¿Qué les queda a los jóvenes? de Mario Benedetti

¿Qué les queda por probar a los jóvenes

en este mundo de paciencia y asco?

¿sólo grafitti? ¿rock? ¿escepticismo?

también les queda no decir amén

no dejar que les maten el amor

recuperar el habla y la utopía

ser jóvenes sin prisa y con memoria

situarse en una historia que es la suya

no convertirse en viejos prematuros

¿qué les queda por probar a los jóvenes

en este mundo de rutina y ruina?

¿cocaína? ¿cerveza? ¿barras bravas?

les queda respirar / abrir los ojos

descubrir las raíces del horror

inventar paz así sea a ponchazos

entenderse con la naturaleza

y con la lluvia y los relámpagos

y con el sentimiento y con la muerte

esa loca de atar y desatar

¿qué les queda por probar a los jóvenes

en este mundo de consumo y humo?

¿vértigo? ¿asaltos? ¿discotecas?

también les queda discutir con dios

tanto si existe como si no existe

tender manos que ayudan / abrir puertas

entre el corazón propio y el ajeno /

sobre todo les queda hacer futuro

a pesar de los ruines de pasado

y los sabios granujas del presente.

Book of the week: Havana Salsa by Viviana Carballo

Art brings our clever inner selves to life! 

In my opinion, art is everything from the way we speak, dress, walk, to the way the clouds are shaped.

Art means different things for everyone. So stop today by La Casa Azul Bookstore, enjoy your new book of the week, and let the magic of art transport you to the journey waiting to be explore.

- Yajaira

Title: Havana Salsa

Author: Viviana Carballo

Genre: Memoir/Biography (English)

Synopsis:  

 “A vibrant memoir by Carballo that focuses on her childhood, her eccentric family, and the food that nourished, delighted, and healed them.” (http://www.worldcat.org/title/havana-salsa-stories-and-recipes/oclc/67361487)

Review:  

“Readers looking for standards like tostones and cubanos will be satisfied and then enchanted by unique recipes that could only come from Carballo’s experiences.” –New York Post

One Art, by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster,

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three beloved houses went.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

— Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) a disaster.

First Love (poema de la semana)

It happened in Physics,

reading a Library art book under the desk,

(the lesson was Archimedes in the bath)

I turned a page and fell

for an older man, and anonymous at that,

hardly ideal –

he was four hundred and forty-five,

I was fourteen.

‘Eureka!’ streaked each thought

(I prayed no-one would hear)

and Paradise all term

was page 179

(I prayed no-one would guess).

Of course

my fingers, sticky with toffee and bliss,

failed to entice him from his century;

his cool grey stare

fastened me firmly in mine.

I got six overdues,

suspension of borrowing rights

and a D in Physics.

But had by heart what Archimedes proves.

Ten years later I married:

a European with cool grey eyes,

a moustache,

pigskin gloves.

- Jan Owen

Book of the week: The Bolero of Andi Rowe

Storytelling brings out the most joyful memories of one’s life. In my case, storytelling reminds me of when I was a child and my mother used to tell me stories about fairy tales, which at that age I was completely amazed by them. I loved them! 

However, storytelling has its own meaning for everyone. So stop today by La Casa Azul Bookstore, enjoy your new book of the week, and let the magic of storytelling transport you to the journey waiting to be explore.

- Yajaira

Title: The Bolero of Andi Rowe

Author: Tony Margarita Plummer

Genre: Fiction (English)

Synopsis:   

“The Bolero of Andi Rowe, an impressive work by an exciting new talent, offers a compassionate look at the struggle between meeting cultural expectations and seeking happiness, and the sacrifices and triumphs made along the way.” (http://www.goodreads.com)

Review: 

“heartfelt stories of girls who ache to live in any other world than the one given them and who disastrously believe falling in love is the only way to get there. American tales for the new millennium.” – Sandra Cisneros

Roturas (poema de la semana)

Había siempre un largo silencio

cuando uno de los platos

se rompía en la cocina.

Era la hora de las manos pequeñas

que no son manos para sostener.

Y los largos dedos de mi abuela

levantaban esa dureza rota

extendida como un mapa incompleto

por el suelo de la cocina.

Siempre el largo silencio

hablaba

la angustia de las cosas

que no se pueden volver a juntar.

Y todo lo que se ha roto desde entonces;

arterias, músculos, huesos,

higos abiertos, cáscaras de nueces,

caracoles bajo la suela de los zapatos,

ventanas vencidas por piedras

o pasillos que llevan al cuerpo de mi abuelo,

a las cosas rotas en él y en mí.

Mi madre, mi abuela.

Todas las cosas que se rompen.

 *

Miro mis manos;

las líneas que las cruzan

son accidentes geográficos, cañadas.

Soy lo que se rompe en mis manos.

El padre del mundo

es el padre de las grietas, es

la blanda violencia de lo que se separa

sin hacer ruido.

Hay pájaros que caen de las ramas

antes de estar maduros,

hay espacios en blanco entre los cuerpos

antes de que comience la próxima canción.

Las flores se rompen para abrirse,

las olas se rompen hacia adentro,

como las madres pierden a sus hijos.

¿Por qué estoy más cerca de las rupturas

que de las piedras pulidas?

El acero, las flores, los pájaros,

todas las cosas que se rompen.  

- Javier Peñalosa

Book of the Week: The Storyteller by Mario Vargas Llosa

Storytelling brings out the most joyful memories of one’s life. In my case, storytelling reminds me of when I was a child and my mother used to tell me stories about fairy tales, which at that age I was completely amazed by them. I loved them! 

However, storytelling has its own meaning for everyone. So stop today by La Casa Azul Bookstore, enjoy your new book of the week, and let the magic of storytelling transport you to the journey waiting to be explore.

- Yajaira

Title: The Storyteller

Author: Mario Vargas Llosa

Genre: Fiction (English)

Synopsis:  

 “Through the alternation of two narrators, the novel presents a story of Saul Zuratas, a man who decides to leave his past identity behind and go native in one of the indigenous tribes of Peru. Unlike the ethnographers and linguists who explore the aborigine tribes for professional or rational reasons, Saul’s motive is intimate and emotional – it is an act of love. But his noble intention becomes questionable when the reader gradually finds out that the hero could not leave behind the western dominant discourses on which his entire life had been built.  This novel deals with the problem that not only persists in Peru, but also in many other counties of Latin America: the coexistence of the modern society which is prepared to participate in the cultural, economical and political life of the Global World, and of the indigenous population, which is viewed by modern societies as archaic and primitive.” 

(http://www.english.emory.edu)

Review: 

“It is in the chapters narrated by the storyteller that the novel comes wonderfully alive, transporting the reader to a world where men hang suspended in a delicate web of cosmic relationships.” –Mark Dery, The Philadelphia Inquirer