A child's wisdom in a poet's heart.

• Author: Bach, Caleb
• Position: Argentine poet Maria Elena Walsh

The works of Maria Elena Walsh are one of the hidden treasures of Latin American literature. You won't find many of her verses in the regional anthologies that have proliferated in recent years, nor will you find much of her material in translation. But this in no way diminishes her stature as a major writer. Just ask members of recent generations who have grown up with la Reina Batata, Mono Liso, Manuelita la Tortuga, or la Vaca Estudiosa de Humahuaca. They know Walsh. So do those who have been transported to places with euphonious names like Gulubu, el Pais de Nomeacuerdo, Calle Chacabuco, or el Reino del Reves.

Why then has Walsh been overlooked? In part the answer lies in the fallacy of categorization. It is said that Walsh writes for children. How can humorous stuff for kids be great literature? What's more, her verses are set to music! Over her career, however, Walsh has also penned serious verse for adults not to mention dozens of essays, even a novel. And, her rhymes and fables for children are high art in their lyricism, celebration of the sound of words, and efficient presentation of complex notions. She imposes no arbitrary restraints on what can be but rather encourages unfettered young minds to remain faithful to the infinite reaches of their own imaginations. As did James Joyce, Lewis Carroll, and Edward Lear, Walsh focuses on the musicality of language: assonance, tonality, rhythm, tempo. People of all ages can find plenty to chew on in her extensive body of work.

Walsh often has been called a juglaresa The term fits her well because she does literally "juggle" both word and melody in the manner of a medieval troubador. Sometimes the material is humorous, other times she serves up bittersweet wisdom or a nostalgic longing for the past. In recent years a few academics have begun to subject her lines to overly ponderous analysis. But Walsh unimpressed, insisting that she just speaks from the heart. Like Bob Dylan, another great poet who just happens to deliver his lines as songs, Walsh succeeds in expressing herself in a down-to-earth manner. Never forgetting her origins, she identifies with the masses, especially with women trying to survive in an unfair world.

Born in 1930, the future poet was raised in the Buenos Aires suburb of Ramos Mejia. Walsh's ancestry was a combustible mix of Andalusia on her mother's side and the Emerald Isle on her father's. It is to her Irishness that she credits her imagination, receptivity to rebelliousness, and love of myths and fairies. What about her love of words? "Perhaps. My father, an administrator with the railways, used to tell and sing nursery rhymes, limericks, word games, all in English. I adored them. I didn't write them down, but I remembered them." As a teenager, Walsh often read tales of adventure that took her far away: Gulliver's Travels, Huckleberry Finn, Baron Munchhausen, and the stories of Jules Verne. There was also a great deal of music in the Walsh household. Her father and sister both played the piano, and Maria Elena became an accomplished singer of English and Irish folk songs, Schubert lieder, works by Stephen Foster, and spirituals from the southern United States. She loved the 1940s crooners -- Bing Crosby, Rudy Vallee, Fred Astaire -- all of whom she would impersonate using a broom for a microphone.

Homelife, however, was often stormy. Walsh's father could be autocratic, even violent, and thus she took refuge in a private world of writing poetry. On her own, at age fifteen, she submitted a verse to the Buenos Aires daily El Hogar, and it was accepted. So began the young poet's induction into the city's cultural establishment. She placed another poem in the literary section of La Nacion, which was directed by novelist Eduardo Mallea, and other lines appeared in Sur, the famous literary journal edited by Victoria Ocampo. Eventually, at her own expense, Walsh published a collection of her own poetry, Otono imperdonable [Unforgiving Autumn]. The book received plaudits and won the 1947 Premio Municipal de Poesia de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires.

Walsh was a mere seventeen years old when her poetry catapulted her into the limelight of Argentina's literary elite. It was not unusual for her to have dinner at the home of Adolfo Bioy Casares and his wife, Silvina Ocampo. Jorge Luis Borges, too, often stopped by. "Borges was a strange fellow. Extremely shy in those days. Always sort of an interior dialogue with himself, a...