"War is over..."
Lennon & Ono: "WAR IS OVER if you want it" (repeat)
Feliz año nuevo.
Peace.
12.31.2003
Roberto Bolaño's encounter w/ Chavismo
My good friend Simón has posted a link over at El Nuevo Cojo Ilustrado to Bolaño's final interview, earlier this year. He discusses problems he encountered when he was on the jury for the Premio Romulo Gallegos (the year Enrique Vilas-Mata won). He wrote a public letter to the organizers of this state-funded literary award, one of the most prestigious in the Americas, where he accused them of being neo-stalinists with their methods. My point exactly, here at Venepoetics: Chavismo= neostalinismo.
*
"Mi pelea con el jurado y los organizadores del premio se debió, básicamente, a que ellos pretendían que yo avalara, desde Blanes y a ciegas, una selección en la que yo no había participado. Sus métodos, que una pseudo poeta chavista me transmitió por teléfono, se parecían demasiado a los argumentos disuasorios de la Casa de las Américas cubana. Me pareció que era un error enorme que Daniel Sada o Jorge Volpi fueran eliminados a las primeras de cambio, por ejemplo. Ellos dijeron que lo que yo quería era viajar con mi mujer e hijos, algo totalmente falso. De mi indignación por esta mentira surgió la carta en donde los llamé neostalinistas y algo más, supongo." (Roberto Bolaño, 2003)
*
"Mi pelea con el jurado y los organizadores del premio se debió, básicamente, a que ellos pretendían que yo avalara, desde Blanes y a ciegas, una selección en la que yo no había participado. Sus métodos, que una pseudo poeta chavista me transmitió por teléfono, se parecían demasiado a los argumentos disuasorios de la Casa de las Américas cubana. Me pareció que era un error enorme que Daniel Sada o Jorge Volpi fueran eliminados a las primeras de cambio, por ejemplo. Ellos dijeron que lo que yo quería era viajar con mi mujer e hijos, algo totalmente falso. De mi indignación por esta mentira surgió la carta en donde los llamé neostalinistas y algo más, supongo." (Roberto Bolaño, 2003)
John Keats
In today's El Nacional, the poet Esdras Parra writes about Julio Cortázar's posthumously-published study of Keats, Imagen de John Keats. She reads this book, written in Buenos Aires in the 1940s, as a precursor to Rayuela's inventions. Almost as though it could be a chronological/geographical counterpart to his "Paris" book.
Reading Los detectives salvajes, its form reminds me of Rayuela. Bolaño's vision seems much wider, a multiplied reading of Third World (vs/alongside/within) First World cities.
*
"Hoy en día nadie lee a Keats. Nadie parece interesarse en la idea medular de su poesía, la noción, original para su época, de que la verdad es belleza y la belleza es verdad, a la búsqueda de la cual consagró su esfuerzo. Pero ahora se sabe, como dice Auden, que ambas cosas no son lo mismo. La suya fue una obra aislada de las voces comunes de la poesía de su tiempo, una poesía que celebraba desinteresadamente la realidad. Solitaria como la de los grandes solitarios de todas las épocas. El menos romántico de los románticos, tan singular y único que terminó por ser ignorado. No lo leemos, es cierto, pero su obra está allí y quizá demuestre a los lectores ávidos no sólo su frescura sino su impulso ( “criatura de impulso” llamó al hombre), el vigor que lo dominó en su momento. Impulso y vigor tan vivos que ponen en evidencia la realidad del genio.
Quizá Cortázar con su “invención” de una vida de Keats alejada de las narraciones tradicionales, en la que el escritor ocupa el cuerpo del poeta, se sumerge en él, se deja permear por su pensamiento, contribuya de algún modo a que tengamos del poeta romántico una visión más actual, más de nuestro tiempo, empresa difícil, es verdad, al tratarse de un creador con una concepción diferente del mundo, del que nos separan dos siglos."
{Esdras Parra, "Un libro (casi) olvidado," El Nacional, 31 de Diciembre 2003}
In today's El Nacional, the poet Esdras Parra writes about Julio Cortázar's posthumously-published study of Keats, Imagen de John Keats. She reads this book, written in Buenos Aires in the 1940s, as a precursor to Rayuela's inventions. Almost as though it could be a chronological/geographical counterpart to his "Paris" book.
Reading Los detectives salvajes, its form reminds me of Rayuela. Bolaño's vision seems much wider, a multiplied reading of Third World (vs/alongside/within) First World cities.
*
"Hoy en día nadie lee a Keats. Nadie parece interesarse en la idea medular de su poesía, la noción, original para su época, de que la verdad es belleza y la belleza es verdad, a la búsqueda de la cual consagró su esfuerzo. Pero ahora se sabe, como dice Auden, que ambas cosas no son lo mismo. La suya fue una obra aislada de las voces comunes de la poesía de su tiempo, una poesía que celebraba desinteresadamente la realidad. Solitaria como la de los grandes solitarios de todas las épocas. El menos romántico de los románticos, tan singular y único que terminó por ser ignorado. No lo leemos, es cierto, pero su obra está allí y quizá demuestre a los lectores ávidos no sólo su frescura sino su impulso ( “criatura de impulso” llamó al hombre), el vigor que lo dominó en su momento. Impulso y vigor tan vivos que ponen en evidencia la realidad del genio.
Quizá Cortázar con su “invención” de una vida de Keats alejada de las narraciones tradicionales, en la que el escritor ocupa el cuerpo del poeta, se sumerge en él, se deja permear por su pensamiento, contribuya de algún modo a que tengamos del poeta romántico una visión más actual, más de nuestro tiempo, empresa difícil, es verdad, al tratarse de un creador con una concepción diferente del mundo, del que nos separan dos siglos."
{Esdras Parra, "Un libro (casi) olvidado," El Nacional, 31 de Diciembre 2003}
A city understood as a fact, undeniable. Whether it is "central" or not is rendered irrelevant by late capitalism, postmodernity. That there is no escape from the city and, whether we name the chapter or not, it has conquered us. The question now seems to be, How does one live within unbreakable bounds? No use spending time on dismantling "evil" since it already thrives on our energy. Instead, writing words hopelessly can assuage nothingness. Writing hopelessly at least is possible. These facts change by the minute. Next year, we'll think again about topography. Map ourselves. Make sense. Dissolve traffic.
12.30.2003
To not write for the sake of filling the days. The name dissolves but reappears next year. The fragments unify themselves, at a price. This state is a flat stretch of constancy, choose sleep over sun. Reached el final w/out words.
Despues de todo, the notebook tends to speak to itself. If any readers exist, they are from "the future." But that assumption is not based on anything save ego. The dream involved a coastline, a few steps away from a party, cocktail chatter to one side, the flat grey Gulf on the other.
One should have a project, beside sleep. Write commentary on Los detectives salvajes. After Vallejo, Palacios, Uslar Pietri, Sarduy, Bryce Echenique, etc. Paris as a location lives mainly on aura. It is today (and may have been then) just another city. I enjoy reading it but Tampa is more to my measure. Que locura.
Despues de todo, the notebook tends to speak to itself. If any readers exist, they are from "the future." But that assumption is not based on anything save ego. The dream involved a coastline, a few steps away from a party, cocktail chatter to one side, the flat grey Gulf on the other.
One should have a project, beside sleep. Write commentary on Los detectives salvajes. After Vallejo, Palacios, Uslar Pietri, Sarduy, Bryce Echenique, etc. Paris as a location lives mainly on aura. It is today (and may have been then) just another city. I enjoy reading it but Tampa is more to my measure. Que locura.
12.29.2003
Garden
the apamate trees remind you of Emily Dickinson's
garden in Amherst, the types of trees kept there
by the museum, we didn't enter the house that
afternoon, only walked in the garden, like peasants
or travelers, the car went there and back w/ out us
the garden is quietest green for hours with fog
part of it is, one thinks, the landscape those are
Massachusetts stanzas in their anywhere trees
dawn makes it glacial, reading a novel as plot bound
the apamate trees remind you of Emily Dickinson's
garden in Amherst, the types of trees kept there
by the museum, we didn't enter the house that
afternoon, only walked in the garden, like peasants
or travelers, the car went there and back w/ out us
the garden is quietest green for hours with fog
part of it is, one thinks, the landscape those are
Massachusetts stanzas in their anywhere trees
dawn makes it glacial, reading a novel as plot bound
12.28.2003
"You're much too young..."
Did, after all, eat lunch in Dunedin. Saw a girl I think I recognized, drank bloody mary for waking, wrote imaginary air poems afterwards, drove back to Clearwater, those travelers departed, these continue. New Order's 1989 LP Technique is repeatedly played on the car stereo, never loud enough. Visionary beats, repeated sound best. Their opening lines ("You're much too young, to get a hold on me.") sealed our fates, listening in Boston and Tampa that year.
Did, after all, eat lunch in Dunedin. Saw a girl I think I recognized, drank bloody mary for waking, wrote imaginary air poems afterwards, drove back to Clearwater, those travelers departed, these continue. New Order's 1989 LP Technique is repeatedly played on the car stereo, never loud enough. Visionary beats, repeated sound best. Their opening lines ("You're much too young, to get a hold on me.") sealed our fates, listening in Boston and Tampa that year.
Dunedin
Drive up to Dunedin Sunday morning w/ K. and M. who drove up here from Port Charlotte and Naples. Visited the golf course, at those hours under the star blanket abroad. Eat breakfast. Wish them well in travels, read for the afternoon and evening on the porch, listen North Beach, or night airs. Days at the university have long since passed for the three of us, though studies continue. North Tampa was that fictional "seventh circle of hell." Exaggerated.
Listen to The Love Below played too loudly on Ramiro's stereo. It could be the next Illmatic, style-wise. Black Sheep's opening phrase on their first LP: "If it's about anything / then it's got to be style."
Drive up to Dunedin Sunday morning w/ K. and M. who drove up here from Port Charlotte and Naples. Visited the golf course, at those hours under the star blanket abroad. Eat breakfast. Wish them well in travels, read for the afternoon and evening on the porch, listen North Beach, or night airs. Days at the university have long since passed for the three of us, though studies continue. North Tampa was that fictional "seventh circle of hell." Exaggerated.
Listen to The Love Below played too loudly on Ramiro's stereo. It could be the next Illmatic, style-wise. Black Sheep's opening phrase on their first LP: "If it's about anything / then it's got to be style."
12.27.2003
"Porque estudiar, lo que se dice estudiar, no estudiábamos, pero no hubo taller al que no nos asomáramos por lo menos una vez, fue como una fiebre la que nos dio por los talleres, nos haciamos un par de tortas y allí nos presentábamos tan contentos, escuchábamos la lectura de poemas, escuchábamos las críticas, a veces tambien nosotros criticábamos, Xóchitl más que yo, y luego salíamos, ya de noche, y mientras nos encaminábamos a la parada del camión o del metro o bien echábamos a andar directamente a casa, pues entonces nos comíamos nuestras tortas, disfrutando de la noche del DF, una noche que a mí siempre me ha parecido preciosa, generalmente las noches aquí son frescas, brillantes, pero no frías, noches hechas para pasear o para coger, noches hechas para platicar sin apuro, que era lo que yo hacía con Xóchitl, platicar del hijo que íbamos a tener, de los poetas a los que habiamos escuchado recitar, de los libros que estábamos leyendo."
(Roberto Bolaño, Los detectives salvajes, 1998)
(Roberto Bolaño, Los detectives salvajes, 1998)
12.26.2003
Textos del desalojo / Antonia Palacios
Antonia Palacios (1915-2001) Textos del desalojo (Monte Avila Editores, 1974)
*
Homeless Texts (selections)
I don't subvert myself in my long repose. I don't break the lair that hides me. I don't want the days to warm my face. I don't pine for the angel of lost vision. I don't pray to the gods that sustain my speech. I don't want the spaces and the fixed rooftops, nor the vast lodgings full of signals. I don't want to see where my highest memory sits.
At the beginning we were many. We were dispersed, hoping to touch and hear one another. The place was vast and we barely managed a slight caress, a brief closeness. Some escaped. Others started to ignore the elements, they started to change their customs, silently hesitating, blind and breathless. Afterwards we were so few, barely two or three, trembling and very close. In the end just one. One so alone. And the broken wait began to extend itself above the desert.
Antonia Palacios (1915-2001) Textos del desalojo (Monte Avila Editores, 1974)
*
Homeless Texts (selections)
I don't subvert myself in my long repose. I don't break the lair that hides me. I don't want the days to warm my face. I don't pine for the angel of lost vision. I don't pray to the gods that sustain my speech. I don't want the spaces and the fixed rooftops, nor the vast lodgings full of signals. I don't want to see where my highest memory sits.
At the beginning we were many. We were dispersed, hoping to touch and hear one another. The place was vast and we barely managed a slight caress, a brief closeness. Some escaped. Others started to ignore the elements, they started to change their customs, silently hesitating, blind and breathless. Afterwards we were so few, barely two or three, trembling and very close. In the end just one. One so alone. And the broken wait began to extend itself above the desert.
12.25.2003
Notes for venezolanidad
(1)
Thinking of the chapters in Arturo Uslar Pietri's Letras y hombres de Venezuela (1948) on Andres Bello and Teresa de la Parra. How for several Venezuelan writers, their time spent in Venezuela itself was relatively short. In letters to friends, Teresa de la Parra would write from Europe of her nostalgia for Caracas. Even as her Ifigenia (1924) writes against the city, or within a dialectical reading of its maps. Wondering from what side of the city was she writing?
(2)
Antonia Palacios, Textos del desalojo (Monte Avila Editores, 1974):
"No me sublevo en mi largo reposo. No rompo la bóveda que me tiene oculta. No quiero que mi rostro lo calienten los días. No clamo por el ángel de la visión perdida. No clamo por los dioses que me ayudan el habla. No quiero los espacios, ni los techos fijos, ni los vastos aposentos llenos de señales. No quiero ver donde se anida mi más alta memoria."
(3)
Antonia Palacios, Textos del desalojo (Monte Avila Editores, 1974):
"Al principio éramos muchos. Andabamos dispersos, intentando tocarnos, escucharnos. El sitio era muy vasto y apenas alcanzábamos un leve roce, un fugaz acercamiento. Algunos se escaparon. Otros comenzaron a ignorar los elementos, comenzaron a cambiar costumbres tanteándose en silencio, ciegos y sin aliento. Después fuimos muy pocos, apenas dos o tres, muy juntos y temblando. Al fin tan sólo uno. Uno tan sólo. Y la febril espera comenzó a extenderse por encima del desierto."
(4)
It was a poem that could not be
completed w/ out recourse to citation.
A devalued line, engaged with
newsprint paragraphs instead
of stanzas. The "visionaries"
had begun to die off early in the book.
(5)
I hear you on the speakerphone
twice as distorted as Venetian blinds
hearing Jay-Z beats thru the ceiling
sunshine on my porch, smoked out
family is a dispersal acknowledged
fortuitous poematics emblem
silence for the future son's masque
the ache moved along the entire body
sleep was its sustenance
fingers made of rain, golden name
find your own diminishing method,
I hold to the ecstacy of my visions:
(6)
Repetition
in pieces The Love Below disguises
La Florida, single cd skip time vision
(7)
misreading your way through this
(1)
Thinking of the chapters in Arturo Uslar Pietri's Letras y hombres de Venezuela (1948) on Andres Bello and Teresa de la Parra. How for several Venezuelan writers, their time spent in Venezuela itself was relatively short. In letters to friends, Teresa de la Parra would write from Europe of her nostalgia for Caracas. Even as her Ifigenia (1924) writes against the city, or within a dialectical reading of its maps. Wondering from what side of the city was she writing?
(2)
Antonia Palacios, Textos del desalojo (Monte Avila Editores, 1974):
"No me sublevo en mi largo reposo. No rompo la bóveda que me tiene oculta. No quiero que mi rostro lo calienten los días. No clamo por el ángel de la visión perdida. No clamo por los dioses que me ayudan el habla. No quiero los espacios, ni los techos fijos, ni los vastos aposentos llenos de señales. No quiero ver donde se anida mi más alta memoria."
(3)
Antonia Palacios, Textos del desalojo (Monte Avila Editores, 1974):
"Al principio éramos muchos. Andabamos dispersos, intentando tocarnos, escucharnos. El sitio era muy vasto y apenas alcanzábamos un leve roce, un fugaz acercamiento. Algunos se escaparon. Otros comenzaron a ignorar los elementos, comenzaron a cambiar costumbres tanteándose en silencio, ciegos y sin aliento. Después fuimos muy pocos, apenas dos o tres, muy juntos y temblando. Al fin tan sólo uno. Uno tan sólo. Y la febril espera comenzó a extenderse por encima del desierto."
(4)
It was a poem that could not be
completed w/ out recourse to citation.
A devalued line, engaged with
newsprint paragraphs instead
of stanzas. The "visionaries"
had begun to die off early in the book.
(5)
I hear you on the speakerphone
twice as distorted as Venetian blinds
hearing Jay-Z beats thru the ceiling
sunshine on my porch, smoked out
family is a dispersal acknowledged
fortuitous poematics emblem
silence for the future son's masque
the ache moved along the entire body
sleep was its sustenance
fingers made of rain, golden name
find your own diminishing method,
I hold to the ecstacy of my visions:
(6)
Repetition
in pieces The Love Below disguises
La Florida, single cd skip time vision
(7)
misreading your way through this
Mythology
Mythology is too expensive to maintain
travelling in the convertible back seat north
out of Honolulu towards Kailua, stopped
for repetitive verbs along the way, drank
cold on the beach, there's none here
But old notebooks are interviewed with
frankinscense, mhyr statues at the temple
quarter for phone card plans, coins for calls
the notebook languages are outdated by now
Mythology is too expensive to maintain
travelling in the convertible back seat north
out of Honolulu towards Kailua, stopped
for repetitive verbs along the way, drank
cold on the beach, there's none here
But old notebooks are interviewed with
frankinscense, mhyr statues at the temple
quarter for phone card plans, coins for calls
the notebook languages are outdated by now
12.24.2003
"Ya el carácter intempestivo de la reciente visita de Fidel Castro a Venezuela concedía al acontecimiento cierta aureola de misterio, pero las circunstancias que han rodeado la entrevista del dictador cubano con el presidente Chávez no sólo refuerzan esa aureola, sino que nos llevan inevitablemente a recordar las palabras de Bolívar: "a la sombra del misterio no se oculta sino el crimen." "
{Oswaldo Barreto, "A la sombra del misterio," Tal Cual, 23 Diciembre, 2003}
{Oswaldo Barreto, "A la sombra del misterio," Tal Cual, 23 Diciembre, 2003}
Sickness
sin saber cuánto durará
trying (honestly) to write poems
that explain events to me when
choosing a specific one, in mind
forever adding lo que sea to keep
narrative inebriated
medicine for places, a discussion
on morals or poetics, she'll tell you
we're the complicated sons of a
place named after another, these
choices frozen arhythmic melody
from the frozen expanse, a repeated
entry, her calm for lines, each
writing on The Tablets, an array of
distance to dissolve our weights
sin saber cuánto durará
trying (honestly) to write poems
that explain events to me when
choosing a specific one, in mind
forever adding lo que sea to keep
narrative inebriated
medicine for places, a discussion
on morals or poetics, she'll tell you
we're the complicated sons of a
place named after another, these
choices frozen arhythmic melody
from the frozen expanse, a repeated
entry, her calm for lines, each
writing on The Tablets, an array of
distance to dissolve our weights
12.23.2003
"Para limpiarme de tanta politiquería recuerdo el precioso concierto de música venezolana con el que celebraron los 50 años del Aula Magna, o evoco la mirada feliz de mi querido poeta Armando Rojas Guardia, el jueves que se reunieron en la librería Monte Avila para leer textos en su honor Yolanda Pantín, Edda Armas y Rafael Cadenas.
Contrariando a los agoreros que aseguran que los intelectuales parecen dormidos en tiempos tan aciagos, Rojas Guardia resaltó en sus emotivas palabras de agradecimiento que estábamos en un acto en el que Gobierno y oposición--Monte Avila y PEN Club--se unían para darle un "abrazo común" a un escritor."
{Adriana Villanueva, "Ejercicios de optimismo," El Nacional, 6 Diciembre, 2003}
Contrariando a los agoreros que aseguran que los intelectuales parecen dormidos en tiempos tan aciagos, Rojas Guardia resaltó en sus emotivas palabras de agradecimiento que estábamos en un acto en el que Gobierno y oposición--Monte Avila y PEN Club--se unían para darle un "abrazo común" a un escritor."
{Adriana Villanueva, "Ejercicios de optimismo," El Nacional, 6 Diciembre, 2003}
12.22.2003
In Clearwater, focused The Beatles transcript
air conducted interview for late sleep across
Boston tunnels from Allston meridian morning
palm tree cross causeway inter counties route
Talk to Ramiro and Isabel, listen North Beach
*
Cristina Rivera Garza:
"Bajo la cruel monotonía del deluvio estival todos hablaban
escupían palabras y mapas y profecías y rezos."
("Tercer mundo")
Jen Hofer, tr. and ed. Sin puertas visibles (2003)
air conducted interview for late sleep across
Boston tunnels from Allston meridian morning
palm tree cross causeway inter counties route
Talk to Ramiro and Isabel, listen North Beach
*
Cristina Rivera Garza:
"Bajo la cruel monotonía del deluvio estival todos hablaban
escupían palabras y mapas y profecías y rezos."
("Tercer mundo")
Jen Hofer, tr. and ed. Sin puertas visibles (2003)
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