La Femme Dans l’image: Journal danois

Abstract

In sum, Winétt de Rokha’s The Valley Loses Its Atmosphere deserves a wide readership and critical attention. Sequeira’s translation with its poetic brilliance in concert fully with the poet herself should be read and the song of it heard. De Rokha details her travel experience in midcentury Latin America with its social struggles offset by its unique geography. This translation, like all translations, is itself a form of travel writing, crossing linguistic and cultural borders. Here, de Rokha counterpoints the largely imagined American travels of Walt Whitman, who for instance in his canto americano “Starting from Paumanok [indigenous name of Long Island, New York]” (1860) proclaimed he would “strike up for a New World.” She mentions him with fondness and admiration in one of the poems (91). Sadly, he did not get to her America. This new book offers her vivid portrait of it—a vast mural, really—filled with her keen observations in highly poetic, sensuous terms.