Margaret Randall
“Then I saw what the calling was :it was the road I traveled”- Muriel Rukeyser
My life and work have been profoundly informed by parents who gave me love and adventure, and encouraged creativity; the dramatic desert canyons, rich colors and open skies of the southwestern United States; Socialist ideals; the second wave of feminism; and the generous mentorship of many great friends and colleagues. My children, grandchildren, and great grandchild are always with me, even when far away; and my spouse Barbara is bedrock. New York’s abstract expressionist painters in the 1950s, Mexico and her struggles of the 1960s, the Cuban revolution’s second brave decade in the 1970s, the Vietnamese people’s struggle against US attack and occupation in that same decade, and the Sandinista attempt to change Nicaragua in the early 1980s were places and events that shaped me. The exploration of ancient sites continues to be a source of nourishment, and I have long been involved with oral tradition. I deeply believe in humanistic values, combating our culture of violence and greed, and art as a tool for change. I invite you to enter my website, learn about my books, read my poetry and look at my photographic images.
El Corno #10 featured primitive poetry from around the world: from the Comanche, Arapaho, Paiute, and Ojibwa of the lower United States; the Tlingites and Eskimos of Alaska; the Ba-iles and Pigmies of Africa; and the native inhabitants of Easter Island. To illustrate these poems, we invited Cirilo Salgado (age 22) and Juan Martinez (age 12), two young artists from the state of Guerrero, Mexico, to make drawings specially for the issue. As they sat at our kitchen table, with their brushes (...)
Cosas 1
Dos bebieron de esta vasija, de sus afluentes contrarios, hace diez mil estaciones. ¿Eran amantes? ¿Acusado y acusador? ¿Madre y niño?
Una pequeña espiral desértica pudiera haber señalado un manantial o un ojo de agua. Pudo haber acuñado una visión supernova.
El cabo del hacha dormía en el (...)
Who was Rita Valdivia? In October 2017, we commemorate the 50th anniversary of Che Guevara’s death in Bolivia, occasion for tributes throughout the world. Margaret Randall defies the absence of women’s stories in Che’s myth, bringing us the brilliant poetry and powerful personal history of this (...)
HONORABLE ROQUE DALTON (REVISITED)
Honorable Roque Dalton, hell or heaven wherever you are we’ve been talking about you for a while. It rained in Medellin and the temperature was ten beers below zero. I despaired because my window looked out on the whores’ quarter and we were talking about (...)
Every year, on the same date
to V.F.
I never wanted to be just one among multitudes. My delusional eyes were accustomed to being spectators at an endless raging circus.
I remember it: my feet obeyed the delirious rhythm.
Someone shouted: A little faster! Imperiously
(or another sort of (...)
Confused, uncertain, murky, ambiguous
No one will take notice, that much is clear. You will be confused by your body, your voice trained to sound sweet, inoffensive. But you are you are you are you: A solitary man who lives between two worlds, looks in the mirror and sees only his (...)
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