translator – Lake Chapala Artists and Authors

John Upton: a sneak peek into a translator’s notebook

1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s onwards 2 Responses »

Dec 102020

John Upton, the translator of poets such as Pablo Neruda and Miguel de Unamuno, and of several seminal works of Spanish literature, lived (off and on) in Ajijic from 1949 to the early 1990s.

Translator and educator John Upton moved to Ajijic in 1949

In the early 1950s, Upton submitted several colorful pieces about Ajijic and Mexico for the San Francisco Chronicle, including one about the seasonal summer influx of art students:

The Ajijic Art Workshop in the 1950s

I had the good fortune to spend an afternoon with Upton at his home in Ajijic in 1990. He was a most gracious host and very supportive of my efforts to document the life of “Zara”— “La Rusa”—the famous ballerina, a longtime resident of Ajijic, who had died in the village a few months earlier.

A couple of years ago, after I’d written a profile of Upton for this blog, I was visiting with journalist and good friend Dale Hoyt Palfrey. I don’t recall how the topic of Upton came up. But she suddenly broke off the conversation and left the room for a few minutes. She returned clutching a small blue notebook which she handed to me. To my surprise it was one of Upton’s notebooks, written and illustrated in his own hand. She insisted on me taking the notebook (I consider myself its custodian rather than its owner) so that I could see what gems it contained.

The pages offer a sneak peek into Upton’s many interests. Scattered notes suggest that it accompanied him on a trip to Mexico City and the Maya region of the Yucatán Peninsula and Guatemala. Page after page contains notes—usually illustrated with informal sketches—regarding the reading of Maya glyphs and numbers.

Extract from p 23 of John Upton's notebook; all rights reserved.

Other pages of the notebook record vocabulary that Upton, for one reason or another, found interesting. Upton, a highly skilled translator, was considered an expert in the idiomatic and colloquial usage and translation of Spanish, with all its regional differences. These pages shed some insight into how Upton acquired his extraordinary linguistic proficiency.

Extract from p 37 of John Upton's notebook; all rights reserved.

Upton was a keen observer as he traveled. The notebook includes this short piece of prose, headed “Extraneous page,” apparently written to share later with a writing colleague:

Could you make a story of this scene in Mexico City?

Couple at the next table: woman of about 45, too much make up, clothes too loud, obviously a whore, sitting with a very shy young man. He is wolfing food as fast as she can order it (she eats nothing – just sits and watches him eat) and as fast as the waitress can bring it: soup, sandwich, order of enchiladas, milk, coffee, large piece of cake – all these are on the table and she orders something else when it occurs to her. She smokes a cigarette and never takes her eyes from his face. (On second look, there are TWO glasses of milk.)

“But, chico! Why didn’t you tell me? Sure you needed a woman, but you can’t spend your last twenty pesos that way. You have to eat, niño!”

He looks up at her from his soup and smiles, shyly; whereupon her battered face lights up and she seems quite pretty. — [pages 71-72 of notebook]

I would love to know whether this scene was ever incorporated into a short story or book.

Even at the best of times, traveling is sometimes stressful. One evening in San Miguel de Allende, Upton used his notebook (pages 81-82) to vent his frustration at events earlier that day.

Mexicans at their most maddening:

Upon getting off the train at San Miguel A., we were met by two porters who latched on to the suitcases. The women wanted to buy return tickets before leaving the station, as it is some distance from town.

—“Where is the ticket office?”

—“This way.” Men pick up suitcases and we follow them for 300 yards to the far end of the station building. We reach the door and he puts down the bags. “Only it isn’t open right now.”

—“Well, when does it open?”

—“In the morning.”

—“At what time?”

—“In the morning – about noon.”

This information didn’t satisfy me. I walked around the grounds until I found a man who looked knowing. —“When does the ticket office open, please?”

—“The ticket agent just left a couple of minutes ago. It’s closed now.”

—“Yes, I know it’s closed. What I want to know is when it opens.”

—“It’s closed for the rest of the day. The man just left. He went to Celaya.”

—“Well, what about tomorrow? When will he be here?”

—“He won’t open tomorrow, because it is Sunday. Not until Monday.”

—“And when will he open Monday?”

—“Oh! His office hours? From 8:30 a.m. to 4:.00 p.m. every day except Sunday.”

Upton’s deep love of Mexico—enhanced by his study of its people, language and cultures—led to an understanding of the country, and an appreciation for its history and achievements, that is surely a model for all of us.

Acknowledgment

My sincere thanks to Dale Hoyt Palfrey for so generously allowing me custody of John Upton’s notebook.

Comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios are welcomed. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.

The Ajijic Art Workshop in the 1950s

1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s onwards No Responses »

Oct 152020

Educator, translator and all-round good guy John Upton had been living in Ajijic for about a year when he submitted an article about the village in 1950 to the San Francisco Chronicle. The article focuses especially on the impact of the summer Ajijic Art Workshop, marketed in US colleges and universities.

Upton opens by describing Ajijic as “a peaceful Mexican fishing village where life goes on much as it did before the time of Cortes-for 46 weeks of the year.” The bulk of his article is about the remaining six weeks, when — during the rainy season in this “stone and adobe pueblo… almost untouched by the twentieth century” — “Modern Art comes to Ajijic- along with portable radios and falsies.”

Buses from Guadalajara lumber through the burro-clogged streets and discharge members of the Mexican Art Workshop, blinking in the hard, white sunshine.” These art students stay in “La Posada, Ajijic’s only hotel,” which “echoes with the harsh accents of Los Angeles and Chicago.

On the broken brick sidewalks, in the corner store, and under the flame trees in the square, there are little knots of Americans in plaid shirts and blue jeans, carrying paints and canvas and smelling of Dior.”

The workshop was organized by Irma Jonas; its art teachers, headed by Ernesto Linares, included Carlos Mérida, Nicolas Muzenic and Tobias [Toby] Schneebaum. The workshop’s social secretary was Zoe Kernick. The students, mostly women, paid “$275 for a summer of art, inspiration and small adventures.”

Classes are held in one of the town’s largest houses, a sprawling pink adobe with doors eight feet high that open with a key about as large and portable as a pipe wrench. Easels are set up in the luxuriant garden of banana and mango trees until 4.15 in the afternoon, when the daily rainstorm promptly begins. Its downpour lasts little more than half an hour, but after brushes are cleaned and canvases stacked there’s barely time for a rum and water before dinner.

Extra-curricular entertainment is continued largely in gatherings at the inn or in Linares’ cool, high-ceilinged sala, since townspeople frown on women who smoke or drink in public. The cantina has no “table for ladies,” and discourages their attendance-mostly because the showpiece of the establishment is a large, white urinal installed just inside the door.

Music for these evenings is provided by mariachis, local minstrels whose ragged esprit de corps is nicely balanced by their willingness to play anything…. A single evening’s repertoire may include “Quizas” (Number One on the Ajijic hit parade), “Night and Day,” and “Los Blues de San Luis.””

The parties were suitably rowdy, fueled by local tequila, which was “35 cents a liter if you bring your own bottle.”

Acknowledgment

My sincere thanks to Katie Goodridge Ingram for bringing this Upton article to my attention.

Source

John Upton. 1950. “Ah-hee-heek: A Place to Loaf in Mexico.” San Francisco Chronicle, 7 May 1950.

Poet and translator Lysander Kemp played saxophone with the Jocotepec Penguins

1950s No Responses »

Jul 082020

Lysander Kemp (1920-1992) worked as a writer, professor, translator, and was head editor of the University of Texas Press from 1966 to 1975. During his tenure at UT Press, he collaborated with the Mexican writer Octavio Paz (1914-1998) on numerous translations, including the landmark book The Labyrinth of Solitude: Life and Thought in Mexico. Kemp also oversaw the publication of two collections of Paz’s essays and criticism, and translated the work of several other important Mexican writers such as Juan Rulfo.

Lysander Schaffer Kemp Jr. was born 13 November 1920 in Randolph, Vermont, and died in January 1992 in Harwich Port, Massachusetts. He graduated from Canton High School, Canton, Massachusetts in 1938, where he had been active in tennis, music, and on the stage, in addition to being literary editor of the school magazine The Echo.

He graduated from Bates College, Maine, in 1942 (where he was “class poet” in his final year) and then enlisted in the Army. He served three years in the Caribbean Defense Command, in Panama, Ecuador and Puerto Rico, from 1942-1945. After his discharge, more than 40 poems he had submitted in partial fulfillment of his M.A. (1946) from Boston University were published as The Northern Stranger (Random House, 77 pp). His academic English teaching career included a spell at the University of Buffalo, and publications such as “Understanding “Hamlet”” in College English (Oct., 1951).

Lysander Kemp (at rt) playing the alto sax in The Jocotepec Penguins, mid-1950s

From 1953-1965, Kemp moved to Mexico and lived for many years in Jocotepec, at the western end of Lake Chapala. His published poems and short articles about the Lake Chapala area include:

1954. “The only beast: Reflections on Not Attending the Bullfights”, pp 46-56 of Discovery #4 (New York).
1955. “Gods: Jocotepec, Mexico” [poem] The New Yorker. Vol 31 (Sept 10, 1955) p 114.
1957. “The Penguins Gather.” Saturday Review v 40 (May 11, 1957) p. 38. This short article, with photo, describes a dance-band in Jocotepec. Kemp was the first saxophone.
1957. “Perils of Paradise.” Travel piece in House and Garden vol. 111 (April 1957) pp 172-4, 177.
1958. “Travel: Tricks in Buying Pre-Columbian Art.” House and Garden, 113, #2, February 1958, p 22-24, 26

Kemp also translated Juan the Chamula: An Ethnological Recreation of the Life of a Mexican Indian by Ricardo Pozas (University of California Press); Selected Poems of Ruben Dario (University of Texas Press); The Time of the Hero, by Llosa Mario Vargas (Farrar Straus & Giroux); Pedro Paramo: A Novel of Mexico, by Juan Rulfo. (Grove/Atlantic, 1959).

In his career, Kemp published several poems and articles not directly related to Mexico. These include the poems “The Last Rose of Summer : Cape Cod” (The New Yorker, 1954), “Are We Then So Serious?” (New Mexico Quarterly, 1954-1955), and “Cat” (The New Yorker, 1958), and a short piece entitled “Krispie News” (The New Yorker, 1955), in which he wrote that, “”In Mexico Kellogg’s Rice Krispies do not say “Snap, crackle, pop,” as they do here. They say “Pim, pum, pam.”

He also wrote four science fiction stories: “The Airborne Baserunner” (1954), “Boil One Cat” (1954), “The Universal Solvent” (1955) and “Silent Night” (1955).

Related post:

Jocotepec in the mid-1950s: Lysander Kemp’s “The Perils of Paradise”

Note: This is an updated version of a post first published 8 July 2014.

Comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios are welcome. Please email us or use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts.

Translator and educator John Upton moved to Ajijic in 1949

1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s onwards No Responses »

May 232019

John Elbert Upton was born on 10 September 1917 and died aged 88, in Monterey, California, on 9 October 2005. He was a multi-talented individual who earned his living as a translator and teacher. Upton lived in Ajijic for over a decade, from 1949 to 1959, and then returned to live in the village several times (for varying lengths of time) from the 1960s through to the early 1990s.

Upton’s circle of friends in the Lake Chapala area included fellow translator Lysander Kemp, who lived in Jocotepec, and poet and literary figure Witter Bynner, who had a home in Chapala.

Upton majored in music and Spanish at college, becoming an extremely proficient classical guitarist. In 1966, he gained a Masters in Spanish Language and Literature from the University of Madrid in Spain.

John Upton, 1957. Photo credit: Leonard McCombe, Life Magazine

During his early days living in Ajijic, in the 1950s, Upton wrote several colorful pieces about the area for the San Francisco Chronicle, but made his living not by writing but as a teacher to the children of expatriate families. These students included a young Katharine Goodridge Ingram, who went on to run a very successful art gallery in the village. She has particularly fond memories of Upton: “He was my tutor when I was a young girl. Truly a Renaissance man: played guitar, bass fiddle, brought solar-heated water to his Ajijic house, accompanied his wife as she sang hot old cabaret oldies, built a telescope, etc.”

This photo by Leonard McCombe shows a youthful and sartorially-elegant John Upton setting up a telescope he had built in his garden in Ajijic. It appeared in the 23 December 1957 Life Magazine article, “Yanks Who Don’t Go Home. Expatriates Settle Down to Live and Loaf in Mexico.”

Upton wrote a short piece, “Maya Today” (a linguistic study of the Mayan language Yucateco in Yucatán), published in the December 1962 issue of The Modern Language Journal, but was far better known as a Spanish-English translator. Upton’s fine translations introduced generations of English-speaking readers to the extraordinary diversity and creativity of Spanish-language literature.

Besides translations of poems by the likes of Pablo Neruda and Miguel de Unamuno, his published translations include:

Cumboto, by Ramón Díaz Sánchez (University of Texas Press, 1969);
Pueblo en vilo: Microhistoria de San José de Gracia (“San José de Gracía, Mexican Village in Transition”), by Luis González (University of Texas, Austin, 1974).
Jarano, by Ramón Beteta (University of Texas, Austin:, 1975);
In the Magic Land of Peyote, (Texas Pan American Series) by Fernando Benitez (University of Texas, Austin, 1975);
Polifemo, a narrative poem by Luis De Góngora (The Fireweed Press, 1977)
La feria (“The Fair”), by Juan José Arreola (University of Texas, Austin, 1977). This work is chock-full of local idioms, curses, etc., and, as Upton says in his translator’s note, “There are passages in “The Fair” that can confound even a well-informed Mexican”.

In the early 1990s, he worked as staff translator for the Metropolitan Museum of Art and for Latin American Art magazine. Selections of Upton’s translations were included in the book Mexico: Splendors of Thirty Centuries, with an Introduction by Octavio Paz (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1990), and he translated some essays and catalog entries for The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Al-Andalus: The Art of Islamic Spain (1992). In 2004 he was a finalist in the Barnstone Translators’ Competition.

John Upton was one of the many extraordinarily gifted individuals who have shaped the long artistic and literary history of Lake Chapala. He will long be remembered for the supreme quality of his translations, whether of poems, literature or non-fiction.

Note: This post was first published 30 March 2015.

Related posts:

Novelist Christopher Veiel lived at Lake Chapala in the early 1950s

1950s No Responses »

Dec 272018

According to American writer Oakley Hall, the novelist Christopher Veiel (born in 1925) was living at Lake Chapala at the same time he was in 1952. A New York Times reviewer described Veiel as looking “a little like a British F. Scott Fitzgerald.”

It is not known what Veiel was working on, if anything, during his time in Mexico, but his first (and apparently only) novel was published two years later, in 1954, in the U.K. as Intrigue (London: H. Hamilton), and in the U.S. as Hearts and Heads (Boston, U.S.: Little, Brown and Company).

Michael Hargraves says that at the time of its publication Veiel was living in Connecticut, having settled there after some extensive traveling.

Veiel was also the translator (from French) of Francois Clement’s book, The Disobedient Son (Boston: Little, Brown, 1956) in which “Juan, an ignorant but proud and ambitious Indian, learns the ways of power in Veracruz and Mexico City, and returns to his village to lead the fight against those attempting to become the village bosses.”

The Kirkus Review of Hearts and Heads, describes it as “A frivolous entertainment” and “saucy and skittish”. The novel “follows the emotional escapades of Edward Wallingford and Constance, his young wife, as their first months of marriage take them to Geneva where Edward does not find with Constance the sexual incentive he has had with other girls… Constance, on the other hand, while appreciative that Edward is “such a rock” finds something softer in Pierre – the brother of the housekeeper of their neighbor Carlos, and now their chauffeur. Constance decides to marry Pierre but postponing the admission to Edward, the three leave for England where Pierre, in a moment of petulant pride, bares the past and turns on Edward – with a poker. Edward almost dies, and both Constance and Pierre are tried but cleared when Edward comes to their defense…”

“A. Christopher Veiel” (it is unclear what name the initial A stood for) was born in Switzerland and educated at Chillon College and the University of Geneva. He became a teacher of French, German and Latin and retained his Swiss passport after moving to the U.S. in about 1949 to work at Choate School in Wallingford, Connecticut.

Choate alumni, according to Wikipedia, include President John F. Kennedy, Adlai Stevenson, playwright Edward Albee, novelist John Dos Passos, investor Brett Icahn, philanthropist Paul Mellon, screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher, actors Glenn Close, Michael Douglas, Jamie Lee Curtis, Bruce Dern, Paul Giamatti, and businesswoman Ivanka Trump, daughter of President Donald Trump.

Note: This is an updated version of a post first published on 7 July 2014.

Sources

Michael Hargraves. 1992. Lake Chapala: A Literary Survey (Los Angeles: Michael Hargraves).
New York Times, 24 July 1955, 89.

Tony Burton: independent researcher, author and translator

1990s onwards 1 Response »

Mar 222017

Tony Burton is an independent researcher, author and translator, born in the UK, who lived full-time in Mexico for about 18 years and now resides on Vancouver Island, BC, Canada.

Since 1996, Burton has been a contributor and consultant for MexConnect (Mexico Connect), Mexico’s leading independent on-line magazine. He wrote hundreds of articles for the website and developed the earliest online interactive maps of Mexican states and regions.

From 1994 to 2006, he was the editor and lead writer of the “Lloyd Mexican Economic Report,” a monthly newsletter to 130,000 clients of A. W. Lloyd y Asociados in 28 countries.

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His books include:

Lake Chapala: a postcard history (2022)
Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: decades of change in a Mexican Village (2022)
If Walls Could Talk: Chapala’s historic buildings and their former occupants (2020).
Mexican Kaleidoscope: myths, mysteries and mystique (2016).
Western Mexico: A Traveler’s Treasury (4rd edition, 2013); previous editions 1993, 1997, 2001.
Geo-Mexico: the geography and dynamics of modern Mexico (co-authored with Richard Rhoda, 2010).
Lake Chapala Through The Ages; an anthology of travelers’ tales. (2008).
El Occidente de México; un tesoro para el viajero (translation by Lorenza Castiello V. of 3rd edition of Western Mexico: A Traveler’s Treasury, 2004).

All of his books are listed on his Amazon page.

His cartography includes Lake Chapala Map Set (2010) and numerous online interactive maps on MexConnect.

He has contributed chapters to many books, including:

“The Border Story: The Effects of a Barrier Wall” in Echoes from the Wall: Real Stories of Mexican Migrants by Judy King (2019).
“Recreación y turismo en la cuenca Lerma-Chapala” (Recreation and Tourism in the Lerma-Chapala Basin) in La cuenca Lerma-Chapala. Un Atlas sobre el ambiente, su gente y los recursos (Mexico: INE/UNAM/CONACYT, 2006).
“Climate and Geography” in Mexico’s Lake Chapala & Ajijic. The Insider’s Guide, by Teresa Kendrick. (Austin, Texas: MTI, 2000, 2005).
“Chapala, Ajijic, Jocotepec” in Traveler’s Guide to Mexico (1997).
“Fascinating scenery of Western Mexico’s “Volcanic Belt”, and “Snowbirds and Butterflies” in Mexico Living and Travel by Jean and John Bryant. (California: MRTA, 1994).
“Enjoying Jalisco”, chapter 13 of Retiring to Mexico, edited by Nellie and Len Friedman (Indianapolis: ACC books, 1992).

He has also given numerous lectures, workshops and has written several academic papers. As Chief Examiner for Geography for the International Baccalaureate Organization, 2003-2009, he gave workshops to teachers and educators on best practice in geography teaching in several countries.

His translations include:

Paricutín, Fifty Years after its Birth (Guadalajara: Editorial Agata, 1993), which is Simón Lázaro Jimenez’s autobiographical account of the eruption of Paricutín volcano published on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of its eruption.
Wolfgang Vogt’s literary study Juan Rulfo and the South of Jalisco (Guadalajara: Editorial Agata, 1995).
Espacios del lago de Chapala by Carlos Valencia Pelayo (Editorial Agata, 1998). A Drink Named Tequila. by José María Muriá (Editorial Agata, Guadalajara, 1996).
Tonala Ceramics – Living Roots by Gutierre Aceves (Editorial Agata, 1994).
Past Times in Chapala by Jesús González Gortázar (Editorial Agata, 1992).
Maps and Charts of Mexico from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth century. Various authors. (INEGI/INAH, Mexico, 1988).

He is currently working on several projects related to the history of the Lake Chapala area of Mexico.

All of his books are listed on his Amazon page.

Enrique Villaseñor y de La Parra (1865-1934), poet born in Jiquilpan, Michoacán

1920s and earlier No Responses »

Dec 262016

Enrique Carmen de Jesús Villaseñor y de La Parra was born on 14 July 1865 in Jiquilpan, Michoacán (at that time on the shores of Lake Chapala), in a house on a street named for another famous priest and poet born in the town: Diego José Abad. Villaseñor’s father, Toribio Villaseñor, was a rural property owner. Villaseñor was one of ten siblings. He studied in Jacona (near Zamora) and at about age 11, as was customary at that time for upper class families, was sent to Europe to study for the church at the Pontificio Colegio Pío Latino Americano in Rome, Italy. He studied there from 1876 to 1885.

After his ordination in the Jesuit order, he returned to his native Mexico and became a priest in Jiquilpan, singing his first Mass there in 1890. Shortly afterwards, he began to teach Science and Humanities in a seminary in Zamora.

Villaseñor wrote and published many verses and poems about the region, but his most noteworthy early work is a translation from Latin to Spanish, published in 1896, of Diego José Abad’s Poema heroica. Villaseñor was a great admirer of Diego José Abad (1727-1779) and instrumental in convincing the town that the townsfolk erect a monument in Abad’s honor .

Villaseñor collaborated on La Libertad (1904) and La Bandera Católica (1909-1910). He was also a corresponding member of the Sociedad Michoacana de Geografía e Estadística (Michoacán Society for Geography and Statistics). His magnus opus was a monumental poem in verse about the divinity and humanity of Jesús entitled Teogenesia o el Nacimiento de Jesús, published in 1901 with engravings by the outstanding artist José Guadalupe Posada.

Villaseñor died in his native Jiquilpan on 28 October 1934. He was a great philanthropist throughout his life and on his death left all his land as the basis for a foundation to help the poor of the town.

Sources:

Martín Sánchez. 1995. Repertorio michoacano 1889-1926. El Colegio de Michoacán A.C.
Gabriela Inocencio. 2008. “Conmemoran natalicio de poeta jiquilpense”. El Sol de Zamora, 17 July 2008

Sombrero Books welcomes comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios. Please email us or use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts.

American poet Clayton Eshleman’s formative summer at Lake Chapala

1960s No Responses »

Sep 292016

Poet and translator Clayton Eshleman has repeatedly stressed in interviews the significance of a summer stay in Chapala in 1960 in determining his future direction and success. In addition to his own original works, Eshleman is especially well known for his translations of Peruvian poet César Vallejo and for his studies of Paleolithic cave paintings.

Ira Clayton Eshleman Jr. was born on 1 June 1935 in Indianapolis, Indiana. He discovered jazz in his teens and became a proficient jazz pianist and studied music for a short time in university, playing piano in bars to help finance his education. He graduated from the University of Indiana in 1958 with a degree in philosophy. Having by then discovered poetry, including the Beat poets such as Allen Ginsberg, he immediately re-enrolled as a graduate student in English Literature.

In 1959, he was introduced by an artist friend Bill Paden to Latin American poetry and was immediately drawn to the works of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) and Peruvian poet César Vallejo (1892-1938). Quickly realizing, aided by a bilingual dictionary, that existing translations of their poems had obvious flaws, Eshleman decided to do something about it, but knew that he first needed to improve his Spanish.

This was the impetus for him to hitchhike to Mexico City in the summer of 1959, “with a pocket Spanish-English dictionary and two hundred dollars”, and work on his Spanish, while meeting other poets along the way. The following summer, 1960, he spent several weeks in Chapala. In an interview many years later, Eshleman recalls that:

“The next summer I got a ride in the back of a flat-bed truck to Etzatlan, Mexico, ending up in Chapala for a couple of months. I rented a room in the home of an ex-American retired butcher named Jimmy George, who had a sixteen year-old Indian wife and lots of pigs and turkeys. I showed some Neruda poems to her one day and with her very modest English and my baby Spanish (and the faithful bilingual dictionary), we made some crude versions together, which were the real start of my Residence on Earth collection, published in Kyoto, Japan in 1962.”

During his months in Chapala (and despite a bout of hepatitis), Eshleman also worked on many of the poems published in Mexico & North (privately published in Japan in 1961), the first collection of his own poetry.

In the summer of 1961, Eshleman married Barbara Novak. The couple then lived in Japan for three years, where Eshleman taught English and studied Eastern religions. Eshleman considered this period, when he was translating César Vallejo’s Poemas humanos, the beginning of his “apprenticeship to poetry”.

The Eshlemans then spent a year (1964-65) in Peru. Eshleman had gone there in the hope of persuading César Vallejo’s widow, Georgette, to allow him access to the poet’s original manuscripts, but she never did give her permission. While living in Lima, Eshleman worked on Quena, a bilingual literary magazine funded by the North American Peruvian Institute, but this magazine was suppressed for political reasons prior to publication. Though the young couple returned together to New York in 1966, they separated shortly afterwards.

Back in New York, Eshleman taught at the American Language Institute at New York University and began to publish a series of books under the Caterpillar Books imprint. He was an active participant in the anti-war movement and was jailed briefly as an organizer of the “Angry Arts” protest group.

On New Year’s Eve 1968 Eshleman met Caryl Reiter, who was to become his second wife. When he was appointed to the faculty of the School of Critical Studies at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, the couple left New York for California. During a year in France (1973-1974), Eshleman taught courses in American poetry at the American College in Paris and the couple first visited the Paleolithic painted caves of the Dordogne region. This was the start of a prolonged interest in investigating the imagination and imagery of the Paleolithic painters. Eshleman’s major work on this topic was published in 2003 as Juniper Fuse: Upper Paleolithic Imagination and the Construction of the Underworld.

For the latter part of the 1970s and early 1980s, the Eshlemans lived in Los Angeles, with the poet working for the Extension Program of the University of California at Los Angeles, the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, and a visiting lecturer at campuses in San Diego, Riverside, Los Angeles, and Santa Barbara. From 1986 to his retirement from academic life in 2003, Eshleman was Professor of English at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

During his prolific career, Eshleman had work published in more than 500 magazines and newspapers, and also founded and edited two important literary magazines: Caterpillar (1967-1973) and Sulfur (1981-2000).

Eshleman’s books of poetry and prose include Mexico and North (Tokyo, Japan, 1961); Walks (New York: Caterpillar, 1967); The House of Okumura (Toronto: Weed/Flower, 1969); Indiana (Los Angeles: Black Sparrow Press, 1969); The House of Ibuki (Freemont, MI: Sumac Press, 1969); Altars (Los Angeles: Black Sparrow Press, 1971); Coils (Los Angeles: Black Sparrow Press, 1973); Realignment (Kingston, NY: Treacle Press, 1974); The Gull Wall (Los Angeles: Black Sparrow Press, 1975); On Mules Sent from Chavin: A Journal and Poems (Swanea, UK: Galloping Dog Press, 1977); What She Means (Los Angeles: Black Sparrow Press, 1978); Fracture (Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow Press, 1983); The Name Encanyoned River: Selected Poems 1960-1985 (Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow Press, 1986); Under World Arrest (Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press, 1994); Erratics (Rosendale, NY: Hunger Press, 2000); Everwhat (Canary Islands: Zasterle Press, 2003); An Alchemist with One Eye on Fire (Boston: Black Widow Press, 2006); The Grindstone of Rapport: A Clayton Eshleman Reader (Boston: Black Widow Press, 2008); and Anticline (Boston: Black Widow Press, 2010).

Eshleman has won numerous literary awards, including a National Book Award for Translation, the Landon Translation prize from the Academy of American Poets (twice), a Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry, two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a Rockefeller Study Center residency in Bellagio, Italy.

And to think that it all began at a butcher’s home in Chapala…

Source of quotes:

“An expanded version of ‘Niall McDevitt Interviews Clayton Eshleman”. – The Wolf.
“An Interview with Clayton Eshleman; Going to the Moon with Some Wonderful Ghosts:Literary Translation and a Poet’s Formation” by Ethriam Cash Brammer.

Owen Wallace Gillpatrick (1862-1925): “The Man Who Likes Mexico”

1920s and earlier 1 Response »

Oct 052015

Owen Wallace Gillpatrick (1862-1925) was an American author and playwright who spent a short time in the Chapala area in about 1899, several years prior to publishing his book The Man who likes Mexico (1911). The book includes an atmospheric photo of moonlight shining on Lake Chapala.

The title of his book, The Man who likes Mexico, is the byline he used as a correspondent for the Mexican Herald. His planned one year trip to Mexico in 1898 eventually became six years in length. The book describes his journeys and experiences during his first two years in Mexico. He approached the country with a refreshingly positive attitude, summed up by the following quote from the foreword:

“Americans who visit Mexico will not fail to discover much that is likeable; and it seems only just to remark first on what is likeable, deferring adverse comment until a careful observation of life and conditions shall have rendered intelligent criticism possible.”

Gillpatrick was born in New Hampshire, but lived almost all his life in California. He had always yearned to visit Mexico:

Reared in California, where the romance of early Mexican days still lingers, and where the prodigality of nature and of life are in keeping with Mexican tradition, I ardently dreamed of this Spanish American southland”.

He was a spontaneous and adventurous traveler. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Gillpatrick positively preferred the areas away from the railroads. He stayed for a month in Guadalajara, before continuing on to Chapala. Gillpatrick’s enthusiasm for Mexico never waned. He closed his book by writing that, “Two ties united my heart to Mexico—first, love of friends; last and always, her mountains”.

His recollections of Chapala include a description of the Hotel Arzapalo, Chapala’s first major hotel, designed for Ignacio Arzapalo Palacios, a Spaniard who had come to Chapala seeking the curative properties of Chapala’s thermal waters and then fallen in love with its natural beauty and favorable climate. The hotel had opened in 1898.

That the manager of the Hotel Arzapalo was a man of taste, I knew when I saw the hotel, with its clambering rose-vines, its well-kept gardens and the little pier running out into the lake, with comfortable benches at either side. When he assigned me to a room, with a view of mountain and lake combined, I was doubly sure. The memories of my ride, together with a bountiful dinner, made me content to loaf the rest of the afternoon; but towards evening I started in search of the warm mineral baths, for which the place is noted. A gentleman who knows Chapala, had said to me, “Don’t go to the fine-looking bath-house with the ‘Baño’ sign; follow the same street till you come to some old buildings and then ask for the tanque.” So I walked by the fine-looking baños and in an old orange orchard, I found the great swimming tank. It must be sixty feet long by twenty wide, and the bottom slopes so that at one end it is over a man’s head. It is surrounded by a high wall and the palms and orange trees grow close up to it. The water is a trifle more than blood-warm, so that you feel an almost imperceptible accession of warmth in stepping into it. It is the kind of a bath that you leave reluctantly and then feel tempted to return to.

The Hotel Arzapalo has some fifty rooms, a large sala and dining-room overlooking the lake, and is provided with a bar and billiard table. The cooking is excellent and the bread is all made in the house. The hotel is situated in what is, beyond doubt, one of the loveliest and most healthful spots in all Mexico.“

Gillpatrick’s prose was very popular in his native country during his lifetime. He was a fluent Spanish speaker, and his translation “with much taste and skill” of Catalan writer Àngel Guimerà’s play Marta of the Lowlands, was performed on Broadway in 1903. He also translated Guimerà’s La Pecadora (Putnam, 1917).

Source:

This post is based on the biography that appears in my Lake Chapala Through the Ages: an anthology of travellers’ tales (2008).

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“Lake Chapala Through The Ages”: one of the 15 best Mexico history books

Other authors featured in Lake Chapala Through The Ages include:

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Artist, writer and translator Phyllis Porter Rauch lived in Jocotepec for more than 40 years

1970s, 1980s, 1990s onwards 1 Response »

Jul 092015

Phyllis (Porter) Rauch, born 28 October 1938, was an American artist, writer and translator who lived in Jocotepec for more than forty years. Her husband was internationally-acclaimed artist Georg Rauch (1924-2006). The couple lived in Guadalajara from 1967 to 1970, before moving to Laguna Beach, California for six years. They returned to Mexico in 1976 and established their permanent home in Jocotepec.

Phyllis Rauch. “Chayito”. Photo reproduced courtesy of the artist.

Phyllis Rauch grew up in Ohio and received her bachelor’s degree in English at Bowling Green State University and her master’s degree in library science at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. She studied German at the Goethe Institute in Rothenburg ob der Tauber and then worked at German libraries, including the Internationale Kinderbibliothek in Munich and the Amerika Gedenkbibliothek in Berlin. She met Georg Rauch in Vienna in 1965 and they were married in Ohio, September of the following year. Phyllis’ own highly-entertaining account of this love story was published on MexConnect in 2006 as “Not your usual wedding – a Valentine’s Day story.”

Phyllis Rauch: Pablito. Reproduced courtesy of the artist.

As a writer, Phyllis has written non-fiction and poetry, mainly for English-language magazines, newspapers and websites. She has also worked as a Spanish-English translator. During the 1968 Olympics in Mexico, Phyllis was a trilingual guide (English, Spanish, German) for the cultural events associated with the 1968 Olympics that were held in Guadalajara. She enjoyed very much squiring around the city the likes of the Berlin Opera and Duke Ellington’s band. Phyllis has never forgotten that after his last concert he kissed her on the cheek and said, “Shuugar.”

Phyllis Rauch. Rousseau-inspired jungle scene. Photo reproduced courtesy of the artist.

Her best-known translation is that of her husband’s wartime memoirs, which were first published, as The Jew with the Iron Cross: A Record of Survival in WWII Russia, only a few months before his death. The self-published book was reissued in February 2015 by mainstream publisher Farrar Straus Giroux, in hardback and audio versions, with the new title of Unlikely Warrior: A Jewish Soldier in Hitler’s Army.

Somewhat late in life, and encouraged by her husband, Phyllis began to paint. Her charming, somewhat naif paintings of rural scenes and Mexican life have received deserved acclaim for their universal appeal.

Phyllis Rauch. Cat, kitten and maguey. Photo reproduced courtesy of the artist.

The Rauchs opened their home and studios, on a one-acre property overlooking Lake Chapala on the outskirts of Jocotepec, as the Los Dos Bed & Breakfast Villas in the 1990s. Phyllis continued to welcome visitors there, especially those with an interest in her husband’s art.

Phyllis Rauch died in September 2021. QEPD.