Classroom activities for poem
1.
Ask students to describe an elderly relative
who is kind to them, like their grandparents. What are some of the positive
memories students have of this elderly relative? Ask students what they share with this relative?
2.
Read out loud the poem “Grandmother and her garden”
two times. The first time, ask your students to write down the words and
phrases that jump out at them. The second time, ask them to listen to the
sounds of the poem and write down what they hear.
3.
Ask students to look up the fruits described
in the poem such as “mango”, “guava”, “guanabana”, “nance fruit”. What are the
students favorite fruits? What do they imagine about the fruits described in
the poem that they have not tasted?
4.
Project the poem “Grandmother and her garden”
in front of the class and have your students read and write down additional
words and phrases that jump out at them.
5.
Ask your students to get in pairs and
discuss the following questions: What did you learn about how Oscar Gonzales
feels about his grandmother? How about her
garden? How does her grandmother live in her garden and in the poet?
6.
Ask your students to gather in groups of
four and discuss with one another what they learned from listening and reading
the poem.
“Grandmother and her garden” by Oscar Gonzales
Copyright Oscar Gonzales,
ONEIDCKE AT CAPACCESS.ORG
Published in Adanna
Poetry Journal, Volume 2
In the seductive
soliloquies of childhood—
I find grandmother
there.
Her voice is gone,
but all the teeming splendors
of her everlasting
garden remain.
Her guava tree
endures
filled with so many
woodland tastes
brimming with a
fruit of soft and seeded center;
the bark of trees
and light of stars
have been
translated into food.
Her image is now
diffuse
but her nance tree
in the morning
has made a yellow
carpet on the ground
The fruit is bright
and bittersweet
like an ephemeral
sun in my mouth.
The canopy of her
avocado tree
covers a wide
expanse
where all the
songbirds dream.
Her mango tree
with outstretched
limbs
sings praises to
the sky.
When ripe, the red
fruit falls on the zinc roof
with a loud bang
reminding us of the
incessant energy of her life.
The roots of the
mango tree
stretch miles in
search of water
and break through
concrete sidewalks.
Even her guanabana
tree
with fruit filled
by a white, spongy core
surrounded by green
skin with spikes
speaks of her.
I feel it is her
poetry
her essence somehow
compressed
in me
and all her fruit
trees.
Classroom activities for poem "Volver" by Oscar Gonzales
1. Read out loud the introductory epigraph by Pablo Neruda and first two stanzas of the poem “Volver” in English. The first time, ask your students to write down the words and phrases that jump out at them. Ask the students to listen to the sounds of the poem and write down what they hear.
3. Ask students about leaving home and their desire to return. What does the poet feel about leaving home and returning? Is the home compared to a person?
4. Project the poem “Volver” in front of the class and have your students read and write down additional words and phrases that jump out at them.
5. Ask your students to get in pairs and discuss the following questions: What did you learn about how Oscar Gonzales feels about his love of home and desire to return? What does the quotation by Pablo Neruda show about pain and nature?
6. Ask your students to gather in groups of four and discuss with one another what they learned from listening and reading the poem.
Volver
by Oscar Gonzales I/XXIV
"Todo se rompe y cae. Todo se borra y pasa. Es el dolor que aúlla como un loco en un
bosque." Pablo Neruda
Recostado bajo el perfil
dormido de la madrugada; habitando el galope muerto de
estos muelles; atrapado en la súbita
detonación de un nombre y tu beso pienso en vos-- como un herido marinero lentamente atravesando el
llanto de un suspiro oscuro.
Vivo esperando el abandonado día sumergido en que te vuelva a acariciar como los ocasos implacables
de diciembre.
Mientras tanto conjugo tus labios abrasados
por mis versos. Te pinto derramada como un
temblor de tierra en mi cuerpo. Con crayones de colores te envuelvo en el latido de
un sueño para sentirte mía.
También te busco como un niño mortalmente frágil en las manos de la noche; pero nunca encuentro el rumor
de tu llovizna que hoy yace doblado en el recodo de un atardecer
ultramarino.
Sin embargo me embarco en el
fuego fugitivo de las olas que se arrancan desde ti y que yo recojo en el tiempo que pasa como las eróticas caricias
siempre arando años.
Por eso, constantemente a
media noche visito tu recuerdo que anda suelto como un inexplicable beso de
ojos asustados extraviado en un sopor sin prisa que siempre me pregunta sobre tu silencio enamorado.
Pero nunca le he podido
contestar o siquiera hablar acerca de
tus labios recorriendo recónditos
secretos, o de tus miradas marinas
poblando este otoño, o de tu rocío que como tú entre huellas grises hoy se
ha quedado.
Y es que las palabras se me vuelven brasas
inasibles.
Inclinado en el silencio
tiemblo. Te siento lejana, ausente.
Pero aún así, bajo el enorme asesinato de
este negro cielo que por separado los dos
admiramos, pronto volveré. El tiempo también es humano y habitado por las ruinas del
silencio con el mismo gesto de una
alondra herida pronto pasará madurando en mis miradas como
la esperanza de poder volver, de poder tenerte otra vez
entre mis brazos loca, de poder amarte, de poder besarte bajo el
divino martirio de mi boca. |
Return
by Oscar Gonzales I
/ XXIV "All
is broken and fallen. All
is erased and passes. It
is pain that howls like
a madman in a forest." Pablo
Neruda
Reclining
under the sleeping silhouette of dawn, inhabiting
the dead gallop of these docks, trapped
in the sudden remembrance of a name and
your kiss I
think of you - - like
a wounded mariner slowly
crossing the tears of a painful longing.
I
live waiting for the abandoned, submerged
day, when
once again I will caress you under
the vivid twilights of December.
Meanwhile I
summon your lips scorched by my verses. I paint you flowing like a land quake over
my body. With color crayons I
wrap you inside the heartbeat of a dream to
feel you mine.
Like
a child I search for you, mortally
fragile in
the hands of the night; but
I never hear the sounds of your drizzle that
today also remain lost in
the confines of an ultramarine dusk.
Yet
I embark on the fugitive fire of waves that
surge from you and
which I collect in
Time that
passes like
an erotic caress always nurturing the years.
That
is why, constantly at midnight I
visit my recollections of you that
have escaped like
a mysterious kiss with fearful eyes, lost in
a tranquil dream which
always asks me about
your enamored silence.
But
I've never been able to answer, never
been able to tell that dream about your lips traveling
through clandestine secrets, or
of your oceanic glances which permeate this autumn, or
about your dew that
like your presence now
remains among gray footprints.
And
it is because words have
become ungraspable embers.
Inclined
in silence I tremble. I
feel you distant, absent.
But
even then, under
the enormous assassination of this dark sky that
we separately admire, I
will soon return.
Time
is also human and
inhabited by the ruins of silence with
the same gesture of a wounded skylark it
will soon pass ripening
in my gazes like the hope of
being able to return, of
being able to have you with me, once again, clasped in my arms, of
being able to love you of
being able to kiss you--under the divine agony of my soul. |
Comments from readers
"The poetry of Oscar Gonzales is that rare kind that speaks to the established and the emerging, the local and international, young mothers and older grandfathers from .. well, everywhere. Some of our best classes have come from reading the poems of Oscar Gonzales. We have been teaching his work and our students here respond wondrously to his poems. It's not always easy to have the students transform so seamlessly into literature. With his work, they do. It's always easy to have the students transform so seamlessly into literature."
"We had been sitting in the living room in front of a fire -- my spouse was in his reading chair and I was on the couch. I began to read Central America in My Heart. First one poem, then another. By the end of the second poem, he had come over to me with tears in his eyes and he lay down with me as I continued to read aloud this lovely 'sea music' written with such eloquence. We held each other and were swept away by the beauty, the sensuality. We didn't read all of it. Such profound art cannot be absorbed, nor should it be, at one sitting. We were so moved by the honey the words that all we could do was cry and hold each other and feel grateful for our love and for having been privileged to be reading this lovely poetry. The sacredness of this experience for us both was simply inexpressible.”
“I opened Central America in My Heart with the idea that I would read a few poems before going to sleep, but found myself pulled on and on, so that I could not turn out the light before I had read all of the book. The poems in the first section struck me with their passion and sensuality, while the concluding section was lacerating in its grief and anger. When I finished the final ‘Warning,’ I felt that it was addressed directly to me: I am a person of inadequate social conscience, to be as kind as possible to myself, and therefore must accuse myself of being one of ‘the assassins who ... make us their accomplices.’ It took me a while to sleep.”
"I cannot express in words what the words of this poem have made me feel and what the verses tell me. Oscar Gonzales has a special talent in his poetry: the power to create magic. When I read his poems I feel the power of each verse in my bones. I got goosebumps and I almost shed an emotional tear. I am so grateful to have found his poetry. SPANISH: No puedo decirles con palabras lo que las de estos poemas me han producido y dicho. Oscar Gonzales tiene un talento muy especial y privilegio: el poder de crear magia. Al leer los poemas senti la carga de cada verso hasta mis huesos; se me puso la piel chinita y casi derramo lagrimas de emocion. Agradezco mucho haber conocido esta obra poetica."
