Hope and the Sea by Magda Portal

Description

“Magda is essentially lyrical and human. . . . In her early poems she is almost always the poet of tenderness. And her lyricism is precisely recognized in her humanity. In her poetry we find all the accents of a woman who lives passionately and vehemently, ignited by love and longing, and tormented by truth and hope”.

— José Carlos Mariátegui

Originally published in Lima in 1927, Magda Portal’s Hope and the Sea immediately stood out as one of the most remarkable books to come out of the Peruvian literary avant-garde. Already an acclaimed poet by the age of twenty-three, Magda Portal became a key participant in the political and intellectual milieu surrounding Amauta magazine, eagerly absorbing the winds of change sweeping across the continent, embodying them within her own intensely personal experience. Hope and the Sea speaks from an intimate yet transcendental voice, which bravely faces the immensity of the sea, earthly forces and the depths of the human heart, ever with immense feeling for the suffering of the poor. Like her contemporaries Blanca Luz Brum, Alfonsina Storni and Juana de Ibarbourou, Magda Portal-feminist leader, avant-garde poet, political organizer-represents one of the crucial personalities at the turning point for feminist movements in Latin America.

Magda Portal (Peru 1900-1989) was not only an acclaimed poet since her early youth but an audacious, free-spirited dissident, increasingly concerned with social justice. Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano referred to Portal as “an illustrious and daring rebel,” while Salvadoran poet Claribel Alegría affirmed that “not only is Magda Portal an excellent poet, she is an important figure in Latin American history, a feminist voice that reflects the sufferings, needs and hopes of our continent.” A key figure in a brilliant Peruvian “vanguard generation” of the 1920s, a group that included the great poet César Vallejo and the socialist thinker José Carlos Mariátegui, she went on to become a pioneering champion of women’s equality, in the context of the larger battle for economic redistribution. Her efforts on behalf of women and the poor may be compared to those of Emma Goldman, Tina Modotti, Rosa Luxemburg, and the French-Peruvian labor leader Flora Tristán. Exiled from Peru in 1927, she was recruited in Mexico City into the revolutionary nationalist APRA movement. When Peru’s autocrat was deposed, she would return with other exiles to Peru to become co-founder and women’s leader of the APRA Party of Peru -American Popular Revolutionary Alliance. She undertook repeated forays into Peru’s hinterlands, traveling high into the Andes and deep into the Amazonian jungle, recruiting women, and men, into the first mass political party in Peru’s history. As national secretary of women’s affairs, she traveled tirelessly, speaking and organizing, often living in clandestinity, and attempting with difficulty to balance the needs of motherhood and poetry. Her exceptional life was marked by serious hardship, involving imprisonments, exiles, and the ten year jailing of her lover, poet Serafín Delmar. When the APRA party veered to the right in the 1940s, abandoning their radical social agenda, she denounced that party and its leader, long-time APRA colleague, Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre. With the rise of the women’s movement in the 1970s in Peru, her life’s work was embraced by a new generation of activists, and since then her legend has only increased in renown.

Kathleen Weaver is a poet, translator, anthologist of women poets, and biographer. She is author of Peruvian Rebel, The World of Magda Portal, With a Selection of Her Poems (Penn State University Press, 2009). She is the co-editor of The Penguin Book of Women Poets (Penguin Books, 1978), a landmark anthology of women poets from around the world, where she included the first English translations of Magda Portal’s poems. She has translated many Cuban poets, including Fayad Jamís, Roberto Fernández Retamar, Eliseo Diego, Samuel Feijóo, as well as Nancy Morejón’s, Where the Island Sleeps Like a Wing, Selected Poetry (Black Scholar Press, 1985). She also translated Fire From the Mountain: The Making of a Sandinista, by Omar Cabezas (Crown Publishing Group, 1985) and Nicaraguan Sketches by Julio Cortázar (W. W. Norton & Co, 1989). A volume of her poetry, Too Much Happens, was published by The Post-Apollo Press in 2015. She studied at the University of Edinburgh and at UC Berkeley as a Ford Fellow in Comparative Literature. She lives in Berkeley, California with her husband, Bob Baldock.

Daniel R. Reedy is Professor Emeritus of Spanish in the Department of Hispanic Studies and Dean Emeritus of The Graduate School at the University of Kentucky. His research on aspects of Peruvian Culture developed in 1959 as a Rotary International Fellow in literature and linguistics at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos. After completing the Ph.D. (1962) at the University of Illinois with a study of colonial-era satirist Juan del Valle y Caviedes, his professional career began at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill), followed by thirty-four years at the University of Kentucky. In 1966-67, a Fulbright Research Fellowship enabled his project on Peruvian vanguard poets in José Carlos Mariátegui’s Revista Amauta, leading to his growing interest in the poetry of Magda Portal. Several journal articles, book chapters, and papers related to her poetry and essays grew out of the Amauta project. Later, in 1971, the Social Science Research Council sponsored Reedy’s return to Peru for extended conversations with Magda. The personal and intellectual relationship that evolved over time was an impetus for Reedy’s research, culminating in his comprehensive volume, Magda Portal, La Pasionaria Peruana. Biografía intelectual (Lima: Flora Tristán Ediciones, 2000). His efforts over four decades to locate and document the corpus of Magda’s poetry produced Magda Portal. Obra Poética Completa (Lima: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2010). Reedy retired from the University of Kentucky as Professor and Dean Emeritus in 2001 . In 2017, he was inducted into The Hall of Fame of the UK College of Arts and Sciences. He is an Honorary Member of The Hispanic Society of America.