I went to a reception to celebrate the publication of a book of poetry by Maria Gomez Lara, who’s seventeen. Her book is called Preguntas para el Azar, which translates roughly to Questions about Chance (or Luck, or Randomness, or Fate). The reception was held in an old colonial house in La Candelaria called Case Poesia de Silva (Silva Poetry House), named after a famous Colombian poet. They have all kinds of readings and 
receptions and seminars there, and Maria goes frequently to their happenings.
Oh, did I mention that she was my student this year?
She got a lot of help with the book from a teacher at my school, Federico Diaz-Granados, 
who’s a published poet himself. Federico teaches Spanish and we got to be amigos when we rode the same bus last year. His English is minimal, and my Spanish is just a step above that, but we like each other and I can tell that he’s 1. probably a genius, and 2. maybe one of the funniest guys in Bogota (even though I can’t usually tell specifically what he’s saying).
So, a little about Maria. My school is small enough that in two years I have managed to teach all of the 10th and 11th graders in at least one class, and some of them as many as three. But, I never had Maria in class until this past semester, though I knew her very casually from other students. Maria’s the type who is every teacher’s favorite student, while at the same time she’s quiet, a little shy, sensitive, and doesn’t really create a stir. In fact, it’s her subtlety that ends up attracting people to her, I think.
She also has, almost every minute of the day, as big a smile as a girl can possibly wear. In class she doesn’t draw attention to herself, though she participates readily and very often has incredible insights. I had her in class before the morning break, so afterwards she’d often hang back to chat. During one of these first chats, she explained to me why she carries two bags each day. One has in it things that she values: her Spanish, English, and French literature texts, philosophy books and projects, novels she’s reading for school, other books she’s reading for pleasure, her journal, which she’s never without, and whatever else she wants to have with her that day. The other bag is for things that don’t rank very highly with her: math and science books, notebooks, and whatever other things that are necessary for various reasons in life at the moment. By having two bags, the trivialities and dull necessities don’t contaminate the things of value.
I taught Maria in US Literature class, which includes a little history, and she also told me once that she’s much less familiar with the US than most of our students are. I said I hoped she’d get a chance to know the US better someday, and she told me that she would enjoy getting to know the people and the country through their literature.
Occasionally we’d ride the same bus home, and sometimes discuss the novels or plays we were reading in class, and her appreciation of literature is on a level that’s very rare and also very refreshing to find. But more than that, her simple enjoyment of it is so obvious in everything she says.
Her other passion is politics, in the global sense of being very concerned for humanity in 
general, having an intense sense of justice and fairness, and wanting her country to become the best it can be and do the right thing by its citizens. There’s a long way to go, but I think that someday Maria will make great contributions to the process.
But, back to the poetry. A couple people, including her mother and Fererico, read some of the poems, and then Maria read a few of them herself. I could catch about every third line, because my Spanish is still at the level where I have to translate in my head most of what I read, but even on that rudimentary level, I could tell it is really good stuff, with great insights and really original phrasings. It’s going to be a fun project for me to read them, and translate them into English. And, of course, I’ve got an autographed copy, so when Maria becomes a world-renowned writer, I can remember that I was there near the beginning.
Entries (RSS)