Context

When I was in high school, a neighbor who loved literature as much as I did introduced me to the work of Spanish poet Miguel Hernández. I was working on a paper for one of my classes and wanted to read beyond the meager offerings in our textbook. One poem in particular caught my attention and has stayed with me since. Titled “Nanas de la cebolla” (“Lullaby of the Onion”), it was written by the author in 1939––from prison––at the end of the Spanish Civil War and dedicated to his child, Manuel Miguel.

The poem is preceded by a fragment in which Hernández responds to his wife’s previous letter: “The scent of the onions you’ve been eating has reached me here, and my little boy is probably tired of nursing and getting onion juice instead of milk”. The poet’s frustration at his inability to protect and provide for his family is evident, as are his sorrow and despair. In the second stanza he writes,

The poem’s socio-historical context influences the lives of the poet and his family but also serves as an extended metaphor for the consequences of another senseless war. For me, the poem’s impact was made more powerful by having met refugees from the Spanish Civil War in my home country and listened to their stories, which made Hernández’s reality come alive and allowed me to better understand and engage with his work.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines context as “the parts of a discourse that surround a word or passage and can throw light on its meaning.” The word itself comes from the Latin contexere, which means “to weave or join together,” which I interpret as “to make sense of” what we’re reading, particularly when we’re not familiar with the author’s background and/or work. Knowing a poem’s context can give us a sense of place, culture, politics, gender dynamics, etc., and situate us in a specific time and place using concrete references, like the “onion’s blood” in the mother’s milk in Hernández’s poem.

Awareness of context also allows us to explore our own patterns in writing, our “go-to” metaphors, devices, obsessions, and recurring themes, so that we can find new and refreshing ways to think about them. In this workshop we read poems (mostly in translation) where the context offered readers an anchor from which to connect with the speaker and their circumstances. We discussed strategies used by the authors––titles, metaphors, specific time and place details––and experimented with our own experiences in connection to those of the authors we read about.

Here I offer a generative prompt you can also use to revise what you wrote at a later date––or even for another poem:

1. Read Gbenga Adesina’s poem “The People’s History of 1998.” Notice how the author begins with a list of events that happened during that year and then transitions into more personal details.
2. Choose a significant year for you and/or your community/family and make a list of events that happened that year. Then, like Adesina, write a poem weaving the public and the personal. Think about contextual markers you can use to engage your reader (the types of clothes, a TV show or song, a routine, habit, ritual, etc.).
3. Let your draft rest for a few days. When you’re ready to revise, take a few minutes to journal by responding to these questions:

• What stands out to you from what you wrote?
• Which one of the markers you used feels like an extended metaphor for the year you chose?

• What is this poem trying to tell you?

   

4. Now write another version of the poem using this information. What did you not say in the first version? What was revealed to you in this exercise?

Further Readings and Explorations: Journals and Magazines for Poetry in Translation

• Modern Poetry in Translation
• Poetry International
• Words Without Borders