Teach me that lullaby, mother, you sang to rock me

How, in days to come, shall I wash his little head?Īnd how shall I swaddle him so as to not hurt him? New caresses, gentle ones, gentler than those of a

Now teach me the science of love, mother. Tell me if he will seek my breast alone, or if I Tell me how he is born and how from within me Mother, tell me all you have learned from your own The woodcuts in this volume were created especially for it by the Uruguayan artist Antonio Frasconi.Ī few of my favourite poems from what was a moving and powerful selection focusing mostly on mothers and children. For the people who had no voice, Gabriela became their voice. She was quick to defend all who suffer injustice, and attentive to all who suffer pain. In it she cried out against persecution, racial hatred, war, genocide-crimes perpetrated by man against his brother. ‘Lagar’ was Gabriela’s last published book. In ‘Tala’, there is a continuity of the themes found in the earlier works-death, grief, children, nature, religious faith, and a new heightened sense of hope, an ecstatic encounter with familiar everyday things, the mystery of the imponderable world of the spirit. With this book she created the first authentic body of children’s literature in Latin America. In ‘Ternura’, Gabriela’s deep sense of the maternal is evident, as is her dedication to a lifelong vocation of teaching. This book is passionate, personal, subjective the pervading tone is tragic.

‘Desolación’ reflects the lonely, majestic landscapes of Gabriela’s native Chile, as well as her early years as a rural schoolteacher in the high Andean villages of the valley of Elqui.

They were selected from her four major works ‘Desolación', ‘Ternura', ‘Tala', and ‘Lagar’. These translations give a profound insight into the original poetry of this greatest of contemporary Latin American women. This bilingual edition of selected poems was translated and edited by Doris Dana, a close personal friend with whom Gabriela lived and worked prior to her death in 1957. She is loved and honored throughout the world as one of the great humanistic voices of our time. Gabriela Mistral was the first Latin American ever to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature, and her works are among the finest in all contemporary poetry.

Selected poems of gabriela mistral