Julia de Burgos

"Que sea nuestra vida presente de todo./Que busque futuro tan sólo en el alma./Que ensaye verdades. Que sienta en idea./Que siempre se extienda cortando distancias"

"Fui estrella en tus brazos derramada"

"¡Oh amor entretenido en astros y palomas,/cómo en rocío feliz cruzas mi alma!"

"¿Cómo podrán callarme/cuando todos los ecos del universo sean/sinfonías en mi frente?"

"La palabra no puede con mi carga de angustia,/y no cabe en mi verso mi dolor exaltado."

"¿Dónde comienza aquel momento triste/que ahogó la danza de mi espíritu"

"Me he sentido llegar allí donde se mueren/las canciones felices"

"Sigue siendo poema Julia de Burgos;/la burguesa del cosmos, que no es burguesa/como quieren los hombres, pues se sonríe/mucho más que al espejo, al río y la selva"

"la gran muerte espera recogerme en sus astros."

"Que nadie me profane la muerte con sollozos"

"Puerto Rican poet Julia de Burgos and Uruguayan Delmira Agustini are united in an unexpected way, de Burgos searching for desire and love and Agustini searching for freedom to love. Linked for the first time when speaking from the perspective of and about the history of love and absence, recreating the adventures of those lost, either on an abandoned island or an abandoned body, placing the poetry of these two women in the same section is the starting point"

"Getting back to the Boricua's issue/what history do you know?/Ever heard of/Agueybana/Pedro Albizu Campos/Palés Matos/Rafael Betances/Arturo Alfonso Schomburg/Francisco Oller/Julia De Burgos/Rafael Hernández/Segundo Ruiz Belvis/Enrique Laguerre/Mariana Bracetti/Pedro Pietri/Still havING problems figuring me out?/Or is it that you just don't know/who you are?"

"The collection is also a question: who is Margarita? Margarita is an intoxicating drink, a flower back home in Puerto Rico, the title of a traditional "danza" that was a favorite of my mother and the name of a woman I love. Margarita is all of these and none. Margarita is my muse, Margarita is my poetry, Margarita is my imaginary lover, Margarita is my Self. And as you read these you may ask yourself: who is Julia? Julia de Burgos is our greatest woman poet in Puerto Rico, Julia is a teacher, Julia is an idol, Julia is a friend. But Julia is, most of all, Margarita. We are all Margaritas and have a Julia within."

"I never strongly identified with Puerto Rican writers from Puerto Rico. My writing comes from a different sensibility...I have, however, read and liked very much Julia de Burgos and José Luis González and Magali García Ramis."

"Julia de Burgos is the eldest of thirteen children, a bottomless spring of emotion, a boundless heart full of desires, a beautiful and eloquent woman who generously spills her spirit onto page after page...Julia de Burgos, the glowing poet of sensual rivers and waves crashing against sea walls, is drowning slowly in despair. I who am also poeta, puertorriqueña, needing both love and art, fighting political battles by day and demons by night, I have stood at the brink of that river of sorrows, tempted by oblivion. I live in a far more generous life, created for me by the labor of countless women, thirty years of collective agitation, thirty years of wrestling with the culture and consciousness of women and men. I do not face her terrible choices, the punishments meted out to passionate creative women of her day."

"In looking at the Puerto Rican movement as a whole and the positive contributions that we made in the seventies and early eighties, first we need to point out that we built on our legacy of struggle. We stood on the shoulders of such Nationalists as Ramón Emeterio Betances, Pedro Albizu Campos, Lolita Lebrón, and such communists as Luisa Capetillo, Jesús Colón, Bernardo Vega, Julia de Burgos, Juana Colón, Evelina Antonetti, Antonio Corretjer, Genoveva Clemente, Gerena Valentín, and many others."

"As my good friend the poet Susana Cabañas says in the last lines of her poem "Elegía a Julia de Burgos" ("Elegy to Julia de Burgos"): "Yo rehuso convertirme en otra estadística./Seré yo y será borinquen/Libre!" ("I refuse to be turned into another statistic/I and Borinquen will be/Free!""

"Julia de Burgos wrote: "That my grandfather was a slave/is my grief;/had he been a master/that would have been my shame.""

"the exploited masses awaken."

"¡Obrero que alzas el mundo!/¡Obrero que todo entintas!/¡Mano que empuja el futuro"