The Valley Loses Its Atmosphere

The Valley Loses Its Atmosphere by Chilean poet Winétt de Rokha (1894–1951) is an epic comprising forty-eight stunning poems written primarily during her journey across Latin America with her famed poet husband, Pablo de Rokha. He had been named Cultural Ambassador of Chile in the Americas by President Juan Antonio Ríos. The ambassadorial journey of the two poets took place from 1944 to 1946, and their travels took them through nineteen countries in South and Central America—including Peru, Uruguay, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Guatemala, Cuba, and Mexico—before reaching the United States. Translated beautifully from Spanish by Jessica Sequeira, whose critically astute introductory essay illuminates the epic, the poetry forms Winétt’s canto americano (American song)—“American” in the original continental sense of the word denoting all of the Americas. The subject of The Valley Loses Its Atmosphere is Latin America, that is, her America. Winétt’s fourth and final collection of poetry, this work was originally published in 1949, the year before fellow Chilean Pablo Neruda published his Canto General (General Song), another American epic based in part on firsthand travels, written in a similar poetic language and with a similar political perspective (i.e. Communist) against oppressive social conditions and foreign imperialist/capitalist interventions in Latin America. Neruda is no stranger to English-language readers, whereas Winétt de Rokha remains essentially unknown. This new bilingual book of her verse, however, goes a long way to change the present situation. It shows her poetic genius at full power and proves her work deserves attention in the Anglophone world. Moreover, the book contributes an edgy, lyric dimension to mid-twentieth-century American travel literature. Winétt’s poetry is characterised by its musicality, unusual imagery, earthiness, dignity, and independence from literary tradition. Searching for new forms to represent reality, her poetry is experimental and avant-garde, in keeping with the modernist period when she composed it. She opens the book’s travel sequence of untitled poems with a verse prelude that proclaims “‘The Valley Loses Its Atmosphere’ / is incorruptibly American” (17) and continues: