ABSTRACT
The history of Latino/a poetry can arguably be traced as far back as the 1500s and the earliest days of the European conquest of the Americas, and to the clash of Spanish, African, and indigenous American cultures that ensued. Despite its long and complex history, and its significance to cultural and political history, the poetry written and performed by US Latinos/as is sometimes marginalized or overlooked in accounts of the US Latino/a experience. For critic and publisher Nicolás Kanellos, Latino poetry is “the iceberg below the surface,” a deep wellspring of forms and ideas that has shaped the broader landscape despite its relative lack of visibility (Kanellos 2002b). An epic account of the discovery and conquest of the Americas can be found in
Spanish soldier and Catholic priest Juan de Castellanos’s “Elegías de varones ilustres de Indias” (“Elegies of Illustrious Men of the Indies,” 1589), the earliest poetry included in the recently published The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature (Stavans 2010). The poem is written in octavas reales, eight-line stanzas that are the Spanish equivalent of the Italian ottava rima form popularized by the poet Giovanni Boccaccio, yet its focus is on the people and places of the Americas. Here is a stanza, included in the Norton Anthology, where de Castellanos depicts Ponce de León’s arrival in Puerto Rico:
Juan Ponce having readied men and store, Under the powers given to his hand, Made the journey without delaying more, With interpreters from Haiti in his command And since on St. John’s Day he went ashore, San Juan de Puerto Rico he called the land. The men that he brought with him on that day Stepped forth on sandy beaches on a bay.
