"I came to the city because I wanted to see you."


I'll finish reading Juan Carlos Méndez Guédez's El libro de Esther today. Chuckling sometimes at the references to Asia (who've recently reunited) and Supertramp on someone's high school stereo in Colinas de Bello Monte in the early 1980s, a decade before the protagonist's search for Esther in Tenerife.

I like the novel's allegorical aspect, the way it might evoke a dissolving nation, as it surely does with the protagonist, his detective work in Spain sabotaged by an existential crisis. I've been reading the book in fragments spread over several weeks but each time I resume the narrative's allure remains. Méndez Guédez is considering the role of the muse in writing, as the opening epigraph from Víctor Valera Mora implies:

"Yo vine a la ciudad porque deseaba verte."

*

Came across this profile of Ashbery in The Guardian. He talks about his affinity for writing quick poems.

I like the idea of Ashbery mocking pastoral turns in his recent poems, while retaining a respect toward rural & urban landscapes, numinous Nature.