A CITY FULL OF POETRY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 203, 29 August 1939, Page 12

A CITY FULL OF POETRY.

New York Inspires Famous Cuban Artist. (By CARLOS J. VIDELA.) NEW YORK. A Cuban beauty who for the last few years has earned great popularity and a comfortable living bv holding the Latin American public spellbound with her poetry recitals is now in New York, ready to launch a campaign to conquer North American audiences.

Dalia Iniguez is !is well known wher ever Spanish is spoken as Greta Garlxt an<l Clark (iaMe (which they pronounce <!nl)-l)lav). She is T)etite. with a figure like Ida. Lupino's and eyes that could set a few islands aflame. When she makes a tour, Latin newspapers dust off their list of superlatives and go into ecstasies of admiration (her clipping hooks weigh almost as much as her trunks). Latins love poetry, and many will sell the family burro and walk a few miles to the city to hear this 'goddess'' as more than one commentator has called her. And the funny thing is that this fiery exponent of the art of Spanish poetry really found her inspiration, of all places, in New York, during a previous stay years ago. "[ came here on a visit," she said at her hotel, looking reminiscently out the window, '"when T was a little girl, and New York roused something hidden in me. I don't know what. But it led me to the path F liave followed. The skyscrapers? Bah! New York has a hundred an<l one little corners and places as full of poetry ns the banks of the Seine and the streets of Montmartre. Only New Yorkers don't notice them.'' ■Miss Iniguez (Een-ye-guess) has just completed a three-year tour of South America, picking up two decorations, several special medals and numberless expressions of admiration, written and oral. She has given special recitals for President Benavides of Peru and for Colonel Batista of Cuba. Even the reserved former Argentine Foreign Minister, Carlos Saavedra Lamas, unbent in her presence and actually smiled. And now she would like to try her hand in Hollywood. "Why not?'' she asks. "The screen can give you a great background and it can bring yon closer to those who hear you." Her repertory, she said, numbers some 300 active pieces, which, added to others, she does not care to recite now, make a grand total of some 500 poems, sonnets, epics and ballads she knows by heart. Found Progress Among Women. What struck Miss Iniguez most forcefully during her three-year tour of South America, she asserted, was the "great progress'' made by women. American influence, according to her, has a lot to do with this. By "progress" she meant South American women's newlv-found interest in sports and other activities that were formerly considered exclusive privileges of the other sex. Activity by women in politics is still frowned upon. Miss Iniguez said. The dark-eved. Cuban beauty declared that American influence, in its effect on the social position of women, is more marked on the west coast of the southern continent, especially in Ecuador and Chile.

"Don't think, though," she added, "that women don't exert a verv strong influence everywhere down there. Only they do it by means of subtler ways than index-pointing and foot-stamping. \ ou'd be surprised how many things are accomplished by men under the spell of smiling feminine suggestion. Drawingroom politics is very strong there."

Her audiences, she said, have been preponderantly feminine, "as it is natural, '"but the number of men who thrill at her recitations is also considerable. And the most encouraging sign, she said, is that this love for poetry is not confined to the so-called higher classes. On the contrary, it cuts through all class lines. It has not been an unusual experience for her. Miss Iniguez related, to find numbers of very poorlydressed people from the countryside among her audiences, particularly in Colombia, where love of poetry is a national trait.

Another discovery that surprised her was the high cultural level of the '•'readin;* public." Many of the best-known American writers are widely read in South America, and if cheaply-printed translations of their works were available the United States might be held in just as hi<?h an intellectual esteem south of the Rio Grande as is France, she declared.

The greatest poets in America are at present, and' have been for some time, women, according to Miss Iniguez. After the death of the Mexican Amado Nervo, the Xicaraguan Ruben Dario and the Argentine Leopoldo Lugones, who committed suicide last year, the foremost names in South America's poetry are those of Juana de Ibarbourou, .Uruguayan, and Gabriela Mistral, Chilean.

One exception to this rule, she asserted, is Juan Ramon Jimenez, "a man with a, great soul, who forsees lightning." Jimenez works in a sound-proof room and writes with a goose feather.

Does she expect to give poetry recitals in this country? "I'd like to." she replied. "La Argentina, the great Spanish dancer who djed in France some time ago, was never more warmly applauded than when she showed her artistry here. Poetry recitals have a great deal in common with dancing. And American women have a soul as warm as that of their Latin sisters.—N.A.N.A.