Thread: The Ovillejo
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Unread 06-14-2002, 07:13 PM
Terese Coe Terese Coe is offline
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Ginger

I've loved this poem since the moment I heard Rhina Espaillat recite it at at the St. Agnes Library recently.

It's characteristic of Rhina that she can express the love of her/his own work a poet needs to survive as a poet in this world, and express it for all poets. There is a bit of egomaniac in every good poet, or s/he wouldn't spend decades writing, often at great expense—financial, emotional, and possibly physical—to him/herself.

Perhaps some other ovillejos could be posted here, because it would be interesting to compare this to some others. The rhyme scheme is clear, but the creation of these heterometric lines appears to me a terrific musical challenge.

This tiny poem gives one such a sense of intimate connection with the poet! That is simultaneous with its ability to bring the reader beyond the terrible trickiness of the artistic ego: that ego which is the sine qua non of art, yet which so often gets the poet and artist into trouble at various points in her/his life, and sometimes very serious trouble indeed. The need to focus on one's own work to the detriment of everything else around one is at once ecstatic and problematical. Many don't survive it, either as artists or as persons.

Terese