Origins of a Dream

. . . mientras haya esperanzas y recuerdos,
¡habrá poesia!
Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer


I remember vividly the homework assignment that made me start to dream about becoming a writer. But I can’t tell the story behind that luminous moment without first filling in some of the background.

Shortly after I turned eleven, my parents decided to return to their birthplace: Nicaragua. I was dead set against the move as I saw it derailing my dream of playing third base for the LA Dodgers. But before I could fully grasp what was about to strike me, I found myself completely immersed in a Spanish-speaking world.

Keep in mind that up to that point my education had been entirely in English and that although I looked Nicaraguan, my grammar in Spanish was atrocious, plus I spoke it with a gringo accent. Because of this I suffered many embarrassing and disconcerting moments.

Still, in spite of the trauma my dislocation caused, the experience also had its rewards. For instance, we lived in a marvelously large colonial home in the city of Granada. Also, from one day to the next, I had gained a loving extended family that greatly helped to ease my transition into the new language and culture.

It was not long after my arrival that I discovered that every Nicaraguan child is expected to recite Rubén Darío’s poetry—Nicaragua’s greatest contribution to literature. Since my Spanish was still at an awkward stage, I was spared from having to do this. My sisters, however, being much younger than me, picked up the language instantly, and soon they were reciting Darío’s verses for the amusement of every person who happened to drop by our house. It was by listening to them repeat their lines—time and time again—that I too memorized many of the Nicaraguan’s poems.

But I have to confess that Rubén Darío’s work has never really moved me. I’m aware that now that I’ve said this publicly every Nicaraguan will consider me a heretic, but I can’t help it. I simply can’t relate to the rigid formality of his work. In spite of this, I'm in awe of Darío’s genius, particularly with regard to the musicality of his rhymes.

Nevertheless, my indifference toward poetry—in Spanish or in English—persisted until I was fourteen. But that changed forever the day that Juan Alas, our literature teacher—a Salesian priest, and published poet himself—assigned several poems written by the nineteenth-century Spanish writer, Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer.

This became a defining moment in my life, for it is when my passion for literature and for language truly began.

The instant I read Bécquer’s verses, they astonished me—and they continue to do so to this day. They opened my eyes and my ears to the beauty of language and to the possibility of exquisitely blending emotional intensity with elegant simplicity.

Right after my introduction to Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, I decided that I too would become a poet. Inspired by his example, I filled several notebooks with verses about dormant harps, melancholic swallows, and unrequited love. And it is my good fortune that these feverish and feeble adolescent musings were lost long ago.

But Bécquer continues to dwell inside of me, as do so many other writers who since that day have touched my heart. And isn’t that really the main reason why a man or a woman would choose such a thorny occupation whose outcome is agonizingly uncertain? Look at what following his calling did for Bécquer: he died impoverished, broken-hearted, and unpublished at the age of thirty-four.

Yet, in spite of the hardships, many persons still opt to become writers because we hope that through our struggle to express whatever is churning inside of us we might be lucky enough to find a minuscule place inside the souls of others and, in doing so, gain a small measure of immortality.