, but they also express intelligence and logic in constructing towers of ideals and culture.

many more people know more about El Quijote than about the Popol Vuh. Why? Because the Spaniards destroyed so much.

In essence, all poets contribute to writing the great endless poem.

I belong to this fantastic tribe, the Mayan, the Aztecs. I am proud of my Indian background. Chichen Itza in Mexico had one of the first observatories, how many years ago? Bud used to say, “Look, this is as good as the one we have in Mount Palomar.” The richness of this civilization is still not recognized, but I think it will be.