38 Facts About Rhina Espaillat

Rhina Espaillat's work has been included in many popular anthologies, including The Heath Introduction to Poetry ; The Muse Strikes Back ; and In Other Words: Literature by Latinas of the US.

Rhina Espaillat had her first poetry published by the Ladies' Home Journal in November 1947.

Rhina Espaillat is well-known for writing poetry that captures the beauty of daily routine, as well as poems which ironically and humorously retell stories from both the Christian Bible and Classical mythology.

Rhina Espaillat is especially well-known for her literary translations of the Christian poetry of St John of the Cross from Castilian Spanish into American English and which appeared in the literary journal First Things, and for similarly translating the greatest works from the literary canon of both Spanish and Latin American poetry.

Rhina Espaillat has published acclaimed translations from American English into Spanish of the poems of both Robert Frost and Richard Wilbur.

Rhina Espaillat is of mixed Afro-Dominican, Spanish, French, and Arawak descent.

Rhina Espaillat is the daughter of Carlos Manuel Homero Espaillat Brache, a Dominican diplomatic attache, and Dulce Maria Batista.

Rhina Espaillat is the grandniece and god-daughter of Dominican diplomat Rafael Brache.

Rhina Espaillat was born in the Dominican Republic's capital of Santo Domingo, which Caudillo Rafael Trujillo had recently renamed Cuidad Trujillo, on January 20,1932.

Shortly after her birth, Rhina Espaillat's parents returned with their infant daughter to their hometown of La Vega, which had been founded by Christopher Columbus in 1494.

Rhina Espaillat was often taken to visit relatives in her mother's hometown of Jarabacoa, which is a popular resort.

Rhina Espaillat began composing poetry in Spanish when she was only 4-years of age.

Rhina Espaillat's first poems were written down by her grandmother, who told Espaillat that her poems were all wonderful and that she was a poet.

In 1937, a five-year old Rhina Espaillat accompanied her parent on a diplomatic mission to Washington, DC.

Rhina Espaillat has since stated that, "those experiences made me much more of an ear poet than an eye poet".

In 1939 Espaillat's parents felt more settled in the United States and Rhina joined them in a New York City apartment on West Forty-Ninth Street in Hell's Kitchen.

Rhina Espaillat explained that Jewish people were running from Europe because there were bad things happening.

Rhina Espaillat was required to speak both English and Spanish with correct pronunciation and grammar.

When Rhina asked her parents to buy her a copy, the Espaillats were, "delighted by their daughter's passion for a compilation of poems rather than dolls or dresses", but they could not afford the book's asking price of $3.75, which was a sizeable amount of money for a refugee family in 1943.

Decades later, the book remains one of Rhina Espaillat's most cherished possessions.

When she was seventeen, Rhina Espaillat received a fan letter from Shabani, in Southern Rhodesia, from an admirer who had translated one of her poems into Afrikaans and who was requesting permission to publish the translation.

Rhina Espaillat received similar fan letters from poetry lovers throughout the United States, as well as in Manila, Berlin, Rio de Janeiro, and London.

Rhina Espaillat's visiting cousins charmed her many local friends and neighbors, as she later described in the poem Translation.

Rhina Espaillat later recalled that she had enjoyed teaching, but missed poetry deeply.

Rhina Espaillat subsequently took charge of "teaching the French Forms and the forms of repetition," but made sure to teach classes in "the Spanish and Hispanic examples of the forms" such as the decima and the ovillejo.

Since her return to American poetry, Rhina Espaillat's work has appeared in Poetry, The American Scholar, and many other journals.

Rhina Espaillat is a two-time winner of the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award, and she judged the 2012 Contest.

Rhina Espaillat writes poetry in both English and Spanish, and has translated into Spanish and published her translations of the poetry of both Robert Frost and Richard Wilbur.

In return for her translations of Frost, which preserve, "their rhyme schemes and metrical ingenuity while at the same time coming up with equivalents for their linguistic idiosyncrasies", Rhina Espaillat has been awarded the Tree at My Window Award by the Robert Frost Foundation of Lawrence, Massachusetts.

Furthermore, ten of Rhina Espaillat's translations have been placed along the Robert Frost Trail at Lawrence Common.

Rhina Espaillat has produced and published English translations of the verse of Dominican poets Quiterio Berroa y Canelo, Manuel del Cabral, and Hector Inchaustegui Cabral.

Rhina Espaillat has translated poetry written in Spanish by fellow Dominican-Americans Juan Matos, Cesar Sanchez Beras, Diogenes Abreu, and Dagoberto Lopez.

From other Latin American countries, Rhina Espaillat has translated the poetry of Miguel de Guevara, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Manuel Gonzalez Prada, Rafael Arevalo Martinez, Gabriela Mistral, Vicente Huidobro, and Alfonsina Storni.

From Spain, Rhina Espaillat has translated the verse of Saint John of the Cross, Gabriel Bocangel, Gabriel Garcia de Tassara, Miguel de Unamuno, and Miguel Hernandez.

Rhina Espaillat has translated the poetry of Antero de Quental from Portuguese and the verse of Blas de Otero from Catalan.

From other languages, Rhina Espaillat has translated into English the verse of Charles of Orleans from Middle French, Dafydd ap Gwilym from Middle Welsh, Croatian national poet Marko Marulic from Renaissance Latin, Luis de Camoes from Portuguese, Bedrich Bridel from Czech, and Filipino poet Gaspar Aquino de Belen from Tagalog.

Rhina Espaillat has cited the music of the Spanish classical guitar, which she first heard played by her grandmother as a child, as a major influence on her poetry.

Rhina Espaillat has particularly cited the music of composer Joaquin Rodrigo as a vitally important influence.