Yolanda Blanco
Encyclopedia
Yolanda Blanco is a Nicaraguan
poet. Nicaragua is well known for its world class poets. Before 1970, all of Nicaragua’s major poets had been men. Then an outstanding group of women started writing poetry. These poets “are currently writing the best new poetry in their country and would rank among the best new poets in Latin America
.” Blanco belongs to this group of poets.
, Nicaragua. She attended the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Nicaragua, in León, between 1970 and 1971. While studying at the university, she organized the first poetry lectures ever, featuring the top Nicaraguan women poets. Blanco went on to study art history and literature in France. During the Seventies, she worked for the creation of a new society in Nicaragua. However, in 1978, she was forced to move to Venezuela when her family’s home was unjustifiably invaded by Sandinista officials. Although she was a well known young Nicaraguan poet during the Eighties, Blanco was not paraded by the Sandinista regime because she did not belong to its party. Blanco graduated with a degree in Literature
from the Universidad Central de Venezuela
. She was a member of "Calicanto", a literary workshop conducted by Venezuelan writer Antonia Palacios, and participated actively in the Venezuelan literary world. In 2005, Blanco won the Mariana Sansón Argüello
National Poetry Award—a literary contest organized yearly by the Nicaraguan Association of
Women Writers (ANIDE)—for her book De lo urbano y lo sagrado.
Blanco currently lives in New York City where she works as a translator and practices Taoist arts.
(FSLN) in Nicaragua.
The focus of her first collection, Así cuando la lluvia, falls on the months of May and June, considered the months of the rain and of the tree. The poet affirms the creative power of the rain identified with that of the woman and welcomes it with affection and happiness. The water brightens up the colors and dissipates monotony. It also creates a bucolic vision in which time is only present and the woman is actualized in love and in memories establishing the foundation of her existence. The woman asserts her pride of being and her common nature with the tree through the sensuality of the touch and the erotism of the body.
In Cerámica sol, Blanco tries to rescue the power of the primeval word, the language rooted in the symbol and in rites. The poet becomes the sun's priestess to extol its meaning in the human life, in the humbleness of the harvests and fruits, in the activity of the bees, in love, in the chant... The perfect conciliation of all these elements is attained in the fertile embrace of Nature
.
Penqueo en Nicaragua was written during the revolutionary fight of the Nicaraguan people that put an end to the regime of Anastasio Somoza
. It constitutes the testimony of a call for action against injustice and a chant for the hope of liberation. With an enormous emotive force, the poet depicts the heroism and courage of the indigenous
neighborhood of Monimbó that led the vanguard in the war against the Sower of the Flowers of Evil. The transformation of peace, work, music, and dance into shrapnel, bombs, destruction, and death originated the uprising against the Somocista army. Blanco remembers the dead Sandinista guerrilla fighters and the faith in the cause for Nicaragua. Pain, hope, guns, and guitars alternate in the poet's affirmation of having been "impregnated" by the love for the Revolution. The colors of Sandinismo
, black and red, appear in most of the poems to verbalize the conflict generated by oppression and liberty
. The denouncement of atrocities, the imprisonments for insurgency, the voices of witnesses, the poverty, orphanhood, mutilation, hunger, and affliction create a multiple cry for solidarity in the fight guided by the motto "Free Country or Death."
In Aposentos, Blanco's awareness of being a woman is the dominant theme. Using a subversive language
that praises sensuality and sexuality, the poet glorifies each part of the female body. Her objective is to inaugurate a new sociological and cultural space confronting the prevalent stereotypes that limit female expression. The identification of woman and Nature emerges continuously in Blanco's poems to communicate their essential creative commonality. It becomes a double discursive axis of denouncement: the subordinated role of women in society, and the generalized repression of their emotions, their experience of love, and writing. Blanco's poetry deviates from the patriarchal tradition and vindicates the validity of a female discourse, the synthesis of a personal and historical process.
De lo urbano y lo sagrado is a mixture of themes. On the one hand, there is nature again; there is the everyday, which the poet considers sacred; and there is also the city, the ultimate city, New York. Blanco transforms herself into a series of Nicaraguan poets: Rubén Darío
, Salomón de la Selva
, José Coronel Urtecho
, and Ernesto Cardenal
to portray the 20th century, together with her own time, her country, and her tradition.
Nicaraguan
Nicaraguans are people inhabiting in, originating or having significant heritage from Nicaragua. Most Nicaraguans live in Nicaragua, although there is also a significant Nicaraguan diaspora, particularly in Costa Rica and the United States with smaller communities in other countries around the world...
poet. Nicaragua is well known for its world class poets. Before 1970, all of Nicaragua’s major poets had been men. Then an outstanding group of women started writing poetry. These poets “are currently writing the best new poetry in their country and would rank among the best new poets in Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
.” Blanco belongs to this group of poets.
Life
Yolanda Blanco was born in ManaguaManagua
Managua is the capital city of Nicaragua as well as the department and municipality by the same name. It is the largest city in Nicaragua in terms of population and geographic size. Located on the southwestern shore of Lake Xolotlán or Lake Managua, the city was declared the national capital in...
, Nicaragua. She attended the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Nicaragua, in León, between 1970 and 1971. While studying at the university, she organized the first poetry lectures ever, featuring the top Nicaraguan women poets. Blanco went on to study art history and literature in France. During the Seventies, she worked for the creation of a new society in Nicaragua. However, in 1978, she was forced to move to Venezuela when her family’s home was unjustifiably invaded by Sandinista officials. Although she was a well known young Nicaraguan poet during the Eighties, Blanco was not paraded by the Sandinista regime because she did not belong to its party. Blanco graduated with a degree in Literature
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
from the Universidad Central de Venezuela
Venezuela
Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...
. She was a member of "Calicanto", a literary workshop conducted by Venezuelan writer Antonia Palacios, and participated actively in the Venezuelan literary world. In 2005, Blanco won the Mariana Sansón Argüello
Mariana Sansón Argüello
Mariana Sansón Argüello was one of the first woman leaders in Nicaraguan poetry. She produced a personal and metaphysical poetry that is recognized as a type of Hispanic American surrealism...
National Poetry Award—a literary contest organized yearly by the Nicaraguan Association of
Women Writers (ANIDE)—for her book De lo urbano y lo sagrado.
Blanco currently lives in New York City where she works as a translator and practices Taoist arts.
Published work
- Así cuando la lluvia. León, Nicaragua: Editorial Hospicio, 1974
- Cerámica sol. León, Nicaragua: Editorial UNAN, 1977
- Penqueo en Nicaragua. Managua, Nicaragua: Editorial Unión, 1981
- Aposentos. Caracas, Venezuela: Pen Club de Venezuela, 1985
- De lo urbano y lo sagrado. Managua, Nicaragua: Ediciones ANIDE, 2005
Themes
Yolanda Blanco's poetic writing reveals a route of intimate spaces that intensify the experience of the female apprehension of reality, of Nature, and of language through the articulation of a discourse coinciding with the feminist postulates of the difference. Her poems also represent a testimony of the revolutionary fight that culminated with the triumph of the Sandinista National Liberation FrontSandinista National Liberation Front
The Sandinista National Liberation Front is a socialist political party in Nicaragua. Its members are called Sandinistas in both English and Spanish...
(FSLN) in Nicaragua.
The focus of her first collection, Así cuando la lluvia, falls on the months of May and June, considered the months of the rain and of the tree. The poet affirms the creative power of the rain identified with that of the woman and welcomes it with affection and happiness. The water brightens up the colors and dissipates monotony. It also creates a bucolic vision in which time is only present and the woman is actualized in love and in memories establishing the foundation of her existence. The woman asserts her pride of being and her common nature with the tree through the sensuality of the touch and the erotism of the body.
In Cerámica sol, Blanco tries to rescue the power of the primeval word, the language rooted in the symbol and in rites. The poet becomes the sun's priestess to extol its meaning in the human life, in the humbleness of the harvests and fruits, in the activity of the bees, in love, in the chant... The perfect conciliation of all these elements is attained in the fertile embrace of Nature
Nature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is equivalent to the natural world, physical world, or material world. "Nature" refers to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general...
.
Penqueo en Nicaragua was written during the revolutionary fight of the Nicaraguan people that put an end to the regime of Anastasio Somoza
Anastasio Somoza
Anastasio Somoza may be:Nicaraguan dictators:* Anastasio Somoza García, * Anastasio Somoza Debayle, Also:* Anastasio Somoza Portocarrero, son of Somoza Debayle...
. It constitutes the testimony of a call for action against injustice and a chant for the hope of liberation. With an enormous emotive force, the poet depicts the heroism and courage of the indigenous
Indigenous peoples
Indigenous peoples are ethnic groups that are defined as indigenous according to one of the various definitions of the term, there is no universally accepted definition but most of which carry connotations of being the "original inhabitants" of a territory....
neighborhood of Monimbó that led the vanguard in the war against the Sower of the Flowers of Evil. The transformation of peace, work, music, and dance into shrapnel, bombs, destruction, and death originated the uprising against the Somocista army. Blanco remembers the dead Sandinista guerrilla fighters and the faith in the cause for Nicaragua. Pain, hope, guns, and guitars alternate in the poet's affirmation of having been "impregnated" by the love for the Revolution. The colors of Sandinismo
Sandinismo
Carlos Fonseca is considered the principal ideologue of the Sandinistas because he established the fundamental ideas of Sandinism. It was revolutionaries like David Nolan and Hugo Cancino Troncoso who provided the sophisticated proponents of Sandinista ideology: Sandinisimo, but it was Fonseca who...
, black and red, appear in most of the poems to verbalize the conflict generated by oppression and liberty
Liberty
Liberty is a moral and political principle, or Right, that identifies the condition in which human beings are able to govern themselves, to behave according to their own free will, and take responsibility for their actions...
. The denouncement of atrocities, the imprisonments for insurgency, the voices of witnesses, the poverty, orphanhood, mutilation, hunger, and affliction create a multiple cry for solidarity in the fight guided by the motto "Free Country or Death."
In Aposentos, Blanco's awareness of being a woman is the dominant theme. Using a subversive language
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
that praises sensuality and sexuality, the poet glorifies each part of the female body. Her objective is to inaugurate a new sociological and cultural space confronting the prevalent stereotypes that limit female expression. The identification of woman and Nature emerges continuously in Blanco's poems to communicate their essential creative commonality. It becomes a double discursive axis of denouncement: the subordinated role of women in society, and the generalized repression of their emotions, their experience of love, and writing. Blanco's poetry deviates from the patriarchal tradition and vindicates the validity of a female discourse, the synthesis of a personal and historical process.
De lo urbano y lo sagrado is a mixture of themes. On the one hand, there is nature again; there is the everyday, which the poet considers sacred; and there is also the city, the ultimate city, New York. Blanco transforms herself into a series of Nicaraguan poets: Rubén Darío
Rubén Darío
Félix Rubén García Sarmiento , known as Rubén Darío, was a Nicaraguan poet who initiated the Spanish-American literary movement known as modernismo that flourished at the end of the 19th century...
, Salomón de la Selva
Salomón de la Selva
Salomón de la Selva born in León Nicaragua on March 20, 1893 and died in Paris, France on February 5, 1959 was a Nicaraguan poet and honorary member of the Mexican Academy of Language.-Biography:...
, José Coronel Urtecho
José Coronel Urtecho
José Coronel Urtecho was a Nicaraguan poet, translator, essayist, critic, narrator, playwright, diplomat and historian. He has been described as "the most influential Nicaraguan thinker of the twentieth century"...
, and Ernesto Cardenal
Ernesto Cardenal
Reverend Father Ernesto Cardenal Martínez is a Nicaraguan Catholic priest and was one of the most famous liberation theologians of the Nicaraguan Sandinistas, a party he has since left. From 1979 to 1987 he served as Nicaragua's first culture minister. He is also famous as a poet...
to portray the 20th century, together with her own time, her country, and her tradition.
Further reading
- Seregni, Jerome, ed. Las palabras pueden: los escritores y la infancia. Bogotá, Colombia: Fondo de las Naciones Unidas para la infancia (UNICEF), 2007.
- Yllescas Salinas, Edwin, ed. La herida en el sol. Poesía contemporánea centroamericana. México D.F., México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. 2007.
- Arellano, Jorge Eduardo, ed. Literatura centroamericana: Diccionario de autores centroamericanos. Managua, Nicaragua: Colección Cultural de Centro América Serie Literaria No. 12. 2003.
- Zamora, Daisy, ed. La mujer nicaragüense en la poesía. Antología. Managua: Nueva Nicaragua, 1992.
- Angleysey, Zoë, ed. Ixok amargo: poesía de mujeres centroamericanas por la paz. Central American Women's Poetry for Peace. Bilingual Anthology. Penobscot, Me: Granite Press, 1987.