on biligualism in poetry writing 2

7/29/2019 On Biligualism in Poetry Writing 2

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On Biligualism in Poetry Writing

Mara Berns

A few weeks ago I wrote a poetry which was in its first part in Spanish and the second one in English, and you

asked why I proceeded that way. Then, I came across the works by Julia Alvarez whose main issue is

bilingualism, not only in the dimension of language but from a writers cultural viewpoint, creating a source of

conflict that impregnates her writing in a creative way.

So, I ask myself now, why a poem half Spanish, half English? When I think of language, it is inevitable to think

of the actors that generate that discourse. Differentiated actors use language to establish their differences in a

fictional or in a real world. Language is a tool to establish differences, perceptions, worlds, stories.

Language is said to act as a bridge between people and cultures, learn English so that you can communicate in

the American world, it is true, but, at the same time, we know that as the other language is not used, an element

that builds up the identity of a person or an artist is lost in the process.

How much of the personal and collective world is lost when the native language, the mother language is taken to

the corner or hidden in the stano?

Bilinguism can be understood as a bridge between American and Latina culture, that experience that takes place

in an in- between zone, a third space, that is not American nor Latino, in process.

"I am a Dominican, hyphen, American," she comments. "As a fiction writer, I find that the most exciting

things happen in the realm of that hyphen--the place where two worlds collide or blend together" (qtd. in

Stavans 553).

Her works reflect the multiple identities she has assumed as a woman, a Latin American, and an American.

Alvarez puts forward the issue of bilingualism and puts it in the thick of the discussion, along with other

sensitive subjects: exile, role of women and presence in the public sphere, language and identity, dime que

idioma hablas y te dire quien eres and language and memory.

As a young writer, I was on guard against the Latina in me, the Spanish in me because as far as I

could see the models that were presented to me did not include my world. In fact, I was told by one

teacher in college that one could only write poetry in the

Language in which one first said Mother. That left me out of American literature, for sure. ("Local

Touch" 68)


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Language not only created conflict for the Latina woman but to the writer as well. Spanish language obviously

would withdraw her from the scenario of American literature, conflict that she puts in mouth of one the

characters of her novels:

"That poet she met at Lucinda's party the night before argued that no matter how much of it one lost, in

the midst of some profound emotion, one would revert to one's mother tongue" (Garcia Girls' 13)

The immigrant experience worked, in the case of Alvarez, in to directions: one it has stimulated her love and

care for words, words became an obsession, something to dissect, as a way to getting in touch with an alien

culture, in this sense is that words become in something with a physicality, as tangible as doors and dolls, as

food, a way to getting in, a way to knowing in her or her true self the American people.

Secondly, words were the way to responding to prejudice and to am aggressive environment, Alvarez as a child,

hid in books, and in writing, her space, her own private, crazy space. Words were the reservoir of her identity

and the well for her creativity.

"I write to find out what I'm thinking. I write to find out who I am. I write to understand things" (qtd. in

Requa 2).

Ultimately, her writing is the space to make this personal research on her identity, in fact, to create her identity.

This reminds me of what Chilean writer Isabel Allende said: I am in the moment I face the white paper and I

write, there, at that moment, I am.

In the case of Alavarez, it is evident that the language for battle if the battle for identity: an identity that is dual,

that is being at two places at the same time and creating a third one that does not exist, but it comes to being as

Alvarez writes. It is quite wonderful, and conflictive, as she only exists (the woman, the writer) as she writes.

There are no bridges between the American and Latin American culture yet, that is something that Alvarez will

achieve later, perhaps in her novel writing as she puts together the drama structure familiar to an American

audience and the contents of her native Dominican Republic.

Was it because, as she says, not all can be translated? For example, there are words, names, particularly names,

accents that cannot be translated.

That gap is acknowledged in Alvarezs work and most particularly in one of her poems called Bilingual Sestina.

It is clear to her the embodiment between language and world, how the world comes back to her as she

pronounces some of the words attached to it.


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The need to get something said and the use of English to express it (as Alvarez is an American writer and she is

expected to write in English) creates an in-between zone, that can be correlated to the in-between zone, a third

zone, that defines the social space in the practice of writing and as a group for bilingual writers. It is a space that

doesnt exist but that needs to be created; in fact, it is created each time that a bilingual work comes out to the

audience. It has the advantage and disadvantage of not having limits, not withholding expectations as to what to

expect in its content and form. It is not always the case, and this particularly applies to Chicano works, which are

delimited by content, struggles, language, territory that comes from a young tradition.

To Alvarez, there is a first and a second world that the writer wants to make dialogue, and they can only

dialogue, as she is a writer, using words.

The words are as objects, no, they are actions, they are caresses

The sounds of Spanish wash over me like warm island waters as I say your soothing names

Words are not passive but active, they get physicality as they are pronounced, and they are transformed into

fragments of the world they refer to.

As a contrast, Alvarez describes English as a technical language

Turned sol, tierra, cielo, luna to vocabulary words sun earth, sky, moon. Language closed

English is a language with no personal history, loaded with scarce experience from the past.

There is a reliance built towards the language, and even Spanish seems to betray the writer when she says

Even Spanish failed us back when we saw how frail a word is when faced with the thing it names. How

saying its name wont always summon up in Spanish or English the full blown genie from the bottled

nombre.

Words in Spanish are a conjuring to bring the past back. Here comes the issue of how memory works in this

process, memory makes a selection, and some names, as in the case of the sestina are brought back ( Gladys,

Rosario, Altagracia, who are the maids, the ones that seem to have the more lively, strong imprint in the past life

in Latin America in the writers childhood) as if they had some kind of purity, an immediacy in bringing that

past back.

Gladys, I summon you back by saying yournombre.

The words were left behind, enclosed in a house, the neglected house of memory (this is true and part of the

whole exile experience, the need to adapt and learn how to deal in the new territory, makes exiles place their

past in a sort of storage facility. Recollection is a magical activity that takes place in the realm of the unknown,


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the irrational.

Furthermore, Spanish, that her linguistic past, that is her past, inevitably impacts her writing in English:

"[W]hat most surprises me [...] is [...] how much of my verbal rhythm, my word choices, my attention to the

sound of my prose comes from my native language as spoken by la familia" ("Family Matters" 126).

And this is referred again as she reflects on her creative process:

I made a discovery one summer when I was reading poetry in Spanish in the early morning. I'd move on to my

writing and find myself encountering difficulties, drawing blanks [...] as I tried to

Express a thought or capture an image. [... The whole rhythm of my thinking and writing had switched to my

first, native tongue. I was translating into, not writing in, English. ("Writing Matters"( 286)

So, as I try to answer the question of why a poem half in Spanish, half in English? Well, I have not Alvarez

identity conflicts, the need to demonstrate I master a language that is not mine to receive my title of writer; I

live a frontier space of identity that is between three countries (my native Argentina, my adopting country

Mexico and the US, where I spent the last six years). For me language is a tool instrumental to what I need to

write, express. If I am creating a world of contraries, opposite emotions, values, thoughts, feelings, language is

for me one more tool, to create that, and language has the peculiarity of changing from country to country, so I

can use it to create difference. In the case of that poem where Dunia was confronted with her lover, a lover that

to the vies of the community was immoral, devilish, he assumes in that poem the hardness that the perception of

the community have of him, I see him through their eyes, not Dunia, so I change into English. The two

languages are part of my palette as a writer.

on biligualism in poetry writing 2

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