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número 02 - noviembre 2011 - 5£ - ISSN 2046-3936

#02
 contents
Alba London 02
november 2011

Director
Jessica Pujol Duran

Editorial team
Is there a women’s literature Poetry section:
Tila Rodríguez-Past
Guille Bravo
in post-modern spain?
The writers’ response Salvador Espriu
Richard Parker
Mazal Oaknin Joan Salvat-Papasseit
Sebastian Pineda
Joan Brossa
Harry Gilonis
Cover Maria-Mercè Marçal:
Gregorio Fontén traducir es una opción vital
Ramón Gómez de la Serna
Noèlia Diaz Vicedo James McGonigal
Design
JBC
Interview with chilean artist Tony Lopez
Webdesign Johanna Berger, founder of
Gregorio Fontén Blank Gallery
Pablo Neruda
Lorenza Ippolito Elisabeth Guthrie

El tiempo de Trilce María Vistoria Atencia

William Rowe Roberta Quance

Spicer and Lorca, their utilities Aurelia Lassaque

Richard Parker Felip Costaglioli
Laia Noguera
James Thomas
Das kapital
David Roas Jack Spicer
Jessica Pujol Jessica Pujol

Amy De’Ath
Jessica Pujol

Maria Mercè Marçal

Noèlia Diaz Vicedo

John Ashbery
Melcion Mateu

website
www.albalondres.com Ezra Pound
Dirceu Villa

Carlos Fernández López

Alba London
ISSN 2046-3936
Gregorio Fontén
 women’s
Article
Mazal Oaknin
Is there a
literature in
post-modern Spain?
The writers’
response?
The question as to whether it
is possible to ascribe a gender
difference to writing has repeatedly
been addressed as a constant in
interviews with Spanish women
authors of the post-war and
democracy periods.1 While most
1 Luis García, ‘Entrevista a Almudena Gran-
des’, Literaturas.com (2002) <http://www.literaturas.
com/EntrevistaAGrandes2002.htm> [accessed 22 June
2010]; María del Mar López-Cabrales, ‘Esther Tusquets.
Entrevista’, en Palabras de mujeres (Madrid: Narcea,
2000), pp. 151-166; Santiago Velázquez, ‘Rosa Regás:
“Hoy sólo se habla de literatura en los jurados de los
premios”’, Espéculo, 19 (2002) <http://www.ucm.es/
info/especulo/numero19/regas.html> [accessed 22
June 2010]; Marta Salvador, ‘Entrevista a Espido Freire
(II)’, Mujeractual.com <http://www.mujeractual.com/
entrevistas/freire/index3.html> [accessed 22 June
2010]; África Prado, ‘Laura Freixas: “Es falso que haya un
boom de la literatura femenina”’, Información.es <http://
www.diarioinformacion.com/cultura/2010/02/23/falso-
The “special” and double-edged
position of “women’s literature” – it is
4 5
at once highly marketed and rendered
invisible – makes critics uncomfortable
and makes authors wonder whether
the category itself may lead women
writers into a trap
Christine Henseler
female authors born during the Franco
regime tend to reject the notion of a
women’s literature, the trend among
the more contemporary women
writers is to celebrate this gender
difference, and to consider that
writing by women is different from
writing by men. Thus, Lucía Etxebarria
(born in 1966) champions women’s
literature in her essay Con nuestra
propia voz: a favor de la literatura
femenina:
La literatura femenina, en general,
amalgama un mismo punto de vista
expresado desde diferentes voces,
la perspectiva que emana de nuestra
haya-boom-literatura-femenina/982279.html> [accessed
22 June 2010]; among many others.
propia naturaleza de mujeres. Tenemos
nuestro propio estilo y ámbito de
creación, porque la creación es
inherente a lo que el escritor o la
escritora vive’.2
On the other hand, the more
veteran Carmen Posadas (born in
1953) defends that, whereas there
is a male and a female viewpoint,
‘al final sólo hay buena literatura
y mala literatura’.3 Whereas her
opinions are representative of the
trend supported by most of her
contemporaries, these arguments
appear to expose the main tendencies
in the literary market contended by
women writers nowadays. Among
these, their opinions mainly evidence
the existence of segregation policies
and of negative allusions to women
authors’ sex and gender in the literary
criticism and literary market fields.
This article will start with a brief
introduction to Laura Freixas’ analysis
of the main trends affecting women
in the literary industry at the present
moment. Special emphasis will be
placed on the coexisting policies
of integration and segregation, as
well as on the commonly made
allusions to sex and gender in works
by women authors. These trends are
particularly linked to the question of
how literature by women should be
treated. Overall, as we shall see, the
writers quoted challenge the critical
establishment’s treatment of women’s
literature as a literature that only has
women characters as its protagonists,
and that is only aimed at a female
readership, for it only deals with
‘women’s issues’.
Is women’s literature different
from men’s literature? Or is it just
treated differently?
Laura Freixas’ canonical analysis
of the situation of Spanish women
writers in the year 2000 was informed
2 Lucía Etxebarria, ‘Con nuestra propia
voz: a favor de la literatura de mujeres’, in La letra futura
(Barcelona: Destino, 2000)
3 ‘Entrevista. Diario de Navarra’, Carmen
Posadas.net <http://www.carmenposadas.net/res-ent-
not-ficha.php?resentnot=53> [accessed 22 June 2010]
by a series of trends that have shaped
the publishing industry as we know
it today.4 These trends, intimately
linked to the recentness of the mass
incorporation of women writers into
the literary market, are ultimately tied
in with the question of the existence of
a women’s literature.
Freixas starts her argument by
noticing that today, women writers are
highly visible and ‘accessible’ through
their appearances in different media,
which according to her creates the
illusion that women are a majority in
the literary market (Freixas, p. 38).
Glossy photographs of women writers
often inundate literary articles in
prestigious magazines such as Qué
Leer and Época; and the review and
comment of their texts on popular
television programs can even lead to
all sorts of personal questions.5 As a
result of their promotional visibility,
Henseler explains, women authors
have become commercial icons,6
which comes in clear contrast to their
numerical inferiority in the literary
market. In effect, after learning
that the number of writers that had
published narrative books in 1999 in
the main Spanish publishing houses
(Alfaguara, Anagrama, Destino,
Planeta, Plaza y Janés, Seix Barral,
and Tusquets) was 129, Laura Freixas
concluded that the proportion of
women was of only 24% (Freixas, pp.
35-36). It is interesting to note that,
conversely to the number of women
writers whose books get published,
the majority of readers are women
(Freixas, p. 39). Thus, after compiling
and analysing three reading polls
carried out by the Spanish Ministry
of Social Affairs in 1978, 1985, and
4 See also Laura Freixas, ‘Mujeres y cultura:
una breve arqueología de la misoginia reinante’, Letras
libres, October 2005 <http://www.letraslibres.com/
index.php?art=10774> [accessed 17 August 2010]
5 In her role as editor of Lo que los hombres
no saben. El sexo contado por las mujeres (2008), Lucía
Etxebarria was interviewed by Marta Robles as part of the
book launching. The interview, broadcasted on Telemadrid
on the 17th of March of 2008, soon left the literary arena
to move on to much more intimate questions. To watch
the complete interview, see <http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=mgX1aORFios> [accessed 5 July 2010]
6 Christine Henseler, Contemporary Spanish
Women’s Narrative and the Publishing Industry (Urbana and
Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003), pp. 16-17.
1990, sociologist Enrique Gil Calvo
concluded that, in Spain, the number
of women readers is superior, both in
absolute and in relative terms, to the
number of male readers.7
As a consequence of their greater
visibility and wider readership,
most publishing houses and literary
institutions are keen to attract women
(Freixas, p. 39). This could be due
to the fact that, according to writer
Clara Obligado, the destiny of a book
is sealed before it arrives to the
bookshops. Hence, although each
author can have a certain say in the
way their book will be presented, and
even though there is always a small
margin of error; publishing houses
already know whether the book will
sell or not. This could depend on the
promotional material invested on
each book and on how popular the
author is, and these coordinates are
more apparent in the case of women
writers because they have become
commercial icons.8 On the other hand,
most academic studies and research
on literature by women seldom reach
the general public (Freixas, p. 39).
This could be simply due to the fact
that Women’s Studies are based on
the Anglo-Saxon tradition. Given that
most feminist criticism bibliography is
written in English, it would be logical
to expect that the majority of experts
in Spanish women authors are Anglo-
American, or Spaniards working at
Anglosaxon institutions (Freixas, p.
81). Women writers’ participation at
Spanish literary institutions parallels
this virtual lack of academic studies
on their works. With the exception
of some notable authors such as
Ana María Matute, women writers
are rarely represented in the most
traditional and prestigious institutions.
The Royal Academy of the Spanish
Language, for example, counts forty
three male members and only four
7 Enrique Gil Calvo, La era de las lectoras.
El cambio cultural de las mujeres españolas (Madrid:
Instituto de la Mujer, Ministerio de Asuntos Sociales,
1983), p. 120.
8 ‘Clara Obligado. Autobiographical
sketches, in Christine Henseler, Contemporary Spanish
Women’s Narrative and the Publishing Industry (Urbana
and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003), pp. 131-
133.
female ones. Another trend currently
contended by women writers refers
to the fact that both integration and
segregation policies coexist in the
literary market. Thus, while some
anthologies displaying a universal
thematic thread only include male
authors, other anthologies are limited
to women authors. Likewise, mentions
to women authors’ sex and gender
are relatively common, and often
made in a negative light, in the literary
criticism field. On the other hand,
allusions to the question of male
identity in the case of a male author,
his readers, or his characters are
virtually unknown.
In fact, the way women authors
contend with all these trends will
determine their commercial success
or their literary prestige. Generally,
the more commercially successful
she is, the less highly regarded
her work in terms of its literary
significance or prestige. The last two
trends are particularly significant
when considering each woman
writer’s views on the question of
the existence of a female literature. 6 7
Women writers often denounce the
absence or misrepresentation of
women authors in mixed anthologies,
prizes, or congresses. For instance,
none of the works examined in the
volume La inmigración en la literatura
española contemporánea, which
has a clearly mixed approach, has
been written by a female author.9
This seems striking when one
considers that immigration is a very
real and very current phenomenon
in today’s Spain, affecting men
and women alike. Furthermore,
the number of women immigrants
has risen sharply in recent years,
partly due to increasing demand for
workers to do jobs with low pay and
prestige. For example, most of the
workforce in the domestic service
sector is female. Likewise, no female
authors are studied in La literatura
española en el exilio: un estudio
comparativo, even though nothing
9 Irene Andrés-Suárez, Marco Kunz, and
Inés D’Ors (eds.), La inmigración en la literatura española
contemporánea (Madrid: Verbum, 2002)
número 02
in the title suggests that the book
will only deal with male authors.10
When female writers attempt to fight
this misrepresentation by creating
women-only collections and events,
they will in this way make a case for
women writers and will encourage
the open public to take them into
consideration. However, this self-
exclusion will give the impression
of a literary space of their own, and
the exclusion of men only ultimately
reinforces the segregation these same
women are attempting to redress. As
Henseler puts it, ‘the “special” and
double-edged position of “women’s
literature” – it is at once highly
marketed and rendered invisible –
makes critics uncomfortable and
makes authors wonder whether the
category itself may lead women
writers into a trap’ (Henseler, p. 16).
In this respects, Almudena Grandes
explains that it is the absence of the
term ‘male literature’ what makes
her uncomfortable: ‘No me gusta el
término ‘literatura femenina’, aunque
no tendría ningún inconveniente
en admitirlo si existiera el término
‘literatura masculina’.11 Espido Freire,
on the other hand, warns against the
risks involved in the use of the term
‘literatura femenina’ by the critical
establishment: ‘Una de las maneras
más frecuentes de discriminación
es la que impone la dictadura de
la llamada literatura femenina […]
cada vez que se menciona que un
autor o una autora escribe literatura
femenina inmediatamente se le está
despreciando’.12
Women writers have tended to
respond in one of two ways when
asked whether the labels of ‘feminine’
or ‘feminist’ could be applied to their
works. Either to deny the existence
of gender difference in writing and
10 Michael Ugarte, La literatura española en
el exilio: un estudio comparativo (Madrid: Siglo Veintiuno,
1999)
11 ‘Encuentro digital con Almudena
Grandes’, 20minutos.es <http://www.20minutos.es/
entrevistas/almudena-grandes/51/> [accessed 25 June
2010]
12 Espido Freire, ‘Conferencia: “Problemá-
tica de la mujer en la juventud”’, El Correo Digital
<http://servicios.elcorreo.com/auladecultura/freire1.
html> [accessed 25 June 2010]
to suggest such labelling ghettoises and by authors such as Lucía the civil war and Transition periods.
writing by women, or to admit to and Etxebarria (2000), and Laura Freixas Women authors born in this period,
celebrate gender difference. Thus, that women’s writing has brought new such as Esther Tusquets, tend to reject
on the one hand, writers such as topics, a different sensitivity, and new the notion of a women’s literature.
Dulce Chacón deny the existence of a character models to literature: ‘creo Tusquets, for instance, denounces
women’s literature and contend that que existe una literatura femenina the segregation of women’s writings
such a label looks down on female o de mujeres con características that the critical establishment carries
writers: propias […] La [aportación] más out through the inclusion of what she
específica se centra en ampliar calls ‘el apartado de las mujeres’,
La literatura femenina no existe, la gama de personajes femeninos which is usually presented as separate
existe una literatura escrita por y presentarlos como personajes from what is considered as serious,
mujeres y una literatura escrita por con valor por sí mismos y en sus universal literature.19
hombres, escrita por homosexuales, relaciones entre mujeres y no sólo
escrita por morenos, por rubios, con los hombres’.17 As we have seen, Spanish women
por pelirrojos... Pero solamente a la writers have, over the years, tried to
literatura escrita por mujeres se le Interestingly, Tsuchiya notes that contend this persistent, long-lasting
pone un apelativo, ‘femenina’. Eso in Spain, perhaps because their life situation. In fact, despite the work
me parece que es menospreciar a la experiences parallel the increasingly done by so-called second generation
mujer que escribe. La literatura no promotional demands of the book feminists, it is striking that writers
necesita de adjetivos, es universal.13 market, the latter trend is generally of the stature of Montero, Grandes,
followed by the generation born in or Tusquets – to name a few – still
On the other hand, the trend the 1960s and 1970s (Tsuchiya, p. have, in the early years of the 21st
supported by authors such as Laura 240). In her essay ‘The “new” Female century, to denounce the way their
Freixas avows that female literature is Subject and the Commodification works are treated by a critical
different from writing by men. In The of Gender in the Works of Lucía establishment which is traditionally
Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Etxebarria’, Tsuchiya explores the male. This segregation has been
Writer and Nineteenth Century Literary process by which Etxebarria, like so made even worse by the increasing
Imagination, Sandra M. Gilbert and many other women writers in the commercialisation of book-selling,
Susan Gubar assert that literature by Spanish literary market nowadays, which makes it especially difficult for
8 9 exploits the market through the women writers to balance their public
women has been traditionally marked
by its authors' feelings of inadequacy, treatment of a series of 'temas de image and their work.
inferiority and self-doubt which result moda'. By doing this, Etxebarria
from their education.14 According contributes to the creation of a 'new'
to them, these ‘phenomena of readership from which the publishing
inferiorization mark the woman writer’s industry can benefit at the same
struggle for artistic self-definition and time.18 Thus, for writers such as
differentiate her efforts at self-creation Espido Freire or Lucía Etxebarria, the
from those of her male counterpart’ often denounced ‘selling out’ of the
(Gilbert and Gubar, p. 50). Whereas publishing industry is a natural part
the foci of difference have never been of their lives. On the other hand, the
unanimously established, what it is life experiences of most writers born
widely recognised by critics such as under Franco are not detached from
Hélène Cixous,15 and Anette Kolodny,16
deration of each author would allow us to observe if any
13 Vicente Alapont, ‘Entrevista a Dulce particular stylistic patterns recur in female fiction. She
Chacón’, Mujeractual.com <http://www.mujeractual. finds reflexive perception and inversion to be the most
com/entrevistas/chacon/index.html> [accessed 25 June persistent ones. Reflexive perception takes place when a
2010] character finds herself, or parts of herself, in unexpected
14 Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The or incomprehensible situations. Inversion, on the other
Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and Nineteenth hand, happens when the stereotypical images of women
Century Literary Imagination (New Haven: Yale University in literature are subverted with the purpose of humour,
Press, 1979), pp. 59-60. revelation of their hidden reality, or connotation of their
15 In ‘Sorties: Out and Out: Attacks/Ways/ opposites. See Toril Moi, Sexual/Textual Politics, 2nd ed.
Forays’, Hélène Cixous proposes difference, multiplicity (London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 70-71.
and heterogeneity as a means to combat the binary 17 María Bengoa, ‘Laura Freixas. El camino
patriarchal system. See Hélène Cixous, ‘Sorties: Out es fácil para el escritor serio y para la escritora frívola’, El
and Out: Attacks/Ways/Forays’ in The Feminist Reader. Correo 7th June 2000, <http://www.laurafreixas.com/
Essays in Gender and the Politics of Literary Criticism, ed. freixascriticas4.htm> [accessed 25 June 2010] 19 Geraldine C. Nichols, Escribir. Espacio
by Catherine Belsey and Jane Moore (London:Macmillan, 18 Akiko Tsuchiya, ‘The “new” Female Sub- propio. Laforet, Matute, Moix, Tusquets, Riera y Roig por
1997), pp. 101-116, (p. 101). ject and the Commodification of Gender in the Works of sí mismas. (Minneapolis, MN: Institute for the Study of
16 For Anette Kolodny, the individual consi- Lucía Etxebarria’, Romance Studies, 20, 1 (2002), 77-87. Ideologies and Literatures, 1989), p. 80.
número 02
 Noèlia Diaz Vicedo
Article Maria-Mercè Marçal:
es una opción
La paradójica, y muchas veces
conflictiva, consideración y
menosprecio entre el traductor
y el poeta solamente puede ser
entendida desde la superficialidad
creativa o la ignorancia literaria. El
poder de seducción de una obra de
arte, sobretodo de un poema, viene
determinado por la capacidad del
escritor de configurar el cuerpo y el
alma de su creación. Una actividad
vital que conecta el poema al poeta
y la escritura a una forma específica
de existencia. La composición de un
poema, la persecución armónica de
la palabra, el sonido, el ritmo interno
y externo de los versos hacen al
escritor ascender vertiginosamente
hasta la sublimidad del alma que
busca atraparlos en el espacio y en
el tiempo, para que tan solo unos
instantes después descienda hacia
la nada y deje al poeta desposeído y
vacío, extrañamente frío y endeble.
De esta forma el poeta se da a sí
mismo, por completo, al poder de la
palabra. Y su condena constante le
remite a la incesante búsqueda que
traducir
vital
logre calmar esta sed de sublimidad
que intermitentemente le alimenta. El
poeta se dejar enredar en el ritmo que
le va guiando a través del poema. Sin
posibilidad de volver, se despoja de su
alma para entregarla a la palabra que
una vez vertida sobre el papel ya no le
pertenece. Si la prioridad de cualquier
gran poeta es adecuar este impulso
de la escritura a su propia mirada, ¿no
es esta una prioridad también para el
traductor? ¿No es el traductor quien
sostiene la tensión que late entre
dos lenguas diferentes que esperan
compartir su existencia? ¿Qué es pues
la traducción, sino una transposición
del alma?
Aquellos autores que conciben
la escritura como un proceso
de autocreación, como la poeta
catalana Maria-Mercè Marçal
(Barcelona 1952-1998), la traducción
corresponde, tal y como nos dice
el pensador Walter Benjamin, a
‘un modo’ de escribir, de explorar
otras dimensiones lingüísticas y
simbólicas, de abarcar otros espacios
10 11
y otros cuerpos1. Marçal busca la
re-creación de sí misma a través del
ritmo de los versos, de la intensidad
de las imágenes y la posibilidad de
construcción de nuevos significados
que la estructura poética ofrece. El
año 1992 después de haber publicado
toda su poesía en vida reunida en
el volumen La lengua abolida (1973-
1989), Marçal así lo explicaba: ‘la
poesía ha tenido para mí una función:
la de estructurarme, de darme un
discurso sobre mi misma. También me
sirve como una segunda memoria, y
no porque me haga pensar en lo que
hice concretamente; sino porque me
recuerda mis conflictos íntimos, las
diferentes fases de mi lucha con la
vida’ (Marçal 1992: 43, mi traducción).
Esta lucha con la vida tuvo un eje
central entorno al cuál se articula
toda su producción literaria: la
1 Ver Benjamin 1999: 71.
identidad femenina. La exploración
de esta identidad, su identidad, en
el espacio poético y a través del
lenguaje es lo que define el ars poetica
marçaliana. Este eje ‘mujer’ hace
girar el universo marçaliano de la
escritura y lo convierte no solamente
en práctica literaria, sino también
en su propia forma de existencia:
‘soy alguien’, nos dice Marçal, ‘una
mujer que escribe’2. Esta mujer que
escribe, lo hace desde distintos
campos entre ellos el de la traducción.
Entender la literatura como una
actividad propia del yo interior, nos
lleva a considerar el lenguaje como
el espacio en el que los significados,
símbolos y estructuras lingüísticas
se entremezclan. El lenguaje no
sólo permite la transferencia de
equivalentes entre dos lenguas sino
que arrastra consigo las imágenes,
los códigos que conforman el alma
2 Ver Marçal 2004: 21-24
del poema, aquello que los versos
quieren expresar. Y esta es, la
característica principal para que
un poema pueda ser traducido y lo
sea con éxito, aquello que Benjamin
en su reflexión sobre la función del
traductor ha denominado como la
‘traducibilidad’. La traducibilidad,
responde en toda su capacidad a la
condición poética que, a pesar de
la transformación lingüística, queda
intacta, inmutable en su esencia
comunicativa. Esta condición es la
que permite al escritor penetrar en
la piel del poema y someterlo a la
transposición de códigos, es decir,
de lenguas. Es cierto, que en este
proceso las palabras nunca son
equivalentes, no son capaces de
llegar a la correspondencia absoluta
entre ambas lenguas. De forma
general se ha denominado a esta
incapacidad del lenguaje — por su
limitación — de acoger el significado
completo de la lengua original,
como ‘lo que se pierde’. Traducir en
este sentido apela a una actividad
lingüística que nada tiene que ver con
la simple mecánica de intercambiar
palabras entre diferentes lenguajes.
En Marçal, la traducción nunca es
un mero ejercicio sino una práctica
vital, parte de su horizonte literario
de autocreación, en el que vida y
escritura van estrechamente ligadas.
Hablar de Marçal como traductora
es pues inseparable de hablar de ella
como escritora y sobretodo como
poeta. Aunque la traducción no fue su
actividad fundamental, si que ocupa
un lugar central e importante dentro
del conjunto de su obra. Maria-
Mercè Marçal empezó su carrera
poética con el poemario Cau de llunes
que ganó el premio Carles Riba en
1976. A este libro le sucedieron los
poemarios Bruixa de dol (1979), Sal
oberta (1982), Terra de mai (1982),
La germana, l’estrangera (1985) y
Desglaç (1989). Marçal también fue
autora de una sola novela sobre la
escritora francesa de origen inglés
Renée Vivien La pasión según Renée
Vivien (1994) ganadora de los más
prestigiosos premios de novela de
la literatura catalana. Entre sus
actividades literarias más destacadas
se encuentran los ensayos literarios
en los que explora la interacción entre
mujer y escritura recopilados por
Mercè Ibarz en el libro Maria-Mercè
Marçal: Sota el signe del drac. Proses
1985-1997 (2004). Su interés por la
producción literaria de otras poetas,
la llevó a realizar tareas de crítica
literaria y publicó estudios sobre
las obras de las poetas catalanas
Clementina Arderiu (Barcelona 1889-
1976), Rosa Leveroni (1910-1985) y
la mallorquina Maria Antònia Salvà
(Palma de Mallorca, 1869 - Llucmajor,
1958). Su ferviente propósito de
ahondar en las raíces de su propia
existencia como mujer poeta, la
llevaron a indagar en las obras no
solo de estas autoras sino de otras
extranjeras que leyó con gran pasión
como Virgina Woolf, Djuna Barnes,
Katherine Mansfield, etc. algunas
de las cuales sintió tal admiración
personal y literaria que tradujo
algunos de sus trabajos al catalán.
Tradujo del francés La dona amagada
de la escritora Colette en 1985, de
Margueritte Yourcenar tradujo El tret
de gràcia y de la surrealista Leonor
Fini tradujo el relato L’oneiropompe
en 1992. Del ruso también conreó la
traducción de poesía, en colaboración
con Monika Zgustová, de las autoras
rusas Anna Akhmàtova Rèquiem i
altres poemas en 1990 y Poema de
la fi de Marina Tsvetàieva en 19923.
De todas ellas y de su propósito de
traducción Marçal dijo: ‘he hecho una
opción, una opción vital: pienso que
tengo una vida limitada y que me es
absolutamente necesario contactar
con un cierto principio femenino
que sea fuerza y no debilidad […] No
es que me parezca mal dedicarme
a traducir Maiakovski, por ejemplo,
pero se que Marina Tsvetàieva me
dirá mas cosas sobre mi que no
Maiakovski. Y también me interesa
más Tsvetàieva, ponemos por caso,
porque si pensamos que hacemos
literatura a partir de aquello que
somos, entonces necesitamos un
tipo de ayuda que nos permita
conectar con nosotros mismos. De
hecho, como decía Virginia Woolf en
3 Hay una edición conjunta publicada
en 2004 por la editorial Proa Versions d’Akhmàtova i
Tsvetàieva. Com en la nit les flames.
Una habitación propia, las mujeres
conectamos con el pasado a través
de nuestras madres, las madres
reales. Pero también hay unas madres
simbólicas que nos hace falta buscar
e investigar si no queremos ser
presas de unos parámetros culturales
absolutamente androcéntricos’ (1992:
43).
Cuando Marçal habla de las
autoras que ha traducido o de su
trabajo de traducción lo hace como
crítica incluso cuando se refiriere a
los aspectos más técnicos, dónde
lleva todo el peso de la acción al
poder de la palabra y lo que significa
para ella como escritora. De esta
manera describía su experiencia al
traducir a Colette: ‘Me gusta Colette,
me parece importante […] Sobre
todo tiene un lenguaje riquísimo, muy
florido, muy sensual, las palabras
tienen un peso muy fuerte por ellas
mismas, por su sonido’ (Marçal en
Montero 2004: 92).
La traducción, pues en Marçal
resta lejos de una acción estéril. Al
12 13
contrario, nos acerca no solamente
a la capacidad creativa de la propia
autora sino al universo de las
autoras que traduce. Marçal como
traductora, se mueve oscilante en
el vaivén entre dos cuerpos que
danzan al compás de su propia
batuta vital. Esto, lejos queda,
de cualquier indicio de profanar
el poema original, como algunos
escritores han sugerido. Traducir
estas autoras no es solamente
reconstruirlas en otro cuerpo,
hacerlas vibrar en otra lengua, sino
que es sumergirse en otras almas,
buscar entre los devaneos rítmicos
una fuente de inspiración, de reflejo
que le sirva para anclar su propio
deseo femenino. Marçal bebe en las
aguas cristalinas de ellas como si de
una fuente se tratara, se nutre de
su sabiduría en la que encuentra un
remanso de paz, una figura referencial
que le pueda servir como punto de
apoyo en sus propios horizontes
poéticos y en su propia existencia.
Traducir es en Marçal una opción
vital.
número 02
Referencias
Benjamin, Walter. 1999. ‘The Task of the
Translator’, Illuminations. London: Pimlico,
pp. 70-82.
Biosca, Mercè y Cornado Mari Pau.
1992. ‘Maria-Mercè Marçal o l’ordenació
de la vida a través de la poesia’. Escriptors
d’Avui. Perfils Literaris. Lleida: Publicacions
de La Paeria, pp. 36-43.
Marçal, Maria-Mercè. 2004. ‘Qui sóc
i per què escric’, en Maria-Mercè Marçal.
Sota el Signe del drac : Proses 1985-1997.
Barcelona: Proa, pp. 21-24.
Montero, Anna. 2004. ‘Anna Montero
entrevista Maria-Mercè Marçal’, Lectora,
no. 10: 259-84.
Poesía
Cau de llunes. Barcelona: Proa, 1977
(1998, 2a edició).
Bruixa de dol.. Sant Boi de Llobregat:
Llibres del Mall, 1979 / Barcelona: Ed.
62, 1998.
Terra de mai. València: El Cingle, 1982.
Sal oberta. Sant Boi de Llobregat:
Llibres del Mall, 1982 / Barcelona: Ed.
62, 1993.
La germana, l’estrangera. Sant Boi
de Llobregat: Llibres del Mall, 1985 /
Barcelona: Ed. 62, 1995.
Desglaç Barcelona: Ed. 62 - Empúries,
1988 (1998, 2a ed).
Llengua abolida (1973-1988). València: 3
i 4, 1989 (2000, 2a ed).
Raó del cos. Barcelona: Ed. 62 -
Empúries, 2000.
Traducciones (del francés)
La dona amagada. COLETTE. Barcelona:
Edicions del Mall, 1985.
El tret de gràcia. MARGUERITE
YOURCENAR. Barcelona: Edicions B, 1990.
L’Oneiropompe. LEONOR FINI.
Barcelona: Edicions de l’Eixample, 1992.
(del ruso con Monika Zgustová)
Rèquiem i altres poemas. ANNA
AKHMÀTOVA. Barcelona: Ed. 62, 1990.
Poema de la fi. MARINA TSVETÀIEVA.
Barcelona: Ed. 62, 1992.
Interview
Lorenza Ippolito
Interview
with chilean artist
Johanna Berger,
Blank Gallery
Launched in April 2007, Blank is a
studio and gallery complex run entirely
by artists. Its purpose is to house
and support contemporary art in all
its forms. The artists based at Blank
produce a vibrant and eclectic work,
including visual and sound installation,
performance and community based
events. Situated at the edge of Hove
in Portslade, Blank is a pioneering
contemporary art venue attracted
by the remoteness of the industrial
wilderness.
Lorenza Ippolito. I am going to start
by asking you a few questions about
yourself. You come from Chile. Do
you feel you are working from a Latin
American viewpoint?
Johanna Berger. It is an interesting
question. Chilean art culture has a
very specific way of understanding
and experiencing art. In the past, Latin
American influence in the arts hasn’t
always been recognised, especially
in Europe. Now, it is becoming more
apparent that South America is a place
of innovation in the contemporary
art scene. Starting from the post-
founder of
war period, there have been art 14 15
movement that have preceded their
European counterparts by 10 years,
but only the Western ones have been
acknowledged in art history books.
Even in South America these artists
and movements were not recognised
until the official Academia recognised
their value, by inscribing them in
Art History. But a lot gets lost in the
process.
L.I. Can you give me an example?
J.B. For example, a Brasilian artist
called Lydia Clark. She completely
rejected the art world and the
economically driven art market. She
was an artist that worked with a
particular type of performance art
around the 40s and 50s doing really
radical performances that recall
what we’re trying to do here now in
Blank. These events were socially
engaged, community based work, but
taken to a really bonkers extreme.
She was interested in staging social
experiments that involved people and
their interaction. Some performances
involved many people in public

spaces, but also other really weird
and wonderful things.
L.I. A bit like flash mobs?
J.B. No, I am talking about a
completely different thing. These
performances were huge and involved
the audience, so that the audience
would be participants, but also
part of the piece. Some of these
performances were big and some
were one-to-one. They remind me of
New York happenings from the 60s
and the Fluxus Movement, much
before the happenings had started,
though.
Because she [Lydia Clark] rejected
the whole art scene and the art
market, she didn’t really become
famous as such. She was well know
and appreciated, but more by artists
and became a university professor in
Brazil. But it’s only now in 2011 that
there are retrospectives of her work
and the academic world is taking an
interest in her life and work. I think
there was a retrospective at the
Haywards Gallery.
When I lived in Chile, I wasn’t really
aware of this. It wasn’t until I actually
started studying it at university that I
understood these hidden histories.
16
I went to University in Chile
and it changed my life. It changed
completely my outlook on things and
to this day I operate from a different
perspective thanks to that experience.
L.I. That sounds really interesting
I’d like to hear more. I don’t know
if it’s relevant to the interview, but I
would like you to go on.
J.B. La Escuela de Arquitectura
y Diseño de la Univesidad Católica
de Valparaiso is an architecture and
design school in Chile. I specialised
in Design, but because of the way
the institution was structured we all
studied together most of the time.
Differently from other places, we
were not taught any practical skills, so
I can’t design for toffee, really. I have
an eye for it, but I didn’t learn how to
use the basic technical tools.
The same applies to the
architecture department, from its
foundation the school chose not
to teach design plans, pupils were
encouraged only to draw their ideas.
They would obviously teach all the
basics about materials, structures and
construction, but not to design proper
plans.
A good example of the universities
philosophy is the Travesias. In
essence, each year the whole
Architecture and Design School
would engage for an entire term in
a Travesia. This meant travelling to
an uninhabited place in the middle
of nowhere. It was a journey in
many ways. My class went to an
uninhabited island in the southern
fjords of Chile, where it rains nearly
300 days a year. We where in tents
and accompanied by a couple of
professors. The idea of the exercise
was to build and invent everything we
needed to live there. We had to first
design and then build our own tents
and cooking things. Everything was
about looking and making.
This experience took us out of our
reality and a lot out of our comfort
zone so, that we could begin to see
things differently. It was incredible;
17 everybody was writing, drawing and
sketching all the time. It was like
being on drugs, but without the drugs;
in a permanent state of “wow”.
I think they wanted to form
individuals, who were creative in
whatever area they were interested in.
Change the way things conventionally
work.
L.I. I know what you mean;
the teachers wanted you to ask
yourselves if the traditional way was
the best way. Or is there a better way
of doing things?
J.B. Yeah. Can we do it in a
different way…but also before that
paying attention to what we are
experiencing something and how are
we experiencing it.
L.I. If what you have learnt at
University is what I think you have,
you are interested in having a more
global understanding of experiences.
It’s not just about a one-dimensional
experience…I mean you either paint
or you draw or you sculpt or you make
a house. It’s more about everybody
número 02
does everything or do people have
specific roles.
J.B. There are some specific roles
within it, but it is important to have
an overview. For me it’s important to
have a wider perspective. The way I
see it, each thing is a tool. So when
you draw, when you use the medium
of drawing, it is as a tool to SEE
something.
[At the university] we used to have
this subject called Cultura del Cuerpo,
culture of the body. Every year, a
huge tournament would be organised
involving the whole University, where
every class would have to design an
object that would be used in a final
tournaments, like a race.
L.I. Was it like P.E.?
J.B. No, I’ll show you some books
one day. We made the most beautiful
things. We would have to start from
platonic shapes, like geometric 3-D
shapes. Some looked like stars, for
example. I remember we made some
huge ones. You could fit one or more
people inside them. Just the designs
of them were beautiful. But, they were
made with bamboo sticks and roughly
placed together. We build quite a
few different ones and it took a long
time. They became stunning pieces of
sculpture.
The day of the tournament we had
to race them. We took them to the
beach, a very flat and long beautiful
beach. Some of these constructions
had people inside them, some need to
be pushed. They even made beautiful
marks in the sand.
L.I. So, how do you use this in your
art today?
J.B. I’ve started working as a
painter. I used to sell my work. I had a
painting studio. I taught painting and I
earned a living by teaching, but I also
sold a lot of paintings increasingly
well. I always sold well. I had people
that wanted to support me and they
paid for my paintings. I was selling
internationally and shipping paintings
to different places.
I was part of a group that had a stall
at The London Independent Art Fair.
We formed a group in order to have
access to funding to help us cover
the cost of having our paintings there.
The group lasted for 3 years and every
year we had a successful stand in
the big fair in Islington. People would
literarily queue to buy our work. And
say things like: ‘If that person isn’t
going to have, then I’ll have it’.
But at some point I just got really
tired of the whole thing. I could stand
chasing rich people around. That
didn’t sit well with me. I felt the work
I was trying to do had something
else behind it. The kind of research I
did for my paintings involved a lot of
work. The model of work just didn’t fit
as a formula. I needed people to buy
my work in order to be able to afford
to make more the work. For example,
if I was going to have to be in a studio
for 3 weeks or 4 weeks at a time to
produce the paintings, I needed to
Johana Berger
sell those paintings, to be able not to
have interrupted the process. I hated
that process of constantly having to
chasing money. I wasn’t taken up by
a gallery; that only happens to a few.
If you are relying on doing your own
selling, marketing, it’s hard work.
I remember an episode. Once a
lady paid me 3000 pounds cash. I had
a carrier bag full of cash on the street!
She had wanted to buy a painting
because it said “Not For Sale” and in
the end, I said “It’s £ 3000” more as
a joke. So, I had to deliver it to her
flat. The painting didn’t fit her flat in
anyway or form. It was full of hunting
stuff and my painting was an abstract
watercolour. I just thought enough.
That was when I decided to leave all
that behind and I gradually started
working in another way. There were
lots of in betweens, but now I run
Blank and this is my new art work.
18
L.I. Yes, tell me about Blank and
how it is an artwork?
J.B. Blank is art in that it didn’t exist
before. I created it. And I approached
it as I would have approached a
painting project. For example, at the
beginning of a painting project I would
look for everything I needed first. So,
I would gather a certain amount of
canvases, wood and primal. I would
have to think how thick I wanted the
brushes to be and what type of paint
I would be using. I used to make my
own paint most of the time. But also, I
would think about where the paintings
were going to go. In the same way I
started looking for all the components
I needed to set up Blank.
Another important detail was that
I wanted a particular ethos to the
place, organic and shifting in nature.
I didn’t want to be a director in the
traditional sense. I wanted to be
the creative person behind it, not
someone who tells people what to do.
As I said before, mine is an organic
vision that gets shaped and changes
19 according the events and the people.
It seems a bit anarchic, but in my
head I always have a clear idea of the
general direction in which Blank is
going.
Lately, Blank has spread from being
an enclave of non commercial and
unconventional contemporary artists -
in an industrial landscape - to opening
up to the local Portslade community.
I spent a lot of time choosing those
initial 12 Blank Artists. I felt I was
curating in a way. I decided not to
included painters and instead to invite
performers and installation artists. It
was as if we were working outside the
city and stretching it.
Now, that’s changed. We are
still non-commercial, but also
unconventionally community
orientated.
L.I. What influenced you most in
your career choices?
J.B. A part from the University we
talked about earlier, nothing that I
can pin point. I am certainly part of a
specific cultural context from which
número 02
Blank came out, but if I see something
too close to what I’m doing, I don’t
find it useful. I have to step away from
it and concentrate on what I’m doing.
. L.I. Do you think of yourself as a
Chilean artist living in England or UK
based artist? How would you define
yourself culturally?
J.B. I don’t know, good question. I
think I am neither of those. Although, I
still feel socially awkward sometimes,
especially at the school gates
waiting for my daughter. My entire
professional career has developed
here in U.K. But I don’t feel English
in any shape or form, there are a
lot of things that are just not me.
I understand how things happen
professionally. Maybe the “chileaness”
is in the way I go about things. The
English way of doing things involves
a lot of talking about things before
doing them. I get impatient with that.
L.I. What about your partner she is
English?
J.B. Poor Sonia, I’m always
complaining. “Why do your people do
that? And why do your people do this?
L.I. So do you think there is a
cultural divide? Has that been positive
or negative?
J.B. Yes, as an artist people find
me very different. I think the cultural
divide allows me more freedom,
though. As an outsider, I can
challenge people in a delicate way.
I do that in projects. I don’t do that
with collaborators. Instead of working
in the English way step by step, I take
a step and then a big jump. But as I
said, a foreign woman I don’t need to
be harsh to challenge situations.
In the same way, when I go back
to Chile I can also be a bit more
challenging there, in a different way,
because I’m not expected to work as
local people work anymore.

Article
William Rowe
El tiempo de
Son tres los tiempos que nombro
con este título: i) 1922 ii) El tiempo
que representa o imita Trilce mismo
iii) El tiempo que pasa por dentro
de la palabra, incluyendo la palabra
Trilce mismo. El tiempo es cantidad y
calidad. Es aquello que, queramos o
no, miden los relojes; y es el instante
singular, no equiparable, que se carga
de vida. En los poemas de Trilce se
produce constantemente un conflicto.
Cito el poema II:
Tiempo Tiempo
Mediodía estancado entre relentes.
Bomba aburrida del cuartel achica
Tiempo tiempo tiempo tiempo.
Este tiempo subdividido en partes
iguales se relaciona en este poema
con la cárcel –o sea con el tiempo
que Vallejo pasó como preso en la
cárcel de Trujillo. Y el tiempo de la
cárcel, el tiempo de la disciplina
carcelaria, que es el modelo del
tiempo social, va asociado con la
máquina que bombea. No es el fluir
continuo de un río sino el movimiento
repetitivo de una máquina, máquina
Trilce
que va seccionando el tiempo
en cantidades estandarizadas,
homogéneas.
Hasta ahí la idea del tiempo que
se expresa en este poema. Pero, ¿ahí
acaba el asunto? ¿Se trata sólo de una
idea del tiempo? ¿Cómo situar esta
experiencia del tiempo en el tiempo
histórico? Se trata del tiempo de la
sociedad industrial capitalista. Vallejo
ya había trabajado en una hacienda
azucarera –1era forma de producción
industrial en el Perú –y ya había vivido
en Lima, que en ese entonces se
transformaba en una sociedad de tipo
capitalista. Y en este tiempo moderno,
deshilachado y arrugado, roto, en
una palabra, se contrasta con otro
tiempo: un tiempo del mundo rural,
provinciano y andino. En el poema
VI, hay un tiempo desordenado, el
del “traje que vestí mañana”, que
desordena la secuencia del tiempo que
fluye lisamente de pasado a futuro, y a
ese desorden se contrasta el acto de
la mujer –de Otilia a quien el poema
llama “mi aquella/ lavandera del
alma”. El poema termina:
…Que mañana entrará
satisfecha, capulí de obrería, dichosa
de probar que sí sabe, que sí puede
¡CÓMO NO VA A PODER!
azular y planchar todos los caos.
El planchar, en este poema, es en
alguna medida un ritual. Y el traje
de ciudad, connota una realidad
desprovista de los rituales de la vida
premoderna, realidad en que el orden
clásico del tiempo (pasado-presente-
futuro) se ha roto.
A primera vista, hay dos maneras
de leer la relación que presenta este
poema entre tiempo andino y tiempo
moderno. Podríamos pensar que el
poema afirma la emoción lírica del
amor pre-moderno en contraposición
al ambiente de la ciudad para
combatir al tiempo moderno
degradado de esta. De ser así, este
poema parecería tener un sentido
semejante al “Idilio muerto” de Los
heraldos negros, en que a la asfixia de
“Bizancio” se contrapone la “andina y
dulce Rita”, quien también se asocia
con el acto de planchar.
20 21
La otra manera de leer Trilce VI
tomaría “el traje turbio de injusticia”
y “todos los caos” como realidades
que siempre excederán el ritual de
la mujer que plancha: es decir, que
el énfasis que ponen las mayúsculas
(‘¡CÓMO NO VA A PODER!’)
registra una gran tensión pero no
la victoria de la emoción lírica de
la poesía romántica1. La injusticia
de la sociedad contemporánea y su
multiplicidad inenarrable no cederán
a un esquema estético y ético
decimonónico. A fin de cuentas, este
poema, al igual que el libro entero,
nos presenta con la interpenetración
de ambos tiempos (pre-moderno,
moderno) y no con el triunfo del
primero, que sería la arcadia
conservadora, ni el del segundo,
que significaría la fe en el progreso:
es decir, la relación entre ambos
1 La lucha contra la sociedad degra-
dada, que es poesía del romanticismo, se registra más
plenamente en Vallejo que en los poetas finalmente
románticos (p.ej. Salaverry), pero siendo Vallejo poeta
del siglo XX, pasa por esa lucha para llegar a una estética
contemporánea, no para reproducirla tal cual.
tiempos es más bien una relación
dialéctica.
¿Hoy seguimos viviendo este
choque del tiempo moderno y
el premoderno? Creo que ya no.
Es verdad que en ciertos lugares
la mentalidad premoderna con
respecto al tiempo sigue existiendo.
Los miembros de las comunidades
campesinas se resisten a concebir el
tiempo en forma de cantidades, sean
de horas, días, semanas o meses. Al
contrario, lo que para ellos marca el
tiempo son las estaciones del año
agrícola (tiempo de siembra, etc), el
tiempo sagrado de las fiestas, el gasto
del trabajo físico y los cambios del
año y el paisaje. Y esa concepción
premoderna sigue viva en las palabras
del curandero de la novela Camino
a las Huaringas de Dimas Arrieta2,
curandero que es guardián de la
memoria colectiva. Este personaje, al
referirse a los europeos que llegaron
en el siglo XVI y a los habitantes de las
ciudades, los llama los “Tiempos”3. Sin
embargo, en las sociedades actuales
prevalece cada vez más el tiempo
cuantitativo, como en el dicho “el
tiempo es dinero”.
La publicidad y el turismo exhiben
este vaciamiento. Hay un video de
publicidad que se ha estado dando
últimamente en la televisión en el
Perú. Habla un señor de unos 50
años que ha abandonado una carrera
exitosa para vivir con sus hijos y su
mujer en la playa. Nos habla de lo
bien que le ha ido con esta decisión.
Y luego sale el nombre del Banco
que patrocina esta información y
escuchamos la frase “el tiempo vale
más que el dinero”.
Uno no sabe si maravillarse más
ante la desfachatez de la mentira
o ante la presunta inocencia del
televidente. Todos sabemos que el
tiempo es dinero–hay que ganar
dinero para comprar la casa en la
2 .
Lima, Ediciones Antares, 1993
3 Ver pp. 67, 92. El maestro curandero se
opone a la división del tiempo en la secuencia pasado-
presente-futuro: una tradición prehispánica se da la mano
con la crítica al tiempo moderno.
playa. Es más, en las sociedades
actuales –neoliberales–si no tienes
dinero, no existes. Es decir, quien no
tiene dinero está fuera de lo social.
Entonces, que salga de la boca de
un banco “el tiempo vale más que
el dinero” es la gran mentira. Nadie
sabe mejor que los bancos que el
capital, que es del negocio, existe
como función del tiempo.
Entonces, quizás, como suele
ocurrir con las mentiras, hay un deseo
de creerla: el gran engaño niega la
esclavitud al dinero que vivimos.
O sea, es la negación que atrae
–negación del grado en que nuestro
tiempo está dominado por el dinero–
y lo que se niega, en el fondo, es el
hecho contundente que para tener
tiempo –tiempo libre para gozarlo–
hay que tener dinero. Así, ¡sigan
soñando con la casita en la playa!,
ya que más van a necesitar al banco.
Quizás habría que añadir que, según
Baudelaire, la mirada de la mentira es
una mirada de aburrimiento. Nos mira
con aburrimiento4.
Lo que estoy proponiendo es que
a aquello que Vallejo experimentó
entre 1918 y 1922, se le ha dado, en
nuestra época, otra vuelta de tuerca.
Al tiempo premoderno que se perdió,
lo ha reemplazado el tiempo-mentira,
el tiempo espectáculo. El tiempo
congelado y alienado se vende. Así,
el turismo busca consumir el tiempo
del otro. Hace un año más o menos,
los vecinos de un pequeño pueblo
medieval de la Toscana de Italia se
pusieron de acuerdo para vender
el pueblo entero a una agencia de
turismo alemana. De ese modo los
turistas podrían vivir la vida de un
pueblito italiano. ¿Qué hicieron los
italianos con la plata? No se sabe,
pero seguramente les pasó por
la mente la idea de comprar otro
pueblo…para revenderlo.
¿Se produce todavía en nuestra
época el choque o el rozamiento
entre el tiempo cualitativo y el tiempo
cuantitativo? Pienso que sí, aunque ya
menos en la forma del tiempo pre-
4 "L’amour du mensonge"
capitalista frente al tiempo moderno.
Y creo que Trilce precisamente nos
puede abrir las puertas a una reflexión
crítica sobre el tiempo. Mejor dicho,
la lectura de Trilce nos exige pasar
por la crítica al tiempo.
Ya volveremos a hablar del poema II
que hace poco cité. Veamos primero
ese poema bastante conocido que
empieza con el verso “Tahona estuosa
de aquellos mis bizcochos” (XXIII).
Comienza así:
Tahona estuosa de aquellos mis
bizcochos
pura yema infantil innumerable,
madre.
Y, después de mencionar a “las dos
hermanas últimas, / Miguel que ha
muerto”, sigue así:
En la sala se arriba nos repartías
de mañana, de tarde, de dual estiba,
aquellas ricas hostias de tiempo,
para que ahora nos sobrasen
cáscaras de relojes en flexión de
las 24 22 23
en puntos parados.
Esta estrofa, que he citado entera,
se quiebra en ese “para/que”: ahí
se rompe la lógica de la maduración,
del desarrollo –de la idea de que
la finalidad de la vida es llegar a la
madurez para así superar la infancia.
¿Por qué? Porque lo que dio
la madre –su cuerpo, su amor,
el satisfacer plenamente las
necesidades de los hijos –aquella
plenitud, en lugar de desembocar en
el ahora de la adultez, en una vida
plena, redonda, realizada, más bien
produce un resto que no se realiza.
Es decir, en lugar de que el amor de
la madre se transforme en la plenitud
del adulto, la promesa cumplida, al
contrario, produce un quiebre, una
escisión en el ser.
Vamos a ver, con un poco más
de lentitud, cómo sucede esto en
el proceso de la lectura. No cabe
duda que los “bizcochos”, la “yema
infantil”, y las “ricas hostias de
número 02
tiempo” constituyen un tiempo
cualitativo, que corresponde a la
interioridad del sujeto –a la vida
interior. Pero, ¿cómo se expresa
este tiempo cualitativo? ¿Cuáles
son sus símbolos? Dirán ustedes
que los símbolos son obvios, que ya
están indicados: es decir, son los
“bizcochos”, la “yema”, las “hostias”;
o sea, que estas palabras están en
relación adecuada con el significado.
Precisamente eso dicen Marco
Martos y Elsa Villanueva en su libro
esencial Las palabras de Trilce: ellos
especifican el por qué estos símbolos
funcionan adecuadamente. Cito:
“El pan está dignificado dentro del
contexto de la educación religiosa
al comparársele con las hostias”.
Pero, al contrario, ¿no es el caso que
en el momento en que se compara
el pan con la hostia en lugar de
producirse una perfecta equivalencia,
digamos una equivalencia simétrica,
se entromete el tiempo del “ahora”,
tiempo en que las “hostias” sobran,
es decir, se resisten a integrarse
en el nivel del significado, más
precisamente en la economía del
significado. Es por el hecho que el
tiempo pasa por la articulación del
símbolo (la hostia y sus equivalentes)
que los símbolos se desquician, no
por ser insuficientes sino por ser
excesivos: constituyen un resto que
no puede incluirse: Hay demasiado
de ese tiempo. Al entrometerse la
forma moderna de la temporalización,
aquella que todavía vivimos, se
rompe el tejido simbólico que, antes,
suministró al sujeto un asidero propio,
24
un lugar en el espacio, dispuesto
para él5. Si para Bachelard el espacio
siempre nos ofrece un lugar dispuesto
para recibirnos, ese lugar se produce
gracias a la suspensión, por el
arquetipo (el del hogar sobre todo),
de la temporalidad contemporánea.
Ese lugar, que reposa en el tejido
simbólico atemporal, aparece en el
poema XXXIV: “Ya no habrá quien no
aguarde, / dispuesto mi lugar, bueno
lo malo.” Y es precisamente “el dolor
sin fin / y nuestro haber nacido así
sin causa” que acaba con ese lugar
predispuesto para el ser: el dolor y
la falta de sentido constituyen un
mundo que es el del Heidegger de Ser
y tiempo, mundo al que hemos sido
“arrojados”, mundo que corresponde
a la temporalidad contemporánea.6
Martos y Villanueva tratan de
resolver el problema de esta suma
que no tiene solución: según ellos
el pan es “alimento material que
ahora en la madurez se forma
alimento espiritual”. Si fuera así,
¡no habría nada que sobrara! El
sustento material de la vida estaría
25 en perfecto equilibrio con el sustento
espiritual. Y ahí, precisamente,
encontramos la doctrina de la
Iglesia: la transubstanciación del pan
de la hostia en la carne de Cristo
es la piedra angular de todas las
equivalencias de materia y espíritu
–es el acto que garantiza el sentido
de la vida material. Sobre esa piedra
matriz se erige la adecuación de
los símbolos. Así, en el libro Fin
desierto de Mario Montalbetti, se
constata que lo que se ha perdido
con el ahuecamiento de las palabras
en el mundo contemporáneo, es
precisamente el sacramento: “Este es
el verso en el que la sangre se vuelve
vino y el paraíso metrópoli”.
Sin embargo, para que el “alimento
material” se hubiera convertido
en “alimento espiritual” requeriría
que el sacrificio de la madre fuera
perfecto, que se convirtiera sin resto
en alimento del adulto. Para Vallejo,
5 Ver El reposo caliente aún de ser (II)
6 Casa de cuervos. Canto villano, Mex, FCE,
1996, p. 190.
número 02
no es así, “las hostias del tiempo”
producen un exceso, un disturbio.
Para Blanca Varela, tampoco es
perfecto el sacrificio de la madre:
lo que ella da al dar a luz al hijo es
la imperfección, lo que le sobra y le
falta: “tu náusea es mía/ la heredaste
como heredan los peces la asfixia /
y el color de tus ojos / es también
color de mi ceguera”7.
Si lo que da la madre en el poema
de Vallejo se convirtiera en “alimento
espiritual”, no sobraría nada. La
equivalencia se produciría sin resto.
¿Cuál es el problema, entonces? Está
en que ese pan –el cuerpo– que daba
la madre ya era “alimento espiritual”.
Colmaba el ser del niño –y ahora
no se concilia con el tiempo de los
relojes en que vive el adulto.
He dicho, la madre daba su cuerpo,
y si esto suena a herejía, creo que es
exactamente así. “Toma…este es mi
cuerpo” son las palabras del evangelio
y de la misa, esas palabras andan por
el fondo de este poema. Si la madre
toma el lugar de Cristo, si su cuerpo,
para con el niño, ocupa el lugar de
la hostia de la misa, se trataría de un
pensamiento herético. Creo que es
precisamente así. Este poema hace
una lectura hereje del evangelio.
Es decir, en la poesía de Vallejo, se
trata más de herejía que de ateísmo.
Y la herejía de Vallejo tiene dos
características: para él, no bastan
el padre, el hijo y el Espíritu Santo,
hay que incluir a la madre –Dios es
femenino8. Y en segundo lugar, el
cristianismo de Vallejo es materialista:
el espíritu ya está en la materia, y
viceversa, no se trata de transformar,
por un acto de fe, la materia
en espíritu. Existe en la poesía
peruana una tradición que ejerce el
pensamiento material de lo espiritual.
Basta mencionar los libros Noche
oscura del cuerpo, de Jorge Eduardo
Eielson, y Ejercicios materiales de
Blanca Varela8.
7 Vallejo feminiza la Santa Trinidad en el
poema Una mujer de senos apacibles. Este tipo de herejía
se produciría entre las mujeres beatas de la colonia.
8 Esa serie incluiría también Las ínsulas
extrañas de Westphalen, La mano desasida de Martín
 El tiempo también es material. En el
poema que estamos comentando, se
da en forma de “cáscaras de relojes
en flexión de las 24 / en puntos
parados.” Hay una contradicción
tensa entre el reloj que da vueltas
por las subdivisiones de las 24 horas
y el reloj parado “en punto”; y otra
contradicción entre la idea del reloj
que al marcar y flexionar las horas
las contiene, y la idea del reloj como
cáscara vacía que no contiene nada.
Si la primera contradicción es de
estirpe heracliteana (simultaneidad
de stasis y movimiento), la segunda
es mallarméana (vaciamiento del
símbolo); ambas pertenecen al
pensamiento dialéctico9. Entonces,
¿qué es, precisamente, lo que sobra?
¿Las hostias de tiempo o el tiempo
del reloj? Propongo que, a fin de
cuentas, cada uno es el resto del otro.
Es decir, en un sentido, lo
numerado, las horas, minutos y
segundos, son un exceso frente
al tiempo de la plenitud. Y, en el
otro sentido, dando un giro de
180° grados, la “yema infantil” es
“innumerable”, excede la medida de
los números. Tal es así también con
la imagen de los huesos de la madre,
convertidos, en el tiempo presente,
en “harina”: mismos años estaba llevando a
Hoy que hasta
Tus puros huesos estarán harina
Que no habrá en qué amasar…
En estos y otros versos del poema,
la madre excede el tiempo del reloj,
excede su economía. Dijo Marx
que en el fondo lo que se explota,
para crear el capital, es el tiempo
–el tiempo de los que trabajan, el
tiempo de los que mueren. El lugar
por excelencia en que el tiempo
de la explotación se impone es
la fábrica: así las imágenes de la
película “Los tiempos modernos” de
Chaplin. Hoy es posible especular
que el capitalismo tardío, en lugar de
habernos liberado de la fábrica, ha
colocado la fábrica en todas partes.
Adán, y Fin desierto de Mario Montalbetti.
9 Sobre Mallarmé y la dialéctica ver,
Badiou, Teoría del sujeto.
La última estrofa del poema da otra
vuelta al asunto:
Tal la tierra oirá en tus silencios,
Cómo nos van cobrando todos
El alquiler del mundo donde nos dejas
Y el valor de aquel pan inacabable.
¿Por qué tenemos que pagar “el
alquiler”, digamos, la hipoteca?
¿Será porque vivimos en la época
del tiempo = dinero? Pero si el
tiempo fuera pura y sencillamente
cuantitativo, en ese caso, ¿por qué
se diría que estamos endeudados?
Creo que el pensamiento de Vallejo
sería que nos han dado algo –la plena
satisfacción de las necesidades por
la madre –que marca una relación
cualitativa, emocional, con el tiempo.
Esa sería nuestra relación primaria
con el tiempo. Luego viene el tiempo
de los relojes que se nos impone. El
tiempo de los relojes se impone sobre
la base de ese tiempo primario, pero
nunca llega a llenar ese espacio10,
nunca llega a ser equivalente a él.
Seguimos pagando la deuda por lo
que hemos recibido, se convierte11 en
vacío el tiempo que da la madre, lo
convierte a la vez en sustancia que
no se puede contener, en algo que no
encuentra su símbolo adecuado.
Por eso hay que decir que “las
ricas hostias del tiempo” engendran
una escisión en el ser. Entonces
no viene al caso afirmar, como
afirma el libro Las palabras de Trilce,
que el pan “al fin del poema se
transformar en símbolo de la vida
misma”. Al contrario, Trilce viaja por
la inadecuación de los símbolos. El
Padre no anda por este poema –por
eso los símbolos (lo simbólico) no
se constituyen adecuadamente. No
hay padre que suprima el amor de
la madre para reemplazarlo con la
palabra.
Al final del poema, la palabra
misma se torna “hostia del tiempo”:
pero ya no la palabra “madre” sino
10 “Hasta en la cruda sombra, hasta en el
gran molar/ cuya encía late en aquel lácteo hoyuelo.”
11 Ver los siguientes versos en que el pezón
que da la leche se formó el vacío de la muerte: en hueco
que no podemos llenar.
el vocablo que pertenece al habla:
¡mamá!
Y nos lo cobran, cuando, siendo nosotros
Pequeños entonces, como tú verías,
No se lo podíamos haber arrebatado
A nadie; cuando tú nos lo diste,
¿di, mamá?
El peso de la palabra más íntima,
también nos lleva por el tiempo de
decirla, el tiempo que se consume
al enunciarla. Se produce para
el lector una perturbación, un
estremecimiento. Porque este
tiempo ocupado por la palabra, este
pedazo de duración, salta fuera del
tiempo sucesivo. Esa es la hostia: la
duración absoluta. Como relámpago,
como corriente eléctrica, el tiempo
real pasa por el poema. Se trata
de una condición extrema a la que
repetidas veces se aproxima el libro.
Y este tiempo no engaña porque
precisamente es lo que estaba fuera
(de la ecuación), es lo que la palabra
del padre excluía12.
Trilce lleva a cabo una revolución
26 27
del lenguaje poético que puede
compararse con la música
dodecafónica, o sea con la revolución
del lenguaje musical que en esos
cabo Arnold Schoenberg. Los dos
principios más importantes de esa
música son: utilizar todas las notas, es
decir, abandonar la escala diatónica,
evitar las octavas. Y segundo, no
repetir ninguna nota hasta acabar con
todas las 12 de la escala cromática.
Estas medidas producen una música
que no está regida por la melodía
y que –esto es lo importante–
ensancha el campo del sonido: al oído
se le demanda que escuche lo que no
estaba en la música que existía hasta
ese entonces. Por eso se puede decir
que esta música no engaña.
¿Cuál es el parecido con Trilce?
Que el tiempo de Trilce deja de
marcarse solo por la métrica de las
sílabas, y se vuelve extraño, rompe
las secuencias y las regularidades.
Que el sonido rebasa las cadencias
12 Ver poema He almorzado solo ahora…
número 02
musicales de la poesía modernista,
deja en gran parte de ser melódico, e
incluye el silencio. Y que la semántica
se zafa de los símbolos reguladores y
va a la deriva. Todos estos factores se
relacionan.
Ya que, desafortunadamente, no
hay tiempo para abarcar todo esto
–se requeriría, en realidad, todo
un curso– me voy a centrar en dos
cosas: la relación de los números con
la emoción y el tiempo que pasa por
la palabra, es decir, el tiempo que
transcurre mientras dura el sonido de
la palabra.
A primera vista, los números
no tendrían relación alguna con la
emoción. Al contrario, serían lo más
frío que puede haber. Sin embargo,
los números tienen su equivalencia
emocional, y eso porque entran
en relación con la vida interior
de la persona. La pura duración
psíquica, nos explica Bergson –a
quien evidentemente había leído
Vallejo –esta duración interior es
heterogénea, es decir consiste en
el cambio incesante. Obviamente
asumimos que los números –las
unidades –son idénticos: pero esto
es así porque los colocamos en un
espacio homogéneo cuantitativo. En
el fondo, sin embargo, los números
producen una resonancia con la vida
interior, que es cualitativa; sostiene
Bergson que esta relación cualitativa
es previa a la cuantitativa.
Se habrán dado cuenta, al leer
Trilce, que en este libro aparecen
muchos números como también la
idea de la numeración. En la mayoría
de los casos, estos números son
extraños porque carecen de sentido.
O no sabemos qué es aquello que
enumeran, o no sabemos qué relación
podría tener el número en el caso
dado, con aquello a que se refiere.
Vamos a ver un caso en el poema LV.
Este poema nos presenta con una
escena de hospital, con “un enfermo
[que] lee la Prensa”, y otro en estado
de debilidad extrema, “cerca a estarlo
sepulto”. El poema termina así:
 Ya la tarde pasó diez y seis veces
por el subsuelo empatrullado,
y se está casi ausente
en el número de madera amarilla
de la cama que está desocupada
tanto tiempo
allá……………………..
enfrente.
Hay un espacio vacío entre las
palabras allá y enfrente. Por ahora, a
lo que quiero llamar la atención es a
lo disparatado del número 16. ¿Por
qué no 17 veces? ¿O una vez? ¿Qué
relación posible podría tener con la
tarde? Se puede decir que la tarde
pasa, lo cual sería un lugar común,
e inclusive que la tarde pasa por el
subsuelo, ya que el tiempo pasa por
todo lo material. Pero, ¡diez y seis
veces!...Hay algo así como un choque,
una violencia allí.
Creo que esto hay que leerlo de
la siguiente manera: Están aquí el
número como cantidad y también
el número como calidad-emoción.
Como cantidad, el incesante pasar
de la tarde será equivalente a la
muerte por la lógica de los números,
del tiempo numerado: es decir, para
citar otro texto de Vallejo, se trata de
“morir del tiempo”. Y, por otro lado,
está el número que acarrea emoción,
el “número de la madera amarilla”
que ha tomado el lugar del muerto
de “la cama…allá…enfrente” –cama
“desocupada tanto tiempo”: aquí,
entonces, el “morir de la vida y no del
tiempo”. En realidad los dos sentidos
opuestos se pelean en ambos
números: el número que cuantifica el
espacio y aquel otro que toma el lugar
del muerto y por eso vehiculiza otra
vez la transubstanciación.
El poema XXX, nos coloca frente
al número 2: Marca la hora (“dos
de la tarde inmoral”) y del número
de los sexos (dos). Estos dos no se
tornan uno: “el guante”, la unidad
que los podría contener, consiste de
diferencias (“guante de los bordes
borde a borde”). Por el encuentro
sexual pasa la marca, el estigma, del
tiempo del reloj: “Quemadura del
segundo / en toda la tierna carnecilla
del deseo”. Por el momento de más
intensidad pasa la arbitrariedad del
azar (“picadura de ají vagoroso”).
Entonces, el tiempo cuantitativo no
se rescata, no se trasciende, aún en
el momento de máxima intensidad:
esa intensidad está signada por el dos
que se resiste a ser dos en uno. Lo
que marca la intensidad del sexo (“la
antena del sexo”) es “lo que estamos
siendo sin saberlo”, aquello que
no es intensivo, que se escapa a la
subjetividad. Por eso se puede decir
que, en Trilce, el tiempo cualitativo
subjetivo, no trasciende: los dos
tiempos siempre están en tensión,
interpenetrantes, inextricables,
como lo estarán en “Sermón sobre
la muerte”. En este punto, Vallejo
difiere de Bergson, para quien la pura
duración interior no está marcada
(quemada) por el símbolo13, lo que
incluiría a los números.
¿Qué diremos, enconces, de lo
innumerable en Trilce si no hay tiempo
interior absolutamente separable de
la numeración? Si bien lo innumerable
consiste del tiempo cualitativo (“pura
yema infantil innumerable”), intensivo,
por otro lado también se relaciona
con lo que es ajeno al sujeto (“lo
que estamos siendo sin saberlo”):
ahí lo innumerable coincide con
lo innombrable. Sin embargo, lo
innumerable, en Trilce, no es la utopía
imaginada que se escapa al lenguaje:
es más bien lo real que requiere
cambiar el lenguaje.
En este respecto, diré, brevemente,
que los trabajos del filósofo francés,
Alain Badiou, enseñan que lo que se
escapa a la numeración constituye
el resto o el excedente de las
matemáticas. Y que la tarea del
pensamiento es inventar conceptos
nuevos capaces de nombrar ese
resto innumerable –mejor dicho,
inenumerable. En las matemáticas,
serían los números imaginarios como
la raíz del -1 (√-1). Y añade Badiou
que esa tarea del pensamiento,
13 p.17. Para entender el “yo Fundamental”,
“en el que sucesión implica fusión y organización”, hay
que separarlo de “las exigencias del lenguaje”. Gilles
Deleuze, El bersonismo, Mexico, Fondo de Cultura
Económica, 1992, p. 17
equivale a producir la justicia14. Creo
que esto se puede generalizar de la
siguiente manera: a esa encrucijada
de las matemáticas corresponde
la revolución de Schoenberg en la
música, y en la poesía, la revolución
del lenguaje poético de Trilce. Y, dicho
sea de paso, el equivalente en las
artes plásticas sería el cubismo.
Y ahora, para finalizar, volvamos
a aquel poema II que es el que más
directamente tematiza el tiempo. Se
trata de un poema tremendamente
comprimido, condensado, que
requeriría mucho tiempo para que se
le hiciera un comentario de alguna
manera completo. Sólo voy a decir
dos cosas, pero creo que son las
esenciales. En el libro Las palabras
de Trilce se nos dice: “El primer verso
del poema nos arroja a la esfera
de la temporalidad. La reiteración
del vocablo tiempo señala un lento
transcurrir no solamente por el
significado de la palabra, sino también
por la cantidad –duración– de cada
una de las sílabas”15. La afirmación
es muy sugerente pero queda corta,
28 29 porque interpreta la duración de las
sílabas como forma de representación
del tiempo, a manera de impresión
del lapso del tiempo que se nos va
dando en el plano sonoro del poema.
El supuesto que se maneja es que el
sonido imita la realidad. Pero como
voy diciendo, creo que el poema
va más allá: la palabra tiempo no
14 Teoría del sujeto, Parte IV
15 Es notable que la carga heideggeriana
de la palabra “arroja” (los seres humanos son arrojados
a un espacio que no está predispuesto para ellos, que
no está marcado simbólicamente para que los reciba)
se cancela en la interpretación que se hace del poema,
como cuando se dice que “el reposo caliente aún de
ser… se refiere a lo único positivo dentro del ambiente
carcelario: el lecho, símbolo de descanso que está por
terminarse,“ (p 51) cuando ese verso registra, más bien,
que el ser no constituye un lugar sino un espacio que ha
sido abandonado. Esto lo anoto no con el afán de hacer
una polémica sino para señalar que Las palabras de
Trilce, probablemente el mejor libro sobre Trilce, muestra
los límites de la lectura que se le hace. A propósito del
Ser y tiempo Heidegger, pienso que se podría afirmar
que en Trilce el ser, al contrario de constituirse por la
futuridad, es más bien un lugar vaciado que en algún
momento estuvo ocupado. Ver el poema XXXIII: ‘Haga la
cuenta de mi vida / [ . . . ] No será lo que aún no haya
venido, sino / lo que ha llegado y ya se ha ido, / sino lo
que ha llegado y ya se ha ido.’ ¿es decir un tiempo nada
mesiánico?
número 02
sólo significa algo y produce una
imagen sonora. También pasa por la
palabra misma el proceso temporal
de la lectura: el tiempo del afuera,
el tiempo real también pasa por la
palabra –como también pasa por la
frase “Dí, mamá”.
Es decir, no sólo estamos frente
a una idea del tiempo, sino al pasar
del tiempo mismo, tiempo que se
subdivide en sus componentes,
como cuando la “Bomba aburrida del
cuartel achica”. El libro Las palabras
de Trilce trata la acción de la bomba
simplemente como una idea: “La
idea de bomba aburrida amplifica
la del tiempo que transcurre con
indiferencia”. Sugiero que más que
una idea, la bomba nos presenta la
producción industrial del tiempo de
los relojes: Tiempo al que se opone el
transcurrir de la duración dentro de la
palabra. Y este segundo tiempo es el
tiempo cualitativo, es la duración de
la vida interior.16
Como última observación,
quiero sugerir lo siguiente: si los
comentaristas de Trilce suelen
interpretar el tiempo de los poemas
en el marco mimético, es decir, si
interpretan el lenguaje de Trilce en
clave de representación del tiempo,
y dejan afuera el tiempo interno a la
palabra, por algo será. Pienso que
es por lo siguiente: que el tiempo
pase por la palabra constituye un
límite extremo del lenguaje, en que
el lenguaje se abre a lo que estaba
afuera. Llegar a ponernos a nivel de
eso, requiere que se den la mano
tanto la crítica del lenguaje como la
crítica del tiempo. ¡Ojalá que lo que
he dicho hoy haya logrado en alguna
medida acercarse a esa meta!
16 Aquí se da la pelea entre el tiempo
cuantitativo y el cualitativo, pelea en que reside una
parte importante de la fuerza estética de Trilce. Es de
notar que para Bergson no hay tal pelea. La duración
interior se ha independizado del tiempo cuantitativo.
Para Benjamin esta abstracción de la vida interior de la
historia no es una condición universal sino producto del
capitalismo. Ver Essays on Charles Baudelaire.
 Richard Parker
Article
Spicer and
Lorca, their
Dear Parker,
I’ve now been unavoidably detached
from developments in poetry for over
40 years, more than twice as long as
Lorca had been away when he wrote
me during After Lorca, and while my
separation from poetry has been
agonised and fruitful for both parties,
I’m nevertheless choked with a
rancorous indifference to your project
here to bring, as I see it, my despised
works to the use and notice of a
provincial coterie. Who already know
my works.
While it was with some surprise that
I received the draft of your article,
which I have amended silently in
my ghostly manner, trusting you’ll
have the grace to see a few of my
misrepresentations unchallenged
through to the press, it was also,
naturally, with a knowledge of the
inevitability of your project that I sat
down to my mischievous corrections
and elisions. Despite the outward
signs, poetry is as big a business as
News Corp., News International, the
utilities
Poetry Society, the Conservative 30 31
and Unionist Party, the Metropolitan
Police Service and their standing
armies, and it as impossible for senior
management here to maintain a
thorough awareness of our underlings’
even most regrettable misprisions
as it is for the senior managements
of those organisations, though I can
happily take full responsibility for
the uglinesses those unknowns have
peddled.
In offer of my gushing and
acrimonious and most flattering
enmities I quote, finally, Buster And despite Jack Spicer’s qualified Robin Blaser edited Spicer’s
Keaton: ‘If parity of all things is profession of innocence, his poetry, poetry as The Collected Books
achievable only through entropy, seen in its most perfectly contiguously of Jack Spicer (1975), a title that
then speed ye cold still dark snowy disparate, if not most greatly conveys Spicer’s own particular
blankness of the end of the universe. developed, form in After Lorca (1957), manner of poetic organisation, one
You shan’t catch my unceasingness is both one of aching utility and which considered poems both as
ceasing!’ perplexing outrageousness to readers particulars and as elements in a
and writers reading and writing today; flux-like arrangement; a harmonious
Love, both of which are utilities. A satisfying tessellation of inharmonious pieces.
and useful book on a number of levels, Spicer’s great mature work is nearly
Jack After Lorca is also disappointing and all placed in such arrangements;
useful in equal measure, as we shall thus the fraudulently inclusive
* discover. collection of ostensible poison-pen
letters in Admonitions (1957), the
refracted/perverted Idylls of the
King-style Arthurian cycle of The Holy
Grail (1962) and the double-edged
hackwork of A Book of Magazine Verse
(1965). The importance of the address
should be noted in all of these pieces;
just as After Lorca is an affection
attack/address on a spurious but
authentic Lorca, so Admonitions
takes an hallucinated San Francisco
Renaissance to task, and A Book of
Magazine Verse makes its generous
and open offering of poetry with the
full knowledge of its pieces’ inevitable
rejection, a Trojan attack within a
gift. And though Spicer would take
this serial poem to greater poetic
heights with those later collections,
its machinery is at its finest, or
most persistently present, form in
After Lorca, a book that contains
a dazzling array of organisational
strategies – dazzling in both the sense
of the work’s ability to impress the
ready with bright flurries of aesthetic
pleasure, and in the sense of a
distraction from a work with dubious
intent, perhaps of dubious quality.
And it is, with its plies over plies
of freely exposed fraudulence, a
disquisition on translation (in poems
and in letters, working together and
against each other).1 Spicer to Blaser:
"Since school’s been out (for
me forever) I’ve been ignoring my
unemployment and translating
Lorca… I enclose my eight latest
‘translations.’ Transformations might
be a better word. Several are originals
and most of the rest change the poem
vitally. I can’t seem to make anybody
understand this or what I’m doing.
They look blank or ask what the
Spanish is for a word that isn’t in the
Spanish or praise (like Duncan did)
an original poem as typically Lorca.
What I am trying to do id establish a
tradition. When I’m through (although
I’m sure no one will ever publish
them) I’d like someone as good as I
1 Clayton Eshleman has provided the
most useful account of the mechanics of After Lorca,
identifying which poems are translations an which are
not, and the extent of Spicer’s traductory waywardness in
The Lorca Working, boundary 2, Vol. 6, No. 1, Jack Spicer
(Autumn, 1977), pp. 31-50
am to translate these translations into
French (or Pushtu) adding more. Do
you understand? No. Nobody does."2
*
‘No poem is intended for the
reader’3,a fact that did not deter
Spicer from directly addressing
Lorca in all of these poems and
dedicating all of them to various
potential readers, an action he would
repeat in Admonitions. Or, rather, the
fact did deter him, and each poem
in this volume and Admonitions is
more or less errantly, or fraudulently,
addressed to a reader whose own
reading of the poem may therefore
be stimulated into a newly energised
reading of a poem that may or may
not have been written with that
person in mind:
Each of them is a mirror, dedicated
to the person that I particularly want
to look into it. But mirrors can be
arranged. The frightening hall of
mirrors in a fun house is universal
beyond each particular reflection. […]
Mirror makers know the secret – one
does not make a mirror to resemble
a person, one brings a person to the
mirror4.
If After Lorca is Spicer’s Homage to
Sextus Propertius5 then Admonitions
is his Mauberley – a definition of
and living within of an ironically
distanced ‘scene’ – the dedications
that dominate that volume, and
which Spicer gives a strategic utility,
stating that through them ‘at least
you assure yourself of one reader’,6
are here pre-figured, and, like The
Tower of Babel, Spicer’s ‘detective’
novel, and Admonitions, the volume,
which both addresses and includes
all those addressees, is in itself an
enaction of a ‘scene’. In both volumes
the poem that Spicer addresses to
himself offers a microcosm of the
2 June 1957, Poet Be Like God, p. 105.
3 Walter Benjamin, The Task of the Transla-
tor, Selected Writings Volume 1, p. 253.
4 Foreword to Admonitions, My Vocabulary
did this to me, p. 157.
5 Spicer himself makes this link, writing to
Robin Blaser ‘I can see why Pound got so angry at the
reaction to his “Propertius.”’ [Poet Be Like God, p. 105.]
Jack Spicer
scene, inserting himself as both writer One of the great advantages of
and reader upon the two arms of the this ramshackle Lorca/not-Lorca
poetic syllogism. arrangement is that it has the
capacity to Lorca-ise elements of the
32 33 Thus this ostensible translation book that might not have seemed
from After Lorca: to be directly related to the Spanish
poet’s work, a utility that functions
Aquatic Park in a related manner to the miscreant
dedications of his poems. Such is
A Translation for Jack Spicer the marvelousness of this technique
that those poems that are, of all the
A green boat poems in the book, most clearly
Fishing in blue water not translations of Lorca become,
or at least can seem to become,
The gulls circle the pier the poems that tread closest to
Calling their hunger the Spaniard’s work (causing the
unwary Robert Duncan to stumble,
A wind rises from the west as Spicer uncharitably points out
Like the passing of desire to Blaser). At the outset this poem
immediately announces its double
Two boys play on the beach nature in its title and its dedication;
Laughing it is named for Aquatic Park, the area
near the northernmost end of San
Their gangling legs cast shadows Francisco’s peninsular, where Spicer
On the wet sand would listen to the baseball on his
portable radio in the afternoons and
Then, hold court, while the dedicatee is
Sprawling in the boat Spicer himself. Both the locale and
the poem’s central personage are out
A beautiful black fish.6 of Lorca’s reach, then, the Spanish
poet having died in 1937 and having
6 My vocabulary did this to me, p. 131.
It is translated into Spanish by Jessica Pujol i Duran
penetrated no further west across the
elsewhere in this publication. American continent than New York
número 02

City. At the same time, however, here
Spicer cleaves closest to his version
of the bare-bones lyric of Lorca (the
poet of a Hispano-Imagist ‘Cantar
sin carne lírica’7), and strays furthest
from his own typical garrulous, surreal
small-talk. The poem resembles
middle-period Lorca in a manner
that seems almost pastiche; the
poem containing one central image,
only glancingly tinged by narrative
at its conclusion and with a bare
minimum of poetic fuss and clutter;
none of the unsettlingly spiteful
changes of register and address we
find elsewhere in Spicer — including
in some pieces elsewhere in After
Lorca — and little else that announces
itself stylistically or that presents the
reader with recourse to exegetical
works or meditation beyond that of
quietly satisfied estival observation.
The only word that presents a hint
of a cross-current to this general
tranquillity is the somewhat unusual
‘gangling’; an adjective that suitably
describes the observed teenagers’
legs but that, with its deceptive ‘-ing’,
suggests a continuous verb form, or a
gerund; adding movement to the boys,
7 Federico García Lorca, Selected Poems, p. 19.
their shadows perhaps mixing the
verb ‘dangling’ with, in British English
at least, the more usual adjective
‘gangly’. This brief moment of
linguistic instability, which of course
further underlines this translation’s
status as pseudo-translation, comes
at a crucial moment in the poem
as the observed boys cavort on the
beach — the indeterminacy might
be said to enact the moment of
homosexual desire that flashes
across this section of the poem:
distracted from the green fishing boat,
the observer-narrator’s attention is
turned to the playing adolescents;
the brief and tender moment of
desirous confusion that ensues entails
the ‘gangling’, before attention is,
perhaps just a touch shamefacedly,
returned to the fishing boat and the
violent capture of that ‘beautiful black
fish’; perhaps a more ominous, and
typically Spicerian, miming of the
queer sexuality. This combination of
the echt Imagist presentation of an
‘intellectual and emotional complex in
an instant of time’8 with an occulted
8 Ezra Pound, A Few Don’ts By an Imagiste,
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/
article/335
queer poetics is essential to Spicer’s con el sexo atravesado por una
tribute to Lorca. Belatedly we return to aguja.
that dedication, ‘A Translation for Jack
Spicer’; the poem and its moment Enemigo del sátiro,
are mirrors ‘for’ the poet himself
to look into, their contents locked enemigo de la vida
in a feedback loop with the poet,
one queer and hermetic, perhaps y amante de los cuerpos bajo la
fetishistic and onanistic. burda tela.
At the same time, however, when Ni un solo momento, hermosura
Spicer offers a ‘straight’ version of viril
Lorca he selects an avatar of that poet
who conversely seems to be somehow que en montes de carbón, anuncios
pastiching Spicer. Spicer translates y ferrocarriles,
Lorca’s Oda a Walt Whitman, from
Lorca’s Poeta en Nueva York (1929- soñabas ser un río y dormir como
30) — the only number from that un río
book that Spicer approaches —, as
Ode for Walt Whitman, and keeps his con aquel camarada que pondría en
translation pretty close to the original, tu pecho
his text generally only benefitting
from the subtle dance of indirectly un pequeño dolor de ignorante
translated prepositions and Spicer’s leopardo.10
tendency towards the more scurrilous
alternative in choices relating to *
the translation of Lorca’s double-
entendres. Spicer’s amendments of Not for one moment, beautiful old
Walt Whitman,
Lorca treat the source text freely, but
34 35 not to such an extent that it might be
Have I stopped seeing your beard
termed a ‘free-translation’: Clayton full of butterflies
Eshleman writes that although ‘at
points Spicer considerably distorts Or your shoulders of corduroy worn
this complex and very tricky Lorca thin by the moon
poem, after all is said and done, his is
by far the best version to date.’9 Here Or your muscles of a virgin Apollo
are parallel passages in Lorca’s and
Spicer’s versions: Or your voice like a column of
ashes.
Ni un solo momento, viejo hermoso
Walt Whitman, Ancient and beautiful as the fog.
he dejado de ver tu barba llena de You gave a cry like a bird
mariposas,
With his prick pierced through by
ni tus hombros de pana gastados a needle
por la luna,
Enemy of satyrs
ni tus muslos de Apolo virginal
Enemy of the grape
ni tu voz como una columna de
ceniza;
And lover of bodies under rough
cloth.
anciano hermoso como la niebla,
Not for one moment, tight-cocked
que gemías igual que un pájaro beauty,
9 The Lorca Working, boundary 2, Vol. 6, No.
1, Jack Spicer (Autumn, 1977), p. 38. 10 Selected Poems, p. 230.
número 02
 Who in mountains of coal,
advertisements, and railroads
Had dreamed of being a river and of
sleeping like one
With a particular comrade, one who
could put in your bosom
The young pain of an ignorant
leopard.11
Spicer is somewhat more robust
in his sexual language; thus Lorca’s
‘hermosura viril’ becomes the balder
‘tight-cocked beauty’; the bird’s ‘sexo
atravesado’ becomes an unlikely
‘prick pierced through by a needle’12;
the conjunction of needle prick and
prick making Lorca’s painful image of
homosexual congress even clearer
in Spicer. Eshleman calls ‘Oda a Walt
Whitman’ ‘Lorca’s most self-conflictive
single poem’13 and suggests that the
complex of attraction and disgust with
which Lorca approaches Whitman and
his own sexuality is what draws Spicer
to the poem, and the strange, implicit
sexual violence of ‘Aquatic Park’ is
also present in ‘Ode to Walt Whitman’:
the shorter poem, not coincidentally,
immediately follows this translation in
After Lorca.
This conscious strengthening of
Lorca’s imagery is a matter of degree,
and adds no new images or meanings
to the text; the new valences that Spicer
contributes to ‘Oda a Walt Whitman’
come instead because of the context
of After Lorca. In this poem, a central
text in Lorca’s provenance of Poeta
en Nueva York, the poet argues for a
direct connection between his Spain
and Whitman’s America, choosing to
ape Whitman’s long line and expansive,
list-like construction, while retaining,
as in the image of the pinioned bird,
11 My vocabulary did this to me, p. 127.
12 No cocks for cocks: ‘Most male birds
(e.g., roosters and turkeys) have a cloaca (also present
on the female), but not a penis. Among bird species with
a penis are paleognathes (tinamous and ratites), Anatidae
(ducks, geese and swans), and a very few other species
(such as flamingos).’ [From Wikipedia; perhaps here
Spicer replaces Lorca’s cockless cock with the more
flagrant bepenised flamingo.]
13 The Lorca Working, boundary 2, Vol. 6,
No. 1, Jack Spicer (Autumn, 1977), p. 47.
an imagery characteristically his own;
one developed through that crucial
conjunction of European surrealism and
Poundian Imagism. The last of these
strands is, of course, also indebted to
Whitman; as for Pound, overbearingly
in his predecessor’s image; ‘It was you
that broke the new wood, / Now is a
time for carving. / We have one sap and
one root — / Let there be commerce
between us.’14 That confused inheritance,
one of the most notorious in the history
of twentieth-century American letters, is
one of great difficulty for the Poundian
but unPoundian poets of the Berkeley
and San Francisco Renaissances to
avoid. Thus another utility in Lorca
for Spicer and for later Americans —
including, most prominently, Deep
Image poets Jerome Rothenberg and
Robert Kelly, who appropriated Lorca’s
cante jondo to provide the context for
an unPoundian, and perhaps rather
late off the mark, cisatlantic Imagism.15
Whitman is digested by Pound and
redigested by Lorca before reappearing
in the unPoundian American poetry of
poets like Spicer, Kelly and Rothenberg
— a provenance made possible by the
retriangulation of this relatively faithful
translation as it appears in After Lorca;
where Lorca had addressed Whitman as
an inspirational queer poetic model, here
the same poem becomes a reclaiming
and a realignment because of Spicer’s
very different context; Whitman is
reconfigured as a less modernist, more
queer poet in a likely far more efficient
manner through this translation than if
Spicer had attempted the task directly.
*
At one stage Spicer addresses Lorca
with the assertion that he ‘would like
to make poems out of real objects’16, a
statement that illuminates his strange
practice throughout After Lorca; a
poem/sequence that does much
to concentrate our mind upon the
particulars of poetic objecthood. Thus
the book form insists upon itself; the
poems all constituent parts of a machine
14 Poems & Translations, p. 269.
15 See Leslie Ullman’s Deep Imagists: The
Subconscious as Medium. http://www.colby.edu/
personal/i/isadoff/cap/Ullman.doc
16 My vocabulary did this to me, p. 133.
that would cease to function with pieces
missing or isolated within magazines
(hence the failure written into the
submissions of Book of Magazine Verse
[1965]) or anthologies: the ‘serial poem,
in the first place, has the book as its unit
— as an individual poem has a poem as
its unit, the actual poem that you write at
the actual time, the single poem.’17 The
integrity of this machine and its units
must come from without, as After Lorca
demonstrates throughout:
And you have to go into a serial poem
not knowing what the hell you’re doing.
That’s the first thing. You have to be
tricked into it. It has to be some path that
you’ve never seen on a map before and
so forth.18
Spicer comes close to acknowledging
the utopian nature of his serial technique
here; while the techniques of After Lorca
insist upon the abrogation of the writerly
ego, the volume is of course a muscular
mastering of Lorca, of the scene, of all
of the serial poem’s elements. Thus
Spicer gives by ceding prime billing to
the Spaniard, by humbly repeating the
36 37 rubric ‘translation’ throughout, where
appropriate and where not, and by
gifting each element of the series to
friends and associates from his poetic
scene. Simultaneously, Spicer takes;
he confronts Lorca through fantastical
and fraudulent letters, he ventriloquises
his forebear, brashly claiming Lorca’s
work for his own and vice versa, and as
much as he celebrates his friend with
those dedications he also implicates and
denounces them.
And thus After Lorca debunks and
insists upon its various provenances,
both backwards in terms of source
material and forward to its complicatedly
fraudulent set of dedicatees. And within
Spicer’s poems it is Lorca’s post-Imagist
thirst for the surrealist-particular that is
the poems’ most consistent stylistic trait,
a method as indebted to the Berkeley
Renaissance’s Poundian-Objectivist
inheritance as it is directly received from
Lorca. But; he of course fails to make
any ‘real objects’ (whatever those might
17 The House that Jack Built, p. 52.
18 The House that Jack Built, p. 52.
número 02
be, finally) into poems, he mimes their
objecthood, using this capacity – their
mimetic function; that function perhaps
furthest from the differentiated ‘real’
object – to both hail and discredit their
objectness. Thus Spicer makes poems
into objects; quite undoing his project.
Or does the failed mimesis here become,
in its failure, the mute object that it
aspires to imitate? And thus continues
through aesthetic eternity flicking itself
on and off; a machine constructed with
the single function of switching itself,
once charged by the watchful manus ex
machina, off?19
*
Finally, Pound also linked the practice
of Imagism to translation: ‘Translation
is likewise good training, if you find
that your original matter “wobbles”
when you try to rewrite it. The meaning
of the poem to be translated can not
“wobble.”’20 But these translations, and
the hallucinated poems they translate,
are all in the ‘wobble’; a self-righting,
productive wobble, a gomboc.21 O
to have trod the world in the world
Mesolithic, the poets dialectical and
troubled/untroubled. And in the far-off
coming era to tread again among the
lowdrooping ferns, the highreaching
hymens of lush and foreign great
orchids, will you plan and execute
artworks dialectically again?
19 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul9jq
qVzMWk&feature=related
20 Ezra Pound, A Few Don’ts By an Imagiste,
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/
article/335
21 http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=pn811yIALPw
Short story
David Roas
Kapital
Overbooked. The lips of the lady
attending me at the Swiss Air counter
just pronounced the feared word. The
one time I get to the airport with plenty
of time, it turns out that the plane is
already full. The employee, very kind,
apologises (Désolés, monsieur), gives
me a ticket to check-in with no seat
assigned and asks me to go to gate A-8,
where her colleagues will try to sort
out the problem. I know I should trust
Helvetic efficiency, but, given my natural
pessimism, something inside warns me
that the day will not bring me any good.
I set aside those bad feelings and
head towards gate A-8 following the
Das
38 39
‘Of course, in life there are a lot of
things more important than money.
But they cost a lot of money!’
Groucho Marx
instructions of the kind employee. I pass
all the checkpoints with no difficulties,
I get close to the company’s counter
and, after explaining my problem to the
two people who attend me, they ask me
to sit down and wait. Apparently, I am
not the only one with such a problem.
A couple stare at me, smiling, as if they
were saying Yes, the same happened
to us. I open my backpack, take a book
and get immersed in reading as an
entertainment for the waiting.
After a time that seems eternal, one
of the Swiss Air employees that had
attended me comes and gives me a
check-in ticket. But when I revise it, I
 Semitic faces around me, they’re giving
them the plane on a plate; but my fears
are unfounded).
I get up and go to the toilet. Before
going back to my seat, I have the
irrepressible temptation of looking at
the other side of the curtain that the
hostess, as usual, has drawn after taking
off to isolate the first class area (an
act that in my previous flights I always
perceived, from my second class seat,
as an insult). But my curiosity is not
motivated because now I consider
myself –circumstantially– superior to the
other passengers from that side of the
plane, but for a question of perspective.
In other words, to experience what can
be seen from this side of the curtain
border, light but insurmountable.
our hostess. As if I were a child caught
at a prank, she pulls an angry face of
reproach, takes my hand and, after
delicately closing the curtain, takes me
to my seat.
Before sitting I ask her if she can bring
me a whisky. Without uttering a word,
she takes the bottle from the metal
trolley, serves me a generous quantity of
scotch and gives me the glass with a big,
delicious and sedative smile.
Sprawled on my grey leather seat, I let
myself become intoxicated with the taste
of the malt and pretend to think about
the revolution.

I move the curtain a bit and I

receive the second surprise of the day,
thus they have assigned me a seat in
first-class. There is no doubt that it is a
mistake, so I’m swift to communicate to
the employees of Swiss Air, who, without
abandoning their kindness, although
with certain sarcastic complaisance, say
I should not worry, it’s not a confusion,
it is usual to move a second-class
passenger (said like it’s awful) to first.
When I get in the plane I cannot
repress a shiver. A new world (yes, I
confess, it is my first time) opens before
me. Nervous as a child on Christmas
Eve, I head towards the seat they
assigned me: there waits for me an
enormous grey leather seat where I
sprawl with a slight grunt of pleasure. I
check, almost in tears, that I can stretch
my legs with complete comfort.
Before take off, a hostess gives
newspapers, chocolates and water with
40
a wide smile, (their usual blue uniform
seems more sober and elegant than
ever). A deceptive thought flourishes
in my mind: now I am sure she will
say they cannot give me any of those
things because I have not paid for the
right ticket. I am mistaken (again), and I
receive, grateful, the same presents as
the rest of my companions. After eating
a chocolate, I open the water container.
It is delicious. First class water, I think,
doing an easy joke.
The plane takes off comfortably,
neatly. In a few minutes, it stabilises
and the kind hostess from before starts
serving dinner. More surprises: the trout
was exquisite, the wine a marvellous
Mosela (250 cc.), the chocolate
dessert sublime (the hostess, seeing
my enjoyment, brings me another
plate, winking an eye), even the coffee
is excellent… And all with unexpected
metal cutlery (I look, surreptitiously, for
Translated by Jessica Pujol
stick in my head. The scenario that
appears before my eyes is horrific: the [published in his book Distorsiones,
passengers are shaking widely holding Páginas de Espuma. Madrid, 2010]
tight to the armrests of the seats, some
41 pray, some shout, the crew, sitting at the
end of the aircraft, cannot repress their
panic… a heavy shaking open some of
the compartments and the suitcases
fall, objects, clothes, over the horrified
heads of the passengers.
But I do not feel anything. I look
behind and I realise that in the first
class everything is as calm as the start:
my companions have finished their
dinner and some have started reading,
others chat slowly, some even snooze,
meanwhile the hostess serves coffee
with her placid smile.
I stick my head through the curtain
again and I see the same hair-rising
scene. The passengers are still shouting,
many crying hysterically, a woman hugs
her baby desperately. The turbulence is
so violent that I sense the plane will not
be able to save them.
Scared, I almost say something to
the guy siting closer to me when I feel
a slight pressure on my left arm. It is

número 02
poetry
Joan Salvat-Papasseit

The Memory of a Fugue by Bach

I plodged off to Garraf

Section
passing thirteen arcaded verandas in the mountains
only to see in Sitges the blue humming of a kitchen and the gleaming white of a
\ lime-washed courtyard

Where will the squirrel go when he can’t find any pine-nuts?

– he’ll nibble his tail that’ll taste of them

I’ve slogged at making a kite

from the leaf of a calendar
and it dropped with the same numeral

At least the Ministry have put my watch an hour forward

42 43
Salvador Espriu Here where all universal value goes by the name Montjuïc

Poem XX from Cemetery at Sinera

Thorn shrub and holly, the dark-
hidden snow   and thin air haired moon
of tramuntana. dressed
Seaside winter: fragile sun in mourning
over deserted beaches.
All this an antiques dealer couldn’t grasp
tr. Harry Gilonis
I’ve seen more: – A child in rompers
gazes laughing at the stars
But no book speaks of the smile of this child

And here’s what I told them a common enough thing:

– The coloured six-pointed star at the Circus contains all the syntheses in the world.

tr. Harry Gilonis

for Paul Sutton
Joan Brossa

Time

This line is the present.

The line that you just read is the past

- it was left behind after you read it.
The rest of the poem is the future, Joan Brossa
existing outside your
The Kiss
perception.
Breathing,
The words seemingly, right at the foot of the tree,
are here, whether you read them the obstinate grass. I pull
or not. And nothing on earth a stalk trampled by many a foot.
can change that. Here: take it as a memento
of this evening with me.

tr. Harry Gilonis

A poem
44 45 to be carved
in lemonwood.
Joan Brossa
And how did Daphnis take
The Poet finds his Subject the kiss from Chloë?

My universe is the poem.

I don’t like to ape nature tr. Harry Gilonis/Elizabeth James
like a photographer. I must
make life itself appear.

And the poem closes with

a strophe that is only
one word:
the uni-verse.

tr. Harry Gilonis

número 02
 Ramon Gomez de la Serna
Greguerías
After keen nights all the puddles
look cauterized.
Withered leaves wait for rain
to infuse autumn tea.
Grains in the egg-timer are
pouring you
a nice cup of sand.
He used to stare Our little son’s ears
at the blank eyes the gull’s so perfectly shaped
of his nails.
Where have all the dead gone?
Dunno. My map has blue and red
veins.
Night peeps at day blind and confused.
through a horse’s eyes.
Why the tears? Because, my
darling, this is
the time of our lives.
like a half-crazed weaver of tweed. Look at those lizards – mini-
crocodiles
Six is the only number panting like heart patients.
expecting a baby. Trying to make out the quietest
waves of all:
listening to this ancient radio’s Our ancestors taught themselves to
The blind man carefully angles blood transfusion. live one-handed
his white stick speaking on their clunky
as if taking the telephones.
temperature The cock’s comb? God’s tailor
of our cool indifference. just ran it up from remnants.
The rocking chair was born for
this:
Bending to pick up a glove This x-ray of the foot clearly shows nursing babies at the breast.
we shake hands with the dead. us bones designed
to deliver a kick up the backside.
46 47
wings’ Good morning, wisps of cloud – for holding a pencil –
oars God’s beard-trimmings.
let’s apprentice him to a joiner.
After helping a blind person across Dandy pianist donning
the street we find the keys’ fine- X is the alphabet’s
ourselves fingered gloves deckchair
a bit
The accordion is played by Swan’s way
buttoning and unbuttoning See how the first line
Waves don’t mind the rain one bit its flies. of the canal’s long poem
falling on their all-weather gear. starts: a fancy S
That cameo brooch she wore – God keeps the keys Burnt offerings
ah, her breastbone. to all our belly-buttons. From the motorway’s
She plucked on her clarsach alter, sniff the incense of
número 02
 civilization.
Good shot
Year by year the bow
of summer fires off flights of
swallows at our hearts.
Space
In the sky’s graveyard
the moon’s the oldest tombstone.
Can’t quite … read … the date.
Dead stop
Listen. Lift it up
to your ear. Shake. Still nothing
from the skull’s stopped clock.
Glesca greguerías
Who’s that in yir shiny black
piana’s mirror?
Music, oan a dreich night, dreepin
at yir door.
Loch Katrine watter’s loast its
memory,
that’s how it ayways rins oot cauld
an clear.
An dinnae bother greetin – nane o
yir tears’ll Tony Lopez
hing aroon lang enuff tae string a
necklace.
When You Wish . . .
Broon eyes ayways say come in
but blue wans keep ye staunin at
Boxes can seem to be presents
thir door.
but bars get you the weight
of just-solid emulsion
brand name moulded in negative.
In the wean’s schuil bag, wan blunt
She leans back and shuts her eyes
pencil in silky excremental colours –
that looks like it’s been chowin at say thirty pounds’ worth of chocolate
its nails. because it is soft and easier to puke
with flecks of blood on vitreous china.
And the first sign of this anxiety
There’s nae consultants in the is one among the applications
Royal to the hardship fund,
for whit you’ve got: days on end like this
48 49 might as well stay in bed.
idiobloodysyncrasy.
Rouge shadows the cheek bone
eyes enlarged with nylon fringes
tr. James McGonigal. little blonde astonishment. She likes
From: R. Gomez de la Serna, Greguerías: to walk just ahead through the park,
Selección 1940-1952. Argentina:
Colleción Austral, 1952. runs a few steps and slows at risk.
Little white leather boots and mini skirt.
Lock up when no-one’s about
to try on the too-small jeans.
Who right away lies on the bed
when the visitor enters
a print by Patrick Proctor
called My Gardenia.
Slight folds on the lip skin
stand proud of the surface
tissue suffused to smoothness
of just-solid emotion
moulded in a block of scent
número 02
to give him the staggers
like oysters ripped open.
Spots of caviar on soured cream.
Dried porcini soaked overnight.
Will you or will you not give in?
The body image goes round
from adverts to street gaze
up the seams woven into nylon.
I am an emergent formation
inside this cellulite monster where
intake instantly becomes body
and must be paid back in privacy
leaning on perfect white tiles.
She walks and turns and walks some more,
sees on whom the longing gaze
bestows a special glow;
the slim magic of sleeping beauty
wrapped in furs, touched with snow.
The light gait goes ahead
on a ribbon of flagstones tap tap tap tap.
A typist works late, goes Network South East
in a class of her own, home in fear
lays out food in microwave containers –
as any father who has a daughter
fears the perfidious and drunken monster
confined into this rock, prevented,
peopled else this isle with lookalikes.
Thus they waited in the garden
under the loose vine, secretly,
fearing the apeface in the mirror.
So was I then transfixed
in amazement by a flowering cherry
so laden with blossom
the pink and white petals
flecked with red, falling on shoulders
that glow strapless on a five day fast
chewing crisp coated appetite suppressants
nicotine gum, flavoured liquid bulk
of seaweed glue and apple fibre.
On the woodpath where oxlips peep
a runner passes at the edge of vision.
Some kind of thin fabric leggings
stomach tucked, looks like nothing at all.
Part of the lips removed
or sewn together with a tube or reed
inserted to ease the flow of fluids.
wires applied to fix the jaws
after surgery only liquid food
through a tube there inserted
and opened at the time of marriage
with a knife, fewer relapses
from this new treatment regime.
A man in ear-muffs and overalls
strims cow parsley where it shades
bluebells and snakeshead fritillaries
50 51 in the reconstructed wildflower meadow.
Nylon chord rips through lush and juicy stalks
composing a self-sown woodland glade
with an adroit surgical motion,
leaving a whiff of petrol on the breeze.
Starving faces in the compound watch
multi-ethnic commercials on TV
the perfect remodelled features on screen,
relief grain sacks piled at the quayside
a convoy of burnt-out trucks on the road.
Who says that white means innocent?
Sugar and vanilla a Spanish idea
who kept the secret a hundred years
taken at the court of Montezuma.
número 02
 Poems by María Victoria Atencia

Pablo Neruda Christina’s World1

(from Compás binario [Binary time] 1984)
X (From Twenty Love Poems)
Museum of Modern Art,
New York
We lose this night
one hand slips from the others I too was her age once, and lying on the grass,
in a blue surrender learnt of the sun overhead on the withered green,
of a burning silence surrounding me,
through the pane and a sudden -- perhaps stiff -- breeze of warning
wounding my temples.
the distant peaked sunset
I was her age. I've turned around
and on myself, out of countenance, no doubt,
by chance some light to gaze at my house set high on the slope --
hot money grasped – transitory moths nibbling my petticoat in the wardrobe --
not having extracted from a branch of wisteria
and clenched came the memory of you so much as a drop of its juice.
I've turned around,
in our meager feast of sadness
mistaking my name, to save my house,
though I remain in a picture where I only expect geese
Were you there? 52 53
will come polish off the nape of my neck
At all?
With a voice? tr. Roberta Quance
Some ill fitted sensation with no recourse. 1. Painting by Andrew Wyeth.

No comfort, only visions of pitiable animals

Jorge Manrique2
Into eternity as you weave through (from Compás binario [Binary time] 1984)
beasts to the light.
Down to that light which at once creates and destroys us,
down from their nests come the rock-doves to drink.
On the shore they lower their necks to the water
tr. Elizabeth Guthrie and lift them up, and the water that bears their image
empties into the sea, while they, divested of shadow
wing their way back to their columbaries.

tr. Roberta Quance

2. Jorge Manrique is the author of a late medieval
elegy ‘Coplas por la muerte de su padre’ [Lines on
the death of his father]. Atencia's poem alludes to the
passage ‘Nuestras vidas son los ríos / que van a dar
en la mar / que es el morir’ [Our lives are the rivers
/ which shall flow into the sea / which is death].

número 02
 That Light (from Paulina, o el libro de las aguas
( [Paulina, or the book of waters], 1984) Aurelia Lassaque

Soul, withdraw. It's only beauty, that comes Two Poems

and tints the sky, dazzles you, and goes.
Keep that declining light in your hands. The night Occitan
is up to something: the darkness also blinds,
An viatjat tras los matins verds
with a heaven of its own to harry the waters. Subre las aigas de l’ailà,
Straying fish wander into a deadly silt. An virat tantes còps
On the terrace the wind snaps the stems of the aloes. Dins los cèls clars,
An saludadas
las milantas mòrts dels astres
tr. Roberta Quance
E son tornats als camps paures
Per centenas
Dins l’amudiment del temps present,
Los aucèls del cande matin.

English

Through the green mornings they traveled

Along waters of elsewhere,
So many times they circled in the clear skies,
54 55 They honored the many deaths of the planets
Wasteland and came back to the impoverished fields.
(from La pared contigua [The adjacent wall], 1989) Oh hundreds of them
In the mute present of time
Well, I know where I come from, clutching an empty shoe box Oh the white birds of the morning.
-- its cardboard against my breast -- and I know the box is mine and once was full
tr. Felip Costaglioli.
and I scattered its contents along the ancient road;
and I gazed at my image in the glass of the lower windows,
ransacking the box, ransacking myself, Català
and now I see myself walking with its barren space
Han viatjat a través dels verds matins
-- flesh against cardboard -- knowing where I'm bound; Sobre les aigües de l’enllà,
for the love you all one day, no doubt, bore me, Han giravoltat tantes vegades
don't stand in my way or ask me to go back: Dins els cels clars,
Han saludat
leave me on the street. Irremediably. Detached. Les innumerables morts dels astres
I han tornat als pobres camps
Per centenars
Dins la mudesa de l’instant,
tr. Roberta Quance
Els ocells del blanc matí.

tr. Laia Noguera

número 02
Occitan
Lo Rei de Seda Saura
Engana l’aucelum e tuteja l’aura.
Quilhat dins l’èrba salvatja
A perdut sos uèlhs
Raubats a la vèsta d’un soldat.
Tres gojats son venguts
Qu’an escampat sas tripas pel sòl
Per i prene qualque dròlla mal pintrada.
Privat de son còs de seda saura,
L’espaurugal
Fa de sòmis descabestrats
Que desvarian los ausèls.
Català
El Rei de Seda Rossa
Enganya l’ocellada i tuteja el vent.
Arborat en l’herba salvatge,
Ha perdut els ulls
Robats del vestit d’un soldat.
Han vingut tres xicots
I li han escampat les tripes per terra
Per jeure amb una noia mal girbada.
Privat del seu cos de seda rossa,
L’espantaocells
Té somnis folls
Que desorienten els moixons.
tr. Laia Noguera.
Jack Spicer
Aquatic Park
Una traducción para Jack Spicer
Una barca verde
Pescando en el agua azul
English
Las gaviotas rodean el embarcadero
The King of Golden Silk Llamando al hambre
Ensnares the birds and banters with the wind.
El viento se levanta del oeste
Pitched on wild grassland
Como el paso del deseo
He’s lost his eyes
Stolen from the coat of a soldier.
Dos niños juegan en la playa
Three young lads came along
Se ríen
Scattered his guts on the ground
56 57
Where they laid a dishevelled girl.
Las piernas larguiruchas proyectan sombras
En la arena mojada
Without his body of golden silk
The scarecrow
Entonces,
Dreams ungovernable dreams
Tumbándose en la barca
That bewilder the birds.
Un precioso pez negro.
tr. James Thomas
tr. Jessica Pujol
From Moon Shadows : (Aurélia Lassaque, Ombras
de luna – Ombres de Lune, Nîmes, éd. de la
Margeride, 1ère éd. 2009, 2ème éd. 2010).
número 02
Amy De’Ath
Three Poems
El cristal alto
Eres el cristal
más claro, solitario
y alto,
y eres libre,
y te veo pálido,
más pálido que un montón
de chicas jóvenes fregando,
condensándose al máximo
en una lágrima inmensa,
eres el anuncio
del cristal
del que bebes,
es este
el cristal
del que bebes,
es este ese cristal,
te preocupan los años
el día
en que se te comieron
en francés, el mito
del volcán social
siendo una chica
concibes la felicidad
como un pajarito
o un globo
sólo a nuestro alcance-
algunos pájaros
seguirán aquí
cuando haya muerto.
Me gustaría
desligar un par de climas
y lo hago,
resbalando por los charcos
de sudor de tu
frente. Hay
de Poemas para pescetarianos
una diferencia entre
tú y yo
una buena razón para
Sé que el mundo es calamidades, lugar
intercambiar saliva, o para
que unos monos obstinados llamaron casa
que te describas
hace tiempo, al comienzo de la vida,
a ti mismo desde
en la esquina de un cojín de Rectory Road
allí y entonces
te alejes
cuando cocinar pescado requería
rápidamente
mucho tiempo. Sé que el mundo se enlentece
Sí, pero
hasta que me adentro en ti, sé que las hormigas
no tienes que hacerlo,
tienen respuestas, ya me convenciste de ello
se nos viene encima
el niño robusto
y de su forma ingrata de hablar a los niños.
de la primavera 58 59
Sé que el mundo es calamares, y me pregunto
y está a punto de vaciar
¿por qué digo que las barritas de merluza son mías?
sus cálculos en
Oh Cenicientas, sintonizo con vuestra cara mojada,
nuestras cabezas
y decide que estamos bien
huele rancio pero me recuerda a los langostinos
para seguir viviendo
Benjamin, ya sé: acrimonia en un tiempo en que
si queremos, la esperanza
bandas de los noventa del tipo Cotton Eye Joe
pende del aire entre bloques,
imagino que fueron lo más parecido que tuvimos
madre bendita de la nieve
te echo de menos-
a un oráculo, quiero decir que conozco
la altitud de las abejas, pañuelo
el hondo hervidero del amor, las migas de la fritura
alto una riqueza, lo sé,
lo más preciado, millonésimo candidato,
yo también
estaré allí además de mi bolso de almeja y un saco de espinas.
en el cristal
hay tanta tr. Jessica Pujol
riqueza.
tr. Jessica Pujol
número 02
 La vall vertigen empassa. El cor al teu cul i assenta-t’hi. Em manté fora del carrer,
primavera, dos animals en pau.
Vas arribar –va ser imprevisible, unes abelles inclús cantaren
en un núvol futur molt llunyà *
i groc. No ets mai pervers. Mai has sigut pervers.
Tu pots! Un gos Ara sóc veritable nuesa, una espècie de noia bala de fenc, una actriu
emprèn l’amor contra la portalada buida així com altres coses passen ximpleta saltant rius
com que t’adorms, mor en Shakespeare però en les còmiques aventures de Boots. Posant-me d’acord amb
ressuscita en Noroit. Com reconeixeré el calor del fred gairebé dos milions de persones que empenyo
i el seu escamot pirata? Sento per Londres cada dia i per una estona sóc teva, per
el fred. Tinc una estàtua de mi mateixa d’aspecte atonal que diu “la més una vegada deixa que et compensi,
encantadora de totes” ho abat tot”, jo també responc. no puc, estic massa afectada pels mobles del Pacific. Mai
hem parlat de que ens podem trobar
* un dia en un poema, potser inclús en aquest que
vaig deixar al teu costat aquella nit
Vull dir que no intercanvio ànimes, p.ex. no entenc que tocar pastisset, que et vas assentar al meu costat. Et vas donar un cop
fortuïtament ho excusi, no sabia de cap amb la màscara de gat
com alçar el vol de la primavera i vaig aprendre a respondre i se’t van ocórrer 100 idees sexy. Inclús els teus petons eren millors
estudiant amb rigor les gavines, trencant-se a l’oceà
60 61
esperant que els seus besos duressin més que la fam i per sempre amén, ecs on per amor flota la crema.
tota la bondat, el pseudo-budisme,
jo vull totalitzar o viure-hi, en el món sense llibres, biblio- *
grafies pornogràfiques o
cuina turca, jo responc cridant els espais en blanc, avergonyint No importa que siguis una gelatina imploradora i esvelta,
tot tipus de metall, com afecta la teva escalfor
clubs de striptease, així com llums de tauleta de nit i ull de gata en pous de mel, a una noia. No parlaré aquesta nit quan
però què diu la flor? estàs posseït escrivint.
Flor, què és el que vols fer –noi oh la la, les chapelles Quan ets terra i mar amb tendència a arraulir-te en el teu
de mes elles! Flor tronc d’arbre contant les reblades,
Invincible, Deixa que aquesta primavera sigui única, deixa que les notes siguin sempre penso que tens més de 2.000 anys i no m’equivoco,
gossos, ja ho sé,
és el temps del cos, però sempre em sorprèn. Què estàs fent ara, espero
temps en que la teva mirada assídua troba la meva i la nostra cuirassa que tornis, jo oh oh,
brilla a la superfície d’una lluna retrògrada. preciosa, per resumir i apropar-me al present
Oh la meva flor, Oh el meu rodeo. Escolta el meu bes, deixa que faci aquesta estaré aquí sempre
broma sobre tu i m’hi assenti a sobre, escolta amb tu? Potser morim abans de que tornin els ratpenats.
el meu cul, el començament d’un nou cor que sent Islàndia s’estén, s’entén
el teu destí tacat de curri. El llac

número 02
que em converteixis en la teva senyoreta solitària, jo també estaré sola, Maria Mercè Marçal
desintegraré la felicitat
Two Poems
en pols i m’instal·laré a la teva pell i faré diamants amb tu.
Escriuré alguna vegada un Solstice
Poema, escriuràs mai això amb mi, no ho crec, així que ho puc fer. (from Terra de mai, 1982)
No crec que la poesia, Your sex and mine are two mouths.
no crec, la diferència és important en els mars difícils, Don’t you feel what a dew kiss on the flesh!
What a nip, with the brightness of a living almond!
no per un espectre nou. What a talk with night-dew of an open gorge!
M’agradaria saber que sempre sóc present, sempre et canto, What a dance, little tongues without a bridle!
inclús quan estàs posseït What a secret of a narrow pass! Our sexes,

love, are two mouths. And two sexes

tot d’un plegat em reben totes les coses salvatges, les fulles salvatges. rattling us now to the place of mouths.
A buried terror, the sunken echo of the bridle
Ara sóc that tamed the dancing of the flesh,
propicia a tot. Pren nota que avui fora de les llibretes, en we have the beach wide open:
l’estès plomatge dels nostres cervells, let’s launch here the desire of the living surf.
què més dóna el que faci si gires el cap Your sex and my mouth alive,
graciosament cap a l’esquerra, in abundance, twisted together as if they were two sexes,
intermingling liquors of the open fruit
el gires amb gràcia. Quin alleujament renunciar a tota la fauna, and becoming, in full raving, mouths.
deixar-ho tot Mouths, corals in lacuna of flesh
62 63 where the hour feeds the fate and loses the bridle.
al príncep distret que era el meu enemic però últimament
tan sols rebota la meva mirada We are where the hour and the fate lose the bridle,
a través de les finestres dels autobusos d’hidrogen. Perquè tinc el tiquet daurat where we ride on the spring living tide,
without sails, sliding along the wake of the flesh,
i cupons i vals de descompte, my sex and your mouth: sexes
no n’estic segura del que no podem aconseguir in the middle of the face and the crotch, mouths.
mirant els ànecs calents Everything is an undulation of open salt.

clacar, els seus cossos brillants i massissos escombraven el carrer. Sea castles at a party, in the open night
effacing signs and giving the bridle
of everything to the madness of mouths.
Any dead leaf becomes alive
in the sunlight that gives dark light to the sexes
tr. Jessica Pujol La vall vertigen and paints in carmine the flames of the flesh.

Let everything burn in a torrent of flesh

and let our open sap ripen!
Let the solstice of our sexes happen,
let the heart convert to rain every bridle!
Let the patches burst into a living tilth!
Let the forests flourish in thousands of mouths!

And let the mouths make the flesh

takes root, alive, like the open skin
with no bridle at the mirror of our sexes! tr. Noèlia DiazVicedo

número 02
 John Ashbery

Untitled Poem Two Poems from Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror

(from Thawing, 1989)
Com qui fiquen borratxo al vaixell de càrrega

I love you when I know you naked like a little girl,

Vaig provar-ho tot, només alguns eren lliures i immortals.
like an open hand, like a high and tender call
A qualsevol altre indret ens trobem com si seiéssim en un lloc on el sol
that beckons me from a naked branch,
es filtra, a poc a poc,
like a fish that forgets the fish hooks.
esperant que arribi algú. Es diuen paraules dures
i el sol esgrogueeix les fulles de l’auró...
Like a terrified fish with a fish hook in its mouth.
Like an axe in the eyes of the mutilated child
I això va ser tot, però vaig sentir
in dreams, in flesh. Like blood that runs.
el bellugueig obscur d’un nou alè en les pàgines
Naked like blood.
que al l’hivern feien olor de catàleg vell.
Sorgien noves frases. I tanmateix l’estiu
I love you when I know you naked like a knife, 64 65
anava prou bé, sense haver passat encara el punt àlgid,
like a vivid and offered leaf, like a thunderclap
ple i fosc amb la promesa d’aquella plenitud,
that burns it, blind. Like the grass, like the rain.
aquell moment en què ningú no pot marxar
Like my shadow, naked behind the frozen mirror.
i fins i tot els menys atents es queden en silenci
per tal d’observar allò que ha de passar.
As naked as a breast stuck to my lips.
Like the open lip of a toothless old man
Una mirada gèlida t’atura
Facing death. Like the disarmed
i camines tremolós: m’hauran vist?
And open hour of thawing.
S’hauran adonat de la meva presència, aquest cop, de tal com sóc,
o ho han tornat a deixar per a més endavant? Els infants

tr. Noèlia DiazVicedo juguen encara, els núvols apareixen amb una sobtada
impaciència en el cel de la tarda, després es dissipen
mentre arriba, densa i límpida, la penombra.
Només per aquell so de clàxon
a baix, per un moment, vaig pensar
que començava aquell gran afer seriós, orquestrat,
amb els colors concentrats en un cop d’ull, una balada
que ara abasta el món sencer, però amb suavitat,

número 02
amb suavitat encara, a pesar de la seva autoritat i gran tacte.
El predomini d’aquests borrallons grisos que cauen?
Són taques solars. Has dormit al sol
més temps que l’esfinx, i no ets qui en surt més ben parat.
Entra. I em va semblar que una ombra cobria la porta,
però era només ella que arribava per tornar-me a demanar
si entrava, i em deia que, si no, no tingués pressa.
La lluentor de la nit s’imposa. Una lluna pàl·lida i cistersense
s’ha enfilat al bell mig del cel, instal·lada,
finalment compromesa amb això de la fosca.
I sorgeix un sospir de totes les coses petites del món,
els llibres, el paper, els lligacames vells i els botons dels calçotets llargs
guardats en alguna capsa de cartró, i totes les versions
més baixes de ciutats aplanades sota la nit que tot ho iguala.
L’estiu exigeix i s’emporta massa coses,
però la nit —la reservada, la reticent— dóna més del que s’enduu.
66
tr. Melcion Mateu
Situació agreujant
Igual que una tempesta, va dir, els colors trenats
em banyen i no em serveixen de res. O iqual que aquell
que, en un banquet, no menja res, perquè no sap escollir
entre els plats fumejants. Aquesta mà tallada
defensa la vida i la llibertat de vagar per on vulgui,
per l’est o per l’oest, pel nord o pel sud, sempre
camina un estrany al meu costat. Ai, estacions,
cabines, chaleur, curanderos amb barret negre
als afores d’alguna festa rural,
el nom que eviteu i no dieu mai és el meu, el meu!
Algun dia em queixaré de com n’estic de cansat
per culpa vostra, però mentrestant el passeig
continua. Tothom està llest per sortir,
segons sembla. I és que què més tenim?
Els jocs anuals? Sí, hi ha ocasions
per als uniformes blancs i per a un llenguatge especial
mantingut en sectet davant dels altres. Tallen
67
les llimes tal com cal. Tot això bé que ho sé
però es veu que no puc evitar que m’afecti,
cada dia, tot el dia. He provat alguna distracció,
llegir fins ben entrada la nit, viatjar en tren
i l’amor.
Un dia em va trucar un home quan no hi era
i em va deixar aquest missatge: «S’ha equivocat
de cap a cap. Per sort, encara té temps
de corregir la situació, però ha d’actuar amb rapidesa.
Vingui’m a veure tan aviat com pugui. I, sisplau,
no parli amb ningú del tema. En depenen moltes coses, a més de la seva vida.»
Al principi, no em va preocupar gens. Darrerament
m’he estat mirant peces antiquades de roba escocesa, tocant
colls blancs emmidonats, pensant si hi ha manera
que tornin a ser blancs. La meva dona
es pensa que sóc a Oslo —a Oslo, França, és clar.
tr. Melcion Mateu
número 02
Ezra Pound             soprando os cabelos no escuro,
Erguendo, erguendo e agitando:
Marfim imergindo na prata,
Canto IV             Escurecido, obscurecido
Marfim imergindo na prata,
Nem borrão, nem sequer um  breve estilhaço de luz do sol.
Palácio em luz fumegante, Então Actæon: Vidal,
Tróia um fiapo de fronteiras crestadas no fogo, Vidal.  É o velho Vidal tagarelando,
ANAXIFORMINGES! Aurunculeia!             tropeçando ao longo do bosque,
Ouça-me. Cadmo de Proas Douradas! Nem bruxuleio, nem salpicado que seja de luz do sol,
Espelhos de prata captam o brilho das rochas, fulguram;             os cabelos lívidos da deusa.
A aurora, para o nosso despertar, imerge na luz verde-fria;
Orvalho –névoa embaça, na grama, calcanhares pálidos se movendo. Saltam os cães sobre Actæon,
Bate, bate, zumbe, um baque, na relva suave             “Aqui, aqui, Actæon,”
            sob as macieiras, Gamo malhado do bosque;
Choros nympharum, pata de bode, alternando um pé branco; Ouro, ouro, mecha dourada,
Crescente de águas raiadas de azul, verde-ouro nos bancos de areia,             Espessa como feixe de trigo,
Um galo negro canta na espuma do mar; Brilho, brilho no sol,
              Saltam os cães sobre Actæon.
E junto ao curvado, esculpido pé do coxim,
            pata-garra e cabeça leonina, um velho sentado Tropeçando, tropeçando ao longo do bosque,
Murmura num tom monótono... : Murmurando, murmurando Ovídio:
                        Ityn!             “Pergusa... lago... lago... Gargáfia,
Et ter flebiliter, Ityn, Ityn! “Lago... lago de Salmacis.”
E ela foi à janela e de lá se jogou,             A armadura vazia estremece ao movimento do cisne.
            “O tempo todo, todo, andorinhas gritando:  
Ityn!   68 69 Então a luz chove, então entorna, e lo soleills plovil
            “E tinhas o coração de Cabestan no prato.” O cristal líquido e impetuoso
            “Eu tinha o coração de Cabestan no prato?             sob os joelhos dos deuses.
            “Nenhum outro sabor me será grato.” Prega a prega, suave luzir de água;
E ela foi à janela, Filete de riacho traz pétalas brancas.
                        a fina barra de pedra branca O pinheiro em Takasago
Fazendo um arco duplo; cresce com o pinheiro de Isé!
Firmes os dedos na firme rocha branca; A água agita a areia de alvo brilho junto à fonte
Oscilou um momento, “Eis a Árvore dos Semblantes!”
                        E o vento vindo de Rhodez Pontas de ramos forcados, flamejando como lótus.
Inflou a manga de sua camisa. Prega a prega
                .  .  .  as andorinhas gritando: O fluido raso revolteia,
’Tis.  ’Tis.  Ytis! sob os joelhos dos deuses.
            Actæon...  
                e um vale, Tochas se fundem no clarão
O vale espesso com folhas, com folhas, as árvores,             a chama acesa do quiosque da esquina,
A luz do sol brilha, brilha no alto, Azul-ágata envolve o céu (como em Gourdon aquela vez)
Como um teto de escama de peixe,             o espirrar de resina,
            Como o teto da igreja em Poictiers Sândalo açafrão se despetala em pés pequenos: Hymenæus Io!
Se fosse de ouro.             Hymen, Io Hymenæe!    Aurunculeia!
            Abaixo, abaixo Uma flor escarlate deposta na pedra alvibranca.
Nem raio, nem fibra, nem sequer um disco de luz do sol  
Laminando a água negra, suave;             E Sõ-Gyoku, dizendo:
No banho do corpo de ninfas, de ninfas, e Diana, “Este vento, senhor, é o vento do rei,
Ninfas, branco-agregadas em torno dela, e o ar, o ar,             Este vento é o vento do palácio,
Sacudindo, o ar aceso com a deusa, Sacudindo os jatos d’água imperiais.”

número 02
            E Hsiang, afrouxando o colarinho:
“Este vento ruge no fundo da terra,
            expele a água em torrentes.”
Nenhum vento é o vento do rei.
            Que cada vaca fique com seu vitelo.
“Este vento é retido em cortinas de gaze...”
Nenhum vento é o do rei...
 
Os cameleiros sentam-se na volta da escada,
Miram Ecbátana de ruas planejadas,
“Danaë! Danaë!
Que vento é o do rei?
Fumaça se apega à corrente,
Os pessegueiros espalham folhas radiantes na água,
O som flutua na névoa vespertina,
            A barca arranha o vau,
Vigas douradas sobre a água negra,
            Três passos num espaço aberto,
Pilares de pedra cinzenta à frente...
 
Père Henri Jacques ia falar com o Sennin, no Rokku,
Monte Rokku entre a rocha e os cedros,
Polhonac,
Como Gyges na louça trácia fez a festa,
Cabestan, Tereu,
            E tens o coração de Cabestan no prato,
Vidal, ou Ecbátana, na torre dourada em Ecbátana
Deita-se a noiva do deus, deita-se sempre, para a chuva dourada.
No Garonne. “Saave!”
O Garonne é espesso como tinta,
Procissão, — “Et sa’ave, sa’ave, sa’ave Regina!” —
Se move como um verme na multidão.
Adige, filme esguio de imagens,
Através do Adige, de Stefano, Madonna in hortulo,
Como Cavalcanti a viu.
            O calcanhar do Centauro fincado na lama.
E nos sentamos aqui...
            lá na arena...
Dirceu Villa
cefalópode
leio que o polvo gigante é silencioso,
fluindo sem ossos em noite profunda;
sem corpo: cabeça e tentáculos só.
hectocótilo, o seu sexo imóvel;
& comer, um plano de lentas ventosas:
alcança, então prende, consome e se move.
produz uma tinta e escreve com ela
arabescos ilegíveis no oceano,
água que os esquece quando estão impressos
[se diz: rapida scribere oportet aqua]
na melancólica tinta que o camufla.
também os zoólogos comem sua carne?
— imenso, mas sem corpo, o mole covarde
escreve apenas quando foge ao que não sabe.
pegajoso, e o que expele suja o azul.
cephalopod
70 71 i read the giant octopus is silent,
boneless flowing in deep deep night;
bodiless too: head and tentacles only.
hectocotylus, its unmoving sex;
& eating is a plan of sluggish suckers:
it reaches it, then grabs it, gorges it and then moves.
it makes an ink and writes with it
illegible arabesques in the ocean,
water that forgets’em when already printed
[we say: rapida scribere oportet aqua]
by its camouflaging melancholy ink.
zoologists would also eat its flesh?
— immense, but bodiless, the limp cowardly
writes only when flying from what it doesn’t know.
clingy, and what it expels tarnishes the blue.

tr. DirceuVilla

tr. DirceuVilla

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72 73

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74 75

número 02
 Alba Biographies
Amy De’Ath
Amy De’Ath was born in Suffolk, England in 1985. She studied at the University of East Anglia, UK,
and in Philadelphia, US, before moving to Australia and then London. Her publications include Erec
& Enide (Salt, 2010), and Andromeda / The World Works for Me (Crater Press, 2010). She has a new
chapbook, Caribou, due out soon in the UK from Bad Press, and her work is featured in a number
of UK anthologies published this year. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Open Letter: a
Canadian Journal of Writing and Theory, QUID, Jacket2, Esque, onedit, and Vlak magazine. For three
years she lived and worked in London, where she was recently Poet-in-Residence at the University
of Surrey. She now lives in Vancouver, where she is beginning her PhD on contemporary poetry and
theory at Simon Fraser University. http://amydeath.wordpress.com
Noèlia Diaz Vicedo
Noèlia Diaz Vicedo es escritora, traductora e investigadora. Nació en Agost (Alacant), España
en 1977. Acaba de terminar su doctorado en Queen Mary, University of London sobre la poesía
de Maria-Mercè Marçal. Combina las clases en esta universidad con la investigación de la poesía
contemporánea de mujeres en lengua castellana y catalana. Ha publicado Maria-Mercè Marçal:
An Exploration of Feminine Poetics in the Works of a Late 20th Century Catalan Poet (Cuadernos
de Trabajos de Investigación, Universidad de Alicante, 2004) y diversos artículos sobre escritura y
mujer. Colabora con el Centre for the Study of Contemporary Women’s Writing at the Institute of
Germanic and Romance Studies, University of London.
Carlos Fernández López
Carlos Fernández López es Master of Arts in Comparative Literature (UCL). Ha sido premiado en
el XII Certamen de poesía de los Colegios Mayores de Madrid, el XXIV Premio de Poesía Isabel de
España y La voz + joven 2007. En los últimos años ha tomado parte en proyectos interdisciplinares
en los que su poesía dialoga con la música —vitral de voz (Madrid, 2004)— la danza —i(u)ter (Mallorca,
2006)— y la performance —ERICA (Dresde, 2008)— y desarrollado una intensa actividad
76 77 investigadora, recogida en César Vallejo: textos rescatados (2009). Acaba de publicar Vitral de voz,
(DVD Ediciones), su primer libro de poemas. Pueden encontrar la obra de Carlos en: http://vimeo.
com/20779493
Gregorio Fontén
Gregorio Fontén (Chile, 1983). Musician and poet. He works as a composer and performs his
music and poetry solo or with his project/band Cuchufleta. He has been published in several
anthologies of visual and experimental poetry. From orchestral works to song cycles, his latest
work is centered in the exploration of microtonality and just intonation as a basic element for music
construction and for the interaction with other art forms. http://www.gregoriofonten.com/
Harry Gilonis
Harry Gilonis is a poet, editor, publisher, and occasional critic (writing on poetry, music, and art).
He wrote the catalogue essay for Ian Hamilton Finlay’s exhibition Variations On Several Themes held
at Barcelona's Fundació Joan Miró. His first poetry book, Reliefs, was technically published in
Dublin, but actually came from an Irish press based in Barcelona. A Professor at a Canadian
university said of Harry Gilonis that he “collaborates with his reading”; much of his work works inter-
textually, through assorted modes of translation and mis-translation. His most recent book, eye-
blink, from Veer Books in London, consists of “faithless” translations of classical Chinese poetry; he
has also published Acacia Feelings, the collected poems of Pao Ling-hui, with Crater in London.
Elizabeth Guthrie
Elizabeth Guthrie is doing research for a practice-based PhD in text and performance at Royal
Holloway, University of London. She is poet and performer, a co-editor of Livestock Editions and the
former poetry editor of Bombay Gin. Her work has appeared in Onedit, Requited, Klatch, Bombay Gin,
Pinstripe Fedora and American Drivel Review, with a pamphlet, X Portraits, out through Crater Press,
a chapbook, Yellow and Red, through Black Lodge Press, and the collaborative chapbook with Andrew
K. Peterson, Between Here and the Telescopes, through Slumgullion Press. She is poet in residence
at the Centre for Creative Collaboration in London and has performed for POLYply, Crossing the Line,
Desperate for Love, Crater, Openned and in the seminar Poetic Corners within the Exhibition
Cornered Rooms at the Waterside Project Space. She continues her search for the Art of Memory.

número 02
 Lorenza Ippolito
Born in Johannesbourg (South Africa) in 1979, she is a fine art photographer based in Brighton,
working out of the Blank Studios, and on behalf of Fabrica Art Gallery, and the organiser of Armchair
Critics. She completed an MA in Photography at Brighton University in 2007, having already
obtained a degree in Fine Art in Italy. Her work is concerned with topics relating to cross cultural
identity, intimacy, and ideas of self-representation. She lived for many years in Bologna, though she
spent her formative years in South Africa and currently lives and works in Brighton.
Elizabeth James
lizabeth James is a 'resting' poet (Base to Carry, Barque Press, 2003) and a librarian at the
Victoria & Albert Museum, London.
Aurélia Lassaque
Born in 1983, Aurélia Lassaque is a poet in both the French and Occitan languages. She is keenly
interested in the relationship between poetry and the visual arts and has collaborated with a number
of artists, including Julie Baugnet, an American painter and academic (shows in the US in 2009 and
in Italy in 2010), Adriana Civitarese, Jaumes Privat, Robert Lobet and Véronique Agostini. Her poems
have been translated into Catalan, Italian, English, Albanian and Arabic, and have been published
in various magazines and anthologies. In 2010 she was responsible for the artistic direction of the
Festival of European and Mediterranean Minority Literatures (organized in Italy). In 2011 she is in
charge of the exhibition « Dialogue entre cultures et langues », to be held at the Conseil de l'Europe.
Aurélia Lassaque is also working on a PhD thesis about baroque Occitan drama. She has published
Cinquena Sason (Letras d’oc, 2006), Ombras de Luna / Ombres de Lune (Éditions de la Margeride,
1st 2009, 2nd 2010), E t’entornes pas / Et ne te retourne pas, (Éditions de la Margeride, 2010), Lo
sòmi d’Euridícia – le rêve d’Eurydice, (Éditions les Aresquiers, février 2011) ; Lo sòmi d’Orfèu – le
rêve d’Orphée (Éditions les Aresquiers, juillet 2011) ; Solstici lo bram de Janus – Solstice, le brame de
Janus (to be published by Éditions Jacques Brémond, Autumn 2011).
Tony Lopez
Tony Lopez is an English poet best known for his book False Memory (The Figures, 1996) a
political poem composed in multiple registers of public language. His most recent poetry publication
is Only More So (University of New Orleans Press, 2011), the latest of 25 books of poetry, fiction and
criticism. He has received awards from the Wingate Foundation, the Society of Authors, the UK Arts
and Humanities Research Council, and Arts Council England. His poetry is featured in Twentieth-
Century British and Irish Poetry (Oxford), Vanishing Points (Salt), The Reality Street Book of Sonnets
(RSE), Other: British & Irish Poetry since 1970 (Wesleyan) and Conductors of Chaos (Picador). His
critical writings are collected in Meaning Performance: Essays on Poetry (Salt, 2006) and The Poetry
of W.S. Graham (Edinburgh University Press, 1989). He taught for many years at the University of
Plymouth where he was appointed the first Professor of Poetry. His website is at http://tonylopez.
org.uk
Melcion Mateu
Melcion Mateu Adrover (Barcelona, 1971) és un poeta i traductor català. Amb Vida evident
(Columna Edicions, 1999), el seu debut, va guanyar el premi Octavio Paz de poesia; és un llibre
format per sonets, que va sorprendre pel seu domini tècnic i la intensitat del seu vers. Més tard
va venir Ningú, petit (Edicions 62, 2002), un homenatge al còmic Little Nemo in Slumberland, de
Winsor McCay; es tracta d'una filigrana poètica en la qual la infantesa i les petites coses centren
bona part del discurs. Finalment, Jardí amb cangurs (Edicions 62, 2005), un llibre divers i marcat
especialment pel llarg poema 'Veritable Panamà', tercera part del volum, una composició de 368
versos que actualitza la tradició èpica.
James McGonigal
James McGonigal (b.1947) has combined professional work in schools and teacher education with
editing volumes on Pound and Bunting and on literary relations between Scotland and Ireland. His
own poetry has won prizes in both countries. Recent publications include Beyond the Last Dragon:
A Life of Edwin Morgan (Sandstone Press, 2010) and Cloud Pibroch (Mariscat Press, 2010) which won
the Michael Marks Poetry Pamphlet Award.
Laia Noguera i Coflent
Laia Noguera i Clofent (Calella, 1983) ha publicat els llibres de poesia L’oscultor (2002), Fuga
evasió (2004), Incendi (2005), No et puc dir res (2007), Els llops (2009), Triomf (2009), L’U (2010) i
Parets (2011). Ha gravat el disc Carboncle amb el violista de roda Adrià Grandia, amb qui ha creat
diversos espectacles de música i poesia, i és guitarra solista en el grup de thrash Red for more, amb
el qual ha gravat la maqueta Red for more.
Mazal Oaknin
Mazal Oaknin nació en Almeria, pero pronto se cansó de los invernaderos y se fue a ver mundo,
a la par que acumular títulos universitarios. Tras un inolvidable periplo por Málaga, Birmingham,
el estado de Nueva York y París, Mazal se instaló en Londres en 2007 con una licenciatura en
Traducción, un máster en ELE y bastante experiencia (y paciencia) como profesora de español.
Desde entonces, ha terminado un máster en Estudios Hispánicos (UCL) y ha publicado y presentado
diversos artículos en Especulo, ALEPH, WISPS e IGRS, entre otros. Mazal sigue en Londres, donde
trabaja, estudia y se divierte. No ve la hora de terminar su tesis en 'Women's Literature and Public
Reception' (UCL).
Richard Parker
Richard Parker was born in 1978 and had his D.Phil. conferred upon him in the summer of 2010
for a dissertation on the work of Louis Zukofsky and Ezra Pound. He’s also published books of
poetry, including China and from The Mountain of California… in the summer of 2010. He’s the
editor and printer of the Crater pamphlet series, which is available at www.craterpress.co.uk.
Jessica Pujol i Duran
Jessica Pujol i Duran was born in Barcelona in 1982 and is currently living in London, though
her home is Mataró in tropical Maresme. In London she is working on a Ph.D. on Julio Cortázar
and experimental writing in the 1960s at UCL. She is also a poet and has written and translated
extensively in Catalan and Spanish. Her first book in English, Now Worry., is forthcoming from
Department Press.
Roberta Quance
Roberta Ann Quance was born in Canandaigua, New York in 1950 and received her Ph.D. in
78 79 Romance Studies at Cornell University in 1982. She is at present living in Belfast, where she is a
senior lecturer in Spanish at Queen’s University. Prior to this she lived and worked in Spain, teaching
on the English faculty at the Universidad Autónoma of Madrid.
William Rowe
William Rowe is a Professor at Birbeck, University of London. He is the author of several books on
Latin American literature and culture, including: Ensayos vallejianos (Lima, Latinoamericana Editores,
2006) and Cesar Vallejo: El acto y la palabra (Lima: Fondo Editorial del Congreso del Peru, 2010).
William's book on Spanish American poetry since 1950 was published in 2000 by Oxford University
Press. He is a founding editor of the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies: Travesia and
remains on its advisory board. He is a specialist in 20c poetry and poetics in Latin America, the USA
and Britain, and has published widely, read and broadcast translations of Latin American poetry.
Dirceu Villa
Dirceu Villa was born in 1975 in São Paulo, Brazil, and is the author of three books of poetry:
MCMXCVIII (1998), Descort (2003) and Icterofagia (2008). He has translated Joseph Conrad’s
short stories (2009) and Ezra Pound’s Lustra (2011), written essays on the revision of Portuguese
and Brazilian poetry canon and organized an anthology of 12 contemporary Brazilian poets for the
literary magazine La Otra (Mexico City). He has also written introductions to the works of Marlowe,
Baudelaire and Mallarmé, and is now finishing his PhD thesis at the University of São Paulo, on the
Italian and English poetics of the XV and XVI centuries.
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Gregorio Fontén

Poemas Visuales

80 81

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