While attending college in Lima, Peru, Edgar O’Hara was among a group of students who idolized Peruvian poet Luis Hernandez. O’Hara, associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese studies, remembers attending a public reading by Hernandez in 1976, at which Hernandez was flanked by two bodyguards because of his unpredictable behavior. Hernandez died a year later, under mysterious circumstances.

Hernandez left behind only three slim volumes of poetry, but after 1965 he wrote in notebooks, which he gave away to friends and strangers alike. Now, thanks to O’Hara, the notebooks will be available for study at the UW.

Edgar O'Hara, holding a collage containing pages from the notebooks of the late poet Luis Hernandez, together with a Paul Klee artwork that Hernandez was fond of.

O’Hara has used a UW Royalty Research Fund grant to transfer images of the elusive poet’s notebooks to compact disk. He also has made color copies for use by students and scholars. The materials will be part of the Luis Hernandez Poetry Archive in the Special Collections unit at Allen Library.

“The notebooks are full of poetry, but also of drawings, quotes and even music that he wrote,” O’Hara says. “We wanted to preserve all the contents of the notebooks, not just the poems.”

The archive contains 18 CDs recorded from 54 notebooks, as well as physical reproductions of the notebooks themselves. Recording the notebooks in this way allows the user to see not only their full contents, but also the way in which the poet worked. Hernandez used markers in different colors for his poems, and also wrote in different styles of handwriting.

It wasn’t until 1994 that O’Hara had his first glimpse of some of the notebooks. “It was an incredible experience, to see the actual notebooks,” he recalls. O’Hara noticed, however, that the notebooks were not being kept in ideal circumstances. The poet’s brother had donated five of them to Peru’s National Library; another 40 were in a box in someone’s home; while at least nine were scattered about with various friends and acquaintances of the poet. Copying the notebooks’ contents onto CDs seemed to O’Hara to be a way to make sure they were preserved and accessible.

O’Hara traveled to Peru and Argentina with a photographer, a digital camera, and a laptop computer to get images from each page of the notebooks. While there, he was interviewed by newspapers and television, and the resulting stories led to the discovery of more notebooks. Planned as a three-month project, O’Hara’s research extended to a year.

In July, the library held a special ceremony, attended by the Peruvian consul, to receive the CDs and reproductions from O’Hara. Library officials say they plan to make the material searchable through “Content” multimedia software.

O’Hara’s students will be among the first to use the archive, since O’Hara is currently teaching a 400-level class on—what else—the poetry of Luis Hernandez.

[Autumn 2000 - Table of Contents]