like family.
When I win a verse competition,
I’m surprised, but all the other guests
say they expected it.
Triumph is a feeling like flight,
a hopeful unfolding of feathers,
and then the sheer delight
of feeling accepted.
REJECTION
Back in Valparaíso, I find work
at the customs office, keeping track
of goods that arrive and depart on ships.
Boxes.
Bundles.
Sacks of grain.
Did I really win
a poetry competition?
Boring work leaves my mind free
to dream up articles that might be of interest
to newspapers.
When I write about sports, I’m told
that I express myself too clearly.
It’s not what we need, the editor informs me.
Those are the words every writer dreads,
but discouragement is never an option,
we all have to keep scribbling, or our voices
will vanish.
PERSEVERANCE
All my thoughts are a mixture
of swift disappointments
and endless efforts.
I stay away from work
more often than I go in.
Excuses make me feel ashamed,
but I pretend to be sick, just so I can be free
to stroll along the shoreline, boarding small boats
to go exploring.
The sea
is beautiful,
and my dreams
are invisible,
but my pen
is strong
and persistent.
I never give up
the flow of poems
aimed at waves
and wind.
Mind storms.
Verse hurricanes.
Stories about gnomes, nymphs,
and palaces of sunlight,
the tale of a man who keeps
a bluebird trapped within the cage
of his mind, even though the poor creature
yearns to be free, soaring alone in endless sky.
I write about verses brought to earth
by dark garzas, the graceful herons
that fly above me each time I go out
exploring.
I write about Chile’s changing seasons,
and Nicaragua’s tropical blossoms,
about every aspect of nature
and human nature,
then I add a fantasy
about the queen of fairies,
who travels in a pearl
pulled by golden beetles.
In this story of long ago,
there was a time when everyone
received a magical gift, either riches, strength,
eagle wings, harmony, rhythm, a rainbow,
sunlight, the melodies of stars,
or the music of jungles . . .
but humans envied each other’s gifts,
bickering and battling, so that now
all of us are always granted the same wish,
receiving only a peaceful blue veil of dreams
for the future—in other words, nothing
but hope.
DANGER
Sometimes on quiet evenings
I visit hillside villages.
The music of poor men comforts me.
Days spent tunneling underground
must be so dark and harsh, but outdoors
at night, miners fill the village air
with songs of light . . .
until guitar players and singers
are surrounded
by drinkers,
and fights break out,
guns are drawn,
shots fired,
people injured.
When I accompany a doctor
to the bedside of a wounded man,
it feels oddly familiar
to once again be
a witness,
an outside observer
possessing no weapons
just verses
mere words.
This could have been me, lying bleeding
and helpless, back when I was younger
and more reckless, drinking, fighting,
and rebelling against the whole world
instead of just speaking out against
injustice.
At dawn, I leave the hills,
my heart filled with wonder
at the way human voices
persist in singing to blue sky,
no matter how crushing
the poverty, no matter
how dark
the tunnels
where miners
are forced to labor,
their suffering constantly
interrupted by daydreams.
NO LONGER A TEENAGER
I’m hired by La Nación, the same famous
Argentine newspaper that publishes my hero,
José Martí, the Cuban poet I think of as a mentor
even though I’ve never met him.
My editor wants one new poem each day.
It seems impossible, but I’m sure I can do it,
if I keep reading the verses of others, to find
inspiration.
Martí praises freedom, equality, and hope.
I treasure the same themes, but everyone says
that my style is completely new, musical rhythms
filled with colors that resemble paintings
by impressionists, the sentences in prose poems
made short, simple, and visual
by my love of art
and love of love.
MY FIRST BOOK
Azul.
Blue.
The calm title shows
how my hurricane of verses
helps me find
a sea
of peace.
A LIFETIME OF REBELLIOUS RHYTHMS AND RHYMES
Travels to many lands,
marriage, babies, revolutions,
sorrows and joys, a meeting
with Martí in New York,
the inspiration to write
In one verse, I warn Theodore Roosevelt,
powerful president of the United States,
that his aggressive nation’s violent invasions
of Latin America
will be met with furious
resistance.
It’s not difficult to predict wars
that are still far off in the distant future.
All the signs are present now—the US plans
to dominate our whole Spanish-speaking world.
They won’t succeed, because we will refuse
to be ruled by arrogant racial hatred.
In Mexico, I offend the dictator Porfirio Díaz,
and in Cuba, I read my verses out loud
to crowds of humble farmers,
surrounded by their listening wives
and spellbound children.
After all my complex poems written for grown-ups,
I end up feeling surprised that my most prized
and beloved words
are those of a fairy tale
I scribbled on the fan
of a young girl
named Margarita.
The first stanza is about
the beautiful sea
and scented wind,
pleasing images which lead
to a story of rebellious
independence.
Princess Margarita defies her father
by flying up into the sky
to fetch a brilliant star.
When the angry king warns
that heaven will punish her,
God himself speaks, revealing
that He’s pleased, admiring
her courage and perseverance
so sincerely
that He allows her
to carry the glittering treasure
back to Earth, where she wears
the star of light
as a jewel, fastened
to her silk clothing
right beside the rest
of her natural collection
of wonders—a feather,
a flower, a poem,
and a pearl.
MY MESSAGE FOR THE FUTURE
At first, I’m astonished by the popularity
of my most famous verse, but now I realize
that nothing means more to children
than hope—simply knowing they can grow up
and think for themselves, following the glow
of constellations
as they travel
beyond expectations,
to find peace
in a storm of dreams,
by reaching up to claim
the gleaming light
of their own star-bright
imaginations.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I wrote this book because my Cuban ancestors were some of the humble farmers who attended poetry readings when Darío traveled to the island. Little did he know how inspiring his poetry would be for my great-grandmother and all her descendants. At family gatherings, Darío’s verses were recited, just as I described in The Wild Book, a verse novel about my grandmother’s childhood. In fact, the Nicaraguan poet was so revered in our family that two of my great-uncles were named Rubén and Darío in his honor, and I am not the first Margarita.
With a Star in My Hand is historical fiction based on the autobiography of Rubén Darío (1867–1916). All the events and situations are factual, and because Darío wrote so clearly about his childhood and youth, most of the emotional aspects are also taken from documented sources. Only a few small details have been imagined.
Darío is known as the Father of modernismo, a literary movement that blended poetry and prose, complex rhymes, assonance (vowel rhymes), and free verse, as well as classical European and indigenous Native American images. The 1888 publication of Azul in Valparaíso—when Darío was only twenty-one—is widely regarded as a revolutionary turning point in world literature. Until that time, romantic poetry tended to be overly sentimental, dwelling on one’s own emotions instead of observing the entire world, with its interwoven array of troubles and beauty.
Darío’s importance continued to grow throughout the first half of the twentieth century, and continues long after his death. His birthplace, the town of Metapa, is now called Ciudad Darío. The National Library of Nicaragua was renamed in his honor. His childhood home in León is a museum visited by poets from all over the world.
As the early twentieth-century mentor of Juan Ramón Jiménez, Darío influenced Spain’s Generation of 1927, a group of poets who spoke out against the fascist dictatorship of Franco. They included Federico García Lorca, Jorge Guillén, Pedro Salinas, and Rafael Alberti, who in turn influenced Mexico’s Octavio Paz, Argentina’s Jorge Luis Borges, Cuba’s Alejo Carpentier, Chile’s Pablo Neruda and Gabriela Mistral, and Colombia’s Gabriel García Márquez. Unifying themes for all these writers are freedom, imagination, and the dream of social justice. It is a literary tradition that still thrives today, in the work of nearly every modern Latin American and US Latino poet and novelist.
Pablo Neruda described Darío as a sonorous elephant who shattered all the crystals of an era to let in fresh air. Pedro Salinas wrote that Darío was always half in this world and half out of it, a dreamy tendency which can be found in the work of all “magic realists,” modern Latin America’s answer to fantasy. Described in Spanish as lo real maravilloso (marvelous reality), magic realism shows ordinary lives touched by specific natural and supernatural marvels, rather than imagining completely separate alternate worlds.
After the publication of Azul in Chile, Darío returned to Nicaragua. He was received as a hero in León, but soon moved to El Salvador, where he became the director of a newspaper that promoted the unification of Central America as one country. Soon after he got married, he was forced to flee to Guatemala due to a military coup that overthrew the government of El Salvador. Over the next few decades, he lived in many countries, wrote for newspapers, published several poetry books, served as Nicaragua’s ambassador to various countries, and was often impoverished.
Despite a stormy personal life and sophisticated literary body of work, Rubén Darío is most often remembered by the general public for his rhymed fairy tale, “A Margarita Debayle.” He composed this long poem spontaneously, when the five-year-old daughter of a friend asked him to tell her a story.
“A Margarita Debayle” is so beloved in every Spanish-speaking country that it has been recited by parents and grandparents to the spellbound children of many generations. The story of a princess who flies to the sky to claim a star for herself was far ahead of its time, showing girls that they could be independent. “A Margarita Debayle” begins with an introduction that many Latino children know by heart:
y el viento
lleva esencia sutil de azahar;
yo siento
en el alma una alondra cantar:
tu acento.
Margarita, te voy a cantar
un cuento.
Without attempting to reproduce the beautiful rhyme, assonance, and meter, the above stanza can be loosely translated as:
Margarita, the sea is beautiful,
and the wind
carries a subtle scent of orange blossoms;
I feel
a skylark singing in my soul:
your voice.
Margarita, I am going to tell you
a story.
To read the entire long poem in rhymed English, see Rosalma Zubizarreta’s expert translation at the end of Dancing Home by Alma Flor Ada and Gabriel M. Zubizarreta (Atheneum, 2011).
More from the Author
Soaring Earth
Jazz Owls
Enchanted Air
Forest World
Lion Island
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MARGARITA ENGLE was the 2017–2019 Young People’s Poet Laureate, and received the 2019 NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature. She is a Cuban American author of many verse novels, including The Surrender Tree, a Newbery Honor book, and The Lightning Dreamer, a PEN Literary Award for Young Adult Literature winner. Her verse memoir Enchanted Air received the Pura Belpré Author Award and was a Walter Honor Book, Younger Readers Category, and a finalist for the YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults, among other accolaades. Her picture book Drum Dream Girl received the Charlotte Zolotow Award. Visit her at margaritaengle.com.
Visit us at simonandschuster.com/teen
www.SimonandSchuster.com/Authors/Margarita-Engle
Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Simon & Schuster, New York
ALSO BY MARGARITA ENGLE
Enchanted Air:
Two Cultures, Two Wings: A Memoir
Soaring Earth:
A Companion Memoir to Enchanted Air
Jazz Owls:
A Novel of the Zoot Suit Riots
Forest World
Lion Island:
Cuba’s Warrior of Words
Silver People:
Voices from the Panama Canal
The Lightning Dreamer:
Cuba’s Greatest Abolitionist
The Wild Book
Hurricane Dancers:
The First Caribbean Pirate Shipwreck
The Firefly Letters:
A Suffragette’s Journey to Cuba
Tropical Secrets:
Holocaust Refugees in Cuba
The Surrender Tree:
Poems of Cuba’s Struggle for Freedom
The Poet Slave of Cuba:
A Biography of Juan Francisco Manzano
REFERENCES
Darío, Rubén. Autobiografía de Rubé
n Darío. Barcelona: Red Ediciones, 2015.
Darío, Rubén. Azul. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sopena, 1947.
Darío, Rubén. Prosas profanas. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sopena, 1947.
Darío, Rubén. Songs of Life and Hope/Cantos de vida y esperanza.
Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004.
Jiménez, Juan Ramón. Mi Rubén Darío. Madrid: Visor Libros, 2012.
Lázaro, Georgina. Ilustrado por Lonnie Ruiz. Rubén Darío. Lyndhurst, NJ: Lectorum, 2017.
Morrow, John A. Amerindian Elements in the Poetry of Rubén Darío. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2008.
Watland, Charles D. Poet Errant, A Biography of Rubén Darío. New York: Philosophical Library, 1965.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2020 by Margarita Engle
Jacket illustration copyright © 2020 by Willian Santiago
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