My Family Reunion 2006

Poem

For our family scrapbook

Valle de Collores poem by Luis Llorén Torres. This is just the first two paragraphs of this poem. To make it seem as if it had been typed in a typewriter, I used a courier font. I gave it a burnt edge effect for a more vintage feel.

Eugenio M. Rothe explains it best. This poem is the narrative of a country boy who leaves home to face the larger world and, as he reaches adulthood, he looks back and expresses his impossible longing to return to the rural home of his childhood. It is a description of the universal struggles of human development and of separation-individuation, loss and mourning and a longing to return, and a wish to merge with the early parental objects of childhood.

The poem also parallels the history of the Puerto Rican people, in their transition from a rural society under Spanish rule to an industrialized society as an American Commonwealth. This difficult transition resulted in a massive immigration of Puerto Ricans to the United States that continues to this day. The poem also represents the longing of many Puerto Rican immigrants to return to their island home, and to a simpler time of more fundamental values. The land that is left behind and longed for becomes a metaphor for the early maternal imago.

Read the complete poem