Resources

by Kenneth Koch

Poet Kenneth Koch shows how to incorporate Frederico García Lorca’s poem “Arbolé, Arbolé” (“Tree, Tree”) into a bilingual classroom. This exercise is adapted from Koch’s essay on teaching Lorca, which you can find in the T&W book Luna Luna, edited by Julio Marzán.

Language Diversity: Working with Bilingual Students

ARBOLÉ ARBOLÉ…

Arbolé, arbolé,
seco y verdé.

La niña del bello rostro
está cogiendo aceituna.
El viento, galán de torres,
la prende por la cintura.
Pasaron cuatro jinetes
sobre jacas andaluzas,
con trajes de azul y verde,
con largas capas oscuras.
“Vente a Córdoba, muchacha.”
La niña no los escucha.
Pasaron tres torerillos
delgaditos de cintura,
con trajes color naranja
y espadas de plata antigua.
“Vente a Sevilla, muchacha.”
La niña no los escucha.
Cuando la tarde se puso
morada, con lux difusa,
pasó un joven que llevaba
rosas y mirtos de luna.
“Vente a Granada, muchacha.”
Y la niña no lo escucha.
La niña del bello rostro
sigue cogiendo aceituna,
con el brazo gris del viento
ceñido por la cintura.
Arbolé, arbolé,
Seco y verdé.

TREE, TREE…

Tree, tree,
dry and green.

The girl with the pretty face
is out picking olives.
The wind, playboy of towers,
grabs her around the waist.
Four riders passed by
on Andalusian ponies,
with blue and green jackets
and big, dark capes.
“Come to Córdoba, muchacha.”
The girl won’t listen to them.
Three young bullfighters passed,
slender in the waist,
with jackets the color of oranges
and swords of ancient silver.
“Come to Sevilla, muchacha.”
The girl won’t listen to them.
When the afternoon had turned
dark brown, with scattered light,
a young man passed by, wearing
roses and myrtle of the moon.
“Come to Granada, muchacha.”
And the girl won’t listen to him.
The girl with the pretty face
keeps on picking olives
with the grey arm of the wind
wrapped around her waist.

Tree, tree.
dry and green.

—Translated by William Logan

For my elementary school classes, I chose this poem by Lorca because I felt its dreamy use of colors and its sense of magic places would appeal to children. I was drawn to this poem, too, because it is in Spanish, which gave me a chance to give my Spanish-speaking students some poetry in their language, and to heighten all my students’ sense of the sound and color of words by having them compare, as they read, Spanish words with their English equivalents, and, when they wrote, having them use words in both languages. I suspect that many of the children hadn’t ever really seen any poetry in another language. It was good to show them that there was such a thing, and to give them some idea of what a translation is.

I read the poem aloud, in English first; then as I went through the poem, along with explaining what was happening, I stopped at certain words or phrases to read them in Spanish as well as in English. I had the children close their eyes and listen, for example, to “verde” and “green.” I asked, “Which is greener?” I did the same with “moon” and “luna,” asking “Which is moonier? which is yellower? which more silvery?” The children answered enthusiastically, and by the time we had finished, they were excited about the sound of Spanish and English words. They were in a state to be thinking whether the sky outside the window was more blue or more azul.

The assignment was: “Write a poem about a beautiful, strange place which is full of colors. Include some Spanish words in the poem. These may be color words, or any other words you find in the Lorca poem that you would like to use because of what they mean or just because you like the way they look or sound—you don’t have to know what they mean.” It may help the children with form to tell them that they can, if they wish, put at least one color and one Spanish word in every line; or that they can put one Spanish word for a color (like “verde” and “plata”) in every line. Some Spanish-speaking students asked if they could write their whole poems in Spanish, and Yuk asked me if instead of Spanish she could use Chinese. I agreed to both requests. Yuk wrote her poem out line by line in English, too; and when the all-Spanish poems were completed I had their authors translate them into English.