17 pages • 34 minutes read
Margarita EngleTula ["Books are door shaped"]
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2013A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Further Reading & Resources
Related Poems
"Tula [City life is a whirl of poetry readings]" by Margarita Engle (2013)
This poem appears in the final section of The Lightning Dreamer (titled “Part Five: The Hotel of Peace, 1836) and describes Tula’s experiences in Havana. Being in the large Cuban city allowed her to meet other poets from many different walks of life. Tula was inspired by the wide variety of people who share their “secret verses / rooted in startling / new ideas” (Lines 8-10). This echoes the secret mental books of “Tula [Books are door-shaped].”
"To A Butterfly" by Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, translated by Manuel A. Tellechea (1841)
This is a poem by the real-life Tula, Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, who inspired Engle’s persona poems. Only a few of Gómez de Avellaneda’s poems have been translated into English. “To A Butterfly” describes the wanderlust of a butterfly, using it to explore the transient quality of beauty and life.
"To A Butterfly" performed at the Nashville Repertory Theatre (2021)
As part of their series “I’m Speaking: The Words of Women Through History,” Nashville actor Prenda Mercado presents a dramatic reading of Gómez de Avellaneda’s poem (translated by Tellechea). This illustrates how Engle’s chosen persona is considered an important historical and protofeminist figure.
"Frida Kahlo to Marty McConnell" by Marty McConnell (2014)
This is another famous persona poem, written from the perspective of Mexican artist and poet Frida Kahlo. The internet (specifically Tumblr) took lines from this poem and attributed them to Kahlo herself, rather than citing McConnell as the author. The lines “take / a lover who looks at you / like maybe you are magic” (Lines 21-23) appear on a variety of merchandise online. Despite the poet’s attempts to correct this misattribution, McConnell’s lines are still frequently cited as Kahlo’s. This is partially due to many people being unfamiliar with the persona form; modern poetry is often written from the perspective of the poet, rather than ventriloquizing someone else.
Further Literary Resources
"Hispanic Issues Online, Vol. 18: Gender and the Politics of Literature", published by the University of Minnesota (2017)
This issue of the academic journal Hispanic Issues Online focuses on Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda. It is edited by María C. Albin, Megan Corbin, and Raúl Marrero-Fente, who also contribute an introduction that provides extensive background about Gómez de Avellaneda’s life. Essays by other contributors analyze Gómez de Avellaneda’s poetry, plays, letters, and novels.
Avellaneda’s 200th Anniversary feature at the University of Miami Library (2014)
The Cuban Heritage Collection of the University of Miami digitized Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda’s writings as part of their 200th Anniversary celebration of her life. The website includes a short biography, portrait, scans of Gómez de Avellaneda’s 19th-century books (written in Spanish), and links to a FIU conference focusing on her work.
"Biographical Timeline of Avellaneda’s Life" from Columbia University
This resource gives the reader a brief, academic overview of the major events in Avellaneda’s life.
Excerpts from José María Heredia in New York, 1823–1825: An Exiled Cuban poet in the Age of Revolution, Selected Letters and Verse by Frederick Luciani (2020)
The Colgate University website features excerpts from a new book edited and translated by Frederick Luciani that covers part of José María Heredia’s literary career. Heredia was Gómez de Avellaneda’s hero; he appears in several of Engle’s poems in The Lightning Dreamer, and Engle includes her own translations and short biography of Heredia at the end of her book. This resource offers important context for understanding Gómez de Avellaneda’s poetry and Engle’s persona poems in Tula’s voice.
Listen to Poem
Poetry Off The Shelf from the Poetry Foundation (2017)
This episode of the Poetry Foundation’s podcast series features Curtis Fox interviewing Margarita Engle. After the Poetry Foundation gave Engle the title of The Young People’s Poet Laureate, they invited her on their Poetry Off The Shelf podcast. Engle reads “Tula [Books are door-shaped]” and other poems, as well as discussing her work and life.
Related Titles
By Margarita Engle
