Articl in Wikipedia

Deborah Miranda

The Trojan War Story told in the Iliad

The Iliad (meaning a song about Ilium) and the Odyssey are Greek epic poems, conventionally attributed to a singularly talented poet named Homer, who lived in the east Greek region of Ionia in the 8th century B.C.E.  Most scholars today, however, question the idea that one singer-poet composed either or both poems, at least not as we would imagine a poet composing today.  Further, a growing number of scholars contest the 8th century date of composition. There were multiple Trojan War story traditions developing at that time; homeric epic is not the earliest nor did it emerge as especially influential or important until the 6th century B.C.E.  That much said, in classical antiquity the songs that became our Iliad and Odyssey did eventually achieve a unique and honorific status, which lived on in western European culture and literature.

People today know the Iliad as a book, usually printed as lines of poetry and translated from the ancient Greek into English or another modern language.  They experience it in the silence and solitude of reading.  The first lines plunge most contemporary readers into the middle of an unfamiliar story populated by dozens of equally unfamiliar characters.  The modern-day encounter with the Iliad however, is unlike that of most Greeks in the ancient world, especially before the time of Alexander the Great at the end of the 4th century B.C.E.  Outside of a lettered elite in the historical period, most ancient Greeks would have read Homer rarely if at all.  Instead, from childhood, they would have heard Trojan War poetry, including precursors to our Iliad, sung by poet-singers in feasting halls and during regional athletic festivals or musical competitions. The basic plot and the cast of characters were not only common knowledge, they were woven into the fabric of Greek social and cultural life.

Why is reading important? An interesting article

http://www.learn-to-read-prince-george.com/why-is-reading-important.html

Vicente Huidobro

  Vicente Huidobro (1893 –  1948) was a Chilean poet. He was an exponent of the artistic movement called Creationism, which held that a poet should bring life to the things he or she writes about, rather than just describe them. In 1914, he gave a lecture,Non serviam, which reflected his aesthetic creed. He studied literature at the University of chile and published Ecos del alma (Soul's Echoes) in 1911, a work with modernist tendencies. The following year he married, and started to edit the journal Musa Joven (Young Muse), where part of his later book,Canciones en la noche (Songs in the Night) appeared, as well as his first calligram, "Triángulo armónico" ("Harmonic Triangle").

Night

You hear the night glide across the snow
The song fell down from the trees
And through the fog sounded voices
I lit my cigar at a glance
Every time I open my lips
I flood the void with clouds
                                    In the harbor
The masts are full of nests.
And the wind
                       groans in the birds' wings
     THE WAVES ROCK THE DEAD SHIP
Whistling on the shore I
          Look at the star that glows between my fingers

(Noche)

"The fantastic flying books"

Literary Devices

In Literature an author is able to use "beyond literary elements" "literary devices" to convey in a more visual way messages in a literary work.

Please find below some well-known literary devices.

-METAPHOR: Probably among the most used literary device, it refers to a meaning / identity ascribed to one way to another. The purpose of using a metaphor is to take an identity or concept that we understand clearly (second subject) and use it to better understand the lesser known element (the first subject).

-ANTITHESIS: It´s purpose is to create a stark contrast meanings between two sentences by using two divergent elements that come together to create one uniform whole.
-ALLITERATION:  Words are used in quick succession and begin with letters belonging to the same sound group. Whether it is the consonant sound or a specific vowel group, the alliteration involves creating a repetition of similar sounds in the sentence. Alliterations are also created when the words all begin with the same letter. Alliterations are used to add character to the writing and often add an element of ‘fun’ to the piece

-HYPERBATON: It is a literary device wherein the author plays with the regular positioning of words and phrases and creates a differently structured sentence to convey the same meaning. It is said that by using a hyperbaton, words or phrases overstep their conventional placements and result in a more complex and intriguing sentence structure. This literary device is used to add more depth and interest to the sentence structure.

-HYPERBOLE: A hyperbole is a literary device wherein the author uses specific words and phrases that exaggerate and overemphasize the basic crux of the statement in order to produce a grander, more noticeable effect. The purpose of hyperbole is to create a larger-than-life effect and overly stress a specific point. Such sentences usually convey an action or sentiment that is generally not practically/ realistically possible or plausible but helps emphasize an emotion

Gabriel García Márquez

He was a novelist, story-script maker and also journalist.

Born on 6 ^th March 1927 in Aracataca Colombia and passed away on 17^th April 2014 in México.

When he was 27 he published his first novel  La hojarasca, but he was not  worldwide known until later in 1967 when Cien años de soledad -One Hundred Years of Solitude- came to light for the first time achieving more than 8.000 copies  sold in only one week.

Cien años de soledad was translated into more than twenty-four languages and was internationally recognized .

Among his work, besides the previous mentioned novels, we can mention: El coronel no tiene quien le escriba -No One Writes to the Colonel (1961), Relato de un náufrago - The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor-(1970), Crónica de una muerte anunciada - Chronicle of a Death Foretold -, El amor en los tiempos de cólera -Love in the Time of Cholera - (1981), (1985), Del amor y otros demonios -Of Love and Other Demons-(1994), among many others.

"Colonel Aureliano Buendía could understand only that the secret of a good old age is simply an honorable pact with solitude". - "El coronel Aureliano Buendía entendió, que la vejez, no es más que un pacto honrado con la soledad".  (One Hundred Years of Solitude)

Live from The Ave: Poetry JAM! - Deborah Miranda

Julio Cortázar

Born in Belgium on august 26^th 1914.

Cortazar’s parents were native from Argentina and when he was four years old Julio’s family migrates to Argentina. He graduated as a school teacher and started his studies at Buenos Aires University but later he must quit because of economic issues.

At the age of 37 he traveled to Paris where he lived most part of his life and worked as a translator for UNESCO.

In 1951 he published his first volume story work titled Bestiario-Bestiary- which included the famous story Casa Tomada -House taken over-.

We highlight among his work Historia de cronopios y de famas - Cronopios and Famas- (1962), La vuelta al día en ochenta mundos -Around the day in eighty worlds-(1967) and his famous novel Rayuela -Hopscoth-(1963).

Cortázar period is located and known as the “Boom generation”. Boom is a big literacy development period in Latin-American novel and marked a point in time where the world change Latin American literature conception for better. Cortázar was not the only one author related to the “Boom” but also we can mention:  Mario Vargas Llosa, Gabriel Garcia Márquez, José Donoso, Alejo Carpentier among others. 
He died in Paris on february 12^th 1984.

"We went around without looking for each other, but knowing we went around to find each other".

"Andábamos sin buscarnos pero sabiendo que andábamos para encontrarnos". (Hopscoth)

Horacio Quiroga

Uruguayan writer, born in 1878 in Salto department Uruguay and died in 1937 in Argentina Buenos Aires.

Known by his brief stories where we can highlight: Cuentos de la selva -Jungle Tales- (1918) dedicated to juvenile readers,  Cuentos de amor, de locura y de muerte- Stories of Love, Madness, and Death- (1917) where we can find the famous tales A la deriva  -Drifting-, La gallina degollada - The Beheaded Chicken , El almohadón de pluma - The Feather Pillow, among others.

Quiroga’s life was fully of tragedies, accident and suicides. When he was 33 after accidentally kill his friends wife, he decides to start living in the jungle in Misiones province of Argentina.  Since then he created most of his work.

His life ended by his own decision after drinking cyanide when he was informed of having a terrible disease.

"Do not write under the hold of your emotions. Let them die and later

raise them to life. If you are able to revive it like it was, as an artist you have made half of your trip".

“No escribas bajo el imperio de la emoción. Déjala morir y evócala luego. Si eres capaz entonces de revivirla tal cual fue, has llegado en arte a la mitad del camino” (Ten Rules for the Perfect Storyteller)