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.
Brief description: 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, 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.