★★★★☆ Humblebrag from the great Cuban national hero

Versos sencillos

José Martí, Anne Fountain (translator)

Like much of the world, I became aware of José Martí because of the song "Guantanamera" first sung by Joseíto Fernández and later popularized by Pete Seeger. Guantanamera is not really a single song --rather it is a Cuban musical form to which a poem consisting of verses of 4 eight-syllable lines may be sung. (For instance, Leon Gieco has such a song on his Semillas del corazón album -- this song is entirely distinct from the Fernández/Seeger song.) Seeger's recording of this song begins with an extensive introduction to Martí. The words of the Fernández/Seeger version of Guantanamera come from Martí's Versos Sencillos, which means, roughly "Simple poems." However, translator Anne Fountain reminds us that

The word “sencillo” is an especially difficult one to convey in English, since there is not really a good equivalent.

Versos Sencillos consists of 46 poems written by Martí in his late 30s in 1890 in the town of Haines Falls, in the Catskill Mountains of New York. Martí spend most of his life in exile from Cuba because of his opposition to the Spanish rulers of Cuba. Indeed, he died not long after the publication of Versos Sencillos, when he returned to Cuba and was killed in an uprising.

The poems themselves are indeed simple and beautiful. I say this without disputing Fountain's statement, 'Martí’s verses are complex in ways that belie a rubric such as “simple.”' Here's one verse of one of my favorites

Mi verso es de un verde claro
Y de un carmín encendido:
Mi verso es un ciervo herido
Que busca en el monte amparo.

My literal translation (with no attempt at rhythm or rhyme)

My verse is light green
and flaming crimson:
My verse is a wounded deer
that seeks sanctuary on the mountain.

Most of Martí's poems trace a common theme: that he is a simple and honest man, who loves life in the small. For instance, he writes, "El arroyo de la sierra/Me complace más que el mar." -- "The mountain stream pleases me more than the sea.", and "Con los pobres de la tierra/Quiero yo mi suerte echar" -- "I want to cast my fate with the Earth's poor".

I bought this dual-language version because I wanted the poems in Spanish and when I searched the US Amazon store, it was the first edition I found with the poems in the original. Fountain's translations sometimes helped me understand obscure points in the original Spanish, and her endnotes were especially helpful in clarifying poems that refer to events in Martí's life. I also applaud her efforts at translation, which she explains as follows

My goal has been to convey Martí’s meaning while keeping consistent rhyme and to create verses that have a natural rhythm when read aloud. I have followed the original rhyme scheme (abba, abab, etc.) where feasible but have tried not to force meaning to preserve form. Likewise the maintenance of a meter that flows well in English—whether it exactly replicates Martí’s or not—has been my priority. Above all, I have seen the work as a whole and within each poem sought to present verses which represent Martí’s message or mood in English.

Translating poetry is HARD. The task Fountain sets herself of preserving meter, rhyme, and meaning in an English translation is nearly impossible, and to be completely honest, I don't think she succeeds.

It is better to read Martí in English translation than not to read him at all. However, if you read Fountain's translation without reading Martí's original Spanish, you should know that the meaning will often be distorted from the original. I don't mean this as a criticism of Fountain so much as a recognition of the difficulty of translating poetry.

Amazon review

Goodreads review