Permanent


All beauty dies, past
especially the love
in love with loveliness
and youth, how vain,

how bittersweet, this might
be the last night we need
meet, quick the pace,
rapid the feet, as

the tune persists in the
ever constant moon,
its reason clear by contrast.

[1969]

{ John Wieners, Cultural Affairs in Boston, Black Sparrow Press, 1988 }

*

Regarding Roberto Bolaño's Los detectives salvajes, I read it on simultaneous fronts. As a novel of postmodern Mexico and its generations of poets. When read allegorically, the novel could be a commentary on Latin American poetics and politics. A third reading is as a re-writing of Kerouac and Cortázar. With an attempt to counter their misogyny, perhaps. I prefer his prose, though, by far. Probably because I identify so much with its vision of the Latin American 1970s.

It seems to correspond to Roque Dalton's use of mutliple narratives and collage in his novel Pobrecito poeta que era yo. Dalton writes with that same picaresque abandon, never losing control of the novel's thread. Both novels attempt to make prose into poetry and vice-versa. I don't know how much they discussed poetry when they met in El Salvador, but it's a central presence in both of these novels.

*

"pero es preciso demorar
este poemario del tiempo,"

{Martha Kornblith, Oraciones para un dios ausente, Monte Ávila Editores, 1995 }

*

hope for the subtle
tone, for the realm
torn from city signed
by the writer's
dislocated frequency
my imitation is better /

*

"Y qué cantidad de palabras había en el monte."

{ Luis Alberto Crespo, Duro, Editorial Pequeña Venecia, 1995 }

*

A faith in cosmic consciousness.
Despite mysticism's lack of evidence.

*

¿Por qué dices que nada resplandece? ¿No ves en la alborada una llameante ensoñación? No mires a lo oscuro. Destápate la cara y deja que te cubra el intenso resplandor. Bien sé que de los muertos sólo nos llega sombra y la vida es apenas una espera de luz. Quédate arrinconada en el último brillo. Tal vez la noche guarde una secreta claridad.

{ Antonia Palacios, Ese oscuro animal del sueño, Monte Ávila Editores, 1991 }