tierra as an adjective?
From a Yupanqui song called El Poeta, a stanza:
**
Poeta de tierras rimas,**
Vete á vivir a la selva,
Y aprenderás muchas cosas
Del hachero y sus miserias.
This one is pretty straightforward. He is chastising a poet for seeing himself as above it all, and knowing nothing of real life, but I am not sure how to translate tierras rimas. It occurred to me that it might mean base rhymes, but I've looked up tierra in several dictionaries at this point, and not seen it as an adjective in any of them. I'm not sure if this is just a writer using words in a non-traditional way, or if I'm totally off base, and it is not even being used as an adjective modifying rimas. Ideas'
3 Answers
A far-out guess: tierras raras are the so-called "rare earths" in the periodic table, so tierras rimas could be a play on words, with poetic meaning as D. Estrega has suggested. It is unusual to see two nouns together like this in Spanish . . . as Quentin said, poetic license.
Poetic license is one explanation, but it turns out to be a typo. It's tiernas rimas[color=red][/color]. Mystery solved.
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