"War is over..."
Lennon & Ono: "WAR IS OVER if you want it" (repeat)
Feliz año nuevo.
Peace.
12.31.2003
Roberto Bolaño's encounter w/ Chavismo
My good friend Simón has posted a link over at El Nuevo Cojo Ilustrado to Bolaño's final interview, earlier this year. He discusses problems he encountered when he was on the jury for the Premio Romulo Gallegos (the year Enrique Vilas-Mata won). He wrote a public letter to the organizers of this state-funded literary award, one of the most prestigious in the Americas, where he accused them of being neo-stalinists with their methods. My point exactly, here at Venepoetics: Chavismo= neostalinismo.
*
"Mi pelea con el jurado y los organizadores del premio se debió, básicamente, a que ellos pretendían que yo avalara, desde Blanes y a ciegas, una selección en la que yo no había participado. Sus métodos, que una pseudo poeta chavista me transmitió por teléfono, se parecían demasiado a los argumentos disuasorios de la Casa de las Américas cubana. Me pareció que era un error enorme que Daniel Sada o Jorge Volpi fueran eliminados a las primeras de cambio, por ejemplo. Ellos dijeron que lo que yo quería era viajar con mi mujer e hijos, algo totalmente falso. De mi indignación por esta mentira surgió la carta en donde los llamé neostalinistas y algo más, supongo." (Roberto Bolaño, 2003)
*
"Mi pelea con el jurado y los organizadores del premio se debió, básicamente, a que ellos pretendían que yo avalara, desde Blanes y a ciegas, una selección en la que yo no había participado. Sus métodos, que una pseudo poeta chavista me transmitió por teléfono, se parecían demasiado a los argumentos disuasorios de la Casa de las Américas cubana. Me pareció que era un error enorme que Daniel Sada o Jorge Volpi fueran eliminados a las primeras de cambio, por ejemplo. Ellos dijeron que lo que yo quería era viajar con mi mujer e hijos, algo totalmente falso. De mi indignación por esta mentira surgió la carta en donde los llamé neostalinistas y algo más, supongo." (Roberto Bolaño, 2003)
John Keats
In today's El Nacional, the poet Esdras Parra writes about Julio Cortázar's posthumously-published study of Keats, Imagen de John Keats. She reads this book, written in Buenos Aires in the 1940s, as a precursor to Rayuela's inventions. Almost as though it could be a chronological/geographical counterpart to his "Paris" book.
Reading Los detectives salvajes, its form reminds me of Rayuela. Bolaño's vision seems much wider, a multiplied reading of Third World (vs/alongside/within) First World cities.
*
"Hoy en día nadie lee a Keats. Nadie parece interesarse en la idea medular de su poesía, la noción, original para su época, de que la verdad es belleza y la belleza es verdad, a la búsqueda de la cual consagró su esfuerzo. Pero ahora se sabe, como dice Auden, que ambas cosas no son lo mismo. La suya fue una obra aislada de las voces comunes de la poesía de su tiempo, una poesía que celebraba desinteresadamente la realidad. Solitaria como la de los grandes solitarios de todas las épocas. El menos romántico de los románticos, tan singular y único que terminó por ser ignorado. No lo leemos, es cierto, pero su obra está allí y quizá demuestre a los lectores ávidos no sólo su frescura sino su impulso ( “criatura de impulso” llamó al hombre), el vigor que lo dominó en su momento. Impulso y vigor tan vivos que ponen en evidencia la realidad del genio.
Quizá Cortázar con su “invención” de una vida de Keats alejada de las narraciones tradicionales, en la que el escritor ocupa el cuerpo del poeta, se sumerge en él, se deja permear por su pensamiento, contribuya de algún modo a que tengamos del poeta romántico una visión más actual, más de nuestro tiempo, empresa difícil, es verdad, al tratarse de un creador con una concepción diferente del mundo, del que nos separan dos siglos."
{Esdras Parra, "Un libro (casi) olvidado," El Nacional, 31 de Diciembre 2003}
In today's El Nacional, the poet Esdras Parra writes about Julio Cortázar's posthumously-published study of Keats, Imagen de John Keats. She reads this book, written in Buenos Aires in the 1940s, as a precursor to Rayuela's inventions. Almost as though it could be a chronological/geographical counterpart to his "Paris" book.
Reading Los detectives salvajes, its form reminds me of Rayuela. Bolaño's vision seems much wider, a multiplied reading of Third World (vs/alongside/within) First World cities.
*
"Hoy en día nadie lee a Keats. Nadie parece interesarse en la idea medular de su poesía, la noción, original para su época, de que la verdad es belleza y la belleza es verdad, a la búsqueda de la cual consagró su esfuerzo. Pero ahora se sabe, como dice Auden, que ambas cosas no son lo mismo. La suya fue una obra aislada de las voces comunes de la poesía de su tiempo, una poesía que celebraba desinteresadamente la realidad. Solitaria como la de los grandes solitarios de todas las épocas. El menos romántico de los románticos, tan singular y único que terminó por ser ignorado. No lo leemos, es cierto, pero su obra está allí y quizá demuestre a los lectores ávidos no sólo su frescura sino su impulso ( “criatura de impulso” llamó al hombre), el vigor que lo dominó en su momento. Impulso y vigor tan vivos que ponen en evidencia la realidad del genio.
Quizá Cortázar con su “invención” de una vida de Keats alejada de las narraciones tradicionales, en la que el escritor ocupa el cuerpo del poeta, se sumerge en él, se deja permear por su pensamiento, contribuya de algún modo a que tengamos del poeta romántico una visión más actual, más de nuestro tiempo, empresa difícil, es verdad, al tratarse de un creador con una concepción diferente del mundo, del que nos separan dos siglos."
{Esdras Parra, "Un libro (casi) olvidado," El Nacional, 31 de Diciembre 2003}
A city understood as a fact, undeniable. Whether it is "central" or not is rendered irrelevant by late capitalism, postmodernity. That there is no escape from the city and, whether we name the chapter or not, it has conquered us. The question now seems to be, How does one live within unbreakable bounds? No use spending time on dismantling "evil" since it already thrives on our energy. Instead, writing words hopelessly can assuage nothingness. Writing hopelessly at least is possible. These facts change by the minute. Next year, we'll think again about topography. Map ourselves. Make sense. Dissolve traffic.
12.30.2003
To not write for the sake of filling the days. The name dissolves but reappears next year. The fragments unify themselves, at a price. This state is a flat stretch of constancy, choose sleep over sun. Reached el final w/out words.
Despues de todo, the notebook tends to speak to itself. If any readers exist, they are from "the future." But that assumption is not based on anything save ego. The dream involved a coastline, a few steps away from a party, cocktail chatter to one side, the flat grey Gulf on the other.
One should have a project, beside sleep. Write commentary on Los detectives salvajes. After Vallejo, Palacios, Uslar Pietri, Sarduy, Bryce Echenique, etc. Paris as a location lives mainly on aura. It is today (and may have been then) just another city. I enjoy reading it but Tampa is more to my measure. Que locura.
Despues de todo, the notebook tends to speak to itself. If any readers exist, they are from "the future." But that assumption is not based on anything save ego. The dream involved a coastline, a few steps away from a party, cocktail chatter to one side, the flat grey Gulf on the other.
One should have a project, beside sleep. Write commentary on Los detectives salvajes. After Vallejo, Palacios, Uslar Pietri, Sarduy, Bryce Echenique, etc. Paris as a location lives mainly on aura. It is today (and may have been then) just another city. I enjoy reading it but Tampa is more to my measure. Que locura.
12.29.2003
Garden
the apamate trees remind you of Emily Dickinson's
garden in Amherst, the types of trees kept there
by the museum, we didn't enter the house that
afternoon, only walked in the garden, like peasants
or travelers, the car went there and back w/ out us
the garden is quietest green for hours with fog
part of it is, one thinks, the landscape those are
Massachusetts stanzas in their anywhere trees
dawn makes it glacial, reading a novel as plot bound
the apamate trees remind you of Emily Dickinson's
garden in Amherst, the types of trees kept there
by the museum, we didn't enter the house that
afternoon, only walked in the garden, like peasants
or travelers, the car went there and back w/ out us
the garden is quietest green for hours with fog
part of it is, one thinks, the landscape those are
Massachusetts stanzas in their anywhere trees
dawn makes it glacial, reading a novel as plot bound
12.28.2003
"You're much too young..."
Did, after all, eat lunch in Dunedin. Saw a girl I think I recognized, drank bloody mary for waking, wrote imaginary air poems afterwards, drove back to Clearwater, those travelers departed, these continue. New Order's 1989 LP Technique is repeatedly played on the car stereo, never loud enough. Visionary beats, repeated sound best. Their opening lines ("You're much too young, to get a hold on me.") sealed our fates, listening in Boston and Tampa that year.
Did, after all, eat lunch in Dunedin. Saw a girl I think I recognized, drank bloody mary for waking, wrote imaginary air poems afterwards, drove back to Clearwater, those travelers departed, these continue. New Order's 1989 LP Technique is repeatedly played on the car stereo, never loud enough. Visionary beats, repeated sound best. Their opening lines ("You're much too young, to get a hold on me.") sealed our fates, listening in Boston and Tampa that year.
Dunedin
Drive up to Dunedin Sunday morning w/ K. and M. who drove up here from Port Charlotte and Naples. Visited the golf course, at those hours under the star blanket abroad. Eat breakfast. Wish them well in travels, read for the afternoon and evening on the porch, listen North Beach, or night airs. Days at the university have long since passed for the three of us, though studies continue. North Tampa was that fictional "seventh circle of hell." Exaggerated.
Listen to The Love Below played too loudly on Ramiro's stereo. It could be the next Illmatic, style-wise. Black Sheep's opening phrase on their first LP: "If it's about anything / then it's got to be style."
Drive up to Dunedin Sunday morning w/ K. and M. who drove up here from Port Charlotte and Naples. Visited the golf course, at those hours under the star blanket abroad. Eat breakfast. Wish them well in travels, read for the afternoon and evening on the porch, listen North Beach, or night airs. Days at the university have long since passed for the three of us, though studies continue. North Tampa was that fictional "seventh circle of hell." Exaggerated.
Listen to The Love Below played too loudly on Ramiro's stereo. It could be the next Illmatic, style-wise. Black Sheep's opening phrase on their first LP: "If it's about anything / then it's got to be style."
12.27.2003
"Porque estudiar, lo que se dice estudiar, no estudiábamos, pero no hubo taller al que no nos asomáramos por lo menos una vez, fue como una fiebre la que nos dio por los talleres, nos haciamos un par de tortas y allí nos presentábamos tan contentos, escuchábamos la lectura de poemas, escuchábamos las críticas, a veces tambien nosotros criticábamos, Xóchitl más que yo, y luego salíamos, ya de noche, y mientras nos encaminábamos a la parada del camión o del metro o bien echábamos a andar directamente a casa, pues entonces nos comíamos nuestras tortas, disfrutando de la noche del DF, una noche que a mí siempre me ha parecido preciosa, generalmente las noches aquí son frescas, brillantes, pero no frías, noches hechas para pasear o para coger, noches hechas para platicar sin apuro, que era lo que yo hacía con Xóchitl, platicar del hijo que íbamos a tener, de los poetas a los que habiamos escuchado recitar, de los libros que estábamos leyendo."
(Roberto Bolaño, Los detectives salvajes, 1998)
(Roberto Bolaño, Los detectives salvajes, 1998)
12.26.2003
Textos del desalojo / Antonia Palacios
Antonia Palacios (1915-2001) Textos del desalojo (Monte Avila Editores, 1974)
*
Homeless Texts (selections)
I don't subvert myself in my long repose. I don't break the lair that hides me. I don't want the days to warm my face. I don't pine for the angel of lost vision. I don't pray to the gods that sustain my speech. I don't want the spaces and the fixed rooftops, nor the vast lodgings full of signals. I don't want to see where my highest memory sits.
At the beginning we were many. We were dispersed, hoping to touch and hear one another. The place was vast and we barely managed a slight caress, a brief closeness. Some escaped. Others started to ignore the elements, they started to change their customs, silently hesitating, blind and breathless. Afterwards we were so few, barely two or three, trembling and very close. In the end just one. One so alone. And the broken wait began to extend itself above the desert.
Antonia Palacios (1915-2001) Textos del desalojo (Monte Avila Editores, 1974)
*
Homeless Texts (selections)
I don't subvert myself in my long repose. I don't break the lair that hides me. I don't want the days to warm my face. I don't pine for the angel of lost vision. I don't pray to the gods that sustain my speech. I don't want the spaces and the fixed rooftops, nor the vast lodgings full of signals. I don't want to see where my highest memory sits.
At the beginning we were many. We were dispersed, hoping to touch and hear one another. The place was vast and we barely managed a slight caress, a brief closeness. Some escaped. Others started to ignore the elements, they started to change their customs, silently hesitating, blind and breathless. Afterwards we were so few, barely two or three, trembling and very close. In the end just one. One so alone. And the broken wait began to extend itself above the desert.
12.25.2003
Notes for venezolanidad
(1)
Thinking of the chapters in Arturo Uslar Pietri's Letras y hombres de Venezuela (1948) on Andres Bello and Teresa de la Parra. How for several Venezuelan writers, their time spent in Venezuela itself was relatively short. In letters to friends, Teresa de la Parra would write from Europe of her nostalgia for Caracas. Even as her Ifigenia (1924) writes against the city, or within a dialectical reading of its maps. Wondering from what side of the city was she writing?
(2)
Antonia Palacios, Textos del desalojo (Monte Avila Editores, 1974):
"No me sublevo en mi largo reposo. No rompo la bóveda que me tiene oculta. No quiero que mi rostro lo calienten los días. No clamo por el ángel de la visión perdida. No clamo por los dioses que me ayudan el habla. No quiero los espacios, ni los techos fijos, ni los vastos aposentos llenos de señales. No quiero ver donde se anida mi más alta memoria."
(3)
Antonia Palacios, Textos del desalojo (Monte Avila Editores, 1974):
"Al principio éramos muchos. Andabamos dispersos, intentando tocarnos, escucharnos. El sitio era muy vasto y apenas alcanzábamos un leve roce, un fugaz acercamiento. Algunos se escaparon. Otros comenzaron a ignorar los elementos, comenzaron a cambiar costumbres tanteándose en silencio, ciegos y sin aliento. Después fuimos muy pocos, apenas dos o tres, muy juntos y temblando. Al fin tan sólo uno. Uno tan sólo. Y la febril espera comenzó a extenderse por encima del desierto."
(4)
It was a poem that could not be
completed w/ out recourse to citation.
A devalued line, engaged with
newsprint paragraphs instead
of stanzas. The "visionaries"
had begun to die off early in the book.
(5)
I hear you on the speakerphone
twice as distorted as Venetian blinds
hearing Jay-Z beats thru the ceiling
sunshine on my porch, smoked out
family is a dispersal acknowledged
fortuitous poematics emblem
silence for the future son's masque
the ache moved along the entire body
sleep was its sustenance
fingers made of rain, golden name
find your own diminishing method,
I hold to the ecstacy of my visions:
(6)
Repetition
in pieces The Love Below disguises
La Florida, single cd skip time vision
(7)
misreading your way through this
(1)
Thinking of the chapters in Arturo Uslar Pietri's Letras y hombres de Venezuela (1948) on Andres Bello and Teresa de la Parra. How for several Venezuelan writers, their time spent in Venezuela itself was relatively short. In letters to friends, Teresa de la Parra would write from Europe of her nostalgia for Caracas. Even as her Ifigenia (1924) writes against the city, or within a dialectical reading of its maps. Wondering from what side of the city was she writing?
(2)
Antonia Palacios, Textos del desalojo (Monte Avila Editores, 1974):
"No me sublevo en mi largo reposo. No rompo la bóveda que me tiene oculta. No quiero que mi rostro lo calienten los días. No clamo por el ángel de la visión perdida. No clamo por los dioses que me ayudan el habla. No quiero los espacios, ni los techos fijos, ni los vastos aposentos llenos de señales. No quiero ver donde se anida mi más alta memoria."
(3)
Antonia Palacios, Textos del desalojo (Monte Avila Editores, 1974):
"Al principio éramos muchos. Andabamos dispersos, intentando tocarnos, escucharnos. El sitio era muy vasto y apenas alcanzábamos un leve roce, un fugaz acercamiento. Algunos se escaparon. Otros comenzaron a ignorar los elementos, comenzaron a cambiar costumbres tanteándose en silencio, ciegos y sin aliento. Después fuimos muy pocos, apenas dos o tres, muy juntos y temblando. Al fin tan sólo uno. Uno tan sólo. Y la febril espera comenzó a extenderse por encima del desierto."
(4)
It was a poem that could not be
completed w/ out recourse to citation.
A devalued line, engaged with
newsprint paragraphs instead
of stanzas. The "visionaries"
had begun to die off early in the book.
(5)
I hear you on the speakerphone
twice as distorted as Venetian blinds
hearing Jay-Z beats thru the ceiling
sunshine on my porch, smoked out
family is a dispersal acknowledged
fortuitous poematics emblem
silence for the future son's masque
the ache moved along the entire body
sleep was its sustenance
fingers made of rain, golden name
find your own diminishing method,
I hold to the ecstacy of my visions:
(6)
Repetition
in pieces The Love Below disguises
La Florida, single cd skip time vision
(7)
misreading your way through this
Mythology
Mythology is too expensive to maintain
travelling in the convertible back seat north
out of Honolulu towards Kailua, stopped
for repetitive verbs along the way, drank
cold on the beach, there's none here
But old notebooks are interviewed with
frankinscense, mhyr statues at the temple
quarter for phone card plans, coins for calls
the notebook languages are outdated by now
Mythology is too expensive to maintain
travelling in the convertible back seat north
out of Honolulu towards Kailua, stopped
for repetitive verbs along the way, drank
cold on the beach, there's none here
But old notebooks are interviewed with
frankinscense, mhyr statues at the temple
quarter for phone card plans, coins for calls
the notebook languages are outdated by now
12.24.2003
"Ya el carácter intempestivo de la reciente visita de Fidel Castro a Venezuela concedía al acontecimiento cierta aureola de misterio, pero las circunstancias que han rodeado la entrevista del dictador cubano con el presidente Chávez no sólo refuerzan esa aureola, sino que nos llevan inevitablemente a recordar las palabras de Bolívar: "a la sombra del misterio no se oculta sino el crimen." "
{Oswaldo Barreto, "A la sombra del misterio," Tal Cual, 23 Diciembre, 2003}
{Oswaldo Barreto, "A la sombra del misterio," Tal Cual, 23 Diciembre, 2003}
Sickness
sin saber cuánto durará
trying (honestly) to write poems
that explain events to me when
choosing a specific one, in mind
forever adding lo que sea to keep
narrative inebriated
medicine for places, a discussion
on morals or poetics, she'll tell you
we're the complicated sons of a
place named after another, these
choices frozen arhythmic melody
from the frozen expanse, a repeated
entry, her calm for lines, each
writing on The Tablets, an array of
distance to dissolve our weights
sin saber cuánto durará
trying (honestly) to write poems
that explain events to me when
choosing a specific one, in mind
forever adding lo que sea to keep
narrative inebriated
medicine for places, a discussion
on morals or poetics, she'll tell you
we're the complicated sons of a
place named after another, these
choices frozen arhythmic melody
from the frozen expanse, a repeated
entry, her calm for lines, each
writing on The Tablets, an array of
distance to dissolve our weights
12.23.2003
"Para limpiarme de tanta politiquería recuerdo el precioso concierto de música venezolana con el que celebraron los 50 años del Aula Magna, o evoco la mirada feliz de mi querido poeta Armando Rojas Guardia, el jueves que se reunieron en la librería Monte Avila para leer textos en su honor Yolanda Pantín, Edda Armas y Rafael Cadenas.
Contrariando a los agoreros que aseguran que los intelectuales parecen dormidos en tiempos tan aciagos, Rojas Guardia resaltó en sus emotivas palabras de agradecimiento que estábamos en un acto en el que Gobierno y oposición--Monte Avila y PEN Club--se unían para darle un "abrazo común" a un escritor."
{Adriana Villanueva, "Ejercicios de optimismo," El Nacional, 6 Diciembre, 2003}
Contrariando a los agoreros que aseguran que los intelectuales parecen dormidos en tiempos tan aciagos, Rojas Guardia resaltó en sus emotivas palabras de agradecimiento que estábamos en un acto en el que Gobierno y oposición--Monte Avila y PEN Club--se unían para darle un "abrazo común" a un escritor."
{Adriana Villanueva, "Ejercicios de optimismo," El Nacional, 6 Diciembre, 2003}
12.22.2003
In Clearwater, focused The Beatles transcript
air conducted interview for late sleep across
Boston tunnels from Allston meridian morning
palm tree cross causeway inter counties route
Talk to Ramiro and Isabel, listen North Beach
*
Cristina Rivera Garza:
"Bajo la cruel monotonía del deluvio estival todos hablaban
escupían palabras y mapas y profecías y rezos."
("Tercer mundo")
Jen Hofer, tr. and ed. Sin puertas visibles (2003)
air conducted interview for late sleep across
Boston tunnels from Allston meridian morning
palm tree cross causeway inter counties route
Talk to Ramiro and Isabel, listen North Beach
*
Cristina Rivera Garza:
"Bajo la cruel monotonía del deluvio estival todos hablaban
escupían palabras y mapas y profecías y rezos."
("Tercer mundo")
Jen Hofer, tr. and ed. Sin puertas visibles (2003)
12.21.2003
12.20.2003
Savage Detectives
"Hoy he salido temprano a dar un paseo. Mi primera intención era dirigir mis pasos a la librería La Batalla del Ebro y platicar hasta la hora de comer con Don Crispín, pero al llegar la librería estaba cerrada. Así que me puse a caminar sin rumbo, disfrutando del sol de la mañana y casi sin darme cuenta llegué a la calle Mesones, en donde está la librería Rebeca Nodier. Pese a que en mi primera visita ya había descartado esta librería como un objetivo apreciable, decidí entrar. No había nadie. Un aire viciado, dulzón, envolvía los libros y las estanterías. Sentí unas voces provenientes de la rebotica, por lo que deduje que la ciega se hallaba enfrascada en la resolución de algún negocio. Decidí esperar ojeando libros viejos."
(Roberto Bolaño, Los detectives salvajes, 1998)
(Roberto Bolaño, Los detectives salvajes, 1998)
Ningun poema
"No envidio nadie nunca
ambiciono nada no debo
obediencia a ninguno"
{Café Tacuba, Cuatro caminos, 2003}
I
for the absent ones or indoors with steam
in her book of essays, Fanny Howe mentions
“The British Guyanese writer Wilson Harris has written:
‘The frame that conventional realism uses endorses
the absence of cosmic love. It consolidates the
nation-state and the vested interests of the nation-state.’ ”
maybe with this Jamaica Plain in mind, or Cambridge
on Center street JP with C., N. and A. after
sitting in the park by a frozen pond facing afternoon
sunlight, throwing ice slivers to break up on the ice
surface, along with stones and our branches
in the car, passing the bare tree above storefront
roofs, two dozen small blackbirds set on the branches
compact winter flowers, pensando en como se escribe
II
"ser delicado y esperar"
for the poem with stable
breath, a regular meter
to furnish the house
wearing frequently postured
English, scant originality
mostly desilusionado por
la falta de monte que me asedia
en estos lares, without being
sure that that's the right word
according to my notebook, Bolaño is
rewriting Kerouac and Cortázar,
identificandose (desde España)
as "latinoamericano," rather than
"chileno," "mexicano," or "español"
the swelling of the seas
not wanting to die so soon
hoping for the evening tea
where there's room for more
the Palestinian and Lebanese
poets I don't know but want to
Fadwa Toukan (1917-2003)
Salah Stetie read only in
Alfredo Silva Estrada's trans-
lations for Ediciones Angria
imitation theory, aire
*
Discussion
Over at Caracas Chronicles, an excellent discussion between New Left Review commentator Gregory Wilpert and Venezuelan blogger/journalist Francisco Toro. Toro's points are worth reading in full:
"Isn't it a hateful, discriminatory, borderline racist but at the very least exoticist vision of Latin America one that leads you to argue that the basic procedural and citizen rights that you take as non-negotiable in the first world are "unrealistic" in Venezuela? Is real democracy, real political freedom, then also unrealistic in Venezuela? Are we not entitled to it? Are we not fully justified when we fight for it? Or is it only in gringos and Europeans who are entitled to political freedom?
Societies need wildly unrealistic people, Greg, they call us intellectuals. Me, I will wildly unrealistically support any political movement that demands the democratic rights of all its citizens, whichever side of the political divide those people my be on. It's just that I can see, to my utter spookment, that many of the governments cadres - the ones I know are in Obispos municipality in Barinas, not the Caracas barrios - have an ultimately autoritarian attitude to political power to match Chavez's perfectly! Dogmatism and intolerance of dissent are a fundamental part of the president's political imagination, it's very hard for me to see how the resulting instability and extremism can be anything but damaging."
"No envidio nadie nunca
ambiciono nada no debo
obediencia a ninguno"
{Café Tacuba, Cuatro caminos, 2003}
I
for the absent ones or indoors with steam
in her book of essays, Fanny Howe mentions
“The British Guyanese writer Wilson Harris has written:
‘The frame that conventional realism uses endorses
the absence of cosmic love. It consolidates the
nation-state and the vested interests of the nation-state.’ ”
maybe with this Jamaica Plain in mind, or Cambridge
on Center street JP with C., N. and A. after
sitting in the park by a frozen pond facing afternoon
sunlight, throwing ice slivers to break up on the ice
surface, along with stones and our branches
in the car, passing the bare tree above storefront
roofs, two dozen small blackbirds set on the branches
compact winter flowers, pensando en como se escribe
II
"ser delicado y esperar"
for the poem with stable
breath, a regular meter
to furnish the house
wearing frequently postured
English, scant originality
mostly desilusionado por
la falta de monte que me asedia
en estos lares, without being
sure that that's the right word
according to my notebook, Bolaño is
rewriting Kerouac and Cortázar,
identificandose (desde España)
as "latinoamericano," rather than
"chileno," "mexicano," or "español"
the swelling of the seas
not wanting to die so soon
hoping for the evening tea
where there's room for more
the Palestinian and Lebanese
poets I don't know but want to
Fadwa Toukan (1917-2003)
Salah Stetie read only in
Alfredo Silva Estrada's trans-
lations for Ediciones Angria
imitation theory, aire
*
Discussion
Over at Caracas Chronicles, an excellent discussion between New Left Review commentator Gregory Wilpert and Venezuelan blogger/journalist Francisco Toro. Toro's points are worth reading in full:
"Isn't it a hateful, discriminatory, borderline racist but at the very least exoticist vision of Latin America one that leads you to argue that the basic procedural and citizen rights that you take as non-negotiable in the first world are "unrealistic" in Venezuela? Is real democracy, real political freedom, then also unrealistic in Venezuela? Are we not entitled to it? Are we not fully justified when we fight for it? Or is it only in gringos and Europeans who are entitled to political freedom?
Societies need wildly unrealistic people, Greg, they call us intellectuals. Me, I will wildly unrealistically support any political movement that demands the democratic rights of all its citizens, whichever side of the political divide those people my be on. It's just that I can see, to my utter spookment, that many of the governments cadres - the ones I know are in Obispos municipality in Barinas, not the Caracas barrios - have an ultimately autoritarian attitude to political power to match Chavez's perfectly! Dogmatism and intolerance of dissent are a fundamental part of the president's political imagination, it's very hard for me to see how the resulting instability and extremism can be anything but damaging."
12.18.2003
I can just disappear
and let silence envelop
whose fingers made of rain
wanting breath or branches
computerless Ahhhhh...
only "notebooking" or turning
pages, ignoring labor though
weight walks through us
"triturar" vs "descansar"
aqui no queda nada
"aire sobre el aire"
imitator=reader
tastes of mountain air
rainbow, crow signs
and let silence envelop
whose fingers made of rain
wanting breath or branches
computerless Ahhhhh...
only "notebooking" or turning
pages, ignoring labor though
weight walks through us
"triturar" vs "descansar"
aqui no queda nada
"aire sobre el aire"
imitator=reader
tastes of mountain air
rainbow, crow signs
Listening
"A new representative, presentin Jean Grae
Customer, client, president, fuck Gen X, we today, nigga
It's hostile today, hot loans and baby mamas to pay
Hot rocks for dollars to sway
What's your hustle, I'm doin mine
And if it don't work - fuck that, it got to
The rhymes too hot to experience how not to
I'm toxic like vodka and gin
200 proof on the rocks, I do it cause I can
Simple, you should stop and I told you who I do it for
And I'm not goin anywhere cause me and life is married and I ain't gettin divorced
So where my hungry women at, my niggas ready to set it
We can all eat, what you need, let's go get it"
{Jean Grae, Attack of the Attacking Things, 2002}
"A new representative, presentin Jean Grae
Customer, client, president, fuck Gen X, we today, nigga
It's hostile today, hot loans and baby mamas to pay
Hot rocks for dollars to sway
What's your hustle, I'm doin mine
And if it don't work - fuck that, it got to
The rhymes too hot to experience how not to
I'm toxic like vodka and gin
200 proof on the rocks, I do it cause I can
Simple, you should stop and I told you who I do it for
And I'm not goin anywhere cause me and life is married and I ain't gettin divorced
So where my hungry women at, my niggas ready to set it
We can all eat, what you need, let's go get it"
{Jean Grae, Attack of the Attacking Things, 2002}
"o no reply, just my skinny arms resting
on an alabaster rendition of Mary"
Bought a copy of Carl Annarummo's chapbook, $4 Poems (Pettycoat Relaxer, 2003) last night. And by chance, from the author himself. Good to meet you, Carl.
The poems are, as expected, wonderful. Read the first half last night and I'm looking forward to the rest.
on an alabaster rendition of Mary"
Bought a copy of Carl Annarummo's chapbook, $4 Poems (Pettycoat Relaxer, 2003) last night. And by chance, from the author himself. Good to meet you, Carl.
The poems are, as expected, wonderful. Read the first half last night and I'm looking forward to the rest.
“occult instability”
Hello to Jean Vengua and Lenny Mendoza Strobel. It’s exciting for me to read your comments on Wilson Harris, since his work is important to my own living and writing. I remember when I began reading his beautiful first novel, The Palace of the Peacock, five years ago here in Boston. At that time I had not returned to Venezuela in too many years, and his writing was a gift that allowed me to recover elements of my life there I had thought were lost forever.
I read his novels as epic poems that, like Derek Walcott's work, recontextualize dominant European narratives within African and Asian diasporas, alongside the autochthonic cultures that bind us in the Americas. His focus on “lo indio” in this hemisphere, particularly, was liberating, since it allowed me to write inside English, with the understanding that “Indianness” was never completely erased. And that, in fact, English could not survive without the “Indian.” Despite the genocidal impulses of modernity, postmodernity.
His writing seems to thrive on the history of interrelation among those of us “colonials” who have survived centuries of war. Francisco Bone, in Jonestown, inhabits his “ghost” body as a lament and as an archive that is fully updated and alive. We are blessed to share these spaces with Wilson Harris.
*
“This meditation by the great Guyanese writer Wilson Harris on the void of misgiving in the textuality of colonial history reveals the cultural and historical dimension of that Third Space of enunciations which I have made the precondition for the articulation of cultural difference. He sees it as accompanying the ‘assimilation of contraries’ and creating that occult instability which presages powerful cultural changes. It is significant that the productive capacities of this Third Space have a colonial or postcolonial provenance. For a willingness to descend into that alien territory—where I have led you—may reveal that the theoretical recognition of the split-space of enunciation may open the way to conceptualizing an international culture, based not on the exoticism of multiculturalism or the diversity of cultures, but on the inscription and articulation of culture’s hybridity. To that end we should remember that it is the ‘inter’—the cutting edge of translation and negotiation, the in-between space—that carries the burden of the meaning of culture.”
{Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 1994}
Hello to Jean Vengua and Lenny Mendoza Strobel. It’s exciting for me to read your comments on Wilson Harris, since his work is important to my own living and writing. I remember when I began reading his beautiful first novel, The Palace of the Peacock, five years ago here in Boston. At that time I had not returned to Venezuela in too many years, and his writing was a gift that allowed me to recover elements of my life there I had thought were lost forever.
I read his novels as epic poems that, like Derek Walcott's work, recontextualize dominant European narratives within African and Asian diasporas, alongside the autochthonic cultures that bind us in the Americas. His focus on “lo indio” in this hemisphere, particularly, was liberating, since it allowed me to write inside English, with the understanding that “Indianness” was never completely erased. And that, in fact, English could not survive without the “Indian.” Despite the genocidal impulses of modernity, postmodernity.
His writing seems to thrive on the history of interrelation among those of us “colonials” who have survived centuries of war. Francisco Bone, in Jonestown, inhabits his “ghost” body as a lament and as an archive that is fully updated and alive. We are blessed to share these spaces with Wilson Harris.
*
“This meditation by the great Guyanese writer Wilson Harris on the void of misgiving in the textuality of colonial history reveals the cultural and historical dimension of that Third Space of enunciations which I have made the precondition for the articulation of cultural difference. He sees it as accompanying the ‘assimilation of contraries’ and creating that occult instability which presages powerful cultural changes. It is significant that the productive capacities of this Third Space have a colonial or postcolonial provenance. For a willingness to descend into that alien territory—where I have led you—may reveal that the theoretical recognition of the split-space of enunciation may open the way to conceptualizing an international culture, based not on the exoticism of multiculturalism or the diversity of cultures, but on the inscription and articulation of culture’s hybridity. To that end we should remember that it is the ‘inter’—the cutting edge of translation and negotiation, the in-between space—that carries the burden of the meaning of culture.”
{Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 1994}
12.17.2003
Self
"Yo Mos, what's gettin ready to happen with Hip-Hop?"
(Where do you think Hip-Hop is goin?)
I tell em, "You know what's gonna happen with Hip-Hop?
Whatever's happening with us"
If we smoked out, Hip-Hop is gonna be smoked out
If we doin alright, Hip-Hop is gonna be doin alright
People talk about Hip-Hop like it's some giant livin in the hillside
comin down to visit the townspeople
We are Hip-Hop
Me, you, everybody, we are Hip-Hop
So Hip-Hop is goin where we goin
So the next time you ask yourself where Hip-Hop is goin
ask yourself.. where am I goin? How am I doin?"
{Mos Def, Black On Both Sides, 1999}
"Yo Mos, what's gettin ready to happen with Hip-Hop?"
(Where do you think Hip-Hop is goin?)
I tell em, "You know what's gonna happen with Hip-Hop?
Whatever's happening with us"
If we smoked out, Hip-Hop is gonna be smoked out
If we doin alright, Hip-Hop is gonna be doin alright
People talk about Hip-Hop like it's some giant livin in the hillside
comin down to visit the townspeople
We are Hip-Hop
Me, you, everybody, we are Hip-Hop
So Hip-Hop is goin where we goin
So the next time you ask yourself where Hip-Hop is goin
ask yourself.. where am I goin? How am I doin?"
{Mos Def, Black On Both Sides, 1999}
"It's getting hectic..."
raps Guru on the song he and DJ Premier perform with the Brand New Heavies on that early 90s masterpiece, Heavy Rhyme Experience. The more I talk the less I want to, particularly when it comes to "politics." But politics includes waking up and grabbing the newspaper on our way out the building. Politics is how one talks and how one listens. Politics is acknowledging that the "masses" are indeed "asses." Avoid that route. At the risk of coming across as an "elitist poet," the central concern is self-education: family, friends, teachers, books. Run as fast as you can away from the devils (Bush II, Chavez, etc.) of the world. Nothing but death in their realms.
And we are living the furies. I prefer books. Even though I know there is no escape.
I've always mistrusted my own voice in groups larger than two or three people. My focus must be to read more and to listen more. To be thankful for the pleasure that is Los detectives salvajes. Or Fanny Howe's essays, Jean Grae, Julieta Venegas, and Cafe Tacuba's recent CDs, Sandra Cisneros's Caramelo and Eileen Tabios's prose poems. "The rest is dross."
There is no country here, in these words. There is no nation within my flesh. These words are neither Venezuelan nor American. They are not Indian, white, Latino, or mestizo. Moving away from certainty, and away from form. Back to poetry and its beautiful forms. The novel's essential dialectic. As a reader only, only read.
"So what could you do in the times which exist
You can't fake moves on your brother or your sis
But if your sis is a (bitch), brother is a jerk
Leave 'em both alone and continue with your work
Whatever it may be in today's society
Everything is fair, at least that how it seems to me
You must be honest and true to the next
Don't be phony and expect one not to flex
Especially if you rhyme, you have to live by the pen..."
{A Tribe Called Quest, The Low End Theory, 1991}
raps Guru on the song he and DJ Premier perform with the Brand New Heavies on that early 90s masterpiece, Heavy Rhyme Experience. The more I talk the less I want to, particularly when it comes to "politics." But politics includes waking up and grabbing the newspaper on our way out the building. Politics is how one talks and how one listens. Politics is acknowledging that the "masses" are indeed "asses." Avoid that route. At the risk of coming across as an "elitist poet," the central concern is self-education: family, friends, teachers, books. Run as fast as you can away from the devils (Bush II, Chavez, etc.) of the world. Nothing but death in their realms.
And we are living the furies. I prefer books. Even though I know there is no escape.
I've always mistrusted my own voice in groups larger than two or three people. My focus must be to read more and to listen more. To be thankful for the pleasure that is Los detectives salvajes. Or Fanny Howe's essays, Jean Grae, Julieta Venegas, and Cafe Tacuba's recent CDs, Sandra Cisneros's Caramelo and Eileen Tabios's prose poems. "The rest is dross."
There is no country here, in these words. There is no nation within my flesh. These words are neither Venezuelan nor American. They are not Indian, white, Latino, or mestizo. Moving away from certainty, and away from form. Back to poetry and its beautiful forms. The novel's essential dialectic. As a reader only, only read.
"So what could you do in the times which exist
You can't fake moves on your brother or your sis
But if your sis is a (bitch), brother is a jerk
Leave 'em both alone and continue with your work
Whatever it may be in today's society
Everything is fair, at least that how it seems to me
You must be honest and true to the next
Don't be phony and expect one not to flex
Especially if you rhyme, you have to live by the pen..."
{A Tribe Called Quest, The Low End Theory, 1991}
12.16.2003
"Preámbulo
Prueba la taza sin sopa
ya no hay sopa
solloza hermano
prueba el traje
bien hecho
a tu medida
te cuelga.........te sobra por
la solapa
nos falta sopa”.
{Juan Sánchez Peláez, Rasgos comunes, 1975}
*
Obituary for Juan Sánchez Peláez by Delia Meneses (en español) at Tal Cual.
Prueba la taza sin sopa
ya no hay sopa
solloza hermano
prueba el traje
bien hecho
a tu medida
te cuelga.........te sobra por
la solapa
nos falta sopa”.
{Juan Sánchez Peláez, Rasgos comunes, 1975}
*
Obituary for Juan Sánchez Peláez by Delia Meneses (en español) at Tal Cual.
Ana Teresa Torres
In her 1992 novel Doña Inés contra el olvido, Ana Teresa Torres (Caracas, 1945) traces the story of a single lawsuit within a divided family. The bitter dispute between two branches of a Venezuelan family is narrated over three centuries by the ghost of Doña Inés. As the novel Jonestown by Wilson Harris (discussed recently by Jean Vengua and Leny Mendoza Strobel) philosophizes Guyana, Torres’s narrative can be read as an allegorical commentary on contemporary Venezuela. In recent months, Torres has published several essays in Tal Cual. These essays on the Venezuelan crisis have been lucid and insightful.
Gregory Rabassa’s translation of this novel (Doña Inés vs Oblivion) was published by Louisiana State University Press in 1999 (paperback: Grove Press, 2000). [Translation note: Rabassa’s use of “corn cakes” instead of “arepas” is awkward.]
“Waiting for the offices to open, he walked up and down the narrow sidewalks for a while; from time to time among the very tall buildings of the banks, brokerages, and financial institutions would appear an Arab’s hardware store, an Italian’s shoe-repair cubbyhole, a Spaniard’s bar with its smell of fried food; surges of people were coming out of the Capitolio subway station, dodging holes in the sidewalk, the stands of street vendors, and braking buses. José Tomás went into a lunchroom, managed to jostle his way to the counter, and shouted so the Portugese behind it could hear his order. The place was packed, and arms holding cups of coffee, glasses of juice, corn cakes, and the daily special reached over his head. Somebody bumped against him without noticing and spilled coffee on his pants. José Tomás cleaned himself off slowly and quietly, ate rapidly in order to get to the Congress. It wasn’t easy to get past the guard post; they’d asked a lot of questions, he’d shown them his party membership card and his credentials as councilman several times, and the same number of times he’d heard, Please wait; you can’t pass right now. People with briefcases were going in and out, along with newspapermen and television crews; automobiles were constantly stopping in front and disgorging important people and their bodyguards.”
(230)
“Besides, at this point promises have grown so muddled that there’s no way to put them in order, and I no longer know whether Columbus invented democracy or Rómulo Betancourt the earthly paradise or whether liberalism pledged agrarian reform or the Adecos independence. No matter what you were waiting for, you were very much mistaken in your patience. This is a matter more for ingenuity than for perseverance, and let me get back to the proof of that.”
(234)
In her 1992 novel Doña Inés contra el olvido, Ana Teresa Torres (Caracas, 1945) traces the story of a single lawsuit within a divided family. The bitter dispute between two branches of a Venezuelan family is narrated over three centuries by the ghost of Doña Inés. As the novel Jonestown by Wilson Harris (discussed recently by Jean Vengua and Leny Mendoza Strobel) philosophizes Guyana, Torres’s narrative can be read as an allegorical commentary on contemporary Venezuela. In recent months, Torres has published several essays in Tal Cual. These essays on the Venezuelan crisis have been lucid and insightful.
Gregory Rabassa’s translation of this novel (Doña Inés vs Oblivion) was published by Louisiana State University Press in 1999 (paperback: Grove Press, 2000). [Translation note: Rabassa’s use of “corn cakes” instead of “arepas” is awkward.]
“Waiting for the offices to open, he walked up and down the narrow sidewalks for a while; from time to time among the very tall buildings of the banks, brokerages, and financial institutions would appear an Arab’s hardware store, an Italian’s shoe-repair cubbyhole, a Spaniard’s bar with its smell of fried food; surges of people were coming out of the Capitolio subway station, dodging holes in the sidewalk, the stands of street vendors, and braking buses. José Tomás went into a lunchroom, managed to jostle his way to the counter, and shouted so the Portugese behind it could hear his order. The place was packed, and arms holding cups of coffee, glasses of juice, corn cakes, and the daily special reached over his head. Somebody bumped against him without noticing and spilled coffee on his pants. José Tomás cleaned himself off slowly and quietly, ate rapidly in order to get to the Congress. It wasn’t easy to get past the guard post; they’d asked a lot of questions, he’d shown them his party membership card and his credentials as councilman several times, and the same number of times he’d heard, Please wait; you can’t pass right now. People with briefcases were going in and out, along with newspapermen and television crews; automobiles were constantly stopping in front and disgorging important people and their bodyguards.”
(230)
“Besides, at this point promises have grown so muddled that there’s no way to put them in order, and I no longer know whether Columbus invented democracy or Rómulo Betancourt the earthly paradise or whether liberalism pledged agrarian reform or the Adecos independence. No matter what you were waiting for, you were very much mistaken in your patience. This is a matter more for ingenuity than for perseverance, and let me get back to the proof of that.”
(234)
“Salmo 1
Bienaventurado el hombre que no sigue las consignas del Partido
ni asiste a sus mítines
ni se sienta en la mesa con los gangsters
ni con los Generales en el Consejo de Guerra
Bienaventurado el hombre que no espía a su hermano
ni delata a su compañero de colegio
Bienaventurado el hombre que no lee los anuncios comerciales
ni escucha sus radios
ni cree en sus slogans
..........Será como un árbol plantado junto a una fuente”
{Ernesto Cardenal, Salmos, Madrid: Editorial Trotta, 1998}
Bienaventurado el hombre que no sigue las consignas del Partido
ni asiste a sus mítines
ni se sienta en la mesa con los gangsters
ni con los Generales en el Consejo de Guerra
Bienaventurado el hombre que no espía a su hermano
ni delata a su compañero de colegio
Bienaventurado el hombre que no lee los anuncios comerciales
ni escucha sus radios
ni cree en sus slogans
..........Será como un árbol plantado junto a una fuente”
{Ernesto Cardenal, Salmos, Madrid: Editorial Trotta, 1998}
12.14.2003
Los detectives salvajes
Where have I been in the last five years that I had not read Roberto Bolaño's fantastic novel?
Stephen Malkmus:
"Years and years have passed since the Puritans invaded our soil
Just like those Arab terrorists you'll never know
But today the Gods can't make us quake
We see our lives as situations: eyes are eyes and teeth are teeth..."
{Pavement, "Give It a Day," CD single, Treble Kicker, 1996}
"Years and years have passed since the Puritans invaded our soil
Just like those Arab terrorists you'll never know
But today the Gods can't make us quake
We see our lives as situations: eyes are eyes and teeth are teeth..."
{Pavement, "Give It a Day," CD single, Treble Kicker, 1996}
12.13.2003
"Rimbaud
No tenemos talento, es que
no tenemos talento, lo que nos pasa
es que no tenemos talento, a lo sumo
oímos voces, eso es lo que oímos: un
centelleo, un parpadeo, y ahí mismo voces. Teresa
oyó voces, el loco
que vi ayer en el Metro oyó voces.
¿Cuál Metro si aquí no hay Metro? Nunca
hubo aquí Metro, lo que hubo
fueron al galope caballos
si es que eso, si es que en este cuarto
de tres por tres hubo alguna vez caballos
en el espejo.
Pero somos precoces, eso sí que somos, muy
precoces, más
que Rimbaud a nuestra edad; ¿más?,
¿todavía mas que ese hijo de madre que
lo perdió todo en la apuesta? Viniera y
nos viera así todos sucios, estallados
en nuestro átomo mísero, viejos
de inmundicia y gloria. Un
puntapie nos diera en el hocico."
{Gonzalo Rojas, El alumbrado, 1986}
No tenemos talento, es que
no tenemos talento, lo que nos pasa
es que no tenemos talento, a lo sumo
oímos voces, eso es lo que oímos: un
centelleo, un parpadeo, y ahí mismo voces. Teresa
oyó voces, el loco
que vi ayer en el Metro oyó voces.
¿Cuál Metro si aquí no hay Metro? Nunca
hubo aquí Metro, lo que hubo
fueron al galope caballos
si es que eso, si es que en este cuarto
de tres por tres hubo alguna vez caballos
en el espejo.
Pero somos precoces, eso sí que somos, muy
precoces, más
que Rimbaud a nuestra edad; ¿más?,
¿todavía mas que ese hijo de madre que
lo perdió todo en la apuesta? Viniera y
nos viera así todos sucios, estallados
en nuestro átomo mísero, viejos
de inmundicia y gloria. Un
puntapie nos diera en el hocico."
{Gonzalo Rojas, El alumbrado, 1986}
12.12.2003
"Our favored idea of the Kafkaesque is of a "labyrinthine bureaucracy." We think of thin corridors that lead only to doors that in turn lead to other doors. In fact, Kafka wrote very few scenes of this kind. What is bureaucratic and labyrinthine in The Trial is not the rooms in which Josef K. finds himself, nor even the people who obstruct him, but rather the infinite time it takes to get anywhere at all. What is labyrinthine, in Kafka, is time itself."
{Zadie Smith, "The Limited Circle Is Pure: Franz Kafka Versus the Novel," The New Republic, Nov 3, 2003}
{Zadie Smith, "The Limited Circle Is Pure: Franz Kafka Versus the Novel," The New Republic, Nov 3, 2003}
12.11.2003
"O Saisons..."
Chilean poet Gonzalo Rojas (b. 1917) has won the Premio Cervantes. He was involved with the grupo Mandrágora in the 1940s. I've read that he lived for a while in Caracas, and I'm also aware of his life-long friendship with Sánchez Peláez. So much more that I must read.
*
Noticed that Louise Varese's translation of A Season in Hell is on the list for Chris's poetry class. I was talking about imitation with C. a few days ago and I realized that most of what I've tried to write, poetry-wise, has been an "imitation" of that marvelous book. And specifically Varese's translation (since I don't know French). Just this excerpt alone is enough to transport me: "O saisons, O chateaux!" Rimbaud's appeal seems endless.
*
Poets that I would like to add, eventually, to Antología:
Hanni Ossot
Yolanda Pantin
Eugenio Montejo
Cintia Desantis
Esdras Parra
Adhely Rivero
Reynaldo Perez So
Ida Gramko
Alfredo Silva Estrada
Yelimar Becerra
Luis Alberto Crespo
*
Jen Hofer's introduction to her anthology of Mexican poetry, Sin puertas visibles, is excellent. As happens with Rimbaud, when I read Dolores Dorantes's poems I feel as though my vision has been amplified. Certain poets remind me that Vision is central. One must struggle to "see," because usually most of us are blind.
*
Even though I am often consumed by anger and negativity, I can't quite understand poets who try to deny Vision. Perry Farrel screams the word in (I think) Ritual de lo Habitual; "Vision!"
Chilean poet Gonzalo Rojas (b. 1917) has won the Premio Cervantes. He was involved with the grupo Mandrágora in the 1940s. I've read that he lived for a while in Caracas, and I'm also aware of his life-long friendship with Sánchez Peláez. So much more that I must read.
*
Noticed that Louise Varese's translation of A Season in Hell is on the list for Chris's poetry class. I was talking about imitation with C. a few days ago and I realized that most of what I've tried to write, poetry-wise, has been an "imitation" of that marvelous book. And specifically Varese's translation (since I don't know French). Just this excerpt alone is enough to transport me: "O saisons, O chateaux!" Rimbaud's appeal seems endless.
*
Poets that I would like to add, eventually, to Antología:
Hanni Ossot
Yolanda Pantin
Eugenio Montejo
Cintia Desantis
Esdras Parra
Adhely Rivero
Reynaldo Perez So
Ida Gramko
Alfredo Silva Estrada
Yelimar Becerra
Luis Alberto Crespo
*
Jen Hofer's introduction to her anthology of Mexican poetry, Sin puertas visibles, is excellent. As happens with Rimbaud, when I read Dolores Dorantes's poems I feel as though my vision has been amplified. Certain poets remind me that Vision is central. One must struggle to "see," because usually most of us are blind.
*
Even though I am often consumed by anger and negativity, I can't quite understand poets who try to deny Vision. Perry Farrel screams the word in (I think) Ritual de lo Habitual; "Vision!"
12.10.2003
" 4.
Did I tell you ALL MY RELATIONS
is often shortened to AMR
and found in pieces by Suquamish artists?
Small Press Traffic signed me on
to their Indigenous Writing Conference
where I am to deliver my latest installment
of the autobiographical prose poem
"Prairie Niggahs 4 Life, Yo" then I'll
sit in on a panel of young writers and
finally pick up the check. And then it's my turn
to resign bitch. The aesthetics of resistence
is futile. I will sing your lines until I die.
AS EVER 2002 R.I.P. AALIYAH, JOHN WIENERS."
{Cedar Sigo, Thank You Letters, Angry Dog Press, 2003}
Did I tell you ALL MY RELATIONS
is often shortened to AMR
and found in pieces by Suquamish artists?
Small Press Traffic signed me on
to their Indigenous Writing Conference
where I am to deliver my latest installment
of the autobiographical prose poem
"Prairie Niggahs 4 Life, Yo" then I'll
sit in on a panel of young writers and
finally pick up the check. And then it's my turn
to resign bitch. The aesthetics of resistence
is futile. I will sing your lines until I die.
AS EVER 2002 R.I.P. AALIYAH, JOHN WIENERS."
{Cedar Sigo, Thank You Letters, Angry Dog Press, 2003}
12.09.2003
Detour
Pleasures of misdirections and detours. The storm stranded me in San Jose, CA yesterday. So, many thanks to C. and J. for their kindness and hospitality, letting me stay on their couch in San Francisco. Enjoyed talking, looking at books, and seeing Aztec dancers and drummers on the way to a taqueria for dinner. Wish I could have spent longer there. A Thank You Letter to both of you.
*
Had a chance to see The Revolution Will Not Be Televised last night. Fascinating footage up close w/ Ch______ & Co. in April of 2002. I'm feeling too good to say much about the film. Except to note how many times I chuckled at the things Ch______ said in his meetings w/ cabinet members. Without malice, I'm amazed by the magnitude of his ignorance. His cliches and slogans are astoundingly adolescent.
It is a long tragedy we are living through.
*
Wrote "poems" on the commuter rail from San Francisco to San Jose this morning. Feels like learning to write again. Or, the ever blocked hand. But I aspire to their beauty and they are what I live for, whether they appear on a page, in a human, in a tree, an animal, or a landscape. Their apparitions are almost always blessings.
*
Wilson Harris, The Mask of the Beggar (2003):
"Art was a substitute through which one was involved, whether as a goddess or a god, to respond to multiple cries in the Silences of a numb humanity of wood or glass or flesh. Whatever divisions one made, whatever philosophical calculations, none were to be taken literally." (26)
Pleasures of misdirections and detours. The storm stranded me in San Jose, CA yesterday. So, many thanks to C. and J. for their kindness and hospitality, letting me stay on their couch in San Francisco. Enjoyed talking, looking at books, and seeing Aztec dancers and drummers on the way to a taqueria for dinner. Wish I could have spent longer there. A Thank You Letter to both of you.
*
Had a chance to see The Revolution Will Not Be Televised last night. Fascinating footage up close w/ Ch______ & Co. in April of 2002. I'm feeling too good to say much about the film. Except to note how many times I chuckled at the things Ch______ said in his meetings w/ cabinet members. Without malice, I'm amazed by the magnitude of his ignorance. His cliches and slogans are astoundingly adolescent.
It is a long tragedy we are living through.
*
Wrote "poems" on the commuter rail from San Francisco to San Jose this morning. Feels like learning to write again. Or, the ever blocked hand. But I aspire to their beauty and they are what I live for, whether they appear on a page, in a human, in a tree, an animal, or a landscape. Their apparitions are almost always blessings.
*
Wilson Harris, The Mask of the Beggar (2003):
"Art was a substitute through which one was involved, whether as a goddess or a god, to respond to multiple cries in the Silences of a numb humanity of wood or glass or flesh. Whatever divisions one made, whatever philosophical calculations, none were to be taken literally." (26)
12.07.2003
Signos primarios: XII
Juan Sánchez Peláez
Sostengo el árbol que acreciento. Y al astro redondo lo cubre una selva de hechizos. Tú pasas descalza en la noche como el relámpago en el corazón de la corteza. Con mi índice pulo lamparas en tu pecho. Una joven visionaria me busca en el sol de los macetones rubios y coloco en ella atención máxima hasta inscribir su nombre en la realidad y labrar mi deseo.
Rasgos comunes (Caracas: Monte Avila Editores, 1975)
Sostengo el árbol que acreciento. Y al astro redondo lo cubre una selva de hechizos. Tú pasas descalza en la noche como el relámpago en el corazón de la corteza. Con mi índice pulo lamparas en tu pecho. Una joven visionaria me busca en el sol de los macetones rubios y coloco en ella atención máxima hasta inscribir su nombre en la realidad y labrar mi deseo.
Rasgos comunes (Caracas: Monte Avila Editores, 1975)
Kailua / Antología
I went with N. and F. by car along the coast to Kailua, swimming in milk blue water, very thickest rain clouds clung to the cliffs of mountain tops.
I've opened a new blog where, in a few days, I will post a mini-anthology of twelve (or more) Venezuelan poets. A selection of translations i've posted at this site. I want the poems to all be gathred in one spot, over at:
// chicha press dot blog spot dot com //
It will be called Antología, and it will be posted a few days from now. Today I enjoy a delay in Hawai`i until Sunday. Lectores. Copyright, for the people, todo eso.
I went with N. and F. by car along the coast to Kailua, swimming in milk blue water, very thickest rain clouds clung to the cliffs of mountain tops.
I've opened a new blog where, in a few days, I will post a mini-anthology of twelve (or more) Venezuelan poets. A selection of translations i've posted at this site. I want the poems to all be gathred in one spot, over at:
// chicha press dot blog spot dot com //
It will be called Antología, and it will be posted a few days from now. Today I enjoy a delay in Hawai`i until Sunday. Lectores. Copyright, for the people, todo eso.
12.06.2003
Trees
A devotee of trees (their branches), unsubtle
Dedicated to the farmers and their grace
With diminishing years, but amplified flowers
This slowness we received from handshakes
A "vision" across the room, animated talking
With her hands and black hair, a coincidence
We use computers for relief from the tragic
Deceits of self-awareness diluted for "the poem"
Who speaks in failure tones, unaffordable
Feelings of place, gesture, unaware fingers
It took one sentence, or one phrase, on glance
Even to calm us and sustain the hallucination
For days and days, speaking repetition's ohm
It was always "a sham" ("but the shambles is a sham /
A few angels on their farm") we might just visit villages
We might speak to each other in code, franchise
That "poem" feeling to make sure it is dead
Happy with eyes and legs crossed at night
Under the warmest stars, who've published
Manifestos for the architects who shape my words
Who was the Muse, her inimitable beauty
Who encouraged my delusionary grip on the keys
It is a study of addiction (words, limbs, curves,
Buildings, trees, houses, voice, self, "vision")
Why should you "publish" these drafts?
Because they deserve their unfluency
And this apple we hope to buy at 7 Eleven
Is for research purposes, all symbols and
Concise evasion, wanting to read myself
Writing for thirty-three and stanzas, overwrought
A devotee of trees (their branches), unsubtle
Dedicated to the farmers and their grace
With diminishing years, but amplified flowers
This slowness we received from handshakes
A "vision" across the room, animated talking
With her hands and black hair, a coincidence
We use computers for relief from the tragic
Deceits of self-awareness diluted for "the poem"
Who speaks in failure tones, unaffordable
Feelings of place, gesture, unaware fingers
It took one sentence, or one phrase, on glance
Even to calm us and sustain the hallucination
For days and days, speaking repetition's ohm
It was always "a sham" ("but the shambles is a sham /
A few angels on their farm") we might just visit villages
We might speak to each other in code, franchise
That "poem" feeling to make sure it is dead
Happy with eyes and legs crossed at night
Under the warmest stars, who've published
Manifestos for the architects who shape my words
Who was the Muse, her inimitable beauty
Who encouraged my delusionary grip on the keys
It is a study of addiction (words, limbs, curves,
Buildings, trees, houses, voice, self, "vision")
Why should you "publish" these drafts?
Because they deserve their unfluency
And this apple we hope to buy at 7 Eleven
Is for research purposes, all symbols and
Concise evasion, wanting to read myself
Writing for thirty-three and stanzas, overwrought
Banyan
I want to read and read and read
Noiselessly, imitating the banyan
Tree I passed this afternoon beside
The mall, all roots & raindrops
Write as little as possible
Hi Mark, glad you liked the poems
From Wednesday, they are mine
Although stolen from Honolulu
And co-written by the rain
Floating off the mountains across
The city from my 16th floor
Not sure if I'll get stuck in Chicago
On Sunday when I fly back east
I'm reading Juan Sánchez Peláez
Slowly in the sun right before the rain
Brings her fingers to my notebook
I want to read and read and read
Noiselessly, imitating the banyan
Tree I passed this afternoon beside
The mall, all roots & raindrops
Write as little as possible
Hi Mark, glad you liked the poems
From Wednesday, they are mine
Although stolen from Honolulu
And co-written by the rain
Floating off the mountains across
The city from my 16th floor
Not sure if I'll get stuck in Chicago
On Sunday when I fly back east
I'm reading Juan Sánchez Peláez
Slowly in the sun right before the rain
Brings her fingers to my notebook
12.04.2003
"Otra vez, otro instante"
Alberto Hernández sobre Juan Sánchez Peláez, en El Meollo:
"III
En sus “Signos primarios”, segunda parte de Rasgos comunes, Juan Sánchez abre la posibilidad de descubrirse en la soledad de la casa. “Entre tu imagen y el horizonte, águila en el hombro de ningún centinela, ella se deja estar”. Cierto, detrás está el mundo, el que ha dejado el poeta con su muerte o, mejor, con su silenciosa retirada “Indócil en ocasiones a tu amor…”.
Más adelante, entre el polvo del tránsito eterno, el poeta suelta: “De nadie es mi sombra. Tuyo y de nadie es el camino/ abierto.// De nadie es mi luz: se encorva en mis bolsillos como una/ sombra más, la nada es común del girasol”.
Como leo bajo la lluvia y mi árbol personal cae cimbrado sobre la ventana, tengo al poeta preso en la nostalgia, en la causa de su lejanía. Lo leo en voz alta para la sordera del mundo: “Nadie me ve estos ojos, los desesperados ojos como cosas/ escritas en sueño. Nadie me ve sentado en una silla de oro/ tocando el universo simplemente con la marea que roza/ labio a labio mientras afino mi flauta con la ley de los/ pájaros”.
Uno de ellos se acerca, estride mi mañana, la rompe, me quita la mañana, se desquita para acercarse a Juan Liscano: “Tienes nombre propio si excavas dentro de ti y rechazas/ el miedo a morir y aceptas el verbo que/ conduce al silencio…”
Palabra más palabra, poema. La muerte y lo que queda, estos textos, esta desolación desde mi biblioteca, desde la ventana abierta que me descubre frente al cielo lluvioso.
Juan Sánchez Peláez quieto, ojos de salto de agua, animal de costumbre cuyos rasgos son tan comunes como su eternidad."
Alberto Hernández 1/12/2003
Alberto Hernández sobre Juan Sánchez Peláez, en El Meollo:
"III
En sus “Signos primarios”, segunda parte de Rasgos comunes, Juan Sánchez abre la posibilidad de descubrirse en la soledad de la casa. “Entre tu imagen y el horizonte, águila en el hombro de ningún centinela, ella se deja estar”. Cierto, detrás está el mundo, el que ha dejado el poeta con su muerte o, mejor, con su silenciosa retirada “Indócil en ocasiones a tu amor…”.
Más adelante, entre el polvo del tránsito eterno, el poeta suelta: “De nadie es mi sombra. Tuyo y de nadie es el camino/ abierto.// De nadie es mi luz: se encorva en mis bolsillos como una/ sombra más, la nada es común del girasol”.
Como leo bajo la lluvia y mi árbol personal cae cimbrado sobre la ventana, tengo al poeta preso en la nostalgia, en la causa de su lejanía. Lo leo en voz alta para la sordera del mundo: “Nadie me ve estos ojos, los desesperados ojos como cosas/ escritas en sueño. Nadie me ve sentado en una silla de oro/ tocando el universo simplemente con la marea que roza/ labio a labio mientras afino mi flauta con la ley de los/ pájaros”.
Uno de ellos se acerca, estride mi mañana, la rompe, me quita la mañana, se desquita para acercarse a Juan Liscano: “Tienes nombre propio si excavas dentro de ti y rechazas/ el miedo a morir y aceptas el verbo que/ conduce al silencio…”
Palabra más palabra, poema. La muerte y lo que queda, estos textos, esta desolación desde mi biblioteca, desde la ventana abierta que me descubre frente al cielo lluvioso.
Juan Sánchez Peláez quieto, ojos de salto de agua, animal de costumbre cuyos rasgos son tan comunes como su eternidad."
Alberto Hernández 1/12/2003
Mountain
A natural, or confounded, mysticism
Could it also be an artificial, machine-made vision?
Chemicals, organic as rain pulled down from clouds
By the mountain--this edge of rainbow unpoeticized
Pedestrian prose for these (my cities)
Walking down avenue, away from glass
Toward temporary machine reproductions
A sense of "being" in Caracas now
With late modernist high rises, tropical draped trees
A line from the parallels of our brown skin
No _______ but I will try to write "thee"
Likewise, this is Caracas without the paranoia
Even sadder, then, for this kind deceit / draft
*
Unread as I still am, I'm looking for Roberto Bolaño's
Los detectives salvajes, which Simón mentioned the
other night: "Lo tienes que leer."
I'm looking for "the cities," as this Honolulu / an archive
Minutes for drafts / 33 years ago today, Boston-born
Whose gifts acquire artificiality's grace / for quiet
All with Conchita's words (Anna in the Tropics):
"And you are the reader of the love stories, and anybody
who dedicates his life to reading books believes in rescuing
things from oblivion."
Connected in translation's air with Doña Ines contra el olvido
Ana Teresa Torres, whose novel I would choose if I were a lector
The alabaster statue of Jose Marti at the park in Ybor City
filmed in super 8mm walking w/ C. and U. three years ago
a bird perches on his uplifted hands ("this hand" / "poet hands")
His readings for the workers would have been a form of mysticism
A natural, or confounded, mysticism
Could it also be an artificial, machine-made vision?
Chemicals, organic as rain pulled down from clouds
By the mountain--this edge of rainbow unpoeticized
Pedestrian prose for these (my cities)
Walking down avenue, away from glass
Toward temporary machine reproductions
A sense of "being" in Caracas now
With late modernist high rises, tropical draped trees
A line from the parallels of our brown skin
No _______ but I will try to write "thee"
Likewise, this is Caracas without the paranoia
Even sadder, then, for this kind deceit / draft
*
Unread as I still am, I'm looking for Roberto Bolaño's
Los detectives salvajes, which Simón mentioned the
other night: "Lo tienes que leer."
I'm looking for "the cities," as this Honolulu / an archive
Minutes for drafts / 33 years ago today, Boston-born
Whose gifts acquire artificiality's grace / for quiet
All with Conchita's words (Anna in the Tropics):
"And you are the reader of the love stories, and anybody
who dedicates his life to reading books believes in rescuing
things from oblivion."
Connected in translation's air with Doña Ines contra el olvido
Ana Teresa Torres, whose novel I would choose if I were a lector
The alabaster statue of Jose Marti at the park in Ybor City
filmed in super 8mm walking w/ C. and U. three years ago
a bird perches on his uplifted hands ("this hand" / "poet hands")
His readings for the workers would have been a form of mysticism
Filiación oscura / Juan Sánchez Peláez
Filiación oscura (1966)
Poesía 1951-1989 (Caracas: Monte Avila Editores, 1994)
“Los viejos
Parece que fue ayer, dicen siempre, y se agitan melancólicos. Buscan, dentro del orden visible, el pretérito. Cruzan el desierto con ese enfado maligno de ir o de permanecer. Llevan sol a la otra orilla en un cántaro de agua.”
*
“Año nuevo
Sin ningún regocijo, rebasándome esta serpiente confinada a lo largo del cuerpo, ajeno a esta permanencia real, ilusoria de la mujer, en esta cavidad nocturna de estrellas errantes y sílabas confusas.”
Filiación oscura (1966)
Poesía 1951-1989 (Caracas: Monte Avila Editores, 1994)
“Los viejos
Parece que fue ayer, dicen siempre, y se agitan melancólicos. Buscan, dentro del orden visible, el pretérito. Cruzan el desierto con ese enfado maligno de ir o de permanecer. Llevan sol a la otra orilla en un cántaro de agua.”
*
“Año nuevo
Sin ningún regocijo, rebasándome esta serpiente confinada a lo largo del cuerpo, ajeno a esta permanencia real, ilusoria de la mujer, en esta cavidad nocturna de estrellas errantes y sílabas confusas.”
12.03.2003
Honolulu
This city requires short lines from my fingers
Hoping to find bus routes out of this tourist zone
Presenting at a teachers conference
Discussing poems by Elizabeth Alexander,
Ana Enriqueta Terán, Miguel Piñero
Can't find the ñ here but the hills across town
with thick rain clouds (Juya) look like Caracas
This city requires short lines from my fingers
Hoping to find bus routes out of this tourist zone
Presenting at a teachers conference
Discussing poems by Elizabeth Alexander,
Ana Enriqueta Terán, Miguel Piñero
Can't find the ñ here but the hills across town
with thick rain clouds (Juya) look like Caracas
"I don't even love life no more, my niggas
I just live it"
(Jean Grae)
far away, after _____, or ______
rain psalm, miguel piñero
misspelled honolulu an urban rip-off
touristic
$3.75 per 15 min. online
"is there a restroom nearby?"
well, i'm gonna look
is the hotel "hell"
"I speak veteran prose"
she is my teacher
often, out Waikiki windows
*
I'm looking for "the cities"
as this Honolulu
aspires to our archive
A hotel life (a glamour
in Hyannis or the boroughs)
too often dismantled
same, same, afterwards
I just live it"
(Jean Grae)
far away, after _____, or ______
rain psalm, miguel piñero
misspelled honolulu an urban rip-off
touristic
$3.75 per 15 min. online
"is there a restroom nearby?"
well, i'm gonna look
is the hotel "hell"
"I speak veteran prose"
she is my teacher
often, out Waikiki windows
*
I'm looking for "the cities"
as this Honolulu
aspires to our archive
A hotel life (a glamour
in Hyannis or the boroughs)
too often dismantled
same, same, afterwards
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