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Julia de Burgos

Julia de Burgos, née Julia Constanze Burgos García, was born on February 17, 1914, in Carolina, Puerto Rico and was one of 13 children. Her father was a farmer and National Guardsman. Her family struggled financially, and

Call Out My Number

by Julia de Burgos (1914–53)

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16

What are they waiting for? Aren't they going to call me?

Have they neglected me among the blades of grass,

my most guileless comrades,

all the dead of the earth?

Why don't they sound their bells?

I'm ready now to make the jump.

Could they want more cadavers

of dreams, dead from innocence?

Perhaps they require more debris

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Poetry Trivia

Question:

What Elizabethan poet described Petrarch's influence on verse writing as being like Procrustes' bed?

Answer

Because the sonnet had become so popular that poems that were too short for the form were stretched to fit it and those too long for it were cut short, Ben Jonson likened Petrarch's influence to Procrustes' infamously adjustable bed.

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