"Dios bendiga a los hijos tarados de García Márquez y a los hijos tarados de Octavio Paz, pues yo soy responsable de esos alumbramientos. Dios bendiga los campos de concentración para homosexuales de Fidel Castro y los veinte mil desaparecidos de Argentina y la jeta perpleja de Videla y la sonrisa de macho anciano de Perón que se proyecta en el cielo y a los asesinos de niños de Río de Janeiro y el castellano que utiliza Hugo Chávez, que huele a mierda y es mierda y que he creado yo.
Todo es, a final de cuentas, folclore."
(Roberto Bolaño, "Los mitos de Cthulhu," Palabra de América, Seix Barral, 2004)
5.29.2004
5.28.2004
Los viejos
No sé si los viejos viven lo inmediato
Sé que quieren huir
como borrachos
y que
agachados
o de pie
advienen distintos
y ocurren puntuales
a la gran cita
en un mar
a la orilla del mar
tampoco duermen
ni están solos
sin embargo
hállanse siempre
están siempre ahí
aguardan calmos
bebiendo leche de cabra
entre amplios
corredores
más arriba de los techos
en una aldea que
pertenece a la luna
o en un hotel de Liverpool
no hay sino instantes
no vengan a contradecirme
mis pensamientos
vanos
hay eso
que sobra
nos falta
y
zozobra
aquello que tú echas de menos
que arde
es joven
y es antiguo
pero
ninguna madre nos habla ya
sino
la puta madre muerte
que come
umbelas umbrales
cerezos rojos en el patio
cantarían los viejos
pero ellos ocupan un nombre extranjero
sin lugar en el mapa ni en la
geografía
por eso cuando me pesan y
degüellan
a causa del tiempo
también soy de otro rumbo
doy un paso al frente
pruebo el norte con mi nuca
y me asalta abajo
o en medio
del agua que mana sed
el espíritu en vela
de los viejos
que
descorren la enorme cortina
o
quieren trepar
la muralla
hipando rabiosos
guturales o naturales
los jalones sucesivos de una historia
verídica
real
que transcurrió
hablarían o cantarían entonces
si tuvieran timbre de voz
para hacernos humano el nombre.
{ Juan Sánchez Peláez, Aire sobre el aire, Caracas: Tierra de Gracia Editores, 1989 }
No sé si los viejos viven lo inmediato
Sé que quieren huir
como borrachos
y que
agachados
o de pie
advienen distintos
y ocurren puntuales
a la gran cita
en un mar
a la orilla del mar
tampoco duermen
ni están solos
sin embargo
hállanse siempre
están siempre ahí
aguardan calmos
bebiendo leche de cabra
entre amplios
corredores
más arriba de los techos
en una aldea que
pertenece a la luna
o en un hotel de Liverpool
no hay sino instantes
no vengan a contradecirme
mis pensamientos
vanos
hay eso
que sobra
nos falta
y
zozobra
aquello que tú echas de menos
que arde
es joven
y es antiguo
pero
ninguna madre nos habla ya
sino
la puta madre muerte
que come
umbelas umbrales
cerezos rojos en el patio
cantarían los viejos
pero ellos ocupan un nombre extranjero
sin lugar en el mapa ni en la
geografía
por eso cuando me pesan y
degüellan
a causa del tiempo
también soy de otro rumbo
doy un paso al frente
pruebo el norte con mi nuca
y me asalta abajo
o en medio
del agua que mana sed
el espíritu en vela
de los viejos
que
descorren la enorme cortina
o
quieren trepar
la muralla
hipando rabiosos
guturales o naturales
los jalones sucesivos de una historia
verídica
real
que transcurrió
hablarían o cantarían entonces
si tuvieran timbre de voz
para hacernos humano el nombre.
{ Juan Sánchez Peláez, Aire sobre el aire, Caracas: Tierra de Gracia Editores, 1989 }
5.21.2004
Oraciones para un dios ausente / Martha Kornblith
Inexorable
te abres al fin,
fugaz como un beso
sembrado en la oscuridad,
esa forma de anticipar
frases que tienen que ver
con el tiempo.
Converge en ti esa sabiduría triste
(acuso una melancolía sola),
tienes esa manera ilustre de aparecer
sumido en el intertexto,
pero es preciso demorar
este poemario del tiempo,
impecable llegaste al fin
(tu discurso espera, ávido de horas).
*
Inexorable
you finally open,
quick as a kiss
planted in darkness,
that way of anticipating
phrases that have to do
with time.
That sad knowledge converges in you
(I accuse a lone melancholy),
you have that illustrious manner of appearing
submerged in the intertext,
but it's crucial to delay
these verses on time,
you reached the end impeccably
(your discourse awaits, avid for hours).
Translator's note: Martha Kornblith was born in Lima, Peru in 1959 and died in Caracas in 1997. She attended the Universidad Central de Venezuela in the 1990s and was a member of the literary group Eclepsidra. Her second collection was published posthumously as El perdedor se lo lleva todo, Caracas: Editorial Pequeña Venecia, 1997.
Kornblith's poems have appeared in several anthologies, including Antología de la poesía latinoamericana del siglo XXI, ed. Julio Ortega, México DF: Siglo Veintinuo Editores, 1997.
{ Martha Kornblith, Oraciones para un dios ausente, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1995 }
Inexorable
te abres al fin,
fugaz como un beso
sembrado en la oscuridad,
esa forma de anticipar
frases que tienen que ver
con el tiempo.
Converge en ti esa sabiduría triste
(acuso una melancolía sola),
tienes esa manera ilustre de aparecer
sumido en el intertexto,
pero es preciso demorar
este poemario del tiempo,
impecable llegaste al fin
(tu discurso espera, ávido de horas).
*
Inexorable
you finally open,
quick as a kiss
planted in darkness,
that way of anticipating
phrases that have to do
with time.
That sad knowledge converges in you
(I accuse a lone melancholy),
you have that illustrious manner of appearing
submerged in the intertext,
but it's crucial to delay
these verses on time,
you reached the end impeccably
(your discourse awaits, avid for hours).
Translator's note: Martha Kornblith was born in Lima, Peru in 1959 and died in Caracas in 1997. She attended the Universidad Central de Venezuela in the 1990s and was a member of the literary group Eclepsidra. Her second collection was published posthumously as El perdedor se lo lleva todo, Caracas: Editorial Pequeña Venecia, 1997.
Kornblith's poems have appeared in several anthologies, including Antología de la poesía latinoamericana del siglo XXI, ed. Julio Ortega, México DF: Siglo Veintinuo Editores, 1997.
{ Martha Kornblith, Oraciones para un dios ausente, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1995 }
5.20.2004
5.19.2004
Gloria Anzaldúa (1942-2004)
Writing is very liberating and emancipatory; it frees you up. In the process of writing you’re reflecting on all the things that make you different, that make you the same, that make you a freak. You’re constantly grappling with identity issues. Postcoloniality looks at this power system—whether it’s a government, anthropology, or composition—and asks, “Who has the voice? Who says these are the rules? Who makes the law? And if you’re not part of making the laws and the rules and the theories, what part do you play? How is that other system placed in your mind?” You get into the neocolonization of people’s minds. You get into the erasure of certain histories, the erasure of ideas, voices, languages, and books. A lot of the Mayan and Aztec codices were burned and a whole system of knowledge wiped out. Postcoloniality comes and asks these questions.
{ Gloria Anzaldúa, Interviews/Entrevistas, Routledge, 2000 }
*
To a Spanish Poet
(for Manuel Altolaguirre)
You stared out the window on the emptiness
Of a world exploding:
Stones and rubble thrown upwards in a fountain
Blasted sideways by the wind.
Every sensation except loneliness
Was drained out of your mind
By the lack of any motionless object the eye could find.
You were a child again
Who sees for the first time things happen.
Then, stupidly, the sulphur stucco pigeon
Fixed to the gable above your ceiling
Swooped in a curve before the window
Uttering, as it seemed, a coo.
When you smiled,
Everything in the room was shattered,
Only you remained whole
In frozen wonder, as though you stared
At your image in the broken mirror
Where it had always been silverly carried.
Thus I see you
With astonishment whitening in your gaze
Which still retains in the black central irises
Laughing images
Of a man lost in the hills near Malaga
Having got out of his carriage
And spent a week following a partridge;
Or of that broken-hearted general
Who failed to breed a green-eyed bull.
Beyond the violet violence of the news,
The meaningless photographs of the stricken faces,
The weeping from entrails, the vomiting from eyes,
In all the peninsular places,
My imagination reads
The penny fear that you are dead.
Perhaps it is we who are unreal and dead,
We of a world that revolves, dissolves and explodes
While we lay the steadfast corpse under the ground
Just beneath the earth’s lid,
And the flowering eyes grow upwards through the grave
As through a rectangular window
Seeing the stars become clear and more clear
In a sky like a sheet of glass,
Beyond these comedies of falling stone.
Your heart looks through the breaking body,
Like axle through the turning wheel,
With eyes of blood.
Unbroken heart,
You stare through my revolving bones
On the transparent rim of the dissolving world
Where all my side is opened
With ribs drawn back like springs to let you enter
And replace my heart that is more living and more cold.
Oh let the violent time
Cut eyes into my limbs
As the sky is pierced with stars that look upon
The map of pain,
For only when the terrible river
Of grief and indignation
Has poured through all my brain
Can I make from lamentation
A world of happiness,
And another constellation,
With your voice that still rejoices
In the centre of its night,
As, buried in this night,
The stars burn with their brilliant light.
{ Stephen Spender, Selected Poems, Faber & Faber, 1944 }
Writing is very liberating and emancipatory; it frees you up. In the process of writing you’re reflecting on all the things that make you different, that make you the same, that make you a freak. You’re constantly grappling with identity issues. Postcoloniality looks at this power system—whether it’s a government, anthropology, or composition—and asks, “Who has the voice? Who says these are the rules? Who makes the law? And if you’re not part of making the laws and the rules and the theories, what part do you play? How is that other system placed in your mind?” You get into the neocolonization of people’s minds. You get into the erasure of certain histories, the erasure of ideas, voices, languages, and books. A lot of the Mayan and Aztec codices were burned and a whole system of knowledge wiped out. Postcoloniality comes and asks these questions.
{ Gloria Anzaldúa, Interviews/Entrevistas, Routledge, 2000 }
*
To a Spanish Poet
(for Manuel Altolaguirre)
You stared out the window on the emptiness
Of a world exploding:
Stones and rubble thrown upwards in a fountain
Blasted sideways by the wind.
Every sensation except loneliness
Was drained out of your mind
By the lack of any motionless object the eye could find.
You were a child again
Who sees for the first time things happen.
Then, stupidly, the sulphur stucco pigeon
Fixed to the gable above your ceiling
Swooped in a curve before the window
Uttering, as it seemed, a coo.
When you smiled,
Everything in the room was shattered,
Only you remained whole
In frozen wonder, as though you stared
At your image in the broken mirror
Where it had always been silverly carried.
Thus I see you
With astonishment whitening in your gaze
Which still retains in the black central irises
Laughing images
Of a man lost in the hills near Malaga
Having got out of his carriage
And spent a week following a partridge;
Or of that broken-hearted general
Who failed to breed a green-eyed bull.
Beyond the violet violence of the news,
The meaningless photographs of the stricken faces,
The weeping from entrails, the vomiting from eyes,
In all the peninsular places,
My imagination reads
The penny fear that you are dead.
Perhaps it is we who are unreal and dead,
We of a world that revolves, dissolves and explodes
While we lay the steadfast corpse under the ground
Just beneath the earth’s lid,
And the flowering eyes grow upwards through the grave
As through a rectangular window
Seeing the stars become clear and more clear
In a sky like a sheet of glass,
Beyond these comedies of falling stone.
Your heart looks through the breaking body,
Like axle through the turning wheel,
With eyes of blood.
Unbroken heart,
You stare through my revolving bones
On the transparent rim of the dissolving world
Where all my side is opened
With ribs drawn back like springs to let you enter
And replace my heart that is more living and more cold.
Oh let the violent time
Cut eyes into my limbs
As the sky is pierced with stars that look upon
The map of pain,
For only when the terrible river
Of grief and indignation
Has poured through all my brain
Can I make from lamentation
A world of happiness,
And another constellation,
With your voice that still rejoices
In the centre of its night,
As, buried in this night,
The stars burn with their brilliant light.
{ Stephen Spender, Selected Poems, Faber & Faber, 1944 }
5.15.2004
Reading
Novelist and poet Cristina Rivera Garza has an excellent essay out in the anthology Palabra de América (Barcelona: Seix Barral, 2004), in which she discusses her blog writing ("Blogsívela. Escribir a inicios del siglo XXI desde la blogósfera"):
"Me intrigaba en ese momento, así lo quiero creer, la democracia irreverente de la blogósfera--el hecho de escribir a la par y junto con hombres y mujeres para quienes la escritura no era una profesión ni un oficio sino un gusto, un ejercicio, acaso un reto, algo encontrado al azar en el ciberespacio. Me tentaba el anticapitalismo mordaz de la blogescritura--su gratuidad, el hecho irreversible de que cualquier signo inscrito en el blog se encontrara, tal como lo sustenta Kathy Acker, << más allá del terreno del copyright, tal y como éste existe hoy en día >>. Me subyugaba completamente la inmediatez y la antijerarquía de la publicación y la posible, y a fin de cuentas real, inmediatez de la lectura y la respuesta."
*
This anthology of essays by young Latin American writers includes a prologue by Guillermo Cabrera Infante and an essay by Roberto Bolaño. Another author included is the Mexican novelist Jorge Volpi, whose fantastic quantum physics spy-thriller En busca de Klingsor (Seix Barral, 1999) I'm reading right now (along with the usual half a dozen other books).
Reading, and the endless procurement of books, is definitely my obsession. I've probably said it before here but I remember David Ferry at BU mentioning that for him there is no real difference between reading and writing. They are two versions of the same act. A common enough idea, but one which allowed me to better understand this obsession of mine for certain books. Their talismanic nature and my life-long devotion to their pages.
I remember my grandfather in Caracas sitting for hours in the back yard or living room with his pulp fiction and Western novels. He had been a "serious" reader most of his life, and my father told me that in later years he chose to stick to pulp fiction instead, perhaps as an escape or for relaxation. Andy Warhol probably already filmed it, but I've often thought about a film which would consist of a poet sitting on a back porch somewhere reading. How would the viewer know she is a poet? Well, she'd have a notebook beside her, where she'd stop occasionally to write down something.
I write here mainly so I can read all of you. I think the beautiful silence of reading is what I enjoy, as well.
Novelist and poet Cristina Rivera Garza has an excellent essay out in the anthology Palabra de América (Barcelona: Seix Barral, 2004), in which she discusses her blog writing ("Blogsívela. Escribir a inicios del siglo XXI desde la blogósfera"):
"Me intrigaba en ese momento, así lo quiero creer, la democracia irreverente de la blogósfera--el hecho de escribir a la par y junto con hombres y mujeres para quienes la escritura no era una profesión ni un oficio sino un gusto, un ejercicio, acaso un reto, algo encontrado al azar en el ciberespacio. Me tentaba el anticapitalismo mordaz de la blogescritura--su gratuidad, el hecho irreversible de que cualquier signo inscrito en el blog se encontrara, tal como lo sustenta Kathy Acker, << más allá del terreno del copyright, tal y como éste existe hoy en día >>. Me subyugaba completamente la inmediatez y la antijerarquía de la publicación y la posible, y a fin de cuentas real, inmediatez de la lectura y la respuesta."
*
This anthology of essays by young Latin American writers includes a prologue by Guillermo Cabrera Infante and an essay by Roberto Bolaño. Another author included is the Mexican novelist Jorge Volpi, whose fantastic quantum physics spy-thriller En busca de Klingsor (Seix Barral, 1999) I'm reading right now (along with the usual half a dozen other books).
Reading, and the endless procurement of books, is definitely my obsession. I've probably said it before here but I remember David Ferry at BU mentioning that for him there is no real difference between reading and writing. They are two versions of the same act. A common enough idea, but one which allowed me to better understand this obsession of mine for certain books. Their talismanic nature and my life-long devotion to their pages.
I remember my grandfather in Caracas sitting for hours in the back yard or living room with his pulp fiction and Western novels. He had been a "serious" reader most of his life, and my father told me that in later years he chose to stick to pulp fiction instead, perhaps as an escape or for relaxation. Andy Warhol probably already filmed it, but I've often thought about a film which would consist of a poet sitting on a back porch somewhere reading. How would the viewer know she is a poet? Well, she'd have a notebook beside her, where she'd stop occasionally to write down something.
I write here mainly so I can read all of you. I think the beautiful silence of reading is what I enjoy, as well.
5.14.2004
The Crystal Text
I had been thinking about DJs this morning, so it felt like synchronicity to stumble across Ernesto Priego's commentary, ÉCOUTE: SOME NOTES ON DEEJAYING. When I was living in Tampa in the early 90s, I was friends with several DJs. David G and I would sit smoking, drinking, and talking over the music while he pulled out obscure house, hip-hop etc. LPs, after our shifts as pizza cooks. He would spin in clubs around Ybor City or homes and apartments in South Tampa. I remember his interest in my manuscript for a novel I had recently finished. He said: "It must feel good to have completed a work of art." The novel was, however, unreadable, though fragments of it ended up in later poems. My house in Ybor was a good gathering spot, close enough to the life of 7th Avenue to partake, but it also had the back yard and trees to sit under.
Jody mainly chose hip-hop but I remember Bob Dylan on a mix tape she made for me. How much of this is fiction? How much do I invent or remember through a distorted lens? But that's what the writing promises, the pleasure or nostalgia of fiction. She used to visit me in Ybor from across town but we hardly ever talked about music. When she'd practice on her turntables at her apartment in Hyde Park, earphones hanging off one ear, she'd be deep inside her own realm, much like my own version of calm, with books in the library. (Freestyle Fellowship: "Me know some DJs get them flow from the radio / Me know some poets get them flow from the bibliotheque"--Inner City Griots, 1993) She once mentioned that Djing was instinctual for her, that it was about the pleasure of discovering records she had overlooked in her collection. When I'd see her spin at places, she was always very serious, unsmiling, only concerned with the collage she was building. Afterwards, we'd meet up and she'd return to her loquacious, ironic personality.
H, who I rented a room from at the converted warehouse on 19th street in Ybor, would also DJ at parties we had there, or up by USF, in North Tampa apartments or outdoors in the woods of Lutz. He was librarian of beats, knowing exactly what sound would fit the mood of each room or night, from ambient airs to EPMD's Hardcore: "I'm terror, new edition to rap era / I can't be beat, I'm too sweet plus clever / I'm smart, yes, I'm a so-called genius..."
My neighbor at the house on 5th Avenue in Ybor was Edwin, who would DJ at The Castle once a week (before it went Goth). He played strictly New York hip-hop, but really just whatever the best was each week, always schooling his listeners by staying updated and obscure, B-sides, codeine remixes, arcane. The prolific nature of rap music at that time was astonishing, new records coming out it seemed daily. That's what we thank the DJ for, his/her gathering and anthologizing the dozens of styles out at that moment. Maybe the best hip-hop show I've ever seen was in the back room of Edwin's store, Blue Chair Music, where Tap Ghost and Phobia had about 50 of us entranced. Edwin had knocked on our door late one night, telling us about a show we couldn't miss. College Hill and West Tampa gangsters, friends and family of the band, other young DJs and MCs, and a few of us Ybor "artists" crowded into that small room, unbearably humid & dense with smoke & noise.
It was thanks to these friends that I began to think about the parallels between writing and DJing. With both arts, one gathers and archives moments for the reader/listener to consider. Also, the silence required of the practitioner, isolation and the practice of talking to oneself through others. The blog might be a form of DJing, especially this method of borrowing texts and posting them here...that continuum of intuition, my own and others'. Stumble of paragraphs. Missive scratches.
The turntable could be that crystal text Clark Coolidge seems to hover around, obsessed by its transparency and the unnameable pull of its density. Pulling fingers toward one's ear and the listener's distortions. None of it was real.
The paragraph diminishing to a skip on the vinyl.
*
"The music levers into brain, insists
I listen to it. That I have no other
life I am a listener. (Am I lighter?)
He plays an old text, he
does it. He plays on
a text otherwise lifeless. The pressures
of his hands become my voice nodes,
stepping off the inner gradients to a varying density.
I bent my lower lip just now.
The stanzas are of gold or brass
or a folded glass shocked full of bright
outer data. Silly words, give up your
completions. The music will not spill.
It is incapable of other than his hands."
(Clark Coolidge, The Crystal Text, Sun & Moon Press, 1996)
I had been thinking about DJs this morning, so it felt like synchronicity to stumble across Ernesto Priego's commentary, ÉCOUTE: SOME NOTES ON DEEJAYING. When I was living in Tampa in the early 90s, I was friends with several DJs. David G and I would sit smoking, drinking, and talking over the music while he pulled out obscure house, hip-hop etc. LPs, after our shifts as pizza cooks. He would spin in clubs around Ybor City or homes and apartments in South Tampa. I remember his interest in my manuscript for a novel I had recently finished. He said: "It must feel good to have completed a work of art." The novel was, however, unreadable, though fragments of it ended up in later poems. My house in Ybor was a good gathering spot, close enough to the life of 7th Avenue to partake, but it also had the back yard and trees to sit under.
Jody mainly chose hip-hop but I remember Bob Dylan on a mix tape she made for me. How much of this is fiction? How much do I invent or remember through a distorted lens? But that's what the writing promises, the pleasure or nostalgia of fiction. She used to visit me in Ybor from across town but we hardly ever talked about music. When she'd practice on her turntables at her apartment in Hyde Park, earphones hanging off one ear, she'd be deep inside her own realm, much like my own version of calm, with books in the library. (Freestyle Fellowship: "Me know some DJs get them flow from the radio / Me know some poets get them flow from the bibliotheque"--Inner City Griots, 1993) She once mentioned that Djing was instinctual for her, that it was about the pleasure of discovering records she had overlooked in her collection. When I'd see her spin at places, she was always very serious, unsmiling, only concerned with the collage she was building. Afterwards, we'd meet up and she'd return to her loquacious, ironic personality.
H, who I rented a room from at the converted warehouse on 19th street in Ybor, would also DJ at parties we had there, or up by USF, in North Tampa apartments or outdoors in the woods of Lutz. He was librarian of beats, knowing exactly what sound would fit the mood of each room or night, from ambient airs to EPMD's Hardcore: "I'm terror, new edition to rap era / I can't be beat, I'm too sweet plus clever / I'm smart, yes, I'm a so-called genius..."
My neighbor at the house on 5th Avenue in Ybor was Edwin, who would DJ at The Castle once a week (before it went Goth). He played strictly New York hip-hop, but really just whatever the best was each week, always schooling his listeners by staying updated and obscure, B-sides, codeine remixes, arcane. The prolific nature of rap music at that time was astonishing, new records coming out it seemed daily. That's what we thank the DJ for, his/her gathering and anthologizing the dozens of styles out at that moment. Maybe the best hip-hop show I've ever seen was in the back room of Edwin's store, Blue Chair Music, where Tap Ghost and Phobia had about 50 of us entranced. Edwin had knocked on our door late one night, telling us about a show we couldn't miss. College Hill and West Tampa gangsters, friends and family of the band, other young DJs and MCs, and a few of us Ybor "artists" crowded into that small room, unbearably humid & dense with smoke & noise.
It was thanks to these friends that I began to think about the parallels between writing and DJing. With both arts, one gathers and archives moments for the reader/listener to consider. Also, the silence required of the practitioner, isolation and the practice of talking to oneself through others. The blog might be a form of DJing, especially this method of borrowing texts and posting them here...that continuum of intuition, my own and others'. Stumble of paragraphs. Missive scratches.
The turntable could be that crystal text Clark Coolidge seems to hover around, obsessed by its transparency and the unnameable pull of its density. Pulling fingers toward one's ear and the listener's distortions. None of it was real.
The paragraph diminishing to a skip on the vinyl.
*
"The music levers into brain, insists
I listen to it. That I have no other
life I am a listener. (Am I lighter?)
He plays an old text, he
does it. He plays on
a text otherwise lifeless. The pressures
of his hands become my voice nodes,
stepping off the inner gradients to a varying density.
I bent my lower lip just now.
The stanzas are of gold or brass
or a folded glass shocked full of bright
outer data. Silly words, give up your
completions. The music will not spill.
It is incapable of other than his hands."
(Clark Coolidge, The Crystal Text, Sun & Moon Press, 1996)
5.12.2004
La llave china
Juan Villoro
El Nacional
Domingo 09 de Mayo de 2004
Ednodio Quintero nació en Trujillo, un pueblo de la alta montaña venezolana, en una casa inclinada sobre un precipicio por el que corría un río tormentoso. La niebla fue su primera sensación del aire, y el vértigo, su estado natural. Cuando se trasladó a Mérida para estudiar ingeniería forestal, ya había transformado ese paisaje extremo en una moral que determinaría su prosa.
Como los protagonistas de Viaje al centro de la Tierra, Quintero había tomado “lecciones de abismo”. Mérida le reveló una forma más asentada de vivir en los Andes. Ahí encontró estímulos para proseguir su cacería de libros (con claro énfasis en los radicales de la imaginación, de Poe a Beckett) y ahí descubrió que la auténtica universidad estaba en los cafés. Demasiado discreto para dominar tertulias, fue confesor de turno y testigo de cargo de poetas de un día y eruditos de sabidurías dispersas que lo dotaron de una poderosa cultura oral.
No es casualidad que Mariana y los comanches tenga como sitio privilegiado de reunión un café, campamento de los pielrojas de la inteligencia que rinde tributo al tercer hábitat del autor (después del bosque y el páramo en la montaña, donde crece el tonificante y a veces alucinógeno díctamo real y el frailejón, dios amarillo).
En la inventiva Mérida, las bailarinas árabes y los mariachis mexicanos suelen ser de Colombia. Un enclave de estudiantes y gente que se asigna destinos múltiples con más facilidad que en otros sitios, como si la cordillera fomentara destinos siempre provisionales, sedentarios que son nómadas. Ednodio Quintero conoce cada planta y cada declive de ese territorio, del mismo modo en que se siente en casa en las más diversas literaturas. Su mente toca orillas inusuales a contrapelo de la norma.
Empecé a ser testigo de su manera de vivir y escribir (en su caso categorías equivalentes) a principios de los años noventa, cuando conspiraba para reunir escritores en Mérida. Su trabajo ocurría entre motines estudiantiles, gases lacrimógenos de la policía, el cierre del aeropuerto por reparaciones, los excesos nocturnos de algunos colegas en la alberca del hotel, en los que resultaba difícil distinguir un intento de suicidio de la práctica de un deporte muy extremo. Y sin embargo, en ese caos todo salía tan bien como la trucha a la Humboldt de la cena. Ednodio destacaba como el experto organizador que reunía a autores de primera fila, aún desconocidos en el grueso de América Latina: César Aira, Juan Sánchez Peláez, Enrique Vila-Matas, Sergio Pitol, José Balza, Alejandro Rossi. A esta evidente capacidad pragmática, se unía un rasgo misterioso.
El anfitrión iba de un escritor a otro para decir algo enigmático con una pronunciación no siempre descifrable, una adivinanza sacada de las sagas celtas o los primeros pobladores de los Andes, un aforismo de lumbre, un koan zen. Al tercer día, las palabras que soltaba de repente representaban un sistema, el mecanismo que nos definía. Los ojos enrojecidos del anfitrión sugerían noches en vela. Sabíamos que en ocasiones se aislaba en una cabaña de la que salía aún más delgado de tanto pensar. Un explorador curtido por viajes interiores.
Después de leer La danza del jaguar, escuchar su ponencia en torno a su ars poetica y oír sus conversaciones fragmentarias, me quedó claro que estaba ante un representante desplazado de la literatura japonesa. En sus textos el silencio y la acción interrumpida adquieren rara elocuencia; la naturaleza aparece como designio interno de los personajes –una expansión telúrica o vegetal de su destino– y el erotismo obedece a una tensa y variada geometría. Kawabata, Oé, Tanizaki, Akutagawa, Abe son su tribu de elección. Sin embargo, su obra repudia el exotismo. Ajeno al pastiche y la imitación, el novelista venezolano aclimató su extremo oriente con el familiar sentido de la adivinación de quien lee las líneas de una mano. Ya antes se había servido del procedimiento para que Borges, Kafka y Schwob se aclimataran en sus regiones.
Tal vez por estar atento a un vasto campo de intereses, Quintero lee el periódico con intensidad centrífuga y encuentra noticias que sólo parecen imprimirse en su ejemplar. La ciencia, los chismes sociales, el deporte, los viajes, los obituarios, el copioso inventario de lo real, se somete ante sus ojos a una lógica de enrarecida precisión. El método experimental de Quintero: la realidad resulta insólita, no por sus fantásticos portentos, sino por la manera en que es razonada. Su argumentación depende de un rigor severo, pero tiene algo desfasado, a veces perverso, definitivamente alterno. Las piezas se ensamblan conforme a un plan provocador o aun demencial. Pocos narradores han explorado en forma tan aguda las posibilidades de la inteligencia como síntoma de la enfermedad.
A fines de los años noventa, Quintero se mudó a Ciudad de México para ocupar la cátedra Simón Bolívar en la UNAM. Sus primeros días fueron dramáticos. Después de cobrar su mensualidad, fue interceptado en el oscuro vestíbulo de su edificio. Apenas alcanzó a distinguir una mano que le presionaba el cuello. Luego cayó inconsciente. En los días de zozobra que siguieron al asalto, supo que había sido víctima de una técnica conocida como la “llave china”. El novelista empezó a incluir la frase en sus conversaciones, como si buscara otro uso para ese arte marcial.
De vez en cuando, Ednodio llegaba al ruidoso despacho donde yo trabajaba en La Jornada Semanal. Nuestro envejecido edificio se inclinaba sobre Artículo 123, con tal énfasis que rebautizamos la calle como Artículo Mortis y recibimos orden de evacuación. Sin embargo, al igual que otras muchas cosas precarias de México, seguíamos ahí. Tal vez la oficina le traía a Ednodio recuerdos de su primera casa, donde aprendió a cortejar abismos. El caso es que le gustaba asistir a nuestras tertulias de colaboradores. Acorazado por el recato o el flujo de sus ideas, oía a los demás sin decir palabra. Si acaso, soltaba una versión en clave Ionesco del consabido chiste sobre un ruso, un alemán y un latinoamericano. Horas después, hablaba por teléfono a mi casa y conversaba sin freno; la timidez social era su preparación para una sorpresiva elocuencia posterior.
Sus historias participan de esa estrategia; están hechas de rodeos, planteamientos que vuelven sobre sí mismos hasta llegar al sitio donde sobreviene la revelación. La técnica no es muy distinta de la “llave china” de la que fue víctima: una paciente espera en el umbral, una fulminante presión.
Mariana y los comanches ha sido escrita en la plenitud del oficio. El infinito tema del triángulo amoroso encuentra aquí aristas novedosas. Un escritor codicia a una amada doblemente esquiva: como objeto del deseo y personaje narrativo. El protagonista revisa un manuscrito olvidado, tributario de una poética con la que ya no comulga, acaso más genuina que la que lo ha llevado al éxito. El texto convoca a una mujer real y a una mujer narrativa. ¿Es posible recuperar a una sin sacrificar a la otra? La disyuntiva entre vida y creación determina Mariana y los comanches. ¿La mujer que regresa lo hace en nombre del destino o de la ficción? De manera sugerente, la moneda adivinatoria de Quintero a veces cae en la cara de la realidad, a veces en la de la imaginación.
Mariana y los comanches indaga las posibilidades que el deseo tiene de convertirse en crimen para salvarse de sí mismo. “El infierno es la repetición”, escribe el novelista, y avanza para derrotar esa consigna. Lentamente, como en la Lolita de Nabokov, comprendemos la peculiar lección del libro: varios de sus secretos nos habían sido revelados sin que advirtiéramos su fuerza magnética; el presente sólo se descifra al ser pensado hacia atrás. Como los personajes, disponíamos de las soluciones mientras eran vividas (o leídas) ; comprenderlas tarde es, fatalmente, una repetición. Entender ese infierno significa asumirlo, seguir al autor en busca de una salida, el arriesgado rito de paso en que desemboca la trama, sacrificar el arte para que la vida prosiga, modificada, como un río que busca nuevo curso.
Tal es el pacto fáustico que propone Mariana y los comanches. Desde su alta ventana, Ednodio Quintero inventa abismos y remedios para el vértigo.
{ Juan Villoro, El Nacional, 9 Mayo 2004 }
El Nacional
Domingo 09 de Mayo de 2004
Ednodio Quintero nació en Trujillo, un pueblo de la alta montaña venezolana, en una casa inclinada sobre un precipicio por el que corría un río tormentoso. La niebla fue su primera sensación del aire, y el vértigo, su estado natural. Cuando se trasladó a Mérida para estudiar ingeniería forestal, ya había transformado ese paisaje extremo en una moral que determinaría su prosa.
Como los protagonistas de Viaje al centro de la Tierra, Quintero había tomado “lecciones de abismo”. Mérida le reveló una forma más asentada de vivir en los Andes. Ahí encontró estímulos para proseguir su cacería de libros (con claro énfasis en los radicales de la imaginación, de Poe a Beckett) y ahí descubrió que la auténtica universidad estaba en los cafés. Demasiado discreto para dominar tertulias, fue confesor de turno y testigo de cargo de poetas de un día y eruditos de sabidurías dispersas que lo dotaron de una poderosa cultura oral.
No es casualidad que Mariana y los comanches tenga como sitio privilegiado de reunión un café, campamento de los pielrojas de la inteligencia que rinde tributo al tercer hábitat del autor (después del bosque y el páramo en la montaña, donde crece el tonificante y a veces alucinógeno díctamo real y el frailejón, dios amarillo).
En la inventiva Mérida, las bailarinas árabes y los mariachis mexicanos suelen ser de Colombia. Un enclave de estudiantes y gente que se asigna destinos múltiples con más facilidad que en otros sitios, como si la cordillera fomentara destinos siempre provisionales, sedentarios que son nómadas. Ednodio Quintero conoce cada planta y cada declive de ese territorio, del mismo modo en que se siente en casa en las más diversas literaturas. Su mente toca orillas inusuales a contrapelo de la norma.
Empecé a ser testigo de su manera de vivir y escribir (en su caso categorías equivalentes) a principios de los años noventa, cuando conspiraba para reunir escritores en Mérida. Su trabajo ocurría entre motines estudiantiles, gases lacrimógenos de la policía, el cierre del aeropuerto por reparaciones, los excesos nocturnos de algunos colegas en la alberca del hotel, en los que resultaba difícil distinguir un intento de suicidio de la práctica de un deporte muy extremo. Y sin embargo, en ese caos todo salía tan bien como la trucha a la Humboldt de la cena. Ednodio destacaba como el experto organizador que reunía a autores de primera fila, aún desconocidos en el grueso de América Latina: César Aira, Juan Sánchez Peláez, Enrique Vila-Matas, Sergio Pitol, José Balza, Alejandro Rossi. A esta evidente capacidad pragmática, se unía un rasgo misterioso.
El anfitrión iba de un escritor a otro para decir algo enigmático con una pronunciación no siempre descifrable, una adivinanza sacada de las sagas celtas o los primeros pobladores de los Andes, un aforismo de lumbre, un koan zen. Al tercer día, las palabras que soltaba de repente representaban un sistema, el mecanismo que nos definía. Los ojos enrojecidos del anfitrión sugerían noches en vela. Sabíamos que en ocasiones se aislaba en una cabaña de la que salía aún más delgado de tanto pensar. Un explorador curtido por viajes interiores.
Después de leer La danza del jaguar, escuchar su ponencia en torno a su ars poetica y oír sus conversaciones fragmentarias, me quedó claro que estaba ante un representante desplazado de la literatura japonesa. En sus textos el silencio y la acción interrumpida adquieren rara elocuencia; la naturaleza aparece como designio interno de los personajes –una expansión telúrica o vegetal de su destino– y el erotismo obedece a una tensa y variada geometría. Kawabata, Oé, Tanizaki, Akutagawa, Abe son su tribu de elección. Sin embargo, su obra repudia el exotismo. Ajeno al pastiche y la imitación, el novelista venezolano aclimató su extremo oriente con el familiar sentido de la adivinación de quien lee las líneas de una mano. Ya antes se había servido del procedimiento para que Borges, Kafka y Schwob se aclimataran en sus regiones.
Tal vez por estar atento a un vasto campo de intereses, Quintero lee el periódico con intensidad centrífuga y encuentra noticias que sólo parecen imprimirse en su ejemplar. La ciencia, los chismes sociales, el deporte, los viajes, los obituarios, el copioso inventario de lo real, se somete ante sus ojos a una lógica de enrarecida precisión. El método experimental de Quintero: la realidad resulta insólita, no por sus fantásticos portentos, sino por la manera en que es razonada. Su argumentación depende de un rigor severo, pero tiene algo desfasado, a veces perverso, definitivamente alterno. Las piezas se ensamblan conforme a un plan provocador o aun demencial. Pocos narradores han explorado en forma tan aguda las posibilidades de la inteligencia como síntoma de la enfermedad.
A fines de los años noventa, Quintero se mudó a Ciudad de México para ocupar la cátedra Simón Bolívar en la UNAM. Sus primeros días fueron dramáticos. Después de cobrar su mensualidad, fue interceptado en el oscuro vestíbulo de su edificio. Apenas alcanzó a distinguir una mano que le presionaba el cuello. Luego cayó inconsciente. En los días de zozobra que siguieron al asalto, supo que había sido víctima de una técnica conocida como la “llave china”. El novelista empezó a incluir la frase en sus conversaciones, como si buscara otro uso para ese arte marcial.
De vez en cuando, Ednodio llegaba al ruidoso despacho donde yo trabajaba en La Jornada Semanal. Nuestro envejecido edificio se inclinaba sobre Artículo 123, con tal énfasis que rebautizamos la calle como Artículo Mortis y recibimos orden de evacuación. Sin embargo, al igual que otras muchas cosas precarias de México, seguíamos ahí. Tal vez la oficina le traía a Ednodio recuerdos de su primera casa, donde aprendió a cortejar abismos. El caso es que le gustaba asistir a nuestras tertulias de colaboradores. Acorazado por el recato o el flujo de sus ideas, oía a los demás sin decir palabra. Si acaso, soltaba una versión en clave Ionesco del consabido chiste sobre un ruso, un alemán y un latinoamericano. Horas después, hablaba por teléfono a mi casa y conversaba sin freno; la timidez social era su preparación para una sorpresiva elocuencia posterior.
Sus historias participan de esa estrategia; están hechas de rodeos, planteamientos que vuelven sobre sí mismos hasta llegar al sitio donde sobreviene la revelación. La técnica no es muy distinta de la “llave china” de la que fue víctima: una paciente espera en el umbral, una fulminante presión.
Mariana y los comanches ha sido escrita en la plenitud del oficio. El infinito tema del triángulo amoroso encuentra aquí aristas novedosas. Un escritor codicia a una amada doblemente esquiva: como objeto del deseo y personaje narrativo. El protagonista revisa un manuscrito olvidado, tributario de una poética con la que ya no comulga, acaso más genuina que la que lo ha llevado al éxito. El texto convoca a una mujer real y a una mujer narrativa. ¿Es posible recuperar a una sin sacrificar a la otra? La disyuntiva entre vida y creación determina Mariana y los comanches. ¿La mujer que regresa lo hace en nombre del destino o de la ficción? De manera sugerente, la moneda adivinatoria de Quintero a veces cae en la cara de la realidad, a veces en la de la imaginación.
Mariana y los comanches indaga las posibilidades que el deseo tiene de convertirse en crimen para salvarse de sí mismo. “El infierno es la repetición”, escribe el novelista, y avanza para derrotar esa consigna. Lentamente, como en la Lolita de Nabokov, comprendemos la peculiar lección del libro: varios de sus secretos nos habían sido revelados sin que advirtiéramos su fuerza magnética; el presente sólo se descifra al ser pensado hacia atrás. Como los personajes, disponíamos de las soluciones mientras eran vividas (o leídas) ; comprenderlas tarde es, fatalmente, una repetición. Entender ese infierno significa asumirlo, seguir al autor en busca de una salida, el arriesgado rito de paso en que desemboca la trama, sacrificar el arte para que la vida prosiga, modificada, como un río que busca nuevo curso.
Tal es el pacto fáustico que propone Mariana y los comanches. Desde su alta ventana, Ednodio Quintero inventa abismos y remedios para el vértigo.
{ Juan Villoro, El Nacional, 9 Mayo 2004 }
5.09.2004
A Poetics
"WORDWORKERS
everyone
plugged
away
being taken
MEMORY
what's left
spend it
like there's no...
[sundriedflower lit by the math of
by the smiling mock
by the penury
of our predicament
called]
TOMORROW"
{ Rodrigo Toscano, Partisans, Oakland, CA: O Books, 1999 }
*
"So, what's the science now RZA?
Cutting they pockets like scissors
Send a fella, found him a Wally slipper
Slashing ends in the glass bins in Nevada
Flashing gems 8 and a half 10 state robber
All my life been in some foul shit
Besides, kid, that was child shit
Get on some foul and proud shit
G-ing many Koreans being all that I can be and
Put down on 30 keys and get to fleeing
Light up a tree and dope be breezing like a blow drier
Yo you's a liar like Jeremiah gaming on a flier
Yo my varying niggahs is carrying
Thug-drug marrying hit
And marrying all at the clarion
All my Spanish niggahs love us"
{ Raekwon, Only Built 4 Cuban Linxs, New York: RCA, 1995 }
"WORDWORKERS
everyone
plugged
away
being taken
MEMORY
what's left
spend it
like there's no...
[sundriedflower lit by the math of
by the smiling mock
by the penury
of our predicament
called]
TOMORROW"
{ Rodrigo Toscano, Partisans, Oakland, CA: O Books, 1999 }
*
"So, what's the science now RZA?
Cutting they pockets like scissors
Send a fella, found him a Wally slipper
Slashing ends in the glass bins in Nevada
Flashing gems 8 and a half 10 state robber
All my life been in some foul shit
Besides, kid, that was child shit
Get on some foul and proud shit
G-ing many Koreans being all that I can be and
Put down on 30 keys and get to fleeing
Light up a tree and dope be breezing like a blow drier
Yo you's a liar like Jeremiah gaming on a flier
Yo my varying niggahs is carrying
Thug-drug marrying hit
And marrying all at the clarion
All my Spanish niggahs love us"
{ Raekwon, Only Built 4 Cuban Linxs, New York: RCA, 1995 }
5.07.2004
Aire sobre el aire: XIII
Yo puedo quizás
y tú puedes
nos es urgente
eso sí
un barco velero
y esperar serenos
en nuestras costas y confines
nos es urgente
no vivir engañados
soplando y resoplando
llanuras y horizontes
por el ojo de buey
--de cara a la pared
hasta que amanezca
persona indivisible que nos unes a la vida
nos es urgente
tu anillo nupcial, tu esmeralda en nuestro dedo
y que distribuyas entre nosotros
albas o penumbras
y una rosa húmeda
con numen y sílabas de tus vergeles y praderas
amén y amén
al avistar nuestros puertos.
{ Juan Sánchez Peláez, Aire sobre el aire, Caracas: Tierra de Gracia Editores, 1989 }
Yo puedo quizás
y tú puedes
nos es urgente
eso sí
un barco velero
y esperar serenos
en nuestras costas y confines
nos es urgente
no vivir engañados
soplando y resoplando
llanuras y horizontes
por el ojo de buey
--de cara a la pared
hasta que amanezca
persona indivisible que nos unes a la vida
nos es urgente
tu anillo nupcial, tu esmeralda en nuestro dedo
y que distribuyas entre nosotros
albas o penumbras
y una rosa húmeda
con numen y sílabas de tus vergeles y praderas
amén y amén
al avistar nuestros puertos.
{ Juan Sánchez Peláez, Aire sobre el aire, Caracas: Tierra de Gracia Editores, 1989 }
5.05.2004
Juan Sánchez Peláez
is, for me, the most interesting Venezuelan poet of the twentieth century. And yet, outside of Venezuela and Latin America he is completely unknown. Even within Latin America, very few people know his work. Álvaro Mutis and Octavio Paz have both praised his poems and the latter published his work in Vuelta. Sánchez Peláez was a visiting international fellow at the Iowa Writer's Workshop, after which he lived in New York City for a few years in the early 1970s. In the 1950s he lived in Paris for several years. Despite the international scope of his work, no one seems to have even heard of him.
As far as I know, there has never been an English edition of Sánchez Peláez's work. Which brings us once again to the topic of Venezuelan invisibility. Why, for instance, is there not a single book of his at the University of Iowa's library? Well, because according to the libraries, bookstores, scholars, poets and readers of the United States, Venezuelan poetry does not exist.
One good piece of news, however, is that his collected poems have just been published in Spain by Editorial Lumen.
My first encounter with JSP's poetry was in Providence, RI in 1997, when I purchased his final collection Aire sobre el aire (1989) at a book fair in that city's convention center. I read the 14 poems in this magnificent collection that same evening and was immediately entranced by his verses. His work instantly challenged and transformed my conception of what poetry might be or what it might accomplish. Reading him for the first time was a revelation, which continues to unfold. I guess in that sense, I conceive of poetry as an action, a thought, a vision--hardly ever simply words or a poetics.
Although he aligned himself spiritually with French surrealist and symbolist poets, JSP developed his own distinct style which he polished, deconstructed and inhabited throughout several decades, from the 1940s until his death in Caracas last November. The Miami Herald was the only North American newspaper to mention his death (in its Spanish-language edition, El Nuevo Herald, on January 26, 2004--see my February archives below).
One thing I have noticed about my own translations of his poems is that my versions always end up being rather pathetic approximations of the subtle tones he works with. I am working on a manuscript of selected poems of his in English translation. However, as I keep in mind the fact that he often spent years revising individual poems, I am hesitant to rush my versions. The ones I have posted here and at Antología are extremely clumsy versions.
As with John Wieners, JSP's work must be read within the context of his life. As we read him, we should remember that poems are merely the extensions, or shadows, of our thoughts and actions. This borrowed computer I write on, this internet I take from work, those trees budding outside my classroom windows, those rain clouds gathering above Boston just now, the violence and despair of every day, all these are essential to whatever poem might emerge. We are, more or less, mere conduits.
In the opening paragraphs of 707 Scott Street, John Wieners wrote: "I must forget how to write. I must unlearn what has been taught me." JSP's move toward a minimalist aesthetic, later in his career, evokes this notion of unlearning.
"You arrive, to quell lightning with a glass of almonds.
This dream’s anchor opens my eyes into life."
is, for me, the most interesting Venezuelan poet of the twentieth century. And yet, outside of Venezuela and Latin America he is completely unknown. Even within Latin America, very few people know his work. Álvaro Mutis and Octavio Paz have both praised his poems and the latter published his work in Vuelta. Sánchez Peláez was a visiting international fellow at the Iowa Writer's Workshop, after which he lived in New York City for a few years in the early 1970s. In the 1950s he lived in Paris for several years. Despite the international scope of his work, no one seems to have even heard of him.
As far as I know, there has never been an English edition of Sánchez Peláez's work. Which brings us once again to the topic of Venezuelan invisibility. Why, for instance, is there not a single book of his at the University of Iowa's library? Well, because according to the libraries, bookstores, scholars, poets and readers of the United States, Venezuelan poetry does not exist.
One good piece of news, however, is that his collected poems have just been published in Spain by Editorial Lumen.
My first encounter with JSP's poetry was in Providence, RI in 1997, when I purchased his final collection Aire sobre el aire (1989) at a book fair in that city's convention center. I read the 14 poems in this magnificent collection that same evening and was immediately entranced by his verses. His work instantly challenged and transformed my conception of what poetry might be or what it might accomplish. Reading him for the first time was a revelation, which continues to unfold. I guess in that sense, I conceive of poetry as an action, a thought, a vision--hardly ever simply words or a poetics.
Although he aligned himself spiritually with French surrealist and symbolist poets, JSP developed his own distinct style which he polished, deconstructed and inhabited throughout several decades, from the 1940s until his death in Caracas last November. The Miami Herald was the only North American newspaper to mention his death (in its Spanish-language edition, El Nuevo Herald, on January 26, 2004--see my February archives below).
One thing I have noticed about my own translations of his poems is that my versions always end up being rather pathetic approximations of the subtle tones he works with. I am working on a manuscript of selected poems of his in English translation. However, as I keep in mind the fact that he often spent years revising individual poems, I am hesitant to rush my versions. The ones I have posted here and at Antología are extremely clumsy versions.
As with John Wieners, JSP's work must be read within the context of his life. As we read him, we should remember that poems are merely the extensions, or shadows, of our thoughts and actions. This borrowed computer I write on, this internet I take from work, those trees budding outside my classroom windows, those rain clouds gathering above Boston just now, the violence and despair of every day, all these are essential to whatever poem might emerge. We are, more or less, mere conduits.
In the opening paragraphs of 707 Scott Street, John Wieners wrote: "I must forget how to write. I must unlearn what has been taught me." JSP's move toward a minimalist aesthetic, later in his career, evokes this notion of unlearning.
"You arrive, to quell lightning with a glass of almonds.
This dream’s anchor opens my eyes into life."
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