Marjorie Agosin and her Poems

By vinodnarayan on January 6, 2012 • ( 1 )

I had the pleasure to read the poems of Marjorie Agosin, poet and Human Right Activist. When you read a varied set of subjects that pertain to your interests you often stumble upon something that sticks with you. Something that leave you wanting more and makes you think such that you are forced out of your own self. That is what Marjorie’s poems did to me. They pushed me out of my comfort zone and made me watch myself in the midst of an array of images from the world.

I did some Google search on the poet and though I find several references and came to know that she is a professor of Spanish at the Wellesley College I thought there should be more information of her in Wiki other than the important facts. This post is a humble attempt to add one more page on the digital landscape to introduce her work and to recommend my readers that it is important that they read her.

Marjorie Agosin’s poems are primarily about Women and Children in despair and about human rights violations in dictatorship regimes. These poems are written in Spanish and translated by various people.

How did I land on a Book by Marjorie Agosin?

As usual on a day in the Library and I did a search on poetry on human rights and the idea was to pick a Neruda collection focused on Human Rights and what I landed on was Marjorie Agosin’s “Absence of Shadows”. It went through a renewal as I was finishing another book that I had felt equally compelled to read. But when I started the poems of Marjorie I was in for a surprise.

Though I had taken only one of her collections “An Absence of Shadows” it turned out to be a pleasant surprise to see two of her other books that were out of print “Zones of Pain” and Circles of Madness” added to the same collection.

Why is it important to be read Marjorie Agosin?

While many people will have different reasons to read something, I can only explain my reason by putting a few lines from her book here. The lines would speak for itself…

A few lines from “A Declaration of Human Rights for Children” in “An Absence of Shadows”

We, Children
of the universe
demand the right
to play on
swings and miraculous
seesaws

We, Children
demand the right
to look at the sky
as a violet-colored butterfly
or a ray of colored lace,
a sky without yellow dist
or green helicopters

A few lines from the “Circles of Madness”

Beloved Sister,
woman of scars and solstices
friend of beggars
eternal companion of the tortured
come, help me at the break of dawn.
In you skirts that washed the bitter,
inundated grief of the despoiled,
let me place a dream

A few lines from “The Hand” in “Zones of Pain”

Someone Wounded,
transmuted
takes me by the hand
and through the shadow
behind the chasms
her hand assures me of
the rhythms
of mine
brings me back to the
trace
of your fingertips that tousle and
celebrate my hair

Well that sums up why the book or books should be read. I am sure the poems and the words would jump out and cry, shout, soothe, and convince you to be awake and considerate to the world we live in