Jorge Carrera Andrade

Jorge Carrera Andrade Poems

Jorge Carrera Andrade Biography

Jorge Carrera Andrade was an Ecuadorian poet, historian, author, and diplomat during the 20th century. He was born in Quito, Ecuador in 1902. He died in 1978. During his life and after his death he has been recognized with Jorge Luis Borges, Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz and Cesar Vallejo as one of the most important Latin American poets of the twentieth century. From 1928-33 Carrera first experienced traveling in Europe. He served as Ecuadorian Consul in Peru, France, Japan and the United States. Later he became Ambassador to Venezuela, the United Kingdom, Nicaragua, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. He also served as Secretary of State of Ecuador. While living in the United States, Carrera developed many literary relationships with American writers, in particular Muna Lee whose critically acclaimed translation of his poetry, Secret Country, was published in 1946. His work was praised and championed by John Malcolm Brinnin, H.R. Hays, Archibald MacLeish, Carl Sandburg, William Jay Smith and William Carlos Williams. Carrera Andrade's poetic work developed for half a century in a number of volumes published worldwide. In 1972 Obra poetica completa, which gathers the totality of his lyric work, appeared in Quito. Most of his poetry has been translated into French, English, Italian and German. He also published books of essays, history and an autobiography, El volcan y el colibri (The Volcano and the Hummingbird) (1970). After Carrera's diplomatic career ended in 1969, he was appointed Distinguished Visiting Professor at SUNY Stony Brook, Long Island, where he lectured for two academic years. He spent his last years in his native city of Quito, as Director of the National Library of Ecuador. During his life and after his death he has been recognized with Jorge Luis Borges, Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz and Cesar Vallejo as one of the most important Latin American poets of the twentieth century.)

The Best Poem Of Jorge Carrera Andrade

Anonymous Speech

COMRADES: the world is built upon our dead
and our feet have created all the roads.
Also, beneath every sky, there is not an inch of shadow
for those of us who made the cupolas bloom.

Bread, blonde grandchild of the sower, a roof
- foliage of clay and sun that shelters the family -,
the right to love and walk freely are not ours:
we are the slave traders of our own lives.

Happiness, that sea we've never seen,
the cities we'll never visit
we lift up in our clenched fists like fruit,
announcing the most serious harvest of all time.

Only the right to die, comrades of the world!
A hundred hands divide the offerings of the earth.
Already the time has come to hurl ourselves into the streets and plazas
to reclaim the Work we ourselves built.

translated from the Spanish by Steven Ford Brown

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