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Much of her poetry is simple and direct in language, but full of warmth and emotion. The main themes in her poems are love, maternal love, sterility, nature, sorrow and recovery. Her lover, Romelio Ureta's suicide in 1909, left deep marks on her writings. Several of Mistral's early poems were written for him.
Learn about the life and poetry of Gabriela Mistral, the first Spanish American author to receive the Nobel Prize in literature, who wrote about love, motherhood, social issues, and the spiritual quest. Explore her verse and prose, her influences, her activism, and her legacy as a cultural and spiritual leader.
- First Latin American to Win The Nobel Prize in Literature
- Summing Up Gabriela Mistral’s Poetic Journey
- Published Poetry Collections
- Canción de La Muerte (Song of Death), 1914
- Song of Death
- Dame La Mano
- Give Me Your Hand
- Canto Que Amabas
- The Song You Loved
- Elogio de La Sal
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Gabriela Mistral was the first Latin American author to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. For more on the overarching themes in her work, see the analysis, “Beyond the Mythic Mistral.” She said of her own need to write: “I write poetry because I can’t disobey the impulse; it would be like blocking a spring that surges up in my throat. For a lo...
In Gabriela Mistral: The Poet and Her Work, Margot Arce de Vazquez summed up the life and work of this remarkable poet beautifully: “This was the kind of woman she was: attentive to the present, dominated by the conscience of her deeds and of the course that history takes, incapable of refusing the claims of those who suffer from hunger or thirst f...
Gabriela Mistral’s body of work includes six collections of her poetry (four of which were published in her lifetime) in addition to several volumes of letters and prose. Her first book, Desolación, was published in 1922 in New York City. It gained her an almost instant audience. This was followed by Ternura(Tenderness), published in 1924 in Spain....
La vieja Empadronadora, la mañosa Muerte, cuando vaya de camino, mi niño encuentre. La que huele a los nacidos y husmea su leche, encuentre sales y harinas, mi leche no encuentre. La Contra-Madre del Mundo, la Convida-gentes, por las playas y las rutas no halle al inocente. El nombre de su bautismo la flor con que crece – lo olvide la memoriosa, lo...
Old Woman Census-taker, Death the Trickster, when you’re going along, don’t you meet my baby. Sniffing at newborns, smelling for the milk, find salt, find cornmeal, don’t find my milk. Anti-Mother of the world, People-Collector — on the beaches and byways, don’t meet that child. The name he was baptized, that flower he grows with, forget it, Rememb...
Dame la mano y danzaremos dame la mano y me amarás. Como una sola flor seremos, como una flor, y nada más… El mismo verso cantaremos, al mismo paso bailarás. Como una espiga ondularemos, como una espiga, y nada más. Te llama Rosa y yo Esperanza: pero tu nombre olvidarás, porque seremos una danza en la colina, y nada más.
Give me your hand and give me your love, give me your hand and dance with me. A single flower, and nothing more, a single flower is all we’ll be. Keeping time in the dance together, you’ll be singing the song with me. Grass in the wind, and nothing more, grass in the wind is all we’ll be. I’m called Hope and you’re called Rose: but losing our names...
Yo canto lo que tú amabas, vida mía, Por si te acercas y escuchas, vida mía, por si te acuerdas del mundo que viviste, al atardecer yo canto, sombra mía. Yo no quiero enmudecer, vida mía. ¿Cómo sin mi grito fiel me hallarías? ¿Cuál señal, cuál me declara, vida mía? Soy la misma que fue tuya, vida mía. Ni lenta ni trascordada ni perdida. Acude al an...
Life of my life, what you loved I sing. If you’re near, if you’re listening, think of me now in the evening: shadow in shadows, hear me sing. Life of my life, I can’t be still. What is a story we never tell? How can you find me unless I call? Life of my life, I haven’t changed, not turned aside and not estranged. Come to me as the shadows grow long...
La sal que, en los mojones de la playa de Eva del año 3000, parece frente cuadrada y hombros cuadrados, sin paloma tibia ni rose viva en la mano y de la roca que brilla más que la foca de encima, capaz de volver toda joya. La sal que blanquea, vientre de gaviota y cruje en la pechuga del pingüino y que en la madreperla juega con los colores que no ...
Gabriela Mistral was a Chilean poet, educator, diplomat, and feminist who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1945. She wrote about the themes of death, loss, and motherhood in her original Spanish and English poems, such as Canción de la Muerte, Dame la Mano, and Eligio de la Sal.
Give Me Your Hand. Gabriela Mistral. 1889 –. 1957. translated by Ursula K. Le Guin. Give me your hand and give me your love, give me your hand and dance with me. A single flower, and nothing more, a single flower is all we'll be.
I Sing What You Loved. Gabriela Mistral. 1889 –. 1957. translated from the Spanish by Ursula K. Le Guin. Life of my life, what you loved I sing. If you're near, if you’re listening, remembering earth, in the evening, my life, my shadow, hear me sing.
1889 –. 1957. translated by Ursula K. Le Guin. In mountains I grew up, three dozen peaks around me. I seem never, never, though I hear my steps departing, to have lost them, not in the day, not in the starlit night, and though in pools I see. myself with snowy hair, I never left them, they never left me. like a child forsaken.
Read the poems of Gabriela Mistral, the first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, who was also a Chilean poet-diplomat, educator and feminist. Learn about her life, her tragedies, her achievements and her influence on other poets.
