Elena y los elementos


In her introduction to Leonardo Padrón's Boulevard (Cincuenta de Cincuenta Ediciones, 2002), Beverly Pérez Rego writes:

"Aunque podamos convenir que todo poeta, en realidad desea leerse a sí mismo, aunque procedamos con cautela en nuestra ciudad y evitemos a toda costa las avenidas esdrújulas, debemos recordar otra advertencia de Padrón en su libro de ensayos Crónicas de la vigilia: Quizás la escritura sea un espejo demasiado feroz de nostros mismos."

Padrón's book mapped Caracas in journal form, abrasive verses with meditative prose paragraphs. The cover photograph on the second edition I found at the Librería Ateneo is of a mural with las torres del parque central behind them, as you walk out of the Bellas Artes metro stop, the same mural we'd walk by on the way to the park or Plaza Venezuela. I explicitly imitated some of this book's forms as I was reading it there, travelling the country and city, writing in English but living in Spanish, the compact paragraphs and short lines aided memory, or remembrance. I translated one fragment for the second half of Tropical Fascism, which I hope to update sometime in the next few months, writing an essay on several Venezuelan poets.

His poems fail occasionally, a tinge of telenovela (but since he does write telenovelas), a scriptwriter's excess narrative. N., I. and I saw him read in July 2002 at Librería Macondo in Chacaito, alongside graduates from that year's CELARG workshops (introduced by María Antonieta Flores). His new book is reviewed at El Meollo (see Reseña section).

None like Juan Sánchez Peláez, whose first book Elena y los elementos (1951) was re-edited, with revisions by the author, in honor of its 50th anniversary. Section four of the title poem as a political allegory of today's Venezuela. Some of Sánchez Peláez's later poems (from 2001 to his death in 2003) are prophetic of civil strife, "un desenlace." Surrealist in the sense of rejecting all forms of organization, a poet for silence.


"Yo atravesaba las negras colinas de un desconocido país.
He aquí el espectáculo:
Yo era lúcido en la derrota. Mis antepasados me entregaban las armas de combate.
Yo rehuí el universo por una gran injusticia.
Tú que me escoltas hacia una distante eternidad:
Oh ruego en el alba, cimas de luto, puertas que franquean tajamares de niebla.
Salva mis huestes heridas, verifica un acto de gracia en mis declives.
Pero, ¿qué veo yo, extenso en una maleza de tilos imberbes? Un glaciar cae lánguido en el césped.
El mármol se despide del hombre porque éste es una estatua irreverente."



Juan Sánchez Peláez, Elena y los elementos (Monte Ávila Editores, 2001).