In January 2019, Maya K’iche’ poet Humberto Ak’abal passed away, thus transcending into the eternal silence—perhaps the same silence inhabited by his seismic poems. He was sixty-six.
In life, Humberto published more than thirty books, and his work has been translated into more than twenty languages—including English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Arabic. He remains a towering figure for indigenous and Maya literature, as well as one of Latin America’s most beloved and inventive poets. Humberto wrote extensively about family, time, colonialism, men’s relationship with animals and nature, indigeneity, the plight of the indigenous people in Guatemala, and the Guatemalan genocide. He used onomatopoeia and cacophony to describe his surroundings, and his poems are imbued with devastating political commentary and subtle humor. Carlos Montemayor and Antonio Gamoneda admitted to being fans of Humberto’s poetry, and in 2006, he became a Guggenheim fellow.
One cannot overstate the importance, quality, originality, and poetic sensibility of Humberto Ak’abal. Though his work has been previously translated into English, a new translation shines a new light on Humberto’s devastating poems. This June, Milkweed Editions will publish If Today Were Tomorrow, a book of poems written by Humberto Ak’abal and translated by Michael Bazzett, the author of The Echo Chamber. If Today Were Tomorrow is a beautifully crafted, comprehensive, and faithful approximation and representation of Humberto’s work. I had the opportunity to interview Michael Bazzett on Humberto’s legacy, the experience working between K’iche’, Spanish, and English, and the translation of silence.
José García Escobar (JGE): In 2018, you famously put out your translation of the Maya’s creation myth, The Popol Vuh. Naturally, we find many references and similarities between The Popol Vuh and the poetry of Humberto Ak’abal. Can you describe how translating The Popol Vuh prepared you or helped you translate Humberto’s poetry? Or maybe it was the other way around. I know you’ve worked on If Today Were Tomorrow for many years.
Michael Bazzett (MB): In the opening of The Popol Vuh, when it came time for the gods to create the world, “it only took a word. / To make earth they said, ‘Earth’ / and there it was: sudden / as a cloud or mist unfolds / from the face of a mountain, / so earth was there.”
I’ve always sensed an entire theory of language swirling inside this moment—one that continues, of course, throughout the entirety of the myth—where words are energy, tethered intrinsically to what they call forth. As such, they are not imposed by humans upon the landscape, like labels or sticky notes, but instead uncovered through careful listening and observation of the world around us. If Humberto’s work is built on anything, it is careful listening and observation. One learns very quickly by reading his poems. For instance, in K’iche’, the call of a bird is synonymous with its name, including the little orange & brown plumed bird, “Ch’ik,” who hops “happily / among the fresh shoots”:
Ch’ik is her song,
Ch’ik is her name.
Compass and Rifle: On Roque Dalton’s Stories and Poems of a Class Struggle
No one escapes Dalton’s inquisitive pen . . .
Stories and Poems of a Class Struggle by Roque Dalton, translated from the Spanish by Jack Hirschman, Seven Stories Press, 2023
On Thursday, July 6, 2023, the inaugural day of Guatemala’s International Book Fair (FILGUA), the government of El Salvador requested organizers to exclude Salvadoran author Michelle Recinos’ Sustancia de hígado (F&G Editores) from the fair. The next day, online news outlet elfaro revealed that El Salvador’s ambassador in Guatemala had said, “It would’ve been an unpleasant thing for the government of El Salvador if this book had been a part of the fair.” Details are scarce, but presumably, this action was related to Michelle’s story Barberos en huelga, winner of the 2022 Mario Monteforte Toledo Prize, which openly criticizes sitting president Nayib Bukele’s war on gangs.
Hearing this, I can only imagine what Roque Dalton would have written about Bukele.
Roque Dalton’s Historias y poemas de una lucha de clases (Stories and Poems of a Class Struggle) dates back to 1975, and remains as timely as ever. In a time when most Central American countries are under authoritarian regimes and have experienced backslides of democracy, the life and work of Roque Dalton is at once a beacon of hope, an inspiration, and a warning sign. Historias y poemas de una lucha de clases is a book filled with courageous testimony, the poet’s typical dry humor, and bone-chilling depictions of state violence. Here, Dalton is hyperaware of the pain and plight of his compatriots, but in addition to his typical grittiness and social critique, we also find tenderness, softness, beauty, and frailty; Dalton’s acute perception is both a rifle and a compass, manifesting in words of both rebuke and encouragement.
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Contributor:- José García Escobar
; Language: - Spanish
; Place: - El Salvador
; Writers: - Alaíde Foppa
, - Carlos Fonseca
, - Ernesto Cardenal
, - Jack Hirschman
, - Jaime Barba
, - Julio Delfos Marín
, - Luis de Lión
, - Luis Melgar Brizuela
, - Margaret Randall
, - Michelle Recinos
, - Otto René Castillo
, - Roque Dalton
; Tags: - authoritarianism
, - Central American literature
, - class struggle
, - elfaro
, - F&G Editores
, - fascism
, - FILGUA
, - Mario Monteforte Toledo Prize
, - Salvadoran literature
, - Salvadoran poetry
, - Seven Stories Press
, - social commentary
, - social critique
, - state violence