Issue 13/14 2009 Special Double Issue

Featuring Chilean Poetry Today

Chilean Feature includes new translations of work by Pablo Neruda, Gabriela Mistral, Nicanor Parra, Roberto Bolaño and numerous other contemporary Chilean authors, guest-edited by Mariela Griffor.

This double issue also includes major work by Paul Celan, Eugenio Montale, Mahmoud Darwish, Carolyn Forché, Eleanor Wilner, Jean Valentine, Gerald Stern, Anne Waldman, Jane Mead, D.A. Powell and Katie Ford.

 

 

Los libros se pueden comprar aquí:

http://poetryinternational.sdsu.edu/

y tambien subscriber aqui:

 

http://poetryinternational.sdsu.edu/Subscriptions.htm

 

 

Introduction to the Chilean Section by Mariela Griffor

New Age in Chilean Poetry
Mariela Griffor

Poetry is charged with the unconscious. It involves the constant search for a new language–to bring the unconscious forth in a world composed of words. But if the language we seek no longer exists, how do we express such vital truths on paper? How do we construct the language we need? To construct such a language has been the most important challenge in Chilean poetry in the last thirty years. Why such a challenge? Disruptive events, like economic disasters and political and military repression, isolation from the world and dislocation inside one’s own parameters of identity, create issues that are not easily resolved in language.
In Spain, it took at least thirty years since the end of Franco’s regime for Spaniards to define and discover a new language of expression, one capable of articulating the experiences left by Franco and his government. It took so long not only because the language prior to Franco was old, passé and unprepared for such a task, but also because considerable time was required to heal that part of the language that had been injured. That injury was initially manifested as the inability of individual poets to adequately express their experience of the horrors and repression from the years under the oppressive regime.
In Chile, the situation was even more complicated. The methods of repression were somewhat more sophisticated than those of Franco’s. In Chile, too, people were killed, their bodies disappearing without a trace. Many were tortured, and fear became the one pervasive truth endured by those who survived. One in three families in Chile had a relative in compulsory military service, and these families were segregated from the civilian elite. Despite the first months of violence after the coup d’état, Chileans rather quickly returned to some mean approximation of normalcy, and life continued superficially as it was before. Perhaps it is not without a reason that the rest of Latin America calls Chileans the English of Latin America.
However, many Chileans were not able to accept or adapt to these changes. The writers, began to scavenge the ruined soul of the language for alternative sources of inspiration: Elicura Chihuailaf and Cecilia Vicuña searched for their roots in Mapundung; Elicura Chihuailaf found his source of inspiration in the universe of memory and in his own history as a child.

                                                *

When the old definitions of poetry no longer worked, poets began to define things by their opposites. Nicanor Parra is famous for creating “Anti-Poetry.” Later, another poet, such as Cecilia Vicuña, attempted to create “precarious works”—ephemeral installations in nature, cities and museums—as a way of “hearing an ancient silence waiting to be heard.” 

The poem is the animal
Sinking its mouth
in the stream.

This work of re-definition continues today. For example, while the work of a poet such as Chihuailaf comes from the consideration of family experiences, the outcome of his considerations is different from the typical confessional poem on family matters so prevalent in the U.S.A. today. Chihuailaf heard what was hidden in the whispers of adults. He paid attention to what was happening in the rest of the country, far away from the safety of his native city of Cunco. He remembered what his elders had said as they sat around the fireplace drinking mate. Since he had been told as a child that poetry is worthless, he began to invent a language that gave his writing new value and meaning, uniting oral tradition with an original conception of the world where the essence of his experience could be resuscitated as elegy:
Poetry is good for nothing
    I am told
And in the forest the trees
    caress each other
with blue roots
and wave their branches in the air
greeting with birds
      the Southern Cross
Poetry is the profound whispering
    of the murdered ones
the rumor of leaves in the fall
sadness for the boy
who preserves the language
but has lost his soul

                                               *
The Chilean poet’s understanding that “who preserves the language … has lost his soul” is a feeling perhaps not unusual for writers from countries under repression. Reading these words one is immediately reminded of Brecht’s famous guilt for having survived as a German in World War Two. But the tragedies of Chile happened before our very own eyes: people disappeared, books were banned and burned in front of our eyes, while at the same time we became blinded and deafened and muted by technology, by movies and TV melodramas and video games, all of which radically altered what remained of reality. The possibility of impartiality was somehow obliterated. The ability to understand, to create a powerful language, to bring the life of the unconscious into poetry, and to be consumed and transformed by the fire of individual suffering and truth had been snuffed out, “for the boy who / preserves the language / has lost his soul.”

                                                            *

Compiling this anthology has been a very personal experience for me. As the only member of my family in exile with no possibility of reentering the country for ten years, I experienced many of my family’s most important moments only through videos they had taken at weddings, communions and the like. One of my most painful experiences with poetry happened a few years ago. My family had sent me a video of a poetry reading. Two poets, one old and one young, both used the word motherfucker in their poems.
As a kind of experiment, I watched the video with the sound off. Whenever the older poet said the word, I could feel his pain, anger and hate, all reflected in his eyes, in his body. Every time he came up against an unspeakably harsh experience, the word motherfucker appeared, as it often appears between couples before they divorce; they scream at each other; then they swear at each other. They are completely consumed by pain and desperation until finally they can’t talk anymore. They can no longer find a way to express their feelings in words. What has happened to them? The younger poet, on the other hand, used the word motherfucker as simply a literary resource, a stylistic element, without hate or anger.
I did research on both poets. They had both been in jail, and the old one was tortured, as were many known and unknown poets of my country. The word motherfucker revealed in him a darker, deeper secret: the loss of the language as a tool of expression of his unconscious mind. The language was not enough. The time had come for inventing new ways of expressing our dark experiences during the time under dictatorship.

Poets say that rhythm in poetry is comparable to three bodily functions: the beat of the heart, one’s manner of walking, and one’s way of breathing. I would say that rhythm is one of the aspects of language that Chilean poetry uses to bring forth the unconscious. If any of the pieces of the bridge is broken (or missing), then we need to reestablish a common language to repair it.
This is the challenge of this anthology: To show the variety and the commonality that has been achieved in contemporary Chilean poetry. To help its readers understand the ways poets in Chile and outside of Chile are reinventing themselves and finding their own identity through a common language, if not, through a common experience.

 

Verb
Pablo Neruda

I'm going to wrinkle this word,
I'm going to twist it,
yes, it
is too smooth,
as if a large dog or a large lake
had passed its tongue or water over it, over it,
for years. Years.

I need ferrous salt
in the word, I want the desdentada
of land,
iron salt in the word,
the blood
of those who have spoken and those who have not spoken.

I want to spit the thirst
inside the syllables:
I want to lick the fire
in the sound:
I want to hear the darkness
in the cry. I want to
spit the words,
words stone as virgins.

 

Translated by Anna Beth Young

The Heavenly Poets
Pablo Neruda

What have you done
you intellectualists? Rilkistas?
you fucked up mystifiers, fake witches?
existential poppies shining on a tomb?
you pale grubs in the capitalist cheese?
What did you do
about this dark human being?
about this head
submerged in shit?
this essence
of raw life?

You didn't do anything but run:
you sold piles of debris
you looked for heavenly hairs
cowardly plants, broken fingernails
"Pure Beauty" "Spell".
Your works were those of the poor and terrified
trying to keep your eyes from looking
trying to protect their delicate tangle of pupils
so you could make for your living
a plate of dirty scraps which the masters flung at you.
Without seeing that the stones are in agony,
without defending,
in the cemetery when the rain soaks the motionless
rotten flowers on the grave.

 

Translated by Anna Beth Young

To See Him Again
Gabriela Mistral

And never, never again?
Not on nights packed with a few stars,
or in mornings’ first slender sun
or afternoons sacrificed to afternoons?

Or at the edge of a pale road
that surrounds the farm fields,
or a rim of a trembling fountain,
whitened by a moon?

Or beneath the forest's lush poplars
where, yelling at him,
I was overtaken by the night?
Not in the grotto that returns
the echo of my words?

No. To see him again --
it does not matter where --
in heaven's dead water
or inside the boiling hole
or still moon or in bloodless fright!

To be with him.
To be every springtime and winter,
united in one pained knot
around his bloody neck!

 

Translated by Mariela Griffor

The Pilgrim
Nicanor Parra

Your attention, ladies and gentleman, your attention for one second:
Turn your heads for a moment to this part of the republic.
Forget for one night your personal affairs,
Let pleasure and pain wait at the door:
Hear the voice from this part of the republic.
Your attention, ladies and gentlemen! Your attention for one second!
A soul that has been bottled up for years
In a sort of sexual and intellectual hole,
Feeding itself most inadequately through the nose,
Yearns to be heard.
I’d like to figure out a few things,
I need a little light, the garden’s swarming with flies,
My mind’s a disaster,
I work things out in my own peculiar way,
As I say these words I see a bicycle leaning against a wall,
I see a bridge
And the official car disappearing between buildings.

You part your hair, that’s true, you walk in the public parks,
Under your skins you have other skins,
You have a seventh sense
Which lets you in and out automatically.
But I’m a child calling for its mother from behind rocks,
I’m a pilgrim who makes stones jump high as his nose,
A tree crying out to be smothered in leaves.

 

Translated by Mariela Griffor

The Tablets
Nicanor Parra

I dreamed I was in a desert I was sick of myself
And I started beating a woman.
It was devilish cold, I had to do something,
To shoot someone, take a little exercise;
I had a headache, I was tired,
All I wanted to do was sleep, die.
My shirt drenched with blood
And between my toes were hairs—
The hair of my poor mother—
"Why do you hurt your mother," a stone asked,
A stone covered with dust, "Why do you abuse that woman?"
I couldn't tell where these voices came from, they gave me the shivers,
I looked at my nails, I bit them,
I tried to think of something but without success,
All I saw around me was a desert
And the image of that idol
My god who watched me do these things.
Then came a few birds. 
And at the same moment, in the dark, I discovered some slabs of rock.
With a supreme effort I managed to make out the tablets of the law:
"We are the tablets of the law," they said,
"Why do you abuse your mother?”
“You see those birds that have come to perch on us”
“They are here to record your crimes."
I yawn, I am bored with these admonitions.
"Get rid of those birds," I said aloud.
"No," replied a stone,
"They represent your different sins,”
“They are there to look”
So I turned back again to my lady
And started to let her have it harder than before.
I had to do something to keep awake.
I was under obligation to act
Or I would have fallen asleep among those rocks
And those birds.
So I took a box of matches out of one of my pockets
And decided to set fire to the bust of the god.
I was dreadfully cold, I had to get warm,
But that blaze only lasted a few seconds.
In desperation, I looked for the tablets again
But they were gone:
and the rocks, the rocks were gone.
My mother had abandoned me.
I beat my brow. But
There was nothing more I could do.

 

Translated by Mariela Griffor

Godzilla in Mexico
Roberto Bolaño

Hear me, my son: bombs were dropping

all over Mexico City,

but no one realized.

The air spread poison through

the streets and open windows.

You’d just eaten breakfast and were

watching the detectives on TV.

I was reading in the next room

when I knew we were going to die.

Despite the dizziness and nausea I dragged myself

to the dining room and found you on the floor.

I held you close. You asked me what was happening.

I didn’t tell you we were on death’s telethon

but I whispered, We are going on a journey,

you and I, together, don’t be afraid.

When leaving, death didn’t even close our eyes.

What are we? you asked a week a year later,

ants, bees, wrong numbers

in the great spoiled soup of chance?

We are human beings, my son, nearly birds,

public heroes and secrets.

-A version by B. H. Boston

Lisa
Roberto Bolaño

When Lisa told me she had made love
with another, in the eternal telephone booth of life
in the market in Tepeyac, I thought the world
ended. A tall thin man with
long hair and a long cock, didn’t wait even
one night to penetrate her to the core.
It’s nothing serious, she said, but it
is the best way of getting you out of my life.
Parmenides Garcia Saldana had long hair and could
have been Lisa’s lover, but some
years later I saw he’d died in a mental hospital
or committed suicide. Lisa didn’t want
to lie any longer with losers. Sometimes I dream
of her and see her happy and cold in Mexico
designed by Lovecraft: We listen to music
(Canned Heat, one of Parmenides Garcia Saldana’s
favorite groups) and then we make
love three times. The first time he comes inside of me.
The second time inside my mouth, the third, hardly a thread
of water, a short fishing line, between my breasts. And all
of that in two hours, Lisa said. The two worst hours of my life,
I said from the other end of the line.

 

Translated by Mariela Griffor and B. H. Boston

Prayer to a Farm Worker
Victor Jara

Rise up and look at the mountain, from
where the wind, the sun, the water arrive.
Thou, who determines the course of
rivers, thou who scatters the flight of
your soul.
Rise up. Look at your hands. Join
hands with your brothers, together
in blood we go. Now is the time that
can be tomorrow. Tomorrow.
Deliver us from the men of
misery. Take us to your kingdom of justice and
justice. Blow like the wind the gorge’s flower.
Clean the fire
in the barrel of my gun.
Thy will be done
here on Earth. Give us your strength and
your courage in combat.
Blow like the wind the field’s daffodil.
Clean fire in the barrel of my gun.

Rise up and look at your hands. Join
hands with your brothers, together
in blood we live,
now and at the hour of
our death. Amen. We live. Amen.

 

Translated by Mariela Griffor

From UNUY QUITA

The Water Sequence (fragment)
Cecilia Vicuña

The poem is the animal
Sinking its mouth
in the stream.

 

Translated by Eliot Weinberger

***********************************

=====================================================================

Campanas en un mar abierto

Camilo Marks

Critico Literario

 

Resolana, de Mariela  Griffor, se inscribe en una tradición egregia, aunque en los últimos tiempos, subvalorada, de la poesía ética y testimonial Sin conocer los textos previos de Grifffor –Exiliana, Amor para un subversivo-, resulta evidente, en esta colección, leída y releída varias veces, la toma de conciencia de una mujer que ya no es parte de una pequeña colonia de extranjeros, sino miembro de una vasta colectividad de clases, colores, dialectos y formas de vida de gentes muy diversas, a veces completamente incomunicadas, en otras oportunidades asumiendo el desconcierto de la interrracialidad y la multiforme escenografía de las grandes urbes del norte. Ello es evidente en el poema Salvoconducto, que, de manera muy astuta por parte de Griffor, contiene un enigmático epígrafe de Auden: “¿Quién puede imaginar en un segundo/ o en un momento / lo que el exilio produce en el alma / de los expatriados?”. El vocablo “expatriados” lo dice todo; sin embargo, es más lacerante, menos ambiguo, mucho más doloroso que el trillado “exiliado” (en efecto, cualquiera, si tiene los medios, puede mandarse a cambiar donde le de la gana, sea en busca de nuevos horizontes, sea porque tiene contactos que le permiten vivir en el extranjero).

Griffor, quien es bilingüe, es una rara excepción entre los autores líricos chilenos que publican aquí o en otros ámbitos. En Resolana se advierte una excepcional consistencia, una coherencia en la negativa al robusto naturalismo de nuestra tradición y, sobre todo, una formación cultural profunda –sin duda, se ha empapado en la lírica estadounidense, sobre todo en Emily Dickinson, Wallace Stevens, Elizabeth Bishop, Marianne Mooore-, consolidada en himnos a lo común y corriente, en lo cotidiano, en la alusión a la flora y fauna, que, sin explicitarse de forma manifiesta, utiliza símbolos y recursos literarios para que el peso verbal se imponga a sus lectores. En Pelo de arena, tenemos ejemplos de esta libertad creativa, refrenada en versos en apariencia simples, pero en los cuales las metáforas y las metonimias surgen con plena espontaneidad: “...recuerdos gratos/ olores violentos / palabras tímidas / susurros de hombre en mis oídos / campanas en un mar abierto / vientos del sur y azucenas / viene mi lengua materna / cargada de nostalgia / como siempre / a dejarme / un paquete de días de lluvia / cuerpos calientes / al frente de una chimenea / viene calmada / con su viento de arena, / con su boca de mar, / con sus caricias en tinieblas / viene y me dice estos versos...”

Resolana se abstiene de las posibilidades del heroísmo visionario y las estrofas fluyen libres e inconscientes de su propia audacia. En esta extensa colección

-para los estándares del momento, en que todos los días se publican poemarios de 10 a 20 páginas, Resolana, que contiene 86 títulos, en un centenar de carillas, es una excepción notable-, emerge una voz dotada de una extraordinaria personalidad, fuerte y frágil, solar y sombría, asombrosamente estimulante y

  gozosa de la vida, pese a sus penurias y pobrezas. Estos rasgos sobresalen en Réquiem:  “Se me hace difícil pensar / en que tú también te has ido / Contigo se me ha ido un pedazo de mi lado bueno / ¡No era nada de difícil ser buena contigo!/  Me sentía tranquila, sin / cuestionamientos, / Protegida y segura, sin / tormentos

/ mientras tú luchabas por más vida, / yo luchaba contra los tiranos”. Por razones de espacio, hemos unido dípticos y cuartetos, aunque Réquiem, alterna ambas formas, en verso libre, junto a un triunfal quinteto que concluye en: “Para ti, Claudia, tía Claudia / cara enigmática de mis años tiernos”.

A la manera de ciertos románticos, Mariela Griffor retorna con fascinación al perfil borroso, disminuyendo el realismo cacofónico de la versificación actual. En la mayoría de sus poemas, los materiales pueden parecer parcos, secos, incluso áridos, pero Resolana , como un todo, nos entrega líneas puras, sin la frecuente adulteración del significado, de modo que nada, sino la emoción del verbo, es lo que importa.

Griffor es especialmente admirable en sus pequeñas o grandes evocaciones, en el reflejo de íntimos rincones, que exhiben un timbre exquisito de intensa armonía, como ocurre en Parada: “Ciudades sin / montañas / vidas sin / conciencia / cuerpos sin /deseo / me rodean / el olor de primavera se acerca / con memorias de una infancia / llena de multicolores / pensamientos / y jacintos” (nótese la asimilación –sinéresis- de ideas a flores).

Si hubiera que situar a Griffor dentro de la historia reciente de la poesía chilena, sus parientes más cercanos se encuentran en la vertiente lárica de Jorge Teillier, Delia Domínguez y el Enrique Lihn de sus inicios. Por motivos absurdos, esa corriente ha sido, últimamente, subvalorada. Sin embargo, en el presente, esos vates son figuras centrales de nuestra escritura poética.

Esta situación se debe, en parte, a la  emergencia de docenas, centenares de versificadores jóvenes, ruidosos, pseudocosmopolitas, que publican sin parar, y cuyo futuro es, por decir lo menos, incierto. Pero también, el cansancio frente a tanto estruendo, el hastío ante la pura provocación verbal, nos hacen añorar a voces que, como la de Griffor, poseen un soberano balance de la mente y exhiben una franca superioridad al volcar sus introspecciones hacia el mundo externo de los hechos objetivos.

En Resolana hay, en definitiva, ese equilibrio que, tal vez, traduzca cierta indiferencia frente a la suciedad  del acontecer cotidiano. “Un loco no ve el mismo árbol que ve un sabio”, dijo William Blake y, del mismo modo, Mariela Griffor es capaz de trascender el terrible y sórdido infierno del acontecer sociopolítico para internarse en territorios de arenas movedizas. Es decir, en zonas donde la imaginación sale de la cárcel del cuerpo, para conducirnos a experiencias nuevas, sutiles, esperanzadoras, contradictorias y, a la postre, muy humanas.     

================================================================