Julia de Burgos was born in 1914 to a poor family in Carolina, Puerto Rico. Now a suburb of San Juan, Carolina was a beautiful rural area when Julia was a child. Later her poetry often would refer back to the lush countryside along the course of the Loiza River.

Although the island was in bad economic straits, Julia managed to go through college in the city. There she was known as a non-conforming, rebellious young woman with a reputation for her witty, straightforward conversation. She first became known as a poet in 1937 when she prepared a private, typewritten book called Poemas exactos a mì misma (Poems True to Myself). The next year she published Poemas en veinte surcos (Poems in Twenty Furrows), and in 1939 she published her third book, Canciones de la verdad sencilla (Songs of the Simple Truth), which won a prize from the Institute of Puerto Rican Literature. Her last book, El mar y tú (The Sea and You), was published in 1954, one year after her tragic death.

In 1940, around the time of her separation from her husband, an impassioned Puerto Rican nationalist, Julia moved to New York City. Except for a two-year respite in Cuba, where she affirmed her pride in her Hispanic heritage, Julia lived her remaining years in New York. There she did occasional political work and some reporting, but mostly she withdrew more and more into alcoholism, stopped writing, and was frequently hospitalized. Although she constantly expressed her desire to return to the Island in letters to her sister, she never did so. In July 1953, she was found unconscious at 105th Street and Fifth Avenue in East Harlem. She died shortly thereafter without regaining consciousness. }

Love and death are common themes in the works of Julia de Burgos, but some of her more interesting poems focus on the theme of her search for self. These poems reveal how torn she must have felt, as she swings from a transcendental affirmation of self into faltering ambivalence. The following poem represents one of the rare instances in which Julia de Borgos examines her identity as a woman. It is all the more remarkable and prophetic 'for having been written without the context of a feminist movement.

Julia

de Burgos

—Loretta Feller

Yo Misma Fui Mi Ruta

Yo quise ser como los hombres quisieron que yo

fuese:

un intento de vida;

un juego al escondite con mi ser.

Pero yo estaba hecha de presentes,

y mis pies planos sobre la tierra promisora

no resistían caminar hacia atrás,

y seguían adelante, adelante,

burlando las cenizas para alcanzar el beso____

de los senderos nuevos."

A cada paso adelantado en mi ruta hacia el frente rasgaba mis espaldas el aleteo desesperado

de los troncos viejos.

Pero la rama estaba desprendida para siempre,

y a cada nuevo azote la mirada mía

se separaba más y más y más de los lejanos

horizontes aprendidos;

y mi rostro iba tomando la expresión que le venía de adentro,

la expresión definida que asomaba un sentimiento

de liberación íntima;

un sentimiento que surgía

del equilibrio sostenido entre mi vida

y la verdad del beso de los senderos nuevos.

Ya definido mi rumbo en el presente,

me sentí brote de todos los suelos de la tierra,

de los suelos sin historia,

de los suelos sin porvenir,

del suelo siempre suelo sin orillas

de todos los hombres y de todas las épocas.

Y fui toda en mí como fue en mí la vida...

Yo quise ser como los hombres quisieron que yo . fuese:

un intento de vida;

un juego al escondite con mi ser.

Pero yo estaba hecha de presentes;

cuando ya los heraldos me anunciaban

en el regio desfile de los troncos viejos,

se me torció el deseo de seguir a los hombres,

y el homenaje se quedó esperándome.

-Julia de Burgos (1914-1953)

Antología Poética, Editorial Coquí, San Juan de Puerto Rico, 1977.

I Went My Own Way ·

I wanted to be as men wanted me to be;

a role in life;

a game of hide and seek with my self. But I was made of presence,

and my feet, firm on the promised land, did not resist walking backwards and proceeding forward and forward, mocking the ashes to obtain the kiss of new paths.

At each step advancing on my way forward the desperate beating of ancient heritage struck at my back.

But the branch was severed forever,·

and at each new blow my gaze

Fermi-Antologica Poetica

With my course now defined in the present,

I. felt myself sprouting from all the soil of the earth,

from the soil without history,

from the soil without future,

from the soil always soil without shores

of all men and all ages.

And I became all in myself as life came into me...

I wanted to be as men wanted me to be: A role in life;

separated more and more and more from the distant a game of hide and seek with my self. familiar horizons; But I was made of presence;

and my face began assuming the expression that now when heralds announced me came to it from within,

•

the definite expression that revealed a sentiment

of intimate liberation;

a sentiment that surged

from the sustained balance between my life and the truth of the kiss of new paths.

in the stately procession of ancestors, the desire to follow men twisted me, and my homage stayed waiting for me.

-Julia de Burgos (1914-1953) (translated by Loretta Feller)

June-1980/What She WantëŽPa

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