Antologia

Joaquin Marta Sosa's recently published anthology of Venezuelan poetry: Navegacion de tres siglos: antologia basica de la poesia venezolana 1826/2002 (Caracas: Fundacion Para La Cultura Urbana, 2003). In Thursday's EL Nacional, he published an essay entitled "Y la poesia que?" (And poetry what?):


"To write is to feel alive in the fullest sense. This "I write and then I live," that goes beyond the Cartesian dictum, could find its center within poetry, which in its own manner sinks roots in the atavism, everything began with song and elevates its own body in a flight across time. Maybe because of this, because the word was preceded by voice, it makes sense that public readings might be more succesful than poetry collections."

"But the poet is a type of revealer of the most radical edges of being, in search of one's own disassembling, trying to transcend the self, to discover, to rebel, to fix the infinite paths of dreams and heresy. A major confessional range emerges from the poetry, as do spiritual shocks, the revelation of the common within the individual."

{Joaquin Marta Sosa, "Y la poesia que?", El Nacional, September 18, 2003}