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."

La fe del cardenal

Ana Teresa Torres

Opinión
Viernes 30 de Abril de 2004
TalCual


Como no soy creyente me conmuevo ante la fe y hasta la envidio; es una manera de resistir a las trampas de la realidad. Aquí resumo algunos artículos de fe del poeta de Solentiname que recuerdan un libro que en otro tiempo leímos con fervor: En Cuba, de 1972.

Renovadas sus creencias, don Ernesto escribe sus vivencias y observaciones recogidas en su visita a Venezuela con motivo del Festival Mundial de Poesía. Uno de los logros destacados es que “hasta hace poco una india era ministro” y su ministro anfitrión, es negro. El viceministro de Cultura “le contó” (no sabemos si es un cuento corto o una noveleta) que se han repartido gratuitamente 25 millones de ejemplares de diversos títulos, se ha producido una distribuidora de libros (¿será el cadáver de Kuai Mare?), así como una editorial de libros políticos porque la población “casi sólo encontraba libros de derecha”. (¿En las repisas de la derecha?, ¿a la orilla derecha del río?). “Algunos poetas” le explicaron que el apasionamiento por la poesía era producto de la revolución. Otra noticia es que ahora la universidad será gratis, así que las universidades nacionales probablemente fueron parte de una falsa información de la derecha que nos tuvo engañados por décadas.

Por suerte, dice el poeta, en Cuba “un gran contingente de estudiantes, muy bien escogidos, con la prohibición de pertenecer a partidos políticos, se están formando para realizar en el futuro tareas de gobierno”. ¡Ah!, Internet es gratis para el pueblo, “hasta en el campo”. Corran a las sabanas y conéctense. Lo más destacable es la “confraternización de civiles y soldados, unidos en una sola revolución”. (¿Los de Fuerte Mara? ¿O los que compartieron la piscina con Acosta Carles?). También la religión es de mencionar.

Chávez, por ejemplo, hace citas falsas del Evangelio, pero, eso sí, con el mismo espíritu con que Jesús lo hacía. También de la geografía en sus comparecencias públicas hace campaña para fomentar la lectura y recomienda libros y recita. “Esa vez en atención a mí leyó un poema mío”.

Lo peor, desde luego, es la derecha vandálica. Le roban sus pertenencias a los muchachos que viajan a Cuba, y su campaña es tan terrorífica que un psiquiatra le contó de la cantidad de pacientes afectados. Afortunadamente los periódicos de derecha ya no se venden, él vio los bultos sin abrir al final del día.

Además, “en Caracas hay un edificio blanco muy grande y muy bello, que era la sede central de Petróleos de Venezuela. Allí la riqueza petrolera era administrada autónomamente sin que el Estado pudiera intervenir en nada, y se robaban esa riqueza. Sólo ahora, mediante la nueva Constitución el gobierno pudo tener control de la empresa”. Junto a que no hay presos políticos, éstas son las dos mejores nuevas.

En fin, afortunadamente, dice el poeta: “No debo negar que encontré en Venezuela intelectuales honestos, algunos de ellos amigos míos, que se oponen visceralmente a Chávez”. Después dicen que los intelectuales no sirven para nada, cuando son los mejores publicistas. Pero, como apunté al principio, soy respetuosa de los creyentes, y aquí tenemos la fe que mueve montañas.




(Ana Teresa Torres, Tal Cual, 30 Abril, 2004)

Ghostface

I can't think of anything better than Ghostface and Big Baby Jesus on the same stage. I would have liked to have been there. As soon as I can afford it, I'll be listening to "The Pretty Toney Album." I heard one song off it the other night, and Ghostface's style remains brilliantly weird. Still waiting for ODB's next...

*

HIP-HOP REVIEW | GHOSTFACE KILLAH

A Rapping Acrobat With Lyrics That Do Back Flips and Cartwheels
By KELEFA SANNEH

The New York Times
Published: April 29, 2004


There were four big names on the flier advertising the hip-hop show at Roseland Ballroom on Tuesday: the underground star Talib Kweli, the mixtape hero DJ Kayslay, the veteran rapper Rakim and the Wu-Tang Clan's greatest rapper, Ghostface Killah.

But not all four had an equally successful night. One was good, one was brilliant, one was booed offstage and one was arrested. What more could you want from a hip-hop concert?

First the good: Mr. Kweli showed off his knack for corralling unruly syllables, and his short, straightforward set included "Lonely People," an appealing new song that samples "Eleanor Rigby."

Then the bad: after Mr. Kweli, DJ Kayslay tried and failed to tame a restless crowd, which turned on him for good when he played J-Kwon's "Tipsy." (This was an audience of New York-centric hip-hop purists, whereas J-Kwon is a telegenic St. Louis teenager with a mainstream hit.) Kayslay tried everything: he cursed, he threatened, he pleaded, he laughed. But nothing would stop the booing. Eventually he gave up and walked off.

And then things got ugly: Rakim's D.J. emerged and announced, "They just arrested the God Rakim!" Alan Otto, chief of staff to the Suffolk County sheriff's office, said yesterday that Rakim had been arrested outside the club, in Manhattan, on charges of not paying child support.

If you're going to take the stage after that kind of chaos, you had better be a boxer-cape-wearing, gold-chain-flaunting, idiom-coining, tall-tale-telling genius. Luckily, Ghostface Killah (now known as just plain Ghostface) fits the bill perfectly, and his performance alternately mesmerized and incited an audience that just a half-hour earlier was decorating the stage with plastic cups.

Ghostface's reckless, passionate rhymes make an impact because they don't always make sense. He gives himself over to the seduction of slang, often content to let his pungent phrases create their own dreamlike logic.

When he rapped, "People be talking, I feed dolphins/My defense'll fly the coop off your mean office," he sounded somehow helpless, held prisoner by the pleasures of language.

His sobbing, breathless voice underscores this helplessness, and his rhymes are often buffeted by violent gusts of melancholy and anxiety. Even his stage banter was transfixing and unpredictable.

After talking about his childhood of poverty, he cried, "I ate oatmeal!"

And then, as if he were expecting a fight, "I love oatmeal!"

He was joined by members of his inactive (although not, they insist, disbanded) group Wu-Tang Clan: the Rza, Raekwon, Masta Killa and Dirt McGirt (formerly Ol' Dirty Bastard), who lurched onstage for a brief rendition of "Shimmy Shimmy Ya."

For "Run," from the dizzying new Ghostface CD, "The Pretty Toney Album" (Island/Def Jam), Jadakiss emerged, and together they told thrilling stories about evading arrest. Maybe they could have given Rakim some advice.

For another new track, "Holla," Ghostface simply added lyrics to "La La (Means I Love You)," by the Delfonics. The audience howled the chorus while he delivered the rhymes, summing up his mindset with a typically unhinged simile: "Like the angry cripple, man, don't push me!"

{ nytimes.com }

"Some years ago I attempted to outline the possibility of validating or proving the truths that may occupy certain twentieth century works of fiction that diverge, in peculiar degrees, from canons of realism. I sought such proof or validation by bringing the fictions I had in mind into parallel with profound myth that lies apparently eclipsed in largely forgotten so-called savage cultures.

The nature of such eclipse is a haunting dimension; and now across many years when I find I may read The Guyana Quartet as if it were written by another person, it is possible to conceive how the fiction validates itself through buried or hidden curiously live fossils of another age."

{ Wilson Harris, from the introduction to The Guyana Quartet, London: Faber, 1987 }

"I'm just a red nigger who love the sea,
I had a sound colonial education,
I have Dutch, nigger, and English in me,
and either I'm nobody, or I'm a nation."

{Derek Walcott, "The Schooner Flight," 1979}

poor prose

versos cursi

pura paja

weak words

Deracination

The translation of the interview with Patricia Guzmán will be up sometime in the next few days. I will also be posting a translation of a recent interview with another Caracas-born poet, Eugenio Montejo (see poem below).

Caracas has always been a lesson in deracination for me. I lived there from 1976 until 1982, and even though I was born here in Boston, I usually think of Caracas as my home. But it’s a home I lament because it was always being taken away from me. Of course, my distance from Caracas probably makes me prey to the illusions of nostalgia.

My recent experiences in Caracas have been centered around two seemingly opposite emotions, love and paranoia. The latter is common to anyone who has spent any amount of time in Caracas in recent years. No one is immune to the chaos factor of violent crime. But the love I have for Caracas remains undiminished. It hurts to not be able to return, as I had hoped to this summer. Perhaps one of the reasons I am so vehemently opposed to the current government in Venezuela is because its Stalinist policies have directly affected my family.

When I’m in Caracas I often despise the city. But my conversations with her are frequently the source of my writing. My cousin told me recently how our grandfather used to take her into downtown Caracas on Sundays to walk around Plaza Bolívar, to chat with friends, eat lunch or see the sights. According to her, he knew all the corners’ names and histories (most of the corners in the central grid of the city have names—see Carmen Clemente Travieso, Las esquinas de Caracas, Libros de El Nacional, 2001). As they walked through the streets, our grandfather would stop to point out specific houses and buildings for my cousin to notice. For him, Caracas was his adopted home. He left Maracaibo as a teenager to attend high school in Texas in the 1930s. When he returned to Venezuela he settled in Caracas, where he died in 1989. I often think of how much of Caracas disappered for me when he and my grandmother died.

Nostalgia is irrelevant for me. More than that, it's dangerous to indulge in its corridors.

When my siblings and I left Caracas in 1982, and throughout the 1980s, I felt as though we were the only Venezuelans in Florida. I’m interested in writing about that void that inhabits you when you lose a house, a city, a country.

*

Caracas

Tan altos son los edificios
que ya no se ve nada de mi infancia.
Perdí mi patio con sus lentas nubes
donde la luz dejó plumas de ibis,
egipcias claridades,
perdí mi nombre y el sueño de mi casa.
Rectos andamios, torre sobre torre,
nos ocultan ahora la montaña.
El ruido crece a mil motores por oído,
A mil autos por pie, todos mortales.
Los hombres corren detrás de sus voces
pero las voces van a la deriva
detrás de los taxis.
Más lejana que Tebas, Troya, Nínive
y los fragmentos de sus sueños,
Caracas, ¿dónde estuvo?
Perdí mi sombra y el tacto de sus piedras,
ya no se ve nada de mi infancia.
Puedo pasearme ahora por sus calles
a tientas, cada vez más solitario,
su espacio es real, impávido, concreto,
sólo mi historia es falsa.


{Eugenio Montejo, en Julio Ortega, ed. Antología de la poesía hispanoamericana actual, México D.F. : Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 2002.}

My Sad Captains

Thom Gunn (1929-2004)


One by one they appear in
the darkness: a few friends, and
a few with historical
names. How late they start to shine!
but before they fade they stand
perfectly embodied, all

the past lapping them like a
cloak of chaos. They were men
who, I thought, lived only to
renew the wasteful force they
spent with each hot convulsion.
They remind me, distant now.

True, they are not at rest yet,
but now they are indeed
apart, winnowed from failures,
they withdraw to an orbit
and turn with disinterested
hard energy, like the stars.

“Me afano en celebrar con entusiasmo los oficios cotidianos”: entrevista con Patricia Guzmán


El Nacional - Lunes 19 de Abril de 2004 B/6


Cultura y Espectáculos

PATRICIA GUZMÁN entregó a la imprenta una obra consagratoria. El conjunto de su poesía acaba de ser publicado en un volumen titulado Con el ala alta e incluido en el selecto catálogo del sello editorial merideño “El otro, el mismo”. Periodista de gran prestigio, la poeta confiesa que extraña la escritura periodística, el ensayo concebido para los medios masivos de divulgación... pero no extraña los periódicos

MILAGROS SOCORRO


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



-El periodismo y la literatura, ¿cómo son conviven en ti esas dos sangres?
-Aunque me he pasado la vida peleando con ella, aprendí mucho con la escritura periodística (que no es lo mismo que el periodismo).

Aprendí mucho de ella y le agradezco haber comprendido que el registro de sensibilidades ante una palabra que tienen los otros es infinito; eso me obligó a ser generosa con lo que digo, a pensar en el otro, incluso desde la poesía misma. El periodismo me hizo más ecuánime, más generosa en mi pasión por el lenguaje, me obligó a tener clara conciencia de a quiénes les estoy hablando, de lo contrario no les llego, no los alcanzo, sería narcisa; y eso no lo quiero ser y menos a través del lenguaje.

-De la página 13 de Con el ala alta . Tu primer libro, De mí, lo oscuro , tiene un epígrafe de César Vallejo ("Y si después de tantas palabras /no sobrevive la palabra /Si después de las alas de los pájaros, /No sobrevive el pájaro parado /Más valdría, en verdad, /que se lo coman todo y acabemos").

-Así como mucha gente, antes de salir de su casa se persigna, yo no puedo leer ni hablar de mis libros sin ese epígrafe de César Vallejo, que cada vez más le da sentido a todo.

-¿Cuáles son tus lecturas?
-Es como una carta circular.

Los poetas de lengua española como San Juan y Santa Teresa me obsesionan, pero me encanta la intensidad, la violencia, la estructura de Silvia Plath y Ann Sexton.

No tienen que ver con el hecho de que sean mujeres escritoras. Yo no leo a mujeres o a hombres, yo leo poemas y poetas que me interesen.

Hay algunos de los cuales no me puedo desprender: Hanni Ossott es una obsesión, su voz es una obsesión para mí, sus ensayos sobre poesía, su traducción de Rilke. De María Zambrano, que no es poeta pero con cuánta poesía reflexiona tampoco puedo desprenderme.

Los místicos, sobre todo San Juan de la Cruz, me interesan, leo la Biblia, los salmos, el Libro de Horas, toda aquella escritura que tenga rito, la Torah, Hölderlin, los libros de Heidegger sobre la poesía. Intento leer toda aquella escritura que me traduzca la existencia, que me torne más claras mis angustias.

-En la página 55 de Con el ala alta dice: "Vacíalo /¿Quién quiere la sangre?... ". Y te pregunto, ¿quién puede querer la sangre?
-No lo sé. No lo sabía cuando lo escribí y no sé si lo sabré... Porque en mi proceso de escritura, sobre todo, en ese primer libro, que ya han dicho otros que es balbuceo, que es un libro cifrado, austero, yo estaba empezando a escribir, en el sentido de empezar a inventar la poesía. Sentía que todo me sobraba, y aún sigo escribiendo bajo un temblor, una amenaza, una necesidad, un agobio, una intranquilidad.

La verdad es que yo no hago carrera de escritora, no tengo disciplina para eso. No me pongo a escribir según un plan y no hago proyectos de libros. Una vez que tengo un grupo de poemas, los identifico como conjunto. Con los años, que ya son casi veinte en esto, puedo distinguir mis obras y, porque soy asertiva, por los lectores.

Yo comienzo a escribir sin saber a dónde voy. Cuando me aparece la primera línea y siento que por allí es, me atrevo a continuar.

En fin, no sé quién quiere la sangre... En ese poema que citas sé que quiero vaciar un pájaro. ¿De qué quiero vaciarlo? De la sangre, pero no encontré quién me diera sosiego, porque ¿quién quiere la sangre?... No lo sé.

-El libro se hace, pues, por acumulación más que por proyecto.

¿Cómo lo haces? ¿A qué hora?
¿Después de qué, antes de qué?
-En cualquier momento. Siempre dejo anotaciones, muchas: una palabra del poema de alguien, de alguna crónica, una imagen... y las anoto en un papelito o al margen de una libreta. A veces me da la angustia y me digo, bueno, que si no intento la poesía, la poesía no se va a quedar esperándome, entonces vuelvo a las anotaciones, las retomo, pego una con otra y en ello veo un poema. Obtengo a veces la satisfacción de un poema, no resuelto, pero ya sé que no me he quedado sola, sin poesía.

-¿Eso es todos los días?
-No todos los días. He pasado períodos muy largos sin escribir una línea. Pero luego me doy cuenta de que esos períodos de silencio son necesarios. Me va angustiando el no escribir pero no porque no tenga un libro.

-¿Extrañas el periodismo?
-Lo extraño por momentos. La escritura periodística sí, lo que no extraño es a los periódicos. Yo aprendí a diferenciar el periodismo del periódico. Además, a mí lo que me gusta, lo que mejor hago es el periodismo cultural. Estoy muy clara en eso, lo demás no lo sé hacer bien, quizá porque no me interesa.

Desde luego, manejo la información de actualidad política y económica, yo conozco este oficio. He pasado muchos años leyendo periódicos y en los periódicos como para no conocerlo. Pero no extraño un periódico; extraño escribir textos periodísticos, porque dan otro vuelo a la escritura. Yo no tengo complejos con el periodismo. No tengo nada que negarle al periodismo y lejos de eso le tengo gratitud, quizás porque me he peleado mucho con el periodismo.

La enfermedad tiene una sola ala

-De la página 19. "Reclamo mi cuerpo /entre tanta sordera /tanta lengua en lo oscuro". ¿Qué función tiene la poesía, si alguna, en la maraña de discursos políticos, periodísticos, publicitarios, oficiales y opositores?
-La palabra poética es latencia, pálpito, oscuridad audible, velo para transparentar al ser y las cosas, en tal sentido se torna incompatible con la "maraña" de discursos, sean éstos del orden que sean. Siento y pienso que la poesía, tal y como nos lo confiara Hanni Ossott, es un habla crepuscular, situada en el umbral de las cosas. Ella no detenta autoridad alguna, y cuando se vuelve voz proviene del único entramado que le es cónsono, el hondo entramado del ser; viene de las heridas profundas, de la sed de claridad, de la pugna por y para ser. Con los versos que citas, pertenecientes a De mí, lo oscuro, quizá intentara advertir el extravío al que nos conducen en su despliegue en busca de su destino las palabras, incluso aquella con las que hemos convivido, con las que nos proponemos recorrer un sendero que creemos conocido por haberlo visitado. Quizá quise aludir a la condición de amortajados que viene a ser mácula de nuestros días. Y sigo, años después, libros después, fiel a esa advertencia con la necesidad de quebrar ese tan humano e involuntario ensimismamiento que nos escinde.

-De la página 139. "Las bodas sólo se celebran / cuando llega la muerte / a mí la enfermedad me obsequió unas alianzas". ¿Qué es la enfermedad para el poeta contemporáneo?
-No tengo cómo cifrar qué es la enfermedad para el poeta contemporáneo.

Pero puedo intuir que ella deambula en su habitación, ya no con eco de tos, es otro el espesor de esa sombra que expone a la intemperie los latidos corporales del poeta. Escucho y quiero evocar en este instante el extraño verbo del alucinado de Coro, Elías David Curiel, cuando, embriagado de desamparo, dijera que "el éter es milagrosa escala /por donde Hahím psíquicamente sube /y cierne encima de la noche el ala". Ignorar no puedo el timbre de voz embriagado del olor a sangre de "la vieja herida", con el que Armando Rojas Guardia acotara que "a la luz de neón de nuestro tiempo, a penas suena a masoquismo la confesión insospechada de Juan de la Cruz: ´... lo que quiero es padecer´".

-¿Qué es la enfermedad para ti?
-"A mí la enfermedad me obsequió unas alianzas", escribí en "La Boda". Entre mis manos fueron colocadas para aferrarme así a la vida, así a la palabra, así al Amado, en Esposo convertido.

Porque en el vértigo, en el vacío al que inclina la enfermedad, apenas si oímos un quejido, el nuestro, vuelto queja monosilábica que no hemos de acallar para que se torne posible desprendernos en vilo de amor por aquel que hemos sentido en la carne, y que crece, crece y acepta comulgar, beber de la misma copa. Además, la enfermedad me instruyó en otro canto, en un canto que suena a oratorio, que transformó mis palabras en versículos con los que, como criatura agradecida, desperté a la salud y al gozoso misterio de vivir e intentar el poema día a día. Me afano entonces en rendir tributo al espigado nardo que atrae hasta mi casa al pájaro que cura, me afano en celebrar con entusiasmo, literalmente, los oficios ordinarios, cotidianos, en los que estoy inmersa: desde abandonarme a la lectura y a la música, hasta dictar una clase o servir la mesa para recibir a la familia, a los amigos. Porque, como escribí en "El Poema del Esposo", "La enfermedad tiene una sola ala / (Voy a enterrar en el jardín el ala de amar) ", para que eche raíces esa ala y me permita seguir aferrada a la vida. Y es que, repito, "en mi casa todo pájaro amanece curado".

-¿La poesía es un síntoma? Si es así, ¿de qué?
-Aceptaría esa idea de la poesía como síntoma si acordamos asumir la palabra síntoma fuera del alfabeto médico y visualizarla desplegando el sentido figurado que conlleva, es decir, como señal, indicio de algo auroral, que se anuncia, late, asoma y nace a medias, se vislumbra inacabadamente. En consecuencia, hemos de aceptar que las palabras, todas, y en su esencia, como aquellas con las que el poeta habla, aluden a una palabra perdida, "la palabra única que guarda el secreto del amor divino-humano", según anota María Zambrano.


El susurro del pájaro y la rosa

Patricia Guzmán (Caracas, 1960) es doctora en Literatura Hispanoamericana acreditada por La Sorbona. También es periodista, egresada de Universidad Católica Andrés Bello, donde ejerce como profesora; su carrera periodística incluye hitos como la dirección de las páginas de El Nacional, del suplemento cultural “Bajo Palabra”, de El Diario de Caracas y, más recientemente, de revista dominical “Estampas” del suplemento literario “Verbigracia”, ambos de El Universal.

Pero, sobre todo, Patricia Guzmán es dueña de una de las voces más hermosas y singulares de Venezuela.

Sus cuatro libros de poesía acaban de aparecer compendiados en una preciosa publicación, titulada Con el ala alta, editada por la casa “El otro, mismo”, que dirige Víctor Bravo desde Mérida. Al leer esas impresionantes páginas, se tiene la impresión de que en poesía de Patricia Guzmán castellano se hace celta, porque cobra esa entonación remota, de portentosa cultura irrigada por los siglos, que habita donde menos lo esperamos: en la letra iluminada, en la sombra del cáliz, en el rumor del ave, en jadeo del fanático y en la franja bordada del traje de novia.

En la poesía de Patricia Guzmán una rosa no es una rosa. Es la rosa toda, la rositudabsoluta, la condición extrema, flamígera, ingrávida y geométrica de todo lo que en el mundo es rosa y está impregnado de su sospecha.

La aparición de este libro nos consuela de muchas penas: país tiene poetas. Y eso ya es mucho. Es casi todo.

UNVEILING #8 -- a 6x6 Release Party

Saturday, April 24 / 8pm


with readings at 8pm from Nicole Andonov, Jenna Cardinale, Arielle Guy, Guillermo Juan Parra, Yuko Otomo and Karen Weiser

LIVE MUSIC by Songs to Drink & Drive By

DJs James Hoff (Loudmouth Collective) & Gary Hustwit (Plexifilm)

PROJECTIONS & FILMS by Joel Schlemowitz

AXIS of EVE presents Bushies!


@ the NEST, 88 Front Street, corner of Washington Street, in DUMBO, Brooklyn. F to York, A/C to High St. 718-852-5529

(Ugly Duckling Presse)

Mística del árbol

Los árboles son sacramentos de la paz.
Ellos me enseñan el arte difícil del sosiego,
firme en su aplomo vertical
frente al viento y al látigo incontable de la lluvia.
Su tranquilidad está transida de silencio
pues las hojas, como labios, sólo invitan
a contemplar otra flora escondida e interior
que no se puede describir con las palabras.
Ellas hablan al alma, no al oído.
El tallo, paciente, se revela siempre ascensional
por efecto de la atracción religiosa de la luz
que lo ha elevado, a través de los años,
hacia el cielo; éste parece pesar sobre sus ramas
para darnos la exacta sensación
de estar ante un frondoso
receptáculo sagrado. La calma del árbol ilumina.
No es casual que, bajo su sombra, Buda
haya recibido el rayo austero
de la verdad situada tras el tráfago
de las cosas goteando idéntico dolor:
la última quietud, incontaminable,
cuyo signo en la tierra son los árboles,
serenísimos rastros a seguir
del santo ocio de Dios al contemplarlos
como perfecto reposo de sus ojos.


El árbol es siempre vespertino
aun si lo alumbra una matutina esplendidez:
su esbelta, ensimismada arquitectura
sólo encuentra marco preciso
en el crepúsculo, cuando la paz,
ya madurada, expande copas
donde pernoctan los pájaros, callando.

{Armando Rojas Guardia, Verbigracia, 2000.}

*

"No siempre fue así. En la calle tradicional, la ciudad desplegaba su cadencia pausada como un paisaje franco; las galerías de El Silencio y los pasajes del Centro Simón Bolívar se atrevieron a proponer una ciudad novedosa; las amplias aceras del Centro Comercial Chacaito descubrieron lo urbano como placer; los bulevares revelaron las oportunidades del paseo. Pero la progresiva confiscación del espacio público por la demagogia y la ranchificación nos fue reduciendo al suplicio diario del tráfico como condena y la disgregación como norma, hasta confinar la diversión a la ficción de los "malls" comerciales, con ese olorcito a cotufa con plástico que aviva la ilusión de estar en otra parte."

{Enrique Larrañaga, "De las calles encalladas a la calle que no calla," El Meollo.}


*

Excellent essay by Heriberto Yépez on Enrique Krauze and Samuel Huntington at Anti Sta2 Uni2:

"Nunca pensé decirlo: por favor alguien traiga de vuelta a Octavio Paz."

*

Kill Bill (1 & 2) is so brilliant and hilarious. A muralist's narrative range.

*

"The Unbearable Lightness of Blogging"

*

Slavko Zupcic, 583104: Pizzas Pizzas Pizzas (Caracas: Fundarte, 1995).


Patricia Guzmán, Con el ala alta (Mérida, Venezuela: El otro, el mismo, 2004).

*

My reading for fragment
dime of evening
aligned fortress stance
Tackled for automatic
writing zone
hip-hop fluency
Formal and circumspect
Attired in dread

¿Ernesto Cardenal vs. Armando Rojas Guardia?


On April 1 the Venezuelan poet Joaquin Marta Sosa published an article in El Nacional titled "Los poetas no fueron a Turiaca." In this brief essay (see my translation below, April 2), Marta Sosa recounted a recent conversation he had in Caracas with the Nicaraguan poet Ernesto Cardenal, an old friend of his. The two poets ended up disagreeing vehemently about the current crisis in Venezuela.

Although Cardenal left the Sandinista party more than a decade ago, and in the recently-published final volume of his autobiography he denounces the Sandinistas as corrupt and misguided, he accepted an invitation to attend a government-sponsored poetry conference and festival in Caracas. Venezuelan poets who are opposed to the current regime were disinvited from this event, which was organized by Luis Alberto Crespo at the Casa Nacional de las Letras Andrés Bello.

Cardenal was a close friend of the poet Miguel Otero Silva, one of the founders of the newspaper El Nacional. He writes fondly of his visits to Caracas in his autobiography. However, it's unlikely that his recent visit could have been as pleasant.

Cardenal's disagreement with Marta Sosa is important to note because it reflects the disaster that the chavista regime has created in Venezuela. Those poets who do not swear allegiance to the chavista "process" are being ostracized along with the millions of other Venezuelans who signed in favor of a referendum against Hugo Chávez. Poets, of course, will survive this disaster since poems require no physical sustenance. But Cardenal (and most likely Amiri Baraka, who was also in attendance at the Festival Mundial de Poesía) has fallen for the chavista marketing scheme which aims to blame its own incompetence and neo-stalinist tendencies on the infamous empire to the north.

One poet I've been reading recently is Armando Rojas Guardia (Caracas, 1948). Sometime soon I'll post translations of a few of his poems. He is one of two hundred Venezuelan intellectuals who signed an Open Letter last February (See archives below, Feb 28) in protest of the chavista regime's dictatorial tendencies. As in most "revolutions" (even if ours in Venezuela is una revolución chimba, an absurd revolution) intellectuals are targeted for indoctrination and monetary compensation, or exclusion and exile. One hopes that Cardenal listened to his Venezuelan friends when he was in Caracas, and that he will soon realize that the chavistas have nothing save incompetence and conflict to offer.

In the second volume of his autobiography (Las ínsulas extrañas, Madrid: Editorial Trotta, 2002) Ernesto Cardenal includes the following two portraits of Rojas Guardia as a young student of exteriorismo:

"Armando Rojas Guardia es de los mejores poetas de Venezuela, y para algunos es el mejor. Su padre tambien era poeta, y en mi juventud yo había sido amigo de él, cuando era embajador de Venezuela en Nicaragua. Armando, el hijo, llegó de veinte y pico de años a Solentiname, y formo parte de nuestra comunidad por varios meses. Había sido jesuita por unos pocos años, y después que salió de la Compañia me escribió desde Europa diciendome que había sabido de nuestra comunidad, y que le interesaba por los dos aspectos, lo místico y lo social. Le contesté que bueno pues, que llegara.

Fue en Solentiname que empezó a querer ser poeta, y a serlo mejor dicho, pues allí escribió sus primeros versos, los que después publicó como Diario de Solentiname."
(416)



"Con esa poesía exteriorista Armando Rojas Guardia describió las lluvias de septiembre en Solentiname, las hojas de los plátanos goteando, el lago de muy diversos azules y sus garzas, el grito angustiado del pocoyo, y el murmullo amoroso de la oropéndola. O también el lago es un blancor inmóvil en la madrugada, ya casi el amanecer, bajo un cielo tenebroso, antes que cante el gallo junto a la cocina y se oigan los primeros botes con motor. Y despues son los Salmos a las siete, con las golondrinas alborotadas por el olor de la lluvia, y más tarde se mira desde el taller el agua metálica y brillante como zinc..."
(417)

Extraño es en torno nuestro


Extraño es en torno nuestro
el manantial que nos bebe

extrañas las uvas rojas
que todavía morderemos

raros
los vastos momentos en abril
donde puedan coincidir
tu rumbo y el mío
a la orilla de árboles frondosos
y países que nos son queridos

el vigilante de los crudos inviernos
nos acecha
e ignoramos el peso de nuestros brazos
si podrán ser útiles o no
si el tiempo será fresco o caluroso en abril
o si el granado en flor nos sostendrá serenos en la inquietud.

(2001)


Juan Sánchez Peláez (1922-2003)

Nuevo mundo / Rafael Cadenas

New World

1

I have burned the formulas. I stopped performing exorcisms. My legacy, the ancient power, remains distant. Bonfire's breath in my nostrils, my disintegrated language, the still-humid shadow of a dilemma.
Another life proceeds in darkness like a vein of water.
The entire displacement has existed in order to exile me, to live within another articulation.


2

Dawn papers. They always refer to the adopted homeland, the one I have given myself. Papers piled up as though for ceremony.
Sacrifice to an ebony god.


3

Those invariable writings.

I always return to the same language. Leather haunted by an animal. A fugitive, though present like an ancestor’s life.

Weaving over weaving, love’s dead tongue, a fire which has made me an addict of an insinuating cult.


4

The dawn does not return my final amulet. An old man signals from a beach. I try to return to the springs, but I don’t know the road.


5

My shadow enters.
It brings a serpent, a buffalo, a woman, a house, a pier.
The intoxication of savage copper.
Advance, advance.
Drug.

Overpowers what I observe.
Begins to mark here and there, everything.
Then escapes to join the animal.
Lost like a bird amid leaves.


6

Memory embarks in search of escaped things. Possessions belonging less to their owner than to air. What a wooden chest wants to protect was not born for words. I am the only one who labors to steal it from the eyes.


7

I proceed, making way through the roughness, toward the spot where my future portrait is kept.


8

A remote fire sustains me. I borrow from its red aura.
Hallway toward incandescence, you deny installments.


9

Vegetable orgy.
A naked woman lies beneath the rain.

Textures where an absence watches itself.

Guide me, aromatic cave.


10

Traces never recovered.

Suddenly, a graze. The skin’s universe. The thread lost on the journey.
I am bathed by what lives, by what dies.
Each day is the first day, each night the first night and I, I am also the first resident.




{ Rafael Cadenas, Memorial, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1977 }

Teodoro Petkoff in Boston

On Friday evening (April 9) the journalist and political analyst Teodoro Petkoff presented a lecture at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge. The JFK School website describes Petkoff in the following manner:

"Teodoro Petkoff is one of the leading political figures in recent Venezuelan history. His career began in the left-wing rebellion movements during the 60s as a member of the Venezuelan Communist Party (PCV). He led a groundbreaking reform of the left in Venezuela assuming a critical stance toward left-wing authoritarianism and the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia (1968) with the foundation in 1971 of the party Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS). An economist graduated from the Universidad Central de Venezuela, Mr. Petkoff has been member of the MAS national directive, presidential candidate, and elected congressman in many occasions. In 1996 he became Minister of Economic Planning under the presidency of Rafael Caldera. After his tenure in the Caldera administration, he became director of the newspaper El Mundo and then founder and director of the newspaper Tal Cual ."

I jotted down some notes about the lecture later that night. What follows are excerpts from those notes.

*

Petkoff was introduced by the journalist Ana Julia Jatar, who is currently a Visiting Scholar at Harvard's David Rockefeller Center for Latin American studies. Jatar mentioned that she first met Petkoff when he was one of her father's students at the Universidad Central de Venezuela. Jatar's introduction included an excerpt from a portrait of Petkoff that Gabriel García Márquez wrote in 1982.

According to Petkoff, there have been three historic ruptures in Venezuelan history:

1. When the Liberals overthrew the Conservatives in the 1800s, soon after Venezuela achieved independence from Spain.

2. When Liberals were overthrown by the military at the very beginning of the twentieth century (1900).

3. When the military were overthrown by political parties in 1945. (Petkoff includes the dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez after this third rupture.)

Hugo Chávez's presidency represents a fourth major rupture in Venezuelan history.

Petkoff's comments had two goals:

1. "Definir." To define who Chávez is and what his ideas represent. ("Tenemos que definir exactamente qué es Chávez.")

2. "Terreno." To define exactly on what grounds the opposition needs to challenge Chávez. Petkoff emphasized that the fight against Chávez must remain within the boundaries of a democratic process. To allow ourselves to be drawn into an armed conflict against Chávez would serve no viable purpose. ("¿Cual es el terreno en donde enfrentamos a Chávez?")

Regarding the appearance of Chávez on the political scene, Petkoff outlined three major warning signs in recent Venezuelan history. These warnings went unheeded, for the most part, by politicians and analysts in Venezuela. These three political events can now be interpreted as warnings that Venezuela's democracy was in trouble.

1. 1989: El Caracazo. (When there were major disturbances throughout Caracas, during which hundreds of people were killed by the National Guard.)

2. 1992: The two coup attempts by members of the military against the presidency of Carlos Andrés Pérez.

3. 1994: When Rafael Caldera left his political party (COPEI) and won the presidency as an independent candidate. For Petkoff, this event highlighted the bankruptcy of Venezuela's leading political parties.

Petkoff sees a solution to today's crisis as emerging from a center-Left position (his own). Extremists in the opposition from the far Right (Pedro Carmona, for example) only end up playing into Chávez's strategies.

Petkoff reiterated several times that night that Chávez rules his political party (Movimiento Quinta Republica, MVR) and the country as the "alpha and omega." In this manner, Chávez has discouraged and prevented any democratic tendencies that might exist within chavismo.

One major critique Petkoff makes of the opposition is that they have not sufficiently attacked Chávez's policies in a coherent, thorough manner. By focusing on his personality, they end up not offering a viable alternative plan to chavismo.

Regarding the Cuban presence in Venezuela, Petkoff said that he was sure that there are indeed Cuban police and military advisors in Venezuela today. These police and military are in Venezuela secretly, unlike the Cuban doctors, teachers and sports trainers, who are openly discussed by the Venezuelan government.

Petkoff emphasized the need to distinguish between a totalitarian regime (such as Cuba, China, the Soviet Union) and a more or less typical Latin American dictatorship (Pinochet). Chávez is somewhere between the two. He believes it is foolish and counterproductive for the opposition to label Chávez a dictator or a fascist, even though he does have those tendencies. Petkoff believes that up until now Chávez has been weaving through the fine line between a democracy and a dictatorship. Until he becomes an outright dictator, it does not benefit the opposition to call him a dictator. Petkoff acknowledged that this is difficult, since the line between the two is often blurred by Chávez.

Petkoff sees Chávez's undeniably autocratic methods (very similar to those of 19th century caudillos) as being kept in check by Venezuela's democratic traditions (going back more than forty years). In this sense, Petkoff does not see a "Cubanization" ocurring in Venezuela. Today in Venezuela there is a unique and unprecedented context.

Petkoff believes that Venezuelans today are suffering from a hyper-politicization. It is important to be politicized, particularly for Venezuelans, who for many years were indifferent to politics. But at this current historical moment, we Venezuelans are suffering from a pathological hyper-politicization. This is evident in the fact that whenever any Venezuelans sit down to talk nowdays, the topic always ends up returning to Chávez. Petkoff sees this as an unhealthy situation which we will have to move beyond.

The situation in Venezuela is extremely complex. On the one hand, Chávez has returned us to the era of caudillismo. But the one thing that the opposition has failed to do is connect politically with the many Venezuelans who have historically always been excluded by Venezuela's leaders. While Chávez's policies are not necessarily actually helping the poor, his discourse is geared toward them, and he offers them a sense of inclusion. Even if this inclusion is not supported by material improvements in their lives, it has allowed him to sustain the approximately 25 percent of Venezuelans (a large amount) who still support him.

Petkoff does believe that Chávez's discourse will eventually not be enough to maintain that support. But for now his political discourse is reaching a group that responds to his attention.

At one point during the question & answer session, two members of Boston's Bolivarian Circle (there were six members there, according to my count) tried to challenge Petkoff and disrupt his lecture with rambling, unclear questions. The first one, for instance prefaced his question with the following comment: "I was born in Venezuela but I have lived here for thirty years..." His question covered a point that Petkoff had already gone over earlier. Petkoff disposed of these chavistas' predictable questions eloquently and forcefully. From what I could tell, only two of the six members of Boston's Bolivarian Circle were Venezuelan.

Petkoff spoke for over two hours. After presenting his commentary, he answered a wide range of questions from the audience, which seemed to be almost entirely Venezuelan. One of the last things he said was: "Estoy feliz con mi periodiquito" (I'm happy with my little newspaper). It was fascinating lecture by a brilliant intellectual.

Rafael Cadenas y la otra voz / Rafael Arráiz Lucca

Rafael Cadenas and the Other Voice

Throughout the nineteenth century very few of our poets ventured into the reflective waters of the essay. I think of Andrés Bello and Rafael María Baralt, but not even these writers developed what the Germans call a lyric of thought (gedanken lyrik). Nor did such a distinguished author as friar Juan Antonio Navarrete, throughout the eighteenth century. If memory does not betray me, the first among us to inhabit these spaces was José Antonio Ramos Sucre. He did this not only with his prose poems but also with a series of corrosive epigrams that he titled with precise irony, Granizada, and published in 1929 in the magazine Élite.

Amidst the tumult of the twentieth century only a few have cultivated a lyric of thought. Our poets have tended toward another type of poetry. Within this solitary lineage we find passages from the work of Juan Liscano, Guillermo Sucre, Armando Rojas Guardia, Miguel Márquez and, evidently, Rafael Cadenas. I prefer not to venture into the realm of fiction writing with these ruminations because red lights would appear and we would lose sight of the exit. Let us return to poetry. It is no coincidence that these poets have been, in their own manner, exceptional essayists. In addition, trying to specify in what genre they excel is an arduous task. In truth, today it is impossible to conceive of a great poet, complete and authentic, who lacks critical means. What is more, it is impossible to think of a significant poet whose work does not enact philosophical and critical instruments for understanding the world. Modernity invalidated the relevance of simple expressions developed without epistemological complexity. No one doubts the value of many poetic expressions, but there are very few of them that distinctively assert themselves within history's currents.

One of the most important poetic oeuvres in Venezuelan history belongs to Rafael Cadenas. And if this statement is not news for specialized readers, it could be for many of those who frequent these pages. That is why I affirm it in this manner: a commonplace remark for some, a revelation for others. And in these extremely sad times for Venezuela, when we have descended to the basement where ignorance and idiocy walk hand in hand, it is helpful to celebrate the gems of our patrimony.

For almost a year now, Cadenas’s Obra Entera [Complete Works] has been circulating. It has been published by Mexico’s Fondo de Cultura Económica, thus consecrating his work within Latin America’s most influential publishing house. But this crucial edition is now accompanied by a compilation of interviews edited by Orlando Barreto for Ediciones de la Oruga Luminosa in San Felipe. The book, with its very Cadenasian title, Entrevistas, gathers the best conversations that the author has engaged in with writers and journalists, from 1966 up to the present.

Whoever ventures into the labyrinth of these pages will be able to examine some of the recurring threads in the thought of the poet from Barquisimeto: his condemnation of nationalism, the ego as the center of human dilemmas, the obsessive search for humility as an organizational and catalytic vortex, the defense of the individual above any collective intent to impose limitations, the fascination with Christian mystics and, last but not least, the assimilation of Asian philosophy within the West itself.

One of the most substantive interviews is the one he sustains with Guillent Pérez in 1966, published in this newspaper. In the interview he affirms: “I belong to the Western tradition, the land where the sun sets, and there is no avoiding this. I have tried to mold myself within that heritage. But I began to correct myself a few years ago. I studied, and study, the works of Buddha, Suzuki, Krishnamurti and others. And yet they remain inaccessible to my own experience. They pointed me once again toward the mystics of the West. Jung has been important for me and someone, I won’t say who, brought me back to earth without eliminating the soul.” A paragraph with no dross, followed by another moment, a few lines later, which has an electrifying effect: “Who would dare to ask one of our social, political, academic, artistic or literary luminaries, one of our honourable men, to abandon his or her I?”

When a person has descended to the bottom of the well, the source of what Octavio Paz calls the “other voice,” he or she has experienced the most profound event. The one that can only be attained through silence, where words degenerate into mere fireworks: “What our intellectuals are lacking most is humility. It wouldn't be a bad idea to establish schools where that virtue could be taught. One of the courses that would be imparted there, by mute teachers, would be Pythagorean silence.” I don’t have enough space here to continue citing, so I refer you to the book. Since Plato, we know that a dialogue can be as enlightening as a monologue. If you look for Rafael, you will find him in the place least frequented by Venezuelan writers: any one of Caracas’s bookstores or, also, in one of the buses that ascend from Chacaíto to La Boyera.




{ Rafael Arráiz Lucca, El Nacional, 27 July 2001 }

Castigar al disidente / Víctor Hugo D’Paola

Punishing the Dissident

Revolutions are merciless with dissidents. In Russia, China and Cuba the victorious revolutions eliminated, in the most inhumane manner, those fellow travelers who expressed their differences.

Along with physical elimination, the machine of the system spiritually murdered its adversaries. The dissident was no longer a human being, a comrade in the endless battles for the revolution. He or she became a specter of a former self, a despicable individual who had to be punished, along with his or her family. Horrendous persecutions were unleashed against dissidents and their families, in these and other revolutions.

The opposition member, while still under persecution, was classified with denigrating adjectives by his or her former companions. For the Cuban revolution, the Florida exiles were simply gusanos [worms]. The rebels in Escambray were “bandits.” In Castro’s eyes they were not politicians who opposed his dictatorship; they were gusanos and bandits who needed to be exterminated.

Throughout the twentieth century, the persecutions against the dissidents and opponents of these revolutions became famous. Nearly all of the Bolshevik Party (Lenin’s party) died in the bloody purges, authorized by Stalin, against those who questioned the leadership of the revolution and the State.

Mao did the same thing in China. Along with his famous wife, he led the so-called “cultural revolution,” which was used to consolidate a totalitarian interpretation of culture and to repress and drown any opposition to the powerful dictator.

Cuba has lived through persecution after persecution against the opposition. Ever since the dissent of Huber Matos, a Sierra Maestra guerrilla who endured twenty years of prison for not aligning himself with Castro’s totalitarian politics, and up to the quick trials against the poet Raúl Rivero and other Cuban opponents of the communist dictatorship, Fidel Castro has been merciless against any internal manifestation against his government.

Venezuela’s pathetic revolution cultivates the same methods of repression. The worst aspects of these revolutions are being imitated. It pursues its adversaries furiously and with treachery (see for instance, the case of the oil workers who are victims of Alí Rodríguez’s Stalinist bile). It places its opponents in jails for common criminals, denying them the condition of political prisoners. It invents humiliating terms for them: squalid ones, oligarchs, coup-plotters, fascists, terrorists. With scarce popular support, Chávez now feels an overwhelming rejection from the majority of Venezuelans. The major dissidents against Chavismo are the Venezuelan people. This is why punishment is meted out indiscriminately. Any protester can be tortured with the barbarity of an inhuman beast.

Selective repression has also begun, aimed at the leaders of the opposition and distinguished journalists. This is the reason for the expected trial against Carlos Melo, the persecution of Henrique Capriles Radonski, the political prisoners of the governor of Táchira, the threat by the governor of Mérida against the regional leaders of the Coordinadora Democrática, the charges against Patricia Poleo, the imprisonment of general Alfonso Martínez. The regime is falling apart quickly. At the same time, it bares its Stalinist-fascist claws.



{ Víctor Hugo D’Paola, Tal Cual, 6 April 2004 }

¿Pronósticos o conclusiones? / Francisco Vera Izquierdo

Predictions or Conclusions?

Back when our President wasn't chubby, some people already spoke of his fall from power in the present participle, as a verbal action in development.

In other words, as something that had started but not yet arrived. But four years have passed without the occurrence of this supposed fall from power. This has drawn curiosity, and abroad there are those who believe that governmental survival is an invention of journalists who are looking to draw readers by publishing extravagant stories.

It is undeniable that current conditions make a sudden change seem unlikely. But more than a century ago, the general José Ignacio Pulido, a psychologist and not quite a psychiatrist of Venezuela, declared that the unforeseeable is what always happens in this country.

If one reads the newspapers, listens to the radio, watches television, goes into the street or answers the phone, one would think that the fall of our absurd President is being planned at this moment in Fuerte Tiuna.

And this idea about the Government living, dying or agonizing does have its own perspective after all. It exists in the sense that there are people who receive official salaries, who travel for free, with an official car and driver, etcetera; but a proper government, in the sense of providing, regulating or prohibiting, does not currently exist.

I cannot even imagine the disasters committed by bolivarians as being planned by the Government.

The only thing in existence is the most absolute impunity for crimes committed by any chavista.

The thugs that have been armed by the Government form the base of its electoral sustenance.

I may be mistaken here since gangsters, the same as capitalists, do constitute a force within society; however, they are not an electoral factor. Regardless, the Government has enough power to fill Caracas with campesinos bused into the city for a rally. However, once an election arrives, those campesinos would vote in their home towns, aside from the fact that a paid road trip to the capital might not be enough to buy their votes. Of course the Government’s people are aware, as everyone else is, of their electoral degradation. And I can imagine the waves of elbow jabs in Miraflores each time the vice president or the CNE talk about numbers.

I don’t know how daring the chavista magnates will remain in the face of material obstacles, but in regards to spiritual obstacles, as with the absurd, they show signs of nonpareil boldness. Not only do they face them calmly, but they even seek them out at times through all the means at their disposal. I admire all of them but, even more than the misogynist of Valencia*, I truly admire the vice president, perhaps because he is the person who appears most frequently in the media.

I picture him at home, practicing being Little Red Riding Hood and a rattlesnake.

Aside from rare exceptions, there is one infallible prediction and that is of death. What remains difficult is ascertaining a specific date. Therefore, regarding the fall of our chubby leader, what comes to mind is the Mexican song that says “She only tells me yes, but never tells me when."

I am not prone to prophecies nor do I take those of others seriously.

The most accurate prophecy I remember, whose premonition I heard in my infancy, was spoken by the priest Frutos del Hoyo in Los Dos Caminos: “As I declared last Sunday, today is Día de Reyes.” In the same manner, despite the best wishes of the respectable majority, I will only believe in the prophecies of an imminent fall when I see something similar to that time during the Día de Reyes. But I would also remind the chavistas of the following spiritual advice: “Remain aware, because you know not the day nor the hour.” I have nothing to lose and perhaps much to win as a Venezuelan. But to those who are enjoying an exaggerated and daily increase in wealth, I would recommend you have your luggage packed and your tickets reserved.

It hasn’t rained yet but the clouds are heavy with water.






Translator's note:

* A reference to general Luis Felipe Acosta Carles, whose soldiers brutally attacked several women who were protesting against the government in the city of Valencia (January 2003).




{Francisco Vera Izquierdo, El Nacional, 5 April 2004}

Future Epigraphs



"It is only in the present age that narratives have emerged in which characters stage a revolution against utopia itself--and in which this process is felt to be more satisfying than the founding of utopia in the first place."

{Fredric Jameson, "The Politics of Utopia," New Left Review 25 Jan/Feb 2004}



"A diferencia de otras épocas, la nuestra ha sido decidida con mayor fuerza que nunca por estos guiños, por estas muestras del ingobernable reino del caos. Me propongo contar, pues, la trama del siglo. De mi siglo. Mi versión sobre cómo el azar ha gobernado al mundo y sobre cómo los hombres de ciencia tratamos en vano de domesticar su furia."

{Jorge Volpi, En busca de Klingsor, Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1999}



"Yo venía a través de la ciudad
Desde mi casa al centro,
Al otro extremo de aquel valle,
Cuando se me urgieron respuestas
Para nuestra inconsistencia."

{Yolanda Pantin, "El hueso pélvico," 2001}

Los poetas no fueron a Turiaca / Joaquín Marta Sosa

The Poets Did Not Visit Turiaca

More than twenty years have passed (twenty years is a long time, no matter what the tango might say) and the poet is slightly stooped, his legs give the impression they can barely support his body. But he remains the same self-absorbed person, affectionate in flashes, who listens to me as though he were scrutinizing each word with his serene eyes somewhat dimmed.

I tell him about Juan Carlos Zambrano, who was broken to pieces at a military camp, Turiaca, and in whose stomach the forensic doctors found human hair drenched in a kilogram of shit. I remind him that the same thing happened in his country and that it's always for the same reason, the regime's precarious loss of support.

"But the United States is conspiring here against the government," he tells me. "We're both too old," I allege, "to go around claiming the United States as the only reason for defending any government at random. I don't care what the American government thinks or plans in regards to Venezuela." He is not going to dictate my political morals, nor is he going to mark me along the line separating the acceptable from the detestable. "That argument," we look each other in the eyes, "already smells stale. One supports or opposes a government because of its actions, not because of the friends or enemies it might have."

"But the media," he replies, "are all in the opposition and they attack relentlessly."

"As they did with all the other administrations," I underline for him. "To a large degree, the media were responsible for the legitimization of the chavista coup against an administration that, like the current one, was democratically elected. And several very important newspapers and journalists were truly aligned with chavismo throughout its campaign for the presidency. And they tolerated the closure of Congress, the violation of the Constitution in place at the time, all within the pretext that only he could end the corruption and poverty caused by the political parties.

Corruption today is infinitely higher, and in regards to the political parties his own has been substituted by an appoint-ocracy. It's an old form of excessive and anti-democratic caudillismo, from which we've heard varied and horrible news throughout our national experience."

The poet looks at me, he remains silent. And I know that it's not that he agrees with me but that, instead, it must feel inappropriate to contradict me. After all, we haven't seen each other in twenty years. "And yet," he points out, "he has plenty of popular support." "Yes, that has never been denied," I say, "but today the opposition has more popular support. That's why, against all promises, he resorts to trickery in order to prevent a democratic referendum. This includes the current persecution against those who signed for the convocation of a referendum. With this referendum we all have rights, just as long as we have sworn loyalty to the government. Besides," I insist, "he has done nothing but enhance the ancient heritage of corruption and mismanagement, to which he has added a grim expansion of poverty. In this regard, he only exhibits a frightening disloyalty to the will of the people who elected him. Instead of into the future from a better present, he shoves them in a forced march toward the worst elements of our past."

He stops talking. I stop talking. Someone arrives to take him to another event.

"Well," he says in parting, "take care of yourself." He walks away between two ushers from the seemingly well-organized and efficient event. (I recommend its organizers be promoted to the highest posts in the administration, just to see if something improves, cultural affairs for instance.) The poets have been well-attended , in hotels available to very few people here. They have been generously paid, they have travelled first class.

Surely marvelous. But I wish this courtesy toward poetry were not reserved only for the faithful and for the foreigners who can be displayed like crown jewels. And I would like for a festival that aims to encompass the "world" to invite all the major Venezuelan poets, without requiring a political blood oath.

As I leave the hotel, I am thinking that the poets were not informed, nor was there a ceremony to take them out to Turiaca.

Here, the unarmed individual is murdered under orders from that military chief who has become an inaccessible darkness, thanks to the government's protection and complicity. A darkness perhaps reminiscent of Pinochet, although never of Góngora.

Meanwhile let us read Romeu, in whose caricatures someone says: "It seems odd to me when I encounter a leader who is not delusional, overbearing, ill-mannered and swollen like a globe." I don't even need to be here to know this.





Translator's note:

Joaquín Marta Sosa recently edited an anthology of Venezuelan poetry: Navegación de tres siglos (antología básica de la poesía venezolana 1826/2002), Caracas: Fundación Para La Cultura Urbana, 2003. The writer that Marta Sosa refers to in this essay is most likely the Nicaraguan poet Ernesto Cardenal, who was in Caracas last week to attend the Festival Mundial de Poesía. This government-funded festival and conference was organized by the poet Luis Alberto Crespo, a staunch chavista, who is the director of the Casa Nacional de las Letras Andrés Bello. Important Venezuelan poets such as Elizabeth Schön, Rafael Cadenas, Yolanda Pantin, Jacqueline Goldberg, Eugenio Montejo, and Patricia Guzmán (to name just a few) were not invited to attend the conference.



{ Joaquín Marta Sosa, El Nacional, 1 April 2004 }

Vuelve a pasar la realidad

Francisco Pérez Perdomo


Nada perdura.
Todo cambia, eso es todo.
En este cuarto oscuro,
en la soledad
y entre las sombras,
irremisiblemente sufrimos
por los años que pasan.
El presente es sólo un celaje,
nada más.
En el vacío de esta tierra,
hoy somos apenas los antiguos
y desaparecidos visitantes.
Recorrer uno a uno los lugares
que en épocas tan lejanas
nos fueron entrañables y aquí
de nuevo volvemos a encontrar,
es mirarnos a nosotros mismos
y añorar con nostalgia nuestro
propio pasado. Todo pierde
su sentido si no resuena adentro
de nosotros. Somos recurrentes.
Revocamos el tiempo
y regresamos. Con pasos callados
vuelve el otro
que éramos entonces,
un extraño de sí mismo
y se pone a repetir
las viejas calles. En una
de ellas, la radiante mujer
rodeada por los sueños,
se despereza lentamente
por escasos momentos
bajo el dintel
de la puerta de su casa.
Detenernos y mirarla sin fin,
permanecer allí absortos
y a la vez alelados
hasta más allá de la muerte,
eso hubiéramos querido ahora,
aquí y para siempre.
Pero ya no somos los mismos.
Somos ese espectro lacerado
que camina de un extremo
al otro y cuyos pasos
arrastran las corrientes
del polvo y de la sangre.
Grave y ciega, de espaldas
a nosotros y sin detenerse,
vuelve a pasar la realidad.


(Francisco Pérez Perdomo, La casa de la noche, Caracas: Edición de autor, 2001)

Preguntas ingenuas / Teodoro Petkoff

Simple Questions

In the interview with the poet Luis Alberto Crespo that Tal Cual published yesterday, amid the many interesting and serious things he said, and which I agree with, he commented in ambiguous terms, however, about the Cuban poet Raúl Rivero's prison sentence. Although he condemned "on principle all prisons," he asked how they had jailed Rivero, whether as a poet or as a politician, adding that "the matter is part of the laws over there." Of course, poet, the Soviet gulag was also a part of the laws "over there," of the former Soviet Union. The Nazi concentration camps and the "final solution" against Jews were also very established in a Germanic manner within the laws "over there." The prisoners of Guantanamo (a naval base for North American imperialism located in Cuba, whose contract was automatically renewed in 1999 by Fidel with no added anti-imperialist words) are there "legally." In general, serious governments (and surely the Nazis and the Soviets were serious, as are the Americans) attack human rights while paying close attention to legal formalities. But tell me one thing, poet. By chance, is there a Venezuelan law that prohibits the granting of a passport to those people who oppose the Chavista regime? Or do we simply violate human rights here in the manner of a banana republic, just for the sake of the commander's pure cojones?




{Teodoro Petkoff, Tal Cual, 25 March 2004}

Calletania (Monte Ávila Editores, 1992)

Calletania was written before the bi-partisan collapse and I feel that the novel has relevance today. Narco-guerrillas, arms traffic, unsubstantial ideologies. In my novel the liberators become fanatics and that is partly what is happening today. The revolutionary is transformed into the reactionary and the ideal of liberation into a totalitarian impulse. The process justifies any action. The Jacobin premise is being repeated: with the process everything, against the process nothing. Our dynamic is in black and white: it seems as though no one wants to look at nuances. That has been the government's language: nuance is treason, counterrevolution. What is dangerous is that a certain element among the opposition uses similar criteria.

{Israel Centeno, interview with El Nacional, 31 March 2001 / El Meollo}

New York Schooling: An Interview With Frank Lima / Spring 2001


Frank Lima (New York City, 1939)

Inventory (Tibor de Nagy Gallery, 1964)
Underground with the Oriole (E.P. Dutton, 1971)
Angel: New Poems (Norton, 1976)
Inventory: New and Selected Poems, edited by David Shapiro (Hard Press, 1997)
The Beatitudes (forthcoming)

*

Guillermo Juan Parra Could you comment on your decision to wait twenty years between publishing Angel and Inventory: New and Selected Poems?

Frank Lima There was no choice. It was imperative that I change my lifestyle and my writing as well. Although Allen [Ginsberg] was, and will be, a great American poet and, as Helen Vendler put it, "Allen opened the way" of courage in what is Modern American expression in poetry. Nevertheless, I did not want to become an Icon of ghetto repetition. That is to say, in order to continue writing poetry about the life I was leading would have been certain death. I mean the cemetery kind, not the one that is even worse, the literary one that Allen suffered.


GJP At a reading in New York in 1998 you mentioned your habit of carrying a pocket notebook everywhere. What is your preferred method of composition?

FL Allen suggested that I keep a small notebook on my person at all times for poetic ideas, in the event they occur at inopportune moments.


GJP In the poem "Pisces," you write about César Vallejo. Do you see any connections between the poems Vallejo wrote in Peru and Paris and your own New York poems, in terms of both being attempts to expand the range of your versions of Spanish and English?

FL Yeah! I often translate my "Spanish" ideas into English via poetry.


GJP Your poem "Voyagers" alludes to a certain intimacy that poetry can create: "When poets love each other from across the page / Occasionally they whisper in the same room / and gather their poems like unborn faces in the dark." This relationship between poets could be read as an alternative to Harold Bloom's antagonistic "anxiety of influence." Your poem suggests a form of communication between poets that is collaborative rather than hierarchical. In what sense do you conceive your work as being in conversation with that of other poets?

FL I often make feeble attempts at imitating other poets, just to get started and get away from "writer's block" or poetic shock at discovering you're not a poet after all. I am the apprentice of many great American poets, as many of us are. I'm not pompous enough to deny this wonderful fact. To name a few: O'Hara, Koch, Neruda, Lorca, D. Shapiro, Ashbery, and Vallejo. I disagree with Mr. Bloom, the emperor of poetry. I'm very proud of the many influences in my poetry. There are many a dull poet out there who would do a lot better by imitating someone like O'Hara, etc., etc. I am of the belief that poets write for each other. Who in God's name would choose such a medium of art and who else would read it anyhow? Other poets and for selfish reasons, of course.


GJP Your early poem "Inventory-To 100th Street" suggests affinities with music: "Spicks with cock-comb / hair fronts / ear-gulping mambo music / eye-lapping pepperican flower / crotches." Has music been an influence on your writing?

FL Was mambo in my consciousness when I wrote "Inventory"? Who knows? I can't even dance it. Nevertheless, I suppose it's in my blood. I always listen to music when I write: Mozart, Vangelis, Scriabin, Poulenc, Prokofiev, and lots of Opera. I enjoy the beauty and dramatic atmosphere they create when I'm writing (as I write this, I'm listening to Vaughan Williams' "Lark Ascending.") Salsa is too much fun, sexy and distracting. Salsa is not contemplative and solitary. Poetry is self-starting and its nature does not need companionship.


GJP Your early work, in both subject matter and style, can be read as a predecessor to developments in the poetry of certain artists associated with hip-hop culture, from the painter Jean-Michel Basquiat in the 1980s to rappers such as Mos Def and Nas in the 1990s. How much do you consider your work, like that of many hip-hop artists, as developing partly out of this mestizaje within New York City?

FL Please, don't put me on the same shelf with the deceased Mr. Basquiat. Although he may have had talent, he was naive and lacked what it takes to live without getting loaded. The real test would have been: what now, without drugs and pussy to run to? I was real dumb, without the slightest clue of what was going on in music, to say the least of hip-hop or, for that matter, any ethnic or cultural-movement taking place around me in Spanish Harlem. I just wrote because I liked it and other people liked it too.


GJP The poem that opens Inventory: New and Selected Poems, entitled "Scattered Vignettes," begins as a family history ("My father's mother was a poor Indian who made / and sold confections in the streets / of Guadalajara to make ends meet.") and concludes with nightmarish images of institutionalization and psychological trauma. I find the poem to be reminiscent of Ginsberg's "Kaddish," in the sense that both of you transform tragedy into solace and clarity through a poetic method that doesn't shrink from uncomfortable details. Could you comment on how your poems often provide, or exemplify, a method of accepting and transcending adversity through language?

FL I'm not one to speak of language or any kind of transcendence with regard to a therapeutic or recuperative experience by way of the arts. I do now, however. If I'm to continue writing and enjoying my lifestyle as it is, I'd better stay sober and follow the rules or die! The need to suffer to create a dramatic art is nonsense. Vignettes started out as a vita for my then publisher, Dutton. For whatever reasons, it became this mini abstraction of my life as a youth and I went with it, as I often do when I write. The first word on the screen counts the most. No, it was not painful. That is the writing. The scariest part was how to develop it into something other than a flat bio about me-me. Of course, I've read "Kaddish," a long time ago. Did it influence the writing of Vignettes? As all good poetry does, yes, at some level, yes. Good thing, too. Without "Kaddish" it might have been boring and sentimental. As a result, I took chances. This particular poem has the ability to turn people off.


GJP Your poem "Homenaje" is dedicated to Ginsberg. How much of an influence did his work have on you as a young writer, and in recent years as fellow poets?

FL In the beginning there was Allen. Allen was the second poet I read. The first was Robert Lowell. Both were the ultimate influences in my early writing career. Allen gave a sense of current life and immediacy. Lowell had the elegance and education I did not have. I benefitted greatly from both at the time. My Homenaje, or tribute, to Allen is an honest and open acknowledgement of how important he was to my early writings.


GJP On the subject of influence, in the early 1960s you were friends with Frank O'Hara. His work conveys a sophisticated enthusiasm and curiosity towards New York City, which can often be found in your own work. Could you talk about the class you took with him at the New School for Social Research? Would you say that your friendship with him was an important moment in your development as a poet?

FL Well, Frank was a terrible reader of his own poetry that he made up in his enthusiasm for life in New York. He would have been a great mayor of Broadway. He loved the theater, dance and all the arts. Frank was the mentor that taught me to take chances in poetry and to be free and enjoy writing it. Poetry did not have to be blood and tears, life did not have to be blood and tears, either. That art was the ultimate experience, and that it should be luxurious and fun. At the New School he was matter of fact and to the point. He did like anyone's work. He actually liked reading new things and his critique was always generous and complementary. Although in private this was not always the case. I learned from Frank that art was a wonderful responsibility and that one should respect the practitioner. Frank introduced me to the French composers, the "modernist" French poets, Greek classics and their myths. Not to mention the ballet, dancers, and to many artists, including Edwin Denby and Virgil Thomson, Leonard Bernstein, and many other notable artists. Frank, without a doubt, has been the most influential person and poet in my life, other than Kenneth Koch. I am just beginning to realize how important he was in my life.


GJP During the last decade there has been a growing interest in the so-called New York School poets. Certain critics refer to a second generation New York School. Do you align yourself as a poet with any of these terms, or do you consider them as efforts by critics to classify large and varied groups of poets?

FL No, I do not align my lifestyle or work with the second generation New York School. However, I feel privileged to know them as part of that time. I have, over the years, stayed in contact with many of them and their outstanding and innovative work, that continues to be contributory to modern American poetry. Critics have little choice but to categorize things they do not understand, or perceive as art, because they are not artists but want their craft to be judged as an art form. So, they are generally bitter, and this state manifests itself in the form of fault-finding and categorizing their ignorance of unknown elements of esthetic value. Their rewards are unearned judgement and the power of ignorant judgement. Critics should deal with themselves, and not with the arts as they come to them with a handicap of unfulfilled frustration that the artist suffers as he or she continues a struggle to go on at any cost.


GJP Your poem "New York" (which I quote in full below) ends with a mysterious image of a human hand:

"The streets have become unrecognizable.
The entire city is in tears and surrounded by water.
In the harbor a lovely hand appears."

This image of a hand returns in several poems: "I'm a professor / of hands" ("Hands"); "I have a picture of you / tattooed on the palm of my hand." ("Tattoo"); "The warehouse of wishes where you stored / The accessories of my childhood / They are attached to me / Like a small hand following a planet" ("'94 Puerto Rican Day Parade"). Has this focus on hands been a conscious concern in your work, or is it an image that recurs subconsciously--or perhaps a little of both?

FL I would say it is an unconscious occurrence. I am very concerned with my hands, as they have delivered me from many long and boring nights in situations not of my own choosing. And I play an instrument, the Spanish guitar, with my hands. I earn my living showing students to work with their hands and very sharp knives. So you see, my dear friend, where do I begin with my hands, these hands that can create and destroy this computer and its dispassionate gray grin? Who knows? These salutary mysteries belong to poets like your self. Sorry.


GJP I was hoping you could talk about the story behind the portrait of you by Elaine de Kooning (on the cover of Inventory: New and Selected Poems). How much of an influence has painting had on your poetry?

FL One Sunday morning I went over to visit Elaine de Kooning for a drink, as I was very hung-over from the night before. In my efforts to recuperate, I began drinking with Elaine. She began to paint me as I recovered. David Shapiro made the brilliant suggestion to use the painting as a cover. The rest is history, as they say. I certainly would have never thought of it. David is full of brilliant ideas. There is a cartoon clock in his head that spins its hands at incredible speeds. Although I know many painters, I'm not aware of any influence in my work as a poet. On the other hand, it must have.


GJP In recent years there have been flurries of "discoveries," or celebrations, of U.S. Latino cultures within the mainstream and literary media. These celebrations often mask the long-standing unwillingness of many Americans to acknowledge Latinos as producers of culture. Your work, over the last four decades, has challenged these notions of Latino literature being peripheral and easily classifiable. Would it be accurate to say that your poetry, rather than fitting into any particular category (American, Latino, Puerto Rican, etc.), creates its own sphere that draws from various cultural and aesthetic traditions--and in the process, counters stereotypes of what Latino poetry is or should be?

FL I write poetry because I have to, not because I want to. My intentions were never to be a poet. It just happened in a unique situation. It was Sherman Drexler, the painter, who suggested I write poetry. He was nuts, so I thought at the time. He said, "Write like you talk." End of story. The sources I draw from for "inspiration" are universal. I do not want to be a "Latino" poet. That tag is limiting to a particular group and style, although a necessary means as a vehicle and a point to start from, especially for those amongst our people who are not familiar with this peculiar form of writing. All well and good. But it does not end there, and that is the impression being cast that I do not want to be a part of. I do not feel I have to pontificate to any one of my origins and roots. To me, they are nonexistent in a cloudy past. We are not going to get California and Texas back, never. Puerto Rican Independence is just a charming idea at best. Art is much bigger than that. My poetry is much bigger than that. I do not want to be limited to screaming and bombast for the sake of being heard. That is esthetic colonialism and just too fuck'en easy to do. Our culture is richer and classier than glorifying El Barrio. Our humanity is more enduring than slang, although it can be cute at times. We have an enormous language. Many groups are envious of that, because we have retained it. We have endured along with our language. I advocate speaking it better and learning our history, since Caesar invaded the Iberian penninsula. The ancient politics of Spain are our politics and continue to stain our progress in other Spanish-speaking countries. They are part of us too. Why are these poetic groups so exclusive? Why not keep and translate our classical Spanish tradition of language into what we're creating today? I'm not defending the Royalist, but Franco had Lorca whacked, never for an instant taking into account that he was the greatest living poet Spain has ever given birth to. That's our history, too. We're not just "Latinos." To me, the theater is much bigger than that. It's history and heritage, and a magnificent language that is almost half Arabic. I know this of my own blood, half Mexican and half Puerto Rican that I am. This is my culture, not one or the other. To be true to myself, the price has been terribly high: I usually get excluded from New York P.R. anthologies and other events celebrating our culture. I am not one culture, but of two Latino cultures, including the one that killed thirty-eight million Native-Americans in North and South America! He was one of us too, Hernando Cortez.


GJP You received an MFA degree from Columbia University in 1976. Could you talk about how your experience in graduate school shaped your poetry?

FL At Columbia, the experience was vast and rich, as Stanley Kunitz was one of my instructors. I met many young poets, including Phillip Bryant and Katha Pollitt, now with The Nation. I felt there was a place for poets after all. I think these programs are essential and wonderful. Like performance and hip-hop poetry, it makes poetry more accessible to the non-readers of poetry. The more the better. We have conservatories. Why not for poetry, too? Columbia made poetry less strange as a profession and a lifetime endeavor.


GJP You're currently a Chef Instructor at the New York Restaurant School and you also conduct writing workshops for the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church. Both poetry and the culinary arts share the same need for precision, dedication and conceptual creativity. What differences and similarities do you find between teaching these two art forms? What poets do you like to teach your students, as guides or models for young writers?

FL One is as elusive as the other. Perhaps cooking would appear the more material of the two. In the end, both require the gift of creativity and genius. There are many cooking schools, but not many gifted chefs. I would say that my experiences as a poet led me to believe that there is more to cooking than eating. Certainly a form of art in a highly developed society, according to Escoffier, the great chef of the twentieth century. Of course, I introduce O'Hara, Ashbery, Koch, Neruda, Lorca, Vallejo, Allen, Corso, David Schubert, F.T. Price, Frances Ponge, and L. Senghor, the African poet from Senegal.

2001

Slint's 1987 LP Tweez gets better with each listen. Good noise out of Kentucky and Illinois in the late 1980s/early 1990s.

*

Tomorrow I hope to post an interview I did (over mail) with Frank Lima several years ago, and which has remained unpublished. All his poems are brilliant, but his recent work in 6x6 #5 has particularly interested me, the "autobiography of touch" that he writes.

*

I have not read the Colombian novelist Fernando Vallejo, who won the Premio Romulo Gallegos in Venezuela last year. I did see the film version of his book La virgen de los sicarios (1994) on cable recently and was impressed. Vallejo seems to be asking: how does one live a daily disaster?

*

"Si cae -digo, es un decir- si cae
España, de la tierra para abajo,
niños, ¡cómo vais a cesar de crecer!"

{César Vallejo, España, aparta de mí este cáliz, 1937}

*

Carl's excellent pettycoat relaxer is always in the house.

*

Samuel P. Huntington's new book should really be called, Xenophobia, or, The Mexicans Are Taking Over.

*

commonwealth eve
w/ my city reprieved
formal in our worn
talk an affair of light
while a grove's learned
form repeated a sound
for you this time, we
carried the diagram
the tweeze dense too
disc of Kentucky drawn
matter w/ guitar turn
up its reverb, louder
amp for smallest room
listening university
eyes water in Florida
Georgia even winter's
great to / as she spoke

Ciudad escondida...

Ciudad escondida entre los labios
Ventura o tempestad o torrente
Ciudad igual a una corriente de aire
Entre una hoja de afeitar y una pestaña abandonada


{Emilio Adolfo Westphalen, Bajo zarpas de la quimera: Poemas 1930-1988, Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1991}

Chapoquoit

dawn makes the chorus
dream weight holds
the side door--a form
of leisure, on these
coastal cities with
an ever-filled seasonal
towards this symbolic
order, while hopeful
categories disappeared

Caurimare

Writing for the writing, from cuadernos paralelos, snow lost with the lostness. For what talk of poets or signs interpreted for wanted figures. As was favored by the previous ruler, whose governing policy was power and its establishment in perpetuity (Ozymandias). We remembered those nine letters sentenced across the green hill, we'd driven parallel to its way, as well. It was written for us already in the novel, she'd spent the entire year working in the apartment with mountain views from the office and hall, with a typewriter, last of the moderns, anonymous, interviewed a few times in the fictional 1970s. A foreign past tense, wondering why they keep citing Kafka in its name. In prose the ghosts, who didn't have a city though it existed now book formed but tried to break a language never dropped. And losing sight of the outline.

Ese oscuro animal del sueño / Antonia Palacios


A rough translation of one section from Antonia Palacios (Caracas, 1915-2001), Ese oscuro animal del sueño, Monte Avila Editores, 1991.




That Dark Sleep Animal



Here where I've stopped I listen to strange sounds, the flight of invisible birds, and I think of that firmament only my mind retains. I am still, waiting for a diaphanous surrender, an ignored promise. The sky is tinged an impossible color and the wind roughly shakes the crossroad trees. No one dares pass through these worldly shores, behind white mountains. Maybe the fear of death, a quick death with no time for pain. May the night and its mystical torment, its darkened mantle, burst. Would a morning star shine amid this long unending tempest.

Ese oscuro animal del sueño



Aquí donde me he detenido oigo sonidos extraños, vuelos de invisibles pájaros, y pienso en un firmamento que sólo retiene my mente. Quieta estoy aguardando alguna diáfana entrega, una ignorada promesa. El aire está teñido de un imposible color y el viento sacude intenso los árboles de la encrucijada. Por estos costados del mundo detrás de blancas montañas nadie se atreve a pasar. Tal vez el temor a la muerte, una muerte presurosa sin tiempo para el dolor. Espero que brote la noche con su místico tormento, su manto de oscuridad. Acaso brille un lucero en esta larga intemperie que no tiene nunca fin.

{Antonia Palacios, Ese oscuro animal del sueño, Caracas: Monte Avila Editores, 1991}

Ese oscuro animal del sueño



Una canción silba en el viento. Un largo canto exhaustivo, entrecortada palabra. Sal. Deja ese sitio de agonías y mira como se enaltece la tarde en la colina. Sal. No pienses en los muertos. Deja que sus huesos se vayan reduciendo, reintegrándose a la nada. Sal con tu cuerpo de viviente a fabular tus sueños. Di tu palabra. Si nadie te escucha, habla con los astros, con la sombra que pasa. Elige un sitio de resplandor oculto.


{Antonia Palacios, Ese oscuro animal del sueño, Caracas: Monte Avila Editores, 1991}

Ese oscuro animal del sueño


Hoy somos otros. Hoy somos otros los que ayer respirábamos en el extremo de aquel silencio breve. Somos otros los que palpábamos con ausentes roces el hiriente filo de las cosas. Hoy somos otros los que subimos por el aire y sus altas escaladas. El antiguo esplendor se extinguió en quietísimo olvido. Hoy somos otros en despiadada espera detenidos.


{Antonia Palacios, Ese oscuro animal del sueño, Caracas: Monte Avila Editores, 1991}

El Presidente vive en su palacio
come más que todas las naciones juntas
y engorda menos
por ser elegante y traidor...
se cree el más joven
y es un asesino de cuidado
Nadie podría decir
cual es su gesto de hombre amado
porque todos escupen su signo
y le dicen cuando pasa:
"ahí va la mierda más coqueta".

{Caupolicán Ovalles, ¿Duerme Usted Señor Presidente?, 1961}

(¿para nada?)

Javier Sologuren

el fuego del tiempo
se consume a sí mismo

esa rosa ya no dura
mas que su perfume

llevo un milenio
resplandeciéndome
en las uñas

el polvo es la ceniza
de una
inmutable mariposa

los extremos del sueño
escapan dando gritos

la luz única
que solamente
solo percibo
huye por los márgenes
de esta página
donde
una vez más
la escritura
se encuentra con la nada

(¿para nada?)



Javier Sologuren, Un trino en la ventana vacía (Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1998)

Escritura / Eugenio Montejo

Writing

One day I will write with rocks,
measuring each of my phrases
by weight, volume, movement.
I am tired of words.

No more pencil: scaffolding, theodolites,
emotion's solar nudity tattooing
its secret music
deep in boulders.

With pebble lines, I will draw
my name, the history of my house
and the memory of that river
always passing and stalling
amid my veins like a learned architect.

I will write my song with live rock
in arches, bridges, dolmens, columns,
facing the horizon's solitude,
as a map opens for the eyes
of travelers that never return.

*

Escritura

Alguna vez escribiré con piedras,
midiendo cada una de mis frases
por su peso, volumen, movimiento.
Estoy cansado de palabras.

No más lápiz: andamios, teodolitos,
la desnudez solar del sentimiento
tatuando en lo profundo de las rocas
su música secreta.

Dibujaré con líneas de guijarros
mi nombre, la historia de mi casa
y la memoria de aquel río
que va pasando siempre y se demora
entre mis venas como sabio arquitecto.

Con piedra viva escribiré mi canto
en arcos, puentes, dólmenes, columnas,
frente a la soledad del horizonte,
como un mapa que se abra ante los ojos
de los viajeros que no regresan nunca.