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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
propia naturaleza de mujeres. Tenemos by a series of trends that have shaped
Article
Mazal Oaknin
nuestro propio estilo y ámbito de the publishing industry as we know

Is there a creación, porque la creación es

inherente a lo que el escritor o la
escritora vive’.2
it today.4 These trends, intimately
linked to the recentness of the mass
incorporation of women writers into

literature in On the other hand, the more

veteran Carmen Posadas (born in
the literary market, are ultimately tied
in with the question of the existence of
a women’s literature.

post-modern Spain? 1953) defends that, whereas there

is a male and a female viewpoint,
‘al final sólo hay buena literatura
y mala literatura’.3 Whereas her
Freixas starts her argument by
noticing that today, women writers are
highly visible and ‘accessible’ through

The writers’
opinions are representative of the their appearances in different media,
trend supported by most of her which according to her creates the
contemporaries, these arguments illusion that women are a majority in
appear to expose the main tendencies the literary market (Freixas, p. 38).

response?
in the literary market contended by Glossy photographs of women writers
women writers nowadays. Among often inundate literary articles in
these, their opinions mainly evidence prestigious magazines such as Qué
the existence of segregation policies Leer and Época; and the review and
and of negative allusions to women comment of their texts on popular
authors’ sex and gender in the literary television programs can even lead to
criticism and literary market fields. all sorts of personal questions.5 As a
result of their promotional visibility,
This article will start with a brief Henseler explains, women authors
introduction to Laura Freixas’ analysis have become commercial icons,6
of the main trends affecting women which comes in clear contrast to their
The “special” and double-edged in the literary industry at the present numerical inferiority in the literary
position of “women’s literature” – it is moment. Special emphasis will be market. In effect, after learning
4 5 that the number of writers that had
at once highly marketed and rendered placed on the coexisting policies
invisible – makes critics uncomfortable of integration and segregation, as published narrative books in 1999 in
and makes authors wonder whether well as on the commonly made the main Spanish publishing houses
the category itself may lead women allusions to sex and gender in works (Alfaguara, Anagrama, Destino,
writers into a trap by women authors. These trends are Planeta, Plaza y Janés, Seix Barral,
particularly linked to the question of and Tusquets) was 129, Laura Freixas
Christine Henseler how literature by women should be concluded that the proportion of
treated. Overall, as we shall see, the women was of only 24% (Freixas, pp.
writers quoted challenge the critical 35-36). It is interesting to note that,
The question as to whether it female authors born during the Franco establishment’s treatment of women’s conversely to the number of women
is possible to ascribe a gender regime tend to reject the notion of a literature as a literature that only has writers whose books get published,
difference to writing has repeatedly women’s literature, the trend among women characters as its protagonists, the majority of readers are women
been addressed as a constant in the more contemporary women and that is only aimed at a female (Freixas, p. 39). Thus, after compiling
interviews with Spanish women writers is to celebrate this gender readership, for it only deals with and analysing three reading polls
authors of the post-war and difference, and to consider that ‘women’s issues’. carried out by the Spanish Ministry
democracy periods.1 While most writing by women is different from of Social Affairs in 1978, 1985, and
writing by men. Thus, Lucía Etxebarria Is women’s literature different
1 Luis García, ‘Entrevista a Almudena Gran- (born in 1966) champions women’s from men’s literature? Or is it just 4 See also Laura Freixas, ‘Mujeres y cultura:
des’, Literaturas.com (2002) <http://www.literaturas. literature in her essay Con nuestra treated differently? una breve arqueología de la misoginia reinante’, Letras
com/EntrevistaAGrandes2002.htm> [accessed 22 June propia voz: a favor de la literatura libres, October 2005 <http://www.letraslibres.com/
2010]; María del Mar López-Cabrales, ‘Esther Tusquets. index.php?art=10774> [accessed 17 August 2010]
Entrevista’, en Palabras de mujeres (Madrid: Narcea,
femenina: Laura Freixas’ canonical analysis 5 In her role as editor of Lo que los hombres
2000), pp. 151-166; Santiago Velázquez, ‘Rosa Regás: of the situation of Spanish women no saben. El sexo contado por las mujeres (2008), Lucía
“Hoy sólo se habla de literatura en los jurados de los La literatura femenina, en general, writers in the year 2000 was informed Etxebarria was interviewed by Marta Robles as part of the
premios”’, Espéculo, 19 (2002) <http://www.ucm.es/ amalgama un mismo punto de vista book launching. The interview, broadcasted on Telemadrid
info/especulo/numero19/regas.html> [accessed 22 on the 17th of March of 2008, soon left the literary arena
June 2010]; Marta Salvador, ‘Entrevista a Espido Freire expresado desde diferentes voces, 2 Lucía Etxebarria, ‘Con nuestra propia to move on to much more intimate questions. To watch
(II)’, Mujeractual.com <http://www.mujeractual.com/ la perspectiva que emana de nuestra voz: a favor de la literatura de mujeres’, in La letra futura the complete interview, see <http://www.youtube.com/
entrevistas/freire/index3.html> [accessed 22 June (Barcelona: Destino, 2000) watch?v=mgX1aORFios> [accessed 5 July 2010]
2010]; África Prado, ‘Laura Freixas: “Es falso que haya un 3 ‘Entrevista. Diario de Navarra’, Carmen 6 Christine Henseler, Contemporary Spanish
boom de la literatura femenina”’, Información.es <http:// haya-boom-literatura-femenina/982279.html> [accessed Posadas.net <http://www.carmenposadas.net/res-ent- Women’s Narrative and the Publishing Industry (Urbana and
www.diarioinformacion.com/cultura/2010/02/23/falso- 22 June 2010]; among many others. not-ficha.php?resentnot=53> [accessed 22 June 2010] Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003), pp. 16-17.
1990, sociologist Enrique Gil Calvo female ones. Another trend currently
concluded that, in Spain, the number contended by women writers refers
of women readers is superior, both in to the fact that both integration and
absolute and in relative terms, to the segregation policies coexist in the
number of male readers.7 literary market. Thus, while some
anthologies displaying a universal
As a consequence of their greater thematic thread only include male
visibility and wider readership, authors, other anthologies are limited
most publishing houses and literary to women authors. Likewise, mentions
institutions are keen to attract women to women authors’ sex and gender
(Freixas, p. 39). This could be due are relatively common, and often
to the fact that, according to writer made in a negative light, in the literary
Clara Obligado, the destiny of a book criticism field. On the other hand,
is sealed before it arrives to the allusions to the question of male
bookshops. Hence, although each identity in the case of a male author,
author can have a certain say in the his readers, or his characters are
way their book will be presented, and virtually unknown.
even though there is always a small
margin of error; publishing houses In fact, the way women authors
already know whether the book will contend with all these trends will
sell or not. This could depend on the determine their commercial success
promotional material invested on or their literary prestige. Generally,
each book and on how popular the the more commercially successful
author is, and these coordinates are she is, the less highly regarded
more apparent in the case of women her work in terms of its literary
writers because they have become significance or prestige. The last two
commercial icons.8 On the other hand, trends are particularly significant
most academic studies and research when considering each woman
on literature by women seldom reach writer’s views on the question of
the general public (Freixas, p. 39). the existence of a female literature. 6 7
This could be simply due to the fact Women writers often denounce the
that Women’s Studies are based on absence or misrepresentation of
the Anglo-Saxon tradition. Given that women authors in mixed anthologies,
most feminist criticism bibliography is prizes, or congresses. For instance,
written in English, it would be logical none of the works examined in the
to expect that the majority of experts volume La inmigración en la literatura
in Spanish women authors are Anglo- española contemporánea, which
American, or Spaniards working at has a clearly mixed approach, has
Anglosaxon institutions (Freixas, p. been written by a female author.9
81). Women writers’ participation at This seems striking when one
Spanish literary institutions parallels considers that immigration is a very
this virtual lack of academic studies real and very current phenomenon
on their works. With the exception in today’s Spain, affecting men
of some notable authors such as and women alike. Furthermore,
Ana María Matute, women writers the number of women immigrants
are rarely represented in the most has risen sharply in recent years,
traditional and prestigious institutions. partly due to increasing demand for
The Royal Academy of the Spanish workers to do jobs with low pay and
Language, for example, counts forty prestige. For example, most of the
three male members and only four workforce in the domestic service
sector is female. Likewise, no female
7 Enrique Gil Calvo, La era de las lectoras. authors are studied in La literatura
El cambio cultural de las mujeres españolas (Madrid:
Instituto de la Mujer, Ministerio de Asuntos Sociales,
española en el exilio: un estudio
1983), p. 120. comparativo, even though nothing
8 ‘Clara Obligado. Autobiographical
sketches, in Christine Henseler, Contemporary Spanish
Women’s Narrative and the Publishing Industry (Urbana 9 Irene Andrés-Suárez, Marco Kunz, and
and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003), pp. 131- Inés D’Ors (eds.), La inmigración en la literatura española
133. contemporánea (Madrid: Verbum, 2002)

número 02
in the title suggests that the book to suggest such labelling ghettoises and by authors such as Lucía the civil war and Transition periods.
will only deal with male authors.10 writing by women, or to admit to and Etxebarria (2000), and Laura Freixas Women authors born in this period,
When female writers attempt to fight celebrate gender difference. Thus, that women’s writing has brought new such as Esther Tusquets, tend to reject
this misrepresentation by creating on the one hand, writers such as topics, a different sensitivity, and new the notion of a women’s literature.
women-only collections and events, Dulce Chacón deny the existence of a character models to literature: ‘creo Tusquets, for instance, denounces
they will in this way make a case for women’s literature and contend that que existe una literatura femenina the segregation of women’s writings
women writers and will encourage such a label looks down on female o de mujeres con características that the critical establishment carries
the open public to take them into writers: propias […] La [aportación] más out through the inclusion of what she
consideration. However, this self- específica se centra en ampliar calls ‘el apartado de las mujeres’,
exclusion will give the impression La literatura femenina no existe, la gama de personajes femeninos which is usually presented as separate
of a literary space of their own, and existe una literatura escrita por y presentarlos como personajes from what is considered as serious,
the exclusion of men only ultimately mujeres y una literatura escrita por con valor por sí mismos y en sus universal literature.19
reinforces the segregation these same hombres, escrita por homosexuales, relaciones entre mujeres y no sólo
women are attempting to redress. As escrita por morenos, por rubios, con los hombres’.17 As we have seen, Spanish women
Henseler puts it, ‘the “special” and por pelirrojos... Pero solamente a la writers have, over the years, tried to
double-edged position of “women’s literatura escrita por mujeres se le Interestingly, Tsuchiya notes that contend this persistent, long-lasting
literature” – it is at once highly pone un apelativo, ‘femenina’. Eso in Spain, perhaps because their life situation. In fact, despite the work
marketed and rendered invisible – me parece que es menospreciar a la experiences parallel the increasingly done by so-called second generation
makes critics uncomfortable and mujer que escribe. La literatura no promotional demands of the book feminists, it is striking that writers
makes authors wonder whether the necesita de adjetivos, es universal.13 market, the latter trend is generally of the stature of Montero, Grandes,
category itself may lead women followed by the generation born in or Tusquets – to name a few – still
writers into a trap’ (Henseler, p. 16). On the other hand, the trend the 1960s and 1970s (Tsuchiya, p. have, in the early years of the 21st
In this respects, Almudena Grandes supported by authors such as Laura 240). In her essay ‘The “new” Female century, to denounce the way their
explains that it is the absence of the Freixas avows that female literature is Subject and the Commodification works are treated by a critical
term ‘male literature’ what makes different from writing by men. In The of Gender in the Works of Lucía establishment which is traditionally
her uncomfortable: ‘No me gusta el Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Etxebarria’, Tsuchiya explores the male. This segregation has been
término ‘literatura femenina’, aunque Writer and Nineteenth Century Literary process by which Etxebarria, like so made even worse by the increasing
no tendría ningún inconveniente Imagination, Sandra M. Gilbert and many other women writers in the commercialisation of book-selling,
en admitirlo si existiera el término Susan Gubar assert that literature by Spanish literary market nowadays, which makes it especially difficult for
‘literatura masculina’.11 Espido Freire, 8 9 exploits the market through the women writers to balance their public
women has been traditionally marked
on the other hand, warns against the by its authors' feelings of inadequacy, treatment of a series of 'temas de image and their work.
risks involved in the use of the term inferiority and self-doubt which result moda'. By doing this, Etxebarria
‘literatura femenina’ by the critical from their education.14 According contributes to the creation of a 'new'
establishment: ‘Una de las maneras to them, these ‘phenomena of readership from which the publishing
más frecuentes de discriminación inferiorization mark the woman writer’s industry can benefit at the same
es la que impone la dictadura de struggle for artistic self-definition and time.18 Thus, for writers such as
la llamada literatura femenina […] differentiate her efforts at self-creation Espido Freire or Lucía Etxebarria, the
cada vez que se menciona que un from those of her male counterpart’ often denounced ‘selling out’ of the
autor o una autora escribe literatura (Gilbert and Gubar, p. 50). Whereas publishing industry is a natural part
femenina inmediatamente se le está the foci of difference have never been of their lives. On the other hand, the
despreciando’.12 unanimously established, what it is life experiences of most writers born
widely recognised by critics such as under Franco are not detached from
Women writers have tended to Hélène Cixous,15 and Anette Kolodny,16
respond in one of two ways when
deration of each author would allow us to observe if any
asked whether the labels of ‘feminine’ 13 Vicente Alapont, ‘Entrevista a Dulce particular stylistic patterns recur in female fiction. She
or ‘feminist’ could be applied to their Chacón’, Mujeractual.com <http://www.mujeractual. finds reflexive perception and inversion to be the most
works. Either to deny the existence com/entrevistas/chacon/index.html> [accessed 25 June persistent ones. Reflexive perception takes place when a
of gender difference in writing and 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
10 Michael Ugarte, La literatura española en Century Literary Imagination (New Haven: Yale University in literature are subverted with the purpose of humour,
el exilio: un estudio comparativo (Madrid: Siglo Veintiuno, Press, 1979), pp. 59-60. revelation of their hidden reality, or connotation of their
1999) 15 In ‘Sorties: Out and Out: Attacks/Ways/ opposites. See Toril Moi, Sexual/Textual Politics, 2nd ed.
11 ‘Encuentro digital con Almudena Forays’, Hélène Cixous proposes difference, multiplicity (London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 70-71.
Grandes’, 20minutos.es <http://www.20minutos.es/ and heterogeneity as a means to combat the binary 17 María Bengoa, ‘Laura Freixas. El camino
entrevistas/almudena-grandes/51/> [accessed 25 June patriarchal system. See Hélène Cixous, ‘Sorties: Out es fácil para el escritor serio y para la escritora frívola’, El
2010] and Out: Attacks/Ways/Forays’ in The Feminist Reader. Correo 7th June 2000, <http://www.laurafreixas.com/
12 Espido Freire, ‘Conferencia: “Problemá- Essays in Gender and the Politics of Literary Criticism, ed. freixascriticas4.htm> [accessed 25 June 2010] 19 Geraldine C. Nichols, Escribir. Espacio
tica de la mujer en la juventud”’, El Correo Digital by Catherine Belsey and Jane Moore (London:Macmillan, 18 Akiko Tsuchiya, ‘The “new” Female Sub- propio. Laforet, Matute, Moix, Tusquets, Riera y Roig por
<http://servicios.elcorreo.com/auladecultura/freire1. 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
html> [accessed 25 June 2010] 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:
traducir
es una opción
vital
La paradójica, y muchas veces logre calmar esta sed de sublimidad 10 11
conflictiva, consideración y que intermitentemente le alimenta. El
menosprecio entre el traductor poeta se dejar enredar en el ritmo que
y el poeta solamente puede ser le va guiando a través del poema. Sin
entendida desde la superficialidad posibilidad de volver, se despoja de su y otros cuerpos1. Marçal busca la identidad femenina. La exploración
creativa o la ignorancia literaria. El alma para entregarla a la palabra que re-creación de sí misma a través del de esta identidad, su identidad, en
poder de seducción de una obra de una vez vertida sobre el papel ya no le ritmo de los versos, de la intensidad el espacio poético y a través del
arte, sobretodo de un poema, viene pertenece. Si la prioridad de cualquier de las imágenes y la posibilidad de lenguaje es lo que define el ars poetica
determinado por la capacidad del gran poeta es adecuar este impulso construcción de nuevos significados marçaliana. Este eje ‘mujer’ hace
escritor de configurar el cuerpo y el de la escritura a su propia mirada, ¿no que la estructura poética ofrece. El girar el universo marçaliano de la
alma de su creación. Una actividad es esta una prioridad también para el año 1992 después de haber publicado escritura y lo convierte no solamente
vital que conecta el poema al poeta traductor? ¿No es el traductor quien toda su poesía en vida reunida en en práctica literaria, sino también
y la escritura a una forma específica sostiene la tensión que late entre el volumen La lengua abolida (1973- en su propia forma de existencia:
de existencia. La composición de un dos lenguas diferentes que esperan 1989), Marçal así lo explicaba: ‘la ‘soy alguien’, nos dice Marçal, ‘una
poema, la persecución armónica de compartir su existencia? ¿Qué es pues poesía ha tenido para mí una función: mujer que escribe’2. Esta mujer que
la palabra, el sonido, el ritmo interno la traducción, sino una transposición la de estructurarme, de darme un escribe, lo hace desde distintos
y externo de los versos hacen al del alma? discurso sobre mi misma. También me campos entre ellos el de la traducción.
escritor ascender vertiginosamente sirve como una segunda memoria, y Entender la literatura como una
hasta la sublimidad del alma que Aquellos autores que conciben no porque me haga pensar en lo que actividad propia del yo interior, nos
busca atraparlos en el espacio y en la escritura como un proceso hice concretamente; sino porque me lleva a considerar el lenguaje como
el tiempo, para que tan solo unos de autocreación, como la poeta recuerda mis conflictos íntimos, las el espacio en el que los significados,
instantes después descienda hacia catalana Maria-Mercè Marçal diferentes fases de mi lucha con la símbolos y estructuras lingüísticas
la nada y deje al poeta desposeído y (Barcelona 1952-1998), la traducción vida’ (Marçal 1992: 43, mi traducción). se entremezclan. El lenguaje no
vacío, extrañamente frío y endeble. corresponde, tal y como nos dice sólo permite la transferencia de
el pensador Walter Benjamin, a Esta lucha con la vida tuvo un eje equivalentes entre dos lenguas sino
De esta forma el poeta se da a sí ‘un modo’ de escribir, de explorar central entorno al cuál se articula que arrastra consigo las imágenes,
mismo, por completo, al poder de la otras dimensiones lingüísticas y toda su producción literaria: la los códigos que conforman el alma
palabra. Y su condena constante le simbólicas, de abarcar otros espacios
remite a la incesante búsqueda que
1 Ver Benjamin 1999: 71. 2 Ver Marçal 2004: 21-24
del poema, aquello que los versos se encuentran los ensayos literarios Una habitación propia, las mujeres Referencias
quieren expresar. Y esta es, la en los que explora la interacción entre conectamos con el pasado a través
característica principal para que mujer y escritura recopilados por de nuestras madres, las madres Benjamin, Walter. 1999. ‘The Task of the
un poema pueda ser traducido y lo Mercè Ibarz en el libro Maria-Mercè reales. Pero también hay unas madres Translator’, Illuminations. London: Pimlico,
sea con éxito, aquello que Benjamin Marçal: Sota el signe del drac. Proses simbólicas que nos hace falta buscar pp. 70-82.
en su reflexión sobre la función del 1985-1997 (2004). Su interés por la e investigar si no queremos ser Biosca, Mercè y Cornado Mari Pau.
traductor ha denominado como la producción literaria de otras poetas, presas de unos parámetros culturales 1992. ‘Maria-Mercè Marçal o l’ordenació
‘traducibilidad’. La traducibilidad, la llevó a realizar tareas de crítica absolutamente androcéntricos’ (1992: de la vida a través de la poesia’. Escriptors
responde en toda su capacidad a la literaria y publicó estudios sobre 43). d’Avui. Perfils Literaris. Lleida: Publicacions
condición poética que, a pesar de las obras de las poetas catalanas de La Paeria, pp. 36-43.
la transformación lingüística, queda Clementina Arderiu (Barcelona 1889- Cuando Marçal habla de las Marçal, Maria-Mercè. 2004. ‘Qui sóc
intacta, inmutable en su esencia 1976), Rosa Leveroni (1910-1985) y autoras que ha traducido o de su i per què escric’, en Maria-Mercè Marçal.
comunicativa. Esta condición es la la mallorquina Maria Antònia Salvà trabajo de traducción lo hace como Sota el Signe del drac : Proses 1985-1997.
que permite al escritor penetrar en (Palma de Mallorca, 1869 - Llucmajor, crítica incluso cuando se refiriere a Barcelona: Proa, pp. 21-24.
la piel del poema y someterlo a la 1958). Su ferviente propósito de los aspectos más técnicos, dónde
transposición de códigos, es decir, ahondar en las raíces de su propia Montero, Anna. 2004. ‘Anna Montero
lleva todo el peso de la acción al entrevista Maria-Mercè Marçal’, Lectora,
de lenguas. Es cierto, que en este existencia como mujer poeta, la poder de la palabra y lo que significa no. 10: 259-84.
proceso las palabras nunca son llevaron a indagar en las obras no para ella como escritora. De esta
equivalentes, no son capaces de solo de estas autoras sino de otras manera describía su experiencia al Poesía
llegar a la correspondencia absoluta extranjeras que leyó con gran pasión traducir a Colette: ‘Me gusta Colette,
entre ambas lenguas. De forma como Virgina Woolf, Djuna Barnes, me parece importante […] Sobre Cau de llunes. Barcelona: Proa, 1977
general se ha denominado a esta Katherine Mansfield, etc. algunas todo tiene un lenguaje riquísimo, muy (1998, 2a edició).
incapacidad del lenguaje — por su de las cuales sintió tal admiración florido, muy sensual, las palabras Bruixa de dol.. Sant Boi de Llobregat:
limitación — de acoger el significado personal y literaria que tradujo tienen un peso muy fuerte por ellas Llibres del Mall, 1979 / Barcelona: Ed.
completo de la lengua original, algunos de sus trabajos al catalán. mismas, por su sonido’ (Marçal en 62, 1998.
como ‘lo que se pierde’. Traducir en Tradujo del francés La dona amagada Montero 2004: 92).
este sentido apela a una actividad de la escritora Colette en 1985, de Terra de mai. València: El Cingle, 1982.
lingüística que nada tiene que ver con Margueritte Yourcenar tradujo El tret La traducción, pues en Marçal Sal oberta. Sant Boi de Llobregat:
la simple mecánica de intercambiar de gràcia y de la surrealista Leonor resta lejos de una acción estéril. Al Llibres del Mall, 1982 / Barcelona: Ed.
palabras entre diferentes lenguajes. Fini tradujo el relato L’oneiropompe 12 13 62, 1993.
contrario, nos acerca no solamente
En Marçal, la traducción nunca es en 1992. Del ruso también conreó la a la capacidad creativa de la propia La germana, l’estrangera. Sant Boi
un mero ejercicio sino una práctica traducción de poesía, en colaboración autora sino al universo de las de Llobregat: Llibres del Mall, 1985 /
vital, parte de su horizonte literario con Monika Zgustová, de las autoras autoras que traduce. Marçal como Barcelona: Ed. 62, 1995.
de autocreación, en el que vida y rusas Anna Akhmàtova Rèquiem i traductora, se mueve oscilante en
escritura van estrechamente ligadas. altres poemas en 1990 y Poema de el vaivén entre dos cuerpos que Desglaç Barcelona: Ed. 62 - Empúries,
la fi de Marina Tsvetàieva en 19923. 1988 (1998, 2a ed).
danzan al compás de su propia
Hablar de Marçal como traductora De todas ellas y de su propósito de batuta vital. Esto, lejos queda, Llengua abolida (1973-1988). València: 3
es pues inseparable de hablar de ella traducción Marçal dijo: ‘he hecho una de cualquier indicio de profanar i 4, 1989 (2000, 2a ed).
como escritora y sobretodo como opción, una opción vital: pienso que el poema original, como algunos
tengo una vida limitada y que me es Raó del cos. Barcelona: Ed. 62 -
poeta. Aunque la traducción no fue su escritores han sugerido. Traducir Empúries, 2000.
actividad fundamental, si que ocupa absolutamente necesario contactar estas autoras no es solamente
un lugar central e importante dentro con un cierto principio femenino reconstruirlas en otro cuerpo, Traducciones (del francés)
del conjunto de su obra. Maria- que sea fuerza y no debilidad […] No hacerlas vibrar en otra lengua, sino
Mercè Marçal empezó su carrera es que me parezca mal dedicarme que es sumergirse en otras almas, La dona amagada. COLETTE. Barcelona:
poética con el poemario Cau de llunes a traducir Maiakovski, por ejemplo, buscar entre los devaneos rítmicos Edicions del Mall, 1985.
que ganó el premio Carles Riba en pero se que Marina Tsvetàieva me una fuente de inspiración, de reflejo
dirá mas cosas sobre mi que no El tret de gràcia. MARGUERITE
1976. A este libro le sucedieron los que le sirva para anclar su propio YOURCENAR. Barcelona: Edicions B, 1990.
poemarios Bruixa de dol (1979), Sal Maiakovski. Y también me interesa deseo femenino. Marçal bebe en las
oberta (1982), Terra de mai (1982), más Tsvetàieva, ponemos por caso, aguas cristalinas de ellas como si de L’Oneiropompe. LEONOR FINI.
La germana, l’estrangera (1985) y porque si pensamos que hacemos una fuente se tratara, se nutre de Barcelona: Edicions de l’Eixample, 1992.
Desglaç (1989). Marçal también fue literatura a partir de aquello que su sabiduría en la que encuentra un (del ruso con Monika Zgustová)
autora de una sola novela sobre la somos, entonces necesitamos un remanso de paz, una figura referencial Rèquiem i altres poemas. ANNA
escritora francesa de origen inglés tipo de ayuda que nos permita que le pueda servir como punto de AKHMÀTOVA. Barcelona: Ed. 62, 1990.
Renée Vivien La pasión según Renée conectar con nosotros mismos. De apoyo en sus propios horizontes
Vivien (1994) ganadora de los más hecho, como decía Virginia Woolf en poéticos y en su propia existencia. Poema de la fi. MARINA TSVETÀIEVA.
prestigiosos premios de novela de Barcelona: Ed. 62, 1992.
Traducir es en Marçal una opción
3 Hay una edición conjunta publicada
la literatura catalana. Entre sus en 2004 por la editorial Proa Versions d’Akhmàtova i
vital.
actividades literarias más destacadas Tsvetàieva. Com en la nit les flames.

número 02
Interview
Lorenza Ippolito
Interview
with chilean artist
Johanna Berger,
founder of
Blank Gallery

Launched in April 2007, Blank is a war period, there have been art 14 15
studio and gallery complex run entirely movement that have preceded their
by artists. Its purpose is to house European counterparts by 10 years,
and support contemporary art in all but only the Western ones have been
its forms. The artists based at Blank acknowledged in art history books.
produce a vibrant and eclectic work, Even in South America these artists
including visual and sound installation, and movements were not recognised
performance and community based until the official Academia recognised
events. Situated at the edge of Hove their value, by inscribing them in
in Portslade, Blank is a pioneering Art History. But a lot gets lost in the
contemporary art venue attracted process.
by the remoteness of the industrial
wilderness. L.I. Can you give me an example?

Lorenza Ippolito. I am going to start J.B. For example, a Brasilian artist

by asking you a few questions about called Lydia Clark. She completely
yourself. You come from Chile. Do rejected the art world and the
you feel you are working from a Latin economically driven art market. She
American viewpoint? was an artist that worked with a
particular type of performance art
Johanna Berger. It is an interesting around the 40s and 50s doing really
question. Chilean art culture has a radical performances that recall
very specific way of understanding what we’re trying to do here now in
and experiencing art. In the past, Latin Blank. These events were socially
American influence in the arts hasn’t engaged, community based work, but
always been recognised, especially taken to a really bonkers extreme.
in Europe. Now, it is becoming more She was interested in staging social
apparent that South America is a place experiments that involved people and
of innovation in the contemporary their interaction. Some performances
art scene. Starting from the post- involved many people in public
 They would obviously teach all the does everything or do people have
basics about materials, structures and specific roles.
construction, but not to design proper
plans. J.B. There are some specific roles
within it, but it is important to have
A good example of the universities an overview. For me it’s important to
philosophy is the Travesias. In have a wider perspective. The way I
essence, each year the whole see it, each thing is a tool. So when
Architecture and Design School you draw, when you use the medium
would engage for an entire term in of drawing, it is as a tool to SEE
a Travesia. This meant travelling to something.
an uninhabited place in the middle
of nowhere. It was a journey in [At the university] we used to have
many ways. My class went to an this subject called Cultura del Cuerpo,
uninhabited island in the southern culture of the body. Every year, a
fjords of Chile, where it rains nearly huge tournament would be organised
300 days a year. We where in tents involving the whole University, where
and accompanied by a couple of every class would have to design an
professors. The idea of the exercise object that would be used in a final
was to build and invent everything we tournaments, like a race.
needed to live there. We had to first L.I. Was it like P.E.?
design and then build our own tents
and cooking things. Everything was J.B. No, I’ll show you some books
about looking and making. one day. We made the most beautiful
things. We would have to start from
This experience took us out of our platonic shapes, like geometric 3-D
reality and a lot out of our comfort shapes. Some looked like stars, for
spaces, but also other really weird started studying it at university that I zone so, that we could begin to see example. I remember we made some
and wonderful things. understood these hidden histories. things differently. It was incredible; huge ones. You could fit one or more
16 17 everybody was writing, drawing and people inside them. Just the designs
L.I. A bit like flash mobs? I went to University in Chile sketching all the time. It was like
and it changed my life. It changed of them were beautiful. But, they were
J.B. No, I am talking about a being on drugs, but without the drugs; made with bamboo sticks and roughly
completely my outlook on things and in a permanent state of “wow”.
completely different thing. These to this day I operate from a different placed together. We build quite a
performances were huge and involved perspective thanks to that experience. I think they wanted to form few different ones and it took a long
the audience, so that the audience individuals, who were creative in time. They became stunning pieces of
would be participants, but also L.I. That sounds really interesting whatever area they were interested in. sculpture.
part of the piece. Some of these I’d like to hear more. I don’t know Change the way things conventionally
performances were big and some if it’s relevant to the interview, but I The day of the tournament we had
work. to race them. We took them to the
were one-to-one. They remind me of would like you to go on.
New York happenings from the 60s L.I. I know what you mean; beach, a very flat and long beautiful
and the Fluxus Movement, much J.B. La Escuela de Arquitectura the teachers wanted you to ask beach. Some of these constructions
before the happenings had started, y Diseño de la Univesidad Católica yourselves if the traditional way was had people inside them, some need to
though. de Valparaiso is an architecture and the best way. Or is there a better way be pushed. They even made beautiful
design school in Chile. I specialised of doing things? marks in the sand.
Because she [Lydia Clark] rejected in Design, but because of the way
the whole art scene and the art the institution was structured we all J.B. Yeah. Can we do it in a L.I. So, how do you use this in your
market, she didn’t really become studied together most of the time. different way…but also before that art today?
famous as such. She was well know paying attention to what we are J.B. I’ve started working as a
and appreciated, but more by artists Differently from other places, we experiencing something and how are
were not taught any practical skills, so painter. I used to sell my work. I had a
and became a university professor in we experiencing it. painting studio. I taught painting and I
Brazil. But it’s only now in 2011 that I can’t design for toffee, really. I have
an eye for it, but I didn’t learn how to L.I. If what you have learnt at earned a living by teaching, but I also
there are retrospectives of her work sold a lot of paintings increasingly
and the academic world is taking an use the basic technical tools. University is what I think you have,
you are interested in having a more well. I always sold well. I had people
interest in her life and work. I think The same applies to the that wanted to support me and they
there was a retrospective at the global understanding of experiences.
architecture department, from its It’s not just about a one-dimensional paid for my paintings. I was selling
Haywards Gallery. foundation the school chose not internationally and shipping paintings
experience…I mean you either paint
When I lived in Chile, I wasn’t really to teach design plans, pupils were or you draw or you sculpt or you make to different places.
aware of this. It wasn’t until I actually encouraged only to draw their ideas. a house. It’s more about everybody I was part of a group that had a stall

número 02
at The London Independent Art Fair. sell those paintings, to be able not to L.I. Yes, tell me about Blank and Blank came out, but if I see something
We formed a group in order to have have interrupted the process. I hated how it is an artwork? too close to what I’m doing, I don’t
access to funding to help us cover that process of constantly having to find it useful. I have to step away from
the cost of having our paintings there. chasing money. I wasn’t taken up by J.B. Blank is art in that it didn’t exist it and concentrate on what I’m doing.
The group lasted for 3 years and every a gallery; that only happens to a few. before. I created it. And I approached
year we had a successful stand in If you are relying on doing your own it as I would have approached a . L.I. Do you think of yourself as a
the big fair in Islington. People would selling, marketing, it’s hard work. painting project. For example, at the Chilean artist living in England or UK
literarily queue to buy our work. And beginning of a painting project I would based artist? How would you define
say things like: ‘If that person isn’t I remember an episode. Once a look for everything I needed first. So, yourself culturally?
going to have, then I’ll have it’. lady paid me 3000 pounds cash. I had I would gather a certain amount of
a carrier bag full of cash on the street! canvases, wood and primal. I would J.B. I don’t know, good question. I
But at some point I just got really She had wanted to buy a painting have to think how thick I wanted the think I am neither of those. Although, I
tired of the whole thing. I could stand because it said “Not For Sale” and in brushes to be and what type of paint still feel socially awkward sometimes,
chasing rich people around. That the end, I said “It’s £ 3000” more as I would be using. I used to make my especially at the school gates
didn’t sit well with me. I felt the work a joke. So, I had to deliver it to her own paint most of the time. But also, I waiting for my daughter. My entire
I was trying to do had something flat. The painting didn’t fit her flat in would think about where the paintings professional career has developed
else behind it. The kind of research I anyway or form. It was full of hunting were going to go. In the same way I here in U.K. But I don’t feel English
did for my paintings involved a lot of stuff and my painting was an abstract started looking for all the components in any shape or form, there are a
work. The model of work just didn’t fit watercolour. I just thought enough. I needed to set up Blank. lot of things that are just not me.
as a formula. I needed people to buy That was when I decided to leave all I understand how things happen
my work in order to be able to afford that behind and I gradually started Another important detail was that professionally. Maybe the “chileaness”
to make more the work. For example, working in another way. There were I wanted a particular ethos to the is in the way I go about things. The
if I was going to have to be in a studio lots of in betweens, but now I run place, organic and shifting in nature. English way of doing things involves
for 3 weeks or 4 weeks at a time to Blank and this is my new art work. I didn’t want to be a director in the a lot of talking about things before
produce the paintings, I needed to traditional sense. I wanted to be doing them. I get impatient with that.
the creative person behind it, not
someone who tells people what to do. L.I. What about your partner she is
As I said before, mine is an organic English?
vision that gets shaped and changes J.B. Poor Sonia, I’m always
18 19 according the events and the people. complaining. “Why do your people do
It seems a bit anarchic, but in my that? And why do your people do this?
head I always have a clear idea of the
general direction in which Blank is L.I. So do you think there is a
going. cultural divide? Has that been positive
or negative?
Lately, Blank has spread from being
an enclave of non commercial and J.B. Yes, as an artist people find
unconventional contemporary artists - me very different. I think the cultural
in an industrial landscape - to opening divide allows me more freedom,
up to the local Portslade community. though. As an outsider, I can
I spent a lot of time choosing those challenge people in a delicate way.
initial 12 Blank Artists. I felt I was I do that in projects. I don’t do that
curating in a way. I decided not to with collaborators. Instead of working
included painters and instead to invite in the English way step by step, I take
performers and installation artists. It a step and then a big jump. But as I
was as if we were working outside the said, a foreign woman I don’t need to
city and stretching it. be harsh to challenge situations.
Now, that’s changed. We are In the same way, when I go back
still non-commercial, but also to Chile I can also be a bit more
unconventionally community challenging there, in a different way,
orientated. because I’m not expected to work as
local people work anymore.
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
Johana Berger specific cultural context from which

número 02
 …Que mañana entrará tiempos es más bien una relación
Article
William Rowe
satisfecha, capulí de obrería, dichosa dialéctica.
de probar que sí sabe, que sí puede
¡CÓMO NO VA A PODER! ¿Hoy seguimos viviendo este
azular y planchar todos los caos. choque del tiempo moderno y
el premoderno? Creo que ya no.

El tiempo de
El planchar, en este poema, es en Es verdad que en ciertos lugares
alguna medida un ritual. Y el traje la mentalidad premoderna con
de ciudad, connota una realidad respecto al tiempo sigue existiendo.

Trilce
desprovista de los rituales de la vida Los miembros de las comunidades
premoderna, realidad en que el orden campesinas se resisten a concebir el
clásico del tiempo (pasado-presente- tiempo en forma de cantidades, sean
futuro) se ha roto. de horas, días, semanas o meses. Al
contrario, lo que para ellos marca el
A primera vista, hay dos maneras tiempo son las estaciones del año
de leer la relación que presenta este agrícola (tiempo de siembra, etc), el
poema entre tiempo andino y tiempo tiempo sagrado de las fiestas, el gasto
moderno. Podríamos pensar que el del trabajo físico y los cambios del
poema afirma la emoción lírica del año y el paisaje. Y esa concepción
amor pre-moderno en contraposición premoderna sigue viva en las palabras
al ambiente de la ciudad para del curandero de la novela Camino
combatir al tiempo moderno a las Huaringas de Dimas Arrieta2,
degradado de esta. De ser así, este curandero que es guardián de la
poema parecería tener un sentido memoria colectiva. Este personaje, al
semejante al “Idilio muerto” de Los referirse a los europeos que llegaron
heraldos negros, en que a la asfixia de en el siglo XVI y a los habitantes de las
“Bizancio” se contrapone la “andina y ciudades, los llama los “Tiempos”3. Sin
dulce Rita”, quien también se asocia embargo, en las sociedades actuales
con el acto de planchar. prevalece cada vez más el tiempo
Son tres los tiempos que nombro que va seccionando el tiempo 20 21 cuantitativo, como en el dicho “el
con este título: i) 1922 ii) El tiempo en cantidades estandarizadas,
que representa o imita Trilce mismo homogéneas. La otra manera de leer Trilce VI tiempo es dinero”.
iii) El tiempo que pasa por dentro tomaría “el traje turbio de injusticia”
de la palabra, incluyendo la palabra Hasta ahí la idea del tiempo que y “todos los caos” como realidades La publicidad y el turismo exhiben
Trilce mismo. El tiempo es cantidad y se expresa en este poema. Pero, ¿ahí que siempre excederán el ritual de este vaciamiento. Hay un video de
calidad. Es aquello que, queramos o acaba el asunto? ¿Se trata sólo de una la mujer que plancha: es decir, que publicidad que se ha estado dando
no, miden los relojes; y es el instante idea del tiempo? ¿Cómo situar esta el énfasis que ponen las mayúsculas últimamente en la televisión en el
singular, no equiparable, que se carga experiencia del tiempo en el tiempo (‘¡CÓMO NO VA A PODER!’) Perú. Habla un señor de unos 50
de vida. En los poemas de Trilce se histórico? Se trata del tiempo de la registra una gran tensión pero no años que ha abandonado una carrera
produce constantemente un conflicto. sociedad industrial capitalista. Vallejo la victoria de la emoción lírica de exitosa para vivir con sus hijos y su
Cito el poema II: ya había trabajado en una hacienda la poesía romántica1. La injusticia mujer en la playa. Nos habla de lo
azucarera –1era forma de producción de la sociedad contemporánea y su bien que le ha ido con esta decisión.
industrial en el Perú –y ya había vivido multiplicidad inenarrable no cederán Y luego sale el nombre del Banco
Tiempo Tiempo a un esquema estético y ético
Mediodía estancado entre relentes. en Lima, que en ese entonces se que patrocina esta información y
transformaba en una sociedad de tipo decimonónico. A fin de cuentas, este escuchamos la frase “el tiempo vale
Bomba aburrida del cuartel achica poema, al igual que el libro entero,
Tiempo tiempo tiempo tiempo. capitalista. Y en este tiempo moderno, más que el dinero”.
deshilachado y arrugado, roto, en nos presenta con la interpenetración
una palabra, se contrasta con otro de ambos tiempos (pre-moderno, Uno no sabe si maravillarse más
Este tiempo subdividido en partes moderno) y no con el triunfo del
iguales se relaciona en este poema tiempo: un tiempo del mundo rural, ante la desfachatez de la mentira
provinciano y andino. En el poema primero, que sería la arcadia o ante la presunta inocencia del
con la cárcel –o sea con el tiempo conservadora, ni el del segundo,
que Vallejo pasó como preso en la VI, hay un tiempo desordenado, el televidente. Todos sabemos que el
del “traje que vestí mañana”, que que significaría la fe en el progreso: tiempo es dinero–hay que ganar
cárcel de Trujillo. Y el tiempo de la es decir, la relación entre ambos
cárcel, el tiempo de la disciplina desordena la secuencia del tiempo que dinero para comprar la casa en la
carcelaria, que es el modelo del fluye lisamente de pasado a futuro, y a
ese desorden se contrasta el acto de 1 La lucha contra la sociedad degra-
tiempo social, va asociado con la
máquina que bombea. No es el fluir la mujer –de Otilia a quien el poema dada, que es poesía del romanticismo, se registra más 2 .
Lima, Ediciones Antares, 1993
plenamente en Vallejo que en los poetas finalmente 3 Ver pp. 67, 92. El maestro curandero se
continuo de un río sino el movimiento llama “mi aquella/ lavandera del románticos (p.ej. Salaverry), pero siendo Vallejo poeta opone a la división del tiempo en la secuencia pasado-
repetitivo de una máquina, máquina alma”. El poema termina: del siglo XX, pasa por esa lucha para llegar a una estética presente-futuro: una tradición prehispánica se da la mano
contemporánea, no para reproducirla tal cual. con la crítica al tiempo moderno.
playa. Es más, en las sociedades capitalista frente al tiempo moderno.
actuales –neoliberales–si no tienes Y creo que Trilce precisamente nos
dinero, no existes. Es decir, quien no puede abrir las puertas a una reflexión
tiene dinero está fuera de lo social. crítica sobre el tiempo. Mejor dicho,
Entonces, que salga de la boca de la lectura de Trilce nos exige pasar
un banco “el tiempo vale más que por la crítica al tiempo.
el dinero” es la gran mentira. Nadie
sabe mejor que los bancos que el Ya volveremos a hablar del poema II
capital, que es del negocio, existe que hace poco cité. Veamos primero
como función del tiempo. ese poema bastante conocido que
empieza con el verso “Tahona estuosa
Entonces, quizás, como suele de aquellos mis bizcochos” (XXIII).
ocurrir con las mentiras, hay un deseo Comienza así:
de creerla: el gran engaño niega la
esclavitud al dinero que vivimos. Tahona estuosa de aquellos mis
O sea, es la negación que atrae bizcochos
–negación del grado en que nuestro pura yema infantil innumerable,
tiempo está dominado por el dinero– madre.
y lo que se niega, en el fondo, es el
hecho contundente que para tener Y, después de mencionar a “las dos
tiempo –tiempo libre para gozarlo– hermanas últimas, / Miguel que ha
hay que tener dinero. Así, ¡sigan muerto”, sigue así:
soñando con la casita en la playa!,
ya que más van a necesitar al banco. En la sala se arriba nos repartías
Quizás habría que añadir que, según de mañana, de tarde, de dual estiba,
Baudelaire, la mirada de la mentira es aquellas ricas hostias de tiempo,
una mirada de aburrimiento. Nos mira para que ahora nos sobrasen
con aburrimiento4. cáscaras de relojes en flexión de
las 24 22 23
Lo que estoy proponiendo es que en puntos parados.
a aquello que Vallejo experimentó
entre 1918 y 1922, se le ha dado, en Esta estrofa, que he citado entera,
nuestra época, otra vuelta de tuerca. se quiebra en ese “para/que”: ahí
Al tiempo premoderno que se perdió, se rompe la lógica de la maduración,
lo ha reemplazado el tiempo-mentira, del desarrollo –de la idea de que
el tiempo espectáculo. El tiempo la finalidad de la vida es llegar a la
congelado y alienado se vende. Así, madurez para así superar la infancia.
el turismo busca consumir el tiempo
del otro. Hace un año más o menos, ¿Por qué? Porque lo que dio
los vecinos de un pequeño pueblo la madre –su cuerpo, su amor,
medieval de la Toscana de Italia se el satisfacer plenamente las
pusieron de acuerdo para vender necesidades de los hijos –aquella
el pueblo entero a una agencia de plenitud, en lugar de desembocar en
turismo alemana. De ese modo los el ahora de la adultez, en una vida
turistas podrían vivir la vida de un plena, redonda, realizada, más bien
pueblito italiano. ¿Qué hicieron los produce un resto que no se realiza.
italianos con la plata? No se sabe, Es decir, en lugar de que el amor de
pero seguramente les pasó por la madre se transforme en la plenitud
la mente la idea de comprar otro del adulto, la promesa cumplida, al
pueblo…para revenderlo. contrario, produce un quiebre, una
escisión en el ser.
¿Se produce todavía en nuestra
época el choque o el rozamiento Vamos a ver, con un poco más
entre el tiempo cualitativo y el tiempo de lentitud, cómo sucede esto en
cuantitativo? Pienso que sí, aunque ya el proceso de la lectura. No cabe
menos en la forma del tiempo pre- duda que los “bizcochos”, la “yema
infantil”, y las “ricas hostias de
4 "L’amour du mensonge"

número 02
tiempo” constituyen un tiempo en el momento en que se compara un lugar en el espacio, dispuesto no es así, “las hostias del tiempo”
cualitativo, que corresponde a la el pan con la hostia en lugar de para él5. Si para Bachelard el espacio producen un exceso, un disturbio.
interioridad del sujeto –a la vida producirse una perfecta equivalencia, siempre nos ofrece un lugar dispuesto Para Blanca Varela, tampoco es
interior. Pero, ¿cómo se expresa digamos una equivalencia simétrica, para recibirnos, ese lugar se produce perfecto el sacrificio de la madre:
este tiempo cualitativo? ¿Cuáles se entromete el tiempo del “ahora”, gracias a la suspensión, por el lo que ella da al dar a luz al hijo es
son sus símbolos? Dirán ustedes tiempo en que las “hostias” sobran, arquetipo (el del hogar sobre todo), la imperfección, lo que le sobra y le
que los símbolos son obvios, que ya es decir, se resisten a integrarse de la temporalidad contemporánea. falta: “tu náusea es mía/ la heredaste
están indicados: es decir, son los en el nivel del significado, más Ese lugar, que reposa en el tejido como heredan los peces la asfixia /
“bizcochos”, la “yema”, las “hostias”; precisamente en la economía del simbólico atemporal, aparece en el y el color de tus ojos / es también
o sea, que estas palabras están en significado. Es por el hecho que el poema XXXIV: “Ya no habrá quien no color de mi ceguera”7.
relación adecuada con el significado. tiempo pasa por la articulación del aguarde, / dispuesto mi lugar, bueno
símbolo (la hostia y sus equivalentes) lo malo.” Y es precisamente “el dolor Si lo que da la madre en el poema
Precisamente eso dicen Marco que los símbolos se desquician, no sin fin / y nuestro haber nacido así de Vallejo se convirtiera en “alimento
Martos y Elsa Villanueva en su libro por ser insuficientes sino por ser sin causa” que acaba con ese lugar espiritual”, no sobraría nada. La
esencial Las palabras de Trilce: ellos excesivos: constituyen un resto que predispuesto para el ser: el dolor y equivalencia se produciría sin resto.
especifican el por qué estos símbolos no puede incluirse: Hay demasiado la falta de sentido constituyen un ¿Cuál es el problema, entonces? Está
funcionan adecuadamente. Cito: de ese tiempo. Al entrometerse la mundo que es el del Heidegger de Ser en que ese pan –el cuerpo– que daba
“El pan está dignificado dentro del forma moderna de la temporalización, y tiempo, mundo al que hemos sido la madre ya era “alimento espiritual”.
contexto de la educación religiosa aquella que todavía vivimos, se “arrojados”, mundo que corresponde Colmaba el ser del niño –y ahora
al comparársele con las hostias”. rompe el tejido simbólico que, antes, a la temporalidad contemporánea.6 no se concilia con el tiempo de los
Pero, al contrario, ¿no es el caso que suministró al sujeto un asidero propio, relojes en que vive el adulto.
Martos y Villanueva tratan de
resolver el problema de esta suma He dicho, la madre daba su cuerpo,
que no tiene solución: según ellos y si esto suena a herejía, creo que es
el pan es “alimento material que exactamente así. “Toma…este es mi
ahora en la madurez se forma cuerpo” son las palabras del evangelio
alimento espiritual”. Si fuera así, y de la misa, esas palabras andan por
¡no habría nada que sobrara! El el fondo de este poema. Si la madre
sustento material de la vida estaría toma el lugar de Cristo, si su cuerpo,
24 25 en perfecto equilibrio con el sustento para con el niño, ocupa el lugar de
espiritual. Y ahí, precisamente, la hostia de la misa, se trataría de un
encontramos la doctrina de la pensamiento herético. Creo que es
Iglesia: la transubstanciación del pan precisamente así. Este poema hace
de la hostia en la carne de Cristo una lectura hereje del evangelio.
es la piedra angular de todas las
equivalencias de materia y espíritu Es decir, en la poesía de Vallejo, se
–es el acto que garantiza el sentido trata más de herejía que de ateísmo.
de la vida material. Sobre esa piedra Y la herejía de Vallejo tiene dos
matriz se erige la adecuación de características: para él, no bastan
los símbolos. Así, en el libro Fin el padre, el hijo y el Espíritu Santo,
desierto de Mario Montalbetti, se hay que incluir a la madre –Dios es
constata que lo que se ha perdido femenino8. Y en segundo lugar, el
con el ahuecamiento de las palabras cristianismo de Vallejo es materialista:
en el mundo contemporáneo, es el espíritu ya está en la materia, y
precisamente el sacramento: “Este es viceversa, no se trata de transformar,
el verso en el que la sangre se vuelve por un acto de fe, la materia
vino y el paraíso metrópoli”. en espíritu. Existe en la poesía
peruana una tradición que ejerce el
Sin embargo, para que el “alimento pensamiento material de lo espiritual.
material” se hubiera convertido Basta mencionar los libros Noche
en “alimento espiritual” requeriría oscura del cuerpo, de Jorge Eduardo
que el sacrificio de la madre fuera Eielson, y Ejercicios materiales de
perfecto, que se convirtiera sin resto Blanca Varela8.
en alimento del adulto. Para Vallejo,
7 Vallejo feminiza la Santa Trinidad en el
poema Una mujer de senos apacibles. Este tipo de herejía
5 Ver El reposo caliente aún de ser (II) se produciría entre las mujeres beatas de la colonia.
6 Casa de cuervos. Canto villano, Mex, FCE, 8 Esa serie incluiría también Las ínsulas
1996, p. 190. extrañas de Westphalen, La mano desasida de Martín

número 02
 El tiempo también es material. En el La última estrofa del poema da otra el vocablo que pertenece al habla: musicales de la poesía modernista,
poema que estamos comentando, se vuelta al asunto: ¡mamá! deja en gran parte de ser melódico, e
da en forma de “cáscaras de relojes incluye el silencio. Y que la semántica
en flexión de las 24 / en puntos Tal la tierra oirá en tus silencios, Y nos lo cobran, cuando, siendo nosotros se zafa de los símbolos reguladores y
parados.” Hay una contradicción Cómo nos van cobrando todos Pequeños entonces, como tú verías, va a la deriva. Todos estos factores se
tensa entre el reloj que da vueltas El alquiler del mundo donde nos dejas No se lo podíamos haber arrebatado relacionan.
por las subdivisiones de las 24 horas Y el valor de aquel pan inacabable. A nadie; cuando tú nos lo diste,
y el reloj parado “en punto”; y otra ¿di, mamá? Ya que, desafortunadamente, no
contradicción entre la idea del reloj ¿Por qué tenemos que pagar “el hay tiempo para abarcar todo esto
que al marcar y flexionar las horas alquiler”, digamos, la hipoteca? El peso de la palabra más íntima, –se requeriría, en realidad, todo
las contiene, y la idea del reloj como ¿Será porque vivimos en la época también nos lleva por el tiempo de un curso– me voy a centrar en dos
cáscara vacía que no contiene nada. del tiempo = dinero? Pero si el decirla, el tiempo que se consume cosas: la relación de los números con
Si la primera contradicción es de tiempo fuera pura y sencillamente al enunciarla. Se produce para la emoción y el tiempo que pasa por
estirpe heracliteana (simultaneidad cuantitativo, en ese caso, ¿por qué el lector una perturbación, un la palabra, es decir, el tiempo que
de stasis y movimiento), la segunda se diría que estamos endeudados? estremecimiento. Porque este transcurre mientras dura el sonido de
es mallarméana (vaciamiento del Creo que el pensamiento de Vallejo tiempo ocupado por la palabra, este la palabra.
símbolo); ambas pertenecen al sería que nos han dado algo –la plena pedazo de duración, salta fuera del
pensamiento dialéctico9. Entonces, satisfacción de las necesidades por tiempo sucesivo. Esa es la hostia: la A primera vista, los números
¿qué es, precisamente, lo que sobra? la madre –que marca una relación duración absoluta. Como relámpago, no tendrían relación alguna con la
¿Las hostias de tiempo o el tiempo cualitativa, emocional, con el tiempo. como corriente eléctrica, el tiempo emoción. Al contrario, serían lo más
del reloj? Propongo que, a fin de Esa sería nuestra relación primaria real pasa por el poema. Se trata frío que puede haber. Sin embargo,
cuentas, cada uno es el resto del otro. con el tiempo. Luego viene el tiempo de una condición extrema a la que los números tienen su equivalencia
de los relojes que se nos impone. El repetidas veces se aproxima el libro. emocional, y eso porque entran
Es decir, en un sentido, lo tiempo de los relojes se impone sobre Y este tiempo no engaña porque en relación con la vida interior
numerado, las horas, minutos y la base de ese tiempo primario, pero precisamente es lo que estaba fuera de la persona. La pura duración
segundos, son un exceso frente nunca llega a llenar ese espacio10, (de la ecuación), es lo que la palabra psíquica, nos explica Bergson –a
al tiempo de la plenitud. Y, en el nunca llega a ser equivalente a él. del padre excluía12. quien evidentemente había leído
otro sentido, dando un giro de Seguimos pagando la deuda por lo Vallejo –esta duración interior es
180° grados, la “yema infantil” es que hemos recibido, se convierte11 en Trilce lleva a cabo una revolución heterogénea, es decir consiste en
“innumerable”, excede la medida de vacío el tiempo que da la madre, lo 26 27
del lenguaje poético que puede el cambio incesante. Obviamente
los números. Tal es así también con convierte a la vez en sustancia que compararse con la música asumimos que los números –las
la imagen de los huesos de la madre, no se puede contener, en algo que no dodecafónica, o sea con la revolución unidades –son idénticos: pero esto
convertidos, en el tiempo presente, encuentra su símbolo adecuado. del lenguaje musical que en esos es así porque los colocamos en un
en “harina”: mismos años estaba llevando a espacio homogéneo cuantitativo. En
Por eso hay que decir que “las cabo Arnold Schoenberg. Los dos el fondo, sin embargo, los números
Hoy que hasta ricas hostias del tiempo” engendran principios más importantes de esa producen una resonancia con la vida
Tus puros huesos estarán harina una escisión en el ser. Entonces música son: utilizar todas las notas, es interior, que es cualitativa; sostiene
Que no habrá en qué amasar… no viene al caso afirmar, como decir, abandonar la escala diatónica, Bergson que esta relación cualitativa
afirma el libro Las palabras de Trilce, evitar las octavas. Y segundo, no es previa a la cuantitativa.
En estos y otros versos del poema, que el pan “al fin del poema se repetir ninguna nota hasta acabar con
la madre excede el tiempo del reloj, transformar en símbolo de la vida todas las 12 de la escala cromática. Se habrán dado cuenta, al leer
excede su economía. Dijo Marx misma”. Al contrario, Trilce viaja por Estas medidas producen una música Trilce, que en este libro aparecen
que en el fondo lo que se explota, la inadecuación de los símbolos. El que no está regida por la melodía muchos números como también la
para crear el capital, es el tiempo Padre no anda por este poema –por y que –esto es lo importante– idea de la numeración. En la mayoría
–el tiempo de los que trabajan, el eso los símbolos (lo simbólico) no ensancha el campo del sonido: al oído de los casos, estos números son
tiempo de los que mueren. El lugar se constituyen adecuadamente. No se le demanda que escuche lo que no extraños porque carecen de sentido.
por excelencia en que el tiempo hay padre que suprima el amor de estaba en la música que existía hasta O no sabemos qué es aquello que
de la explotación se impone es la madre para reemplazarlo con la ese entonces. Por eso se puede decir enumeran, o no sabemos qué relación
la fábrica: así las imágenes de la palabra. que esta música no engaña. podría tener el número en el caso
película “Los tiempos modernos” de dado, con aquello a que se refiere.
Chaplin. Hoy es posible especular Al final del poema, la palabra ¿Cuál es el parecido con Trilce? Vamos a ver un caso en el poema LV.
que el capitalismo tardío, en lugar de misma se torna “hostia del tiempo”: Que el tiempo de Trilce deja de Este poema nos presenta con una
habernos liberado de la fábrica, ha pero ya no la palabra “madre” sino marcarse solo por la métrica de las escena de hospital, con “un enfermo
colocado la fábrica en todas partes. sílabas, y se vuelve extraño, rompe [que] lee la Prensa”, y otro en estado
10 “Hasta en la cruda sombra, hasta en el las secuencias y las regularidades. de debilidad extrema, “cerca a estarlo
gran molar/ cuya encía late en aquel lácteo hoyuelo.”
Adán, y Fin desierto de Mario Montalbetti. 11 Ver los siguientes versos en que el pezón
Que el sonido rebasa las cadencias sepulto”. El poema termina así:
9 Sobre Mallarmé y la dialéctica ver, que da la leche se formó el vacío de la muerte: en hueco
Badiou, Teoría del sujeto. que no podemos llenar. 12 Ver poema He almorzado solo ahora…

número 02
 Ya la tarde pasó diez y seis veces intensidad pasa la arbitrariedad del equivale a producir la justicia14. Creo sólo significa algo y produce una
por el subsuelo empatrullado, azar (“picadura de ají vagoroso”). que esto se puede generalizar de la imagen sonora. También pasa por la
y se está casi ausente Entonces, el tiempo cuantitativo no siguiente manera: a esa encrucijada palabra misma el proceso temporal
en el número de madera amarilla se rescata, no se trasciende, aún en de las matemáticas corresponde de la lectura: el tiempo del afuera,
de la cama que está desocupada el momento de máxima intensidad: la revolución de Schoenberg en la el tiempo real también pasa por la
tanto tiempo esa intensidad está signada por el dos música, y en la poesía, la revolución palabra –como también pasa por la
allá…………………….. que se resiste a ser dos en uno. Lo del lenguaje poético de Trilce. Y, dicho frase “Dí, mamá”.
enfrente. que marca la intensidad del sexo (“la sea de paso, el equivalente en las
antena del sexo”) es “lo que estamos artes plásticas sería el cubismo. Es decir, no sólo estamos frente
Hay un espacio vacío entre las siendo sin saberlo”, aquello que a una idea del tiempo, sino al pasar
palabras allá y enfrente. Por ahora, a no es intensivo, que se escapa a la Y ahora, para finalizar, volvamos del tiempo mismo, tiempo que se
lo que quiero llamar la atención es a subjetividad. Por eso se puede decir a aquel poema II que es el que más subdivide en sus componentes,
lo disparatado del número 16. ¿Por que, en Trilce, el tiempo cualitativo directamente tematiza el tiempo. Se como cuando la “Bomba aburrida del
qué no 17 veces? ¿O una vez? ¿Qué subjetivo, no trasciende: los dos trata de un poema tremendamente cuartel achica”. El libro Las palabras
relación posible podría tener con la tiempos siempre están en tensión, comprimido, condensado, que de Trilce trata la acción de la bomba
tarde? Se puede decir que la tarde interpenetrantes, inextricables, requeriría mucho tiempo para que se simplemente como una idea: “La
pasa, lo cual sería un lugar común, como lo estarán en “Sermón sobre le hiciera un comentario de alguna idea de bomba aburrida amplifica
e inclusive que la tarde pasa por el la muerte”. En este punto, Vallejo manera completo. Sólo voy a decir la del tiempo que transcurre con
subsuelo, ya que el tiempo pasa por difiere de Bergson, para quien la pura dos cosas, pero creo que son las indiferencia”. Sugiero que más que
todo lo material. Pero, ¡diez y seis duración interior no está marcada esenciales. En el libro Las palabras una idea, la bomba nos presenta la
veces!...Hay algo así como un choque, (quemada) por el símbolo13, lo que de Trilce se nos dice: “El primer verso producción industrial del tiempo de
una violencia allí. incluiría a los números. del poema nos arroja a la esfera los relojes: Tiempo al que se opone el
de la temporalidad. La reiteración transcurrir de la duración dentro de la
Creo que esto hay que leerlo de ¿Qué diremos, enconces, de lo del vocablo tiempo señala un lento palabra. Y este segundo tiempo es el
la siguiente manera: Están aquí el innumerable en Trilce si no hay tiempo transcurrir no solamente por el tiempo cualitativo, es la duración de
número como cantidad y también interior absolutamente separable de significado de la palabra, sino también la vida interior.16
el número como calidad-emoción. la numeración? Si bien lo innumerable por la cantidad –duración– de cada
Como cantidad, el incesante pasar consiste del tiempo cualitativo (“pura una de las sílabas”15. La afirmación Como última observación,
de la tarde será equivalente a la yema infantil innumerable”), intensivo, es muy sugerente pero queda corta, quiero sugerir lo siguiente: si los
muerte por la lógica de los números, por otro lado también se relaciona 28 29 porque interpreta la duración de las comentaristas de Trilce suelen
del tiempo numerado: es decir, para con lo que es ajeno al sujeto (“lo sílabas como forma de representación interpretar el tiempo de los poemas
citar otro texto de Vallejo, se trata de que estamos siendo sin saberlo”): del tiempo, a manera de impresión en el marco mimético, es decir, si
“morir del tiempo”. Y, por otro lado, ahí lo innumerable coincide con del lapso del tiempo que se nos va interpretan el lenguaje de Trilce en
está el número que acarrea emoción, lo innombrable. Sin embargo, lo dando en el plano sonoro del poema. clave de representación del tiempo,
el “número de la madera amarilla” innumerable, en Trilce, no es la utopía El supuesto que se maneja es que el y dejan afuera el tiempo interno a la
que ha tomado el lugar del muerto imaginada que se escapa al lenguaje: sonido imita la realidad. Pero como palabra, por algo será. Pienso que
de “la cama…allá…enfrente” –cama es más bien lo real que requiere voy diciendo, creo que el poema es por lo siguiente: que el tiempo
“desocupada tanto tiempo”: aquí, cambiar el lenguaje. va más allá: la palabra tiempo no pase por la palabra constituye un
entonces, el “morir de la vida y no del límite extremo del lenguaje, en que
tiempo”. En realidad los dos sentidos En este respecto, diré, brevemente, el lenguaje se abre a lo que estaba
14 Teoría del sujeto, Parte IV
opuestos se pelean en ambos que los trabajos del filósofo francés, 15 Es notable que la carga heideggeriana
afuera. Llegar a ponernos a nivel de
números: el número que cuantifica el Alain Badiou, enseñan que lo que se de la palabra “arroja” (los seres humanos son arrojados eso, requiere que se den la mano
espacio y aquel otro que toma el lugar escapa a la numeración constituye a un espacio que no está predispuesto para ellos, que tanto la crítica del lenguaje como la
del muerto y por eso vehiculiza otra el resto o el excedente de las no está marcado simbólicamente para que los reciba) crítica del tiempo. ¡Ojalá que lo que
se cancela en la interpretación que se hace del poema,
vez la transubstanciación. matemáticas. Y que la tarea del como cuando se dice que “el reposo caliente aún de
he dicho hoy haya logrado en alguna
pensamiento es inventar conceptos ser… se refiere a lo único positivo dentro del ambiente medida acercarse a esa meta!
El poema XXX, nos coloca frente nuevos capaces de nombrar ese carcelario: el lecho, símbolo de descanso que está por
al número 2: Marca la hora (“dos resto innumerable –mejor dicho, terminarse,“ (p 51) cuando ese verso registra, más bien,
que el ser no constituye un lugar sino un espacio que ha
de la tarde inmoral”) y del número inenumerable. En las matemáticas, sido abandonado. Esto lo anoto no con el afán de hacer
de los sexos (dos). Estos dos no se serían los números imaginarios como una polémica sino para señalar que Las palabras de
tornan uno: “el guante”, la unidad la raíz del -1 (√-1). Y añade Badiou Trilce, probablemente el mejor libro sobre Trilce, muestra
que los podría contener, consiste de que esa tarea del pensamiento, los límites de la lectura que se le hace. A propósito del
Ser y tiempo Heidegger, pienso que se podría afirmar 16 Aquí se da la pelea entre el tiempo
diferencias (“guante de los bordes que en Trilce el ser, al contrario de constituirse por la cuantitativo y el cualitativo, pelea en que reside una
borde a borde”). Por el encuentro futuridad, es más bien un lugar vaciado que en algún parte importante de la fuerza estética de Trilce. Es de
sexual pasa la marca, el estigma, del 13 p.17. Para entender el “yo Fundamental”, momento estuvo ocupado. Ver el poema XXXIII: ‘Haga la notar que para Bergson no hay tal pelea. La duración
tiempo del reloj: “Quemadura del “en el que sucesión implica fusión y organización”, hay cuenta de mi vida / [ . . . ] No será lo que aún no haya interior se ha independizado del tiempo cuantitativo.
que separarlo de “las exigencias del lenguaje”. Gilles venido, sino / lo que ha llegado y ya se ha ido, / sino lo Para Benjamin esta abstracción de la vida interior de la
segundo / en toda la tierna carnecilla Deleuze, El bersonismo, Mexico, Fondo de Cultura que ha llegado y ya se ha ido.’ ¿es decir un tiempo nada historia no es una condición universal sino producto del
del deseo”. Por el momento de más Económica, 1992, p. 17 mesiánico? capitalismo. Ver Essays on Charles Baudelaire.

número 02
 Richard Parker
Article
Spicer and
Lorca, their
utilities

Dear Parker, Poetry Society, the Conservative 30 31

and Unionist Party, the Metropolitan
I’ve now been unavoidably detached Police Service and their standing
from developments in poetry for over armies, and it as impossible for senior
40 years, more than twice as long as management here to maintain a
Lorca had been away when he wrote thorough awareness of our underlings’
me during After Lorca, and while my even most regrettable misprisions
separation from poetry has been as it is for the senior managements
agonised and fruitful for both parties, of those organisations, though I can
I’m nevertheless choked with a happily take full responsibility for
rancorous indifference to your project the uglinesses those unknowns have
here to bring, as I see it, my despised peddled.
works to the use and notice of a
provincial coterie. Who already know In offer of my gushing and
my works. acrimonious and most flattering
enmities I quote, finally, Buster And despite Jack Spicer’s qualified Robin Blaser edited Spicer’s
While it was with some surprise that Keaton: ‘If parity of all things is profession of innocence, his poetry, poetry as The Collected Books
I received the draft of your article, achievable only through entropy, seen in its most perfectly contiguously of Jack Spicer (1975), a title that
which I have amended silently in then speed ye cold still dark snowy disparate, if not most greatly conveys Spicer’s own particular
my ghostly manner, trusting you’ll blankness of the end of the universe. developed, form in After Lorca (1957), manner of poetic organisation, one
have the grace to see a few of my You shan’t catch my unceasingness is both one of aching utility and which considered poems both as
misrepresentations unchallenged ceasing!’ perplexing outrageousness to readers particulars and as elements in a
through to the press, it was also, and writers reading and writing today; flux-like arrangement; a harmonious
naturally, with a knowledge of the Love, both of which are utilities. A satisfying tessellation of inharmonious pieces.
inevitability of your project that I sat and useful book on a number of levels, Spicer’s great mature work is nearly
down to my mischievous corrections Jack After Lorca is also disappointing and all placed in such arrangements;
and elisions. Despite the outward useful in equal measure, as we shall thus the fraudulently inclusive
signs, poetry is as big a business as * discover. collection of ostensible poison-pen
News Corp., News International, the letters in Admonitions (1957), the
refracted/perverted Idylls of the am to translate these translations into
King-style Arthurian cycle of The Holy French (or Pushtu) adding more. Do
Grail (1962) and the double-edged you understand? No. Nobody does."2
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 ‘No poem is intended for the
attack/address on a spurious but reader’3,a fact that did not deter
authentic Lorca, so Admonitions Spicer from directly addressing
takes an hallucinated San Francisco Lorca in all of these poems and
Renaissance to task, and A Book of dedicating all of them to various
Magazine Verse makes its generous potential readers, an action he would
and open offering of poetry with the repeat in Admonitions. Or, rather, the
full knowledge of its pieces’ inevitable fact did deter him, and each poem
rejection, a Trojan attack within a in this volume and Admonitions is
gift. And though Spicer would take more or less errantly, or fraudulently,
this serial poem to greater poetic addressed to a reader whose own
heights with those later collections, reading of the poem may therefore
its machinery is at its finest, or be stimulated into a newly energised
most persistently present, form in reading of a poem that may or may
After Lorca, a book that contains not have been written with that
a dazzling array of organisational person in mind:
strategies – dazzling in both the sense Jack Spicer
of the work’s ability to impress the Each of them is a mirror, dedicated
ready with bright flurries of aesthetic to the person that I particularly want
pleasure, and in the sense of a to look into it. But mirrors can be scene, inserting himself as both writer One of the great advantages of
distraction from a work with dubious arranged. The frightening hall of and reader upon the two arms of the this ramshackle Lorca/not-Lorca
intent, perhaps of dubious quality. mirrors in a fun house is universal poetic syllogism. arrangement is that it has the
beyond each particular reflection. […] capacity to Lorca-ise elements of the
And it is, with its plies over plies Mirror makers know the secret – one 32 33 Thus this ostensible translation book that might not have seemed
of freely exposed fraudulence, a does not make a mirror to resemble from After Lorca: to be directly related to the Spanish
disquisition on translation (in poems a person, one brings a person to the poet’s work, a utility that functions
and in letters, working together and mirror4. Aquatic Park in a related manner to the miscreant
against each other).1 Spicer to Blaser: dedications of his poems. Such is
If After Lorca is Spicer’s Homage to A Translation for Jack Spicer the marvelousness of this technique
"Since school’s been out (for Sextus Propertius5 then Admonitions that those poems that are, of all the
me forever) I’ve been ignoring my is his Mauberley – a definition of A green boat poems in the book, most clearly
unemployment and translating and living within of an ironically Fishing in blue water not translations of Lorca become,
Lorca… I enclose my eight latest distanced ‘scene’ – the dedications or at least can seem to become,
‘translations.’ Transformations might that dominate that volume, and The gulls circle the pier the poems that tread closest to
be a better word. Several are originals which Spicer gives a strategic utility, Calling their hunger the Spaniard’s work (causing the
and most of the rest change the poem stating that through them ‘at least unwary Robert Duncan to stumble,
vitally. I can’t seem to make anybody you assure yourself of one reader’,6 A wind rises from the west as Spicer uncharitably points out
understand this or what I’m doing. are here pre-figured, and, like The Like the passing of desire to Blaser). At the outset this poem
They look blank or ask what the Tower of Babel, Spicer’s ‘detective’ immediately announces its double
Spanish is for a word that isn’t in the novel, and Admonitions, the volume, Two boys play on the beach nature in its title and its dedication;
Spanish or praise (like Duncan did) which both addresses and includes Laughing it is named for Aquatic Park, the area
an original poem as typically Lorca. all those addressees, is in itself an near the northernmost end of San
What I am trying to do id establish a enaction of a ‘scene’. In both volumes Their gangling legs cast shadows Francisco’s peninsular, where Spicer
tradition. When I’m through (although the poem that Spicer addresses to On the wet sand would listen to the baseball on his
I’m sure no one will ever publish himself offers a microcosm of the portable radio in the afternoons and
them) I’d like someone as good as I Then, hold court, while the dedicatee is
2 June 1957, Poet Be Like God, p. 105. Sprawling in the boat Spicer himself. Both the locale and
3 Walter Benjamin, The Task of the Transla-
1 Clayton Eshleman has provided the tor, Selected Writings Volume 1, p. 253. the poem’s central personage are out
most useful account of the mechanics of After Lorca, 4 Foreword to Admonitions, My Vocabulary A beautiful black fish.6 of Lorca’s reach, then, the Spanish
identifying which poems are translations an which are did this to me, p. 157. poet having died in 1937 and having
not, and the extent of Spicer’s traductory waywardness in 5 Spicer himself makes this link, writing to 6 My vocabulary did this to me, p. 131.
The Lorca Working, boundary 2, Vol. 6, No. 1, Jack Spicer Robin Blaser ‘I can see why Pound got so angry at the It is translated into Spanish by Jessica Pujol i Duran
penetrated no further west across the
(Autumn, 1977), pp. 31-50 reaction to his “Propertius.”’ [Poet Be Like God, p. 105.] elsewhere in this publication. American continent than New York

número 02
 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 *
City. At the same time, however, here their shadows perhaps mixing the the translation of Lorca’s double-
entendres. Spicer’s amendments of Not for one moment, beautiful old
Spicer cleaves closest to his version verb ‘dangling’ with, in British English Walt Whitman,
of the bare-bones lyric of Lorca (the at least, the more usual adjective Lorca treat the source text freely, but
‘gangly’. This brief moment of 34 35 not to such an extent that it might be
poet of a Hispano-Imagist ‘Cantar Have I stopped seeing your beard
sin carne lírica’7), and strays furthest linguistic instability, which of course termed a ‘free-translation’: Clayton full of butterflies
from his own typical garrulous, surreal further underlines this translation’s Eshleman writes that although ‘at
small-talk. The poem resembles status as pseudo-translation, comes points Spicer considerably distorts Or your shoulders of corduroy worn
middle-period Lorca in a manner at a crucial moment in the poem this complex and very tricky Lorca thin by the moon
that seems almost pastiche; the as the observed boys cavort on the poem, after all is said and done, his is
poem containing one central image, beach — the indeterminacy might by far the best version to date.’9 Here Or your muscles of a virgin Apollo
only glancingly tinged by narrative be said to enact the moment of are parallel passages in Lorca’s and
at its conclusion and with a bare homosexual desire that flashes Spicer’s versions: Or your voice like a column of
minimum of poetic fuss and clutter; across this section of the poem: ashes.
none of the unsettlingly spiteful distracted from the green fishing boat, Ni un solo momento, viejo hermoso
changes of register and address we the observer-narrator’s attention is Walt Whitman, Ancient and beautiful as the fog.
find elsewhere in Spicer — including turned to the playing adolescents;
in some pieces elsewhere in After the brief and tender moment of he dejado de ver tu barba llena de You gave a cry like a bird
Lorca — and little else that announces desirous confusion that ensues entails mariposas,
itself stylistically or that presents the the ‘gangling’, before attention is, With his prick pierced through by
reader with recourse to exegetical perhaps just a touch shamefacedly, ni tus hombros de pana gastados a needle
works or meditation beyond that of returned to the fishing boat and the por la luna,
quietly satisfied estival observation. violent capture of that ‘beautiful black Enemy of satyrs
fish’; perhaps a more ominous, and ni tus muslos de Apolo virginal
The only word that presents a hint
of a cross-current to this general typically Spicerian, miming of the Enemy of the grape
queer sexuality. This combination of ni tu voz como una columna de
tranquillity is the somewhat unusual ceniza;
‘gangling’; an adjective that suitably the echt Imagist presentation of an And lover of bodies under rough
describes the observed teenagers’ ‘intellectual and emotional complex in cloth.
anciano hermoso como la niebla,
legs but that, with its deceptive ‘-ing’, an instant of time’8 with an occulted
suggests a continuous verb form, or a Not for one moment, tight-cocked
que gemías igual que un pájaro beauty,
gerund; adding movement to the boys,
8 Ezra Pound, A Few Don’ts By an Imagiste,
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/ 9 The Lorca Working, boundary 2, Vol. 6, No.
7 Federico García Lorca, Selected Poems, p. 19. article/335 1, Jack Spicer (Autumn, 1977), p. 38. 10 Selected Poems, p. 230.

número 02
 Who in mountains of coal, an imagery characteristically his own; that would cease to function with pieces be, finally) into poems, he mimes their
advertisements, and railroads one developed through that crucial missing or isolated within magazines objecthood, using this capacity – their
conjunction of European surrealism and (hence the failure written into the mimetic function; that function perhaps
Had dreamed of being a river and of Poundian Imagism. The last of these submissions of Book of Magazine Verse furthest from the differentiated ‘real’
sleeping like one strands is, of course, also indebted to [1965]) or anthologies: the ‘serial poem, object – to both hail and discredit their
Whitman; as for Pound, overbearingly in the first place, has the book as its unit objectness. Thus Spicer makes poems
With a particular comrade, one who in his predecessor’s image; ‘It was you — as an individual poem has a poem as into objects; quite undoing his project.
could put in your bosom that broke the new wood, / Now is a its unit, the actual poem that you write at Or does the failed mimesis here become,
time for carving. / We have one sap and the actual time, the single poem.’17 The in its failure, the mute object that it
The young pain of an ignorant one root — / Let there be commerce integrity of this machine and its units aspires to imitate? And thus continues
leopard.11 between us.’14 That confused inheritance, must come from without, as After Lorca through aesthetic eternity flicking itself
one of the most notorious in the history demonstrates throughout: on and off; a machine constructed with
Spicer is somewhat more robust of twentieth-century American letters, is the single function of switching itself,
in his sexual language; thus Lorca’s one of great difficulty for the Poundian And you have to go into a serial poem once charged by the watchful manus ex
‘hermosura viril’ becomes the balder but unPoundian poets of the Berkeley not knowing what the hell you’re doing. machina, off?19
‘tight-cocked beauty’; the bird’s ‘sexo and San Francisco Renaissances to That’s the first thing. You have to be
atravesado’ becomes an unlikely avoid. Thus another utility in Lorca tricked into it. It has to be some path that *
‘prick pierced through by a needle’12; for Spicer and for later Americans — you’ve never seen on a map before and
the conjunction of needle prick and including, most prominently, Deep so forth.18 Finally, Pound also linked the practice
prick making Lorca’s painful image of Image poets Jerome Rothenberg and of Imagism to translation: ‘Translation
homosexual congress even clearer Robert Kelly, who appropriated Lorca’s Spicer comes close to acknowledging is likewise good training, if you find
in Spicer. Eshleman calls ‘Oda a Walt cante jondo to provide the context for the utopian nature of his serial technique that your original matter “wobbles”
Whitman’ ‘Lorca’s most self-conflictive an unPoundian, and perhaps rather here; while the techniques of After Lorca when you try to rewrite it. The meaning
single poem’13 and suggests that the late off the mark, cisatlantic Imagism.15 insist upon the abrogation of the writerly of the poem to be translated can not
complex of attraction and disgust with Whitman is digested by Pound and ego, the volume is of course a muscular “wobble.”’20 But these translations, and
which Lorca approaches Whitman and redigested by Lorca before reappearing mastering of Lorca, of the scene, of all the hallucinated poems they translate,
his own sexuality is what draws Spicer in the unPoundian American poetry of of the serial poem’s elements. Thus are all in the ‘wobble’; a self-righting,
to the poem, and the strange, implicit poets like Spicer, Kelly and Rothenberg Spicer gives by ceding prime billing to productive wobble, a gomboc.21 O
sexual violence of ‘Aquatic Park’ is — a provenance made possible by the the Spaniard, by humbly repeating the to have trod the world in the world
also present in ‘Ode to Walt Whitman’: retriangulation of this relatively faithful 36 37 rubric ‘translation’ throughout, where Mesolithic, the poets dialectical and
the shorter poem, not coincidentally, translation as it appears in After Lorca; appropriate and where not, and by troubled/untroubled. And in the far-off
immediately follows this translation in where Lorca had addressed Whitman as gifting each element of the series to coming era to tread again among the
After Lorca. an inspirational queer poetic model, here friends and associates from his poetic lowdrooping ferns, the highreaching
the same poem becomes a reclaiming scene. Simultaneously, Spicer takes; hymens of lush and foreign great
This conscious strengthening of and a realignment because of Spicer’s he confronts Lorca through fantastical orchids, will you plan and execute
Lorca’s imagery is a matter of degree, very different context; Whitman is and fraudulent letters, he ventriloquises artworks dialectically again?
and adds no new images or meanings reconfigured as a less modernist, more his forebear, brashly claiming Lorca’s
to the text; the new valences that Spicer queer poet in a likely far more efficient work for his own and vice versa, and as
contributes to ‘Oda a Walt Whitman’ manner through this translation than if much as he celebrates his friend with
come instead because of the context Spicer had attempted the task directly. those dedications he also implicates and
of After Lorca. In this poem, a central denounces them.
text in Lorca’s provenance of Poeta *
en Nueva York, the poet argues for a And thus After Lorca debunks and
direct connection between his Spain At one stage Spicer addresses Lorca insists upon its various provenances,
and Whitman’s America, choosing to with the assertion that he ‘would like both backwards in terms of source
ape Whitman’s long line and expansive, to make poems out of real objects’16, a material and forward to its complicatedly
list-like construction, while retaining, statement that illuminates his strange fraudulent set of dedicatees. And within
as in the image of the pinioned bird, practice throughout After Lorca; a Spicer’s poems it is Lorca’s post-Imagist
poem/sequence that does much thirst for the surrealist-particular that is
to concentrate our mind upon the the poems’ most consistent stylistic trait,
11 My vocabulary did this to me, p. 127.
12 No cocks for cocks: ‘Most male birds particulars of poetic objecthood. Thus a method as indebted to the Berkeley
(e.g., roosters and turkeys) have a cloaca (also present the book form insists upon itself; the Renaissance’s Poundian-Objectivist
on the female), but not a penis. Among bird species with poems all constituent parts of a machine inheritance as it is directly received from
a penis are paleognathes (tinamous and ratites), Anatidae Lorca. But; he of course fails to make 19 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul9jq
(ducks, geese and swans), and a very few other species qVzMWk&feature=related
(such as flamingos).’ [From Wikipedia; perhaps here 14 Poems & Translations, p. 269. any ‘real objects’ (whatever those might 20 Ezra Pound, A Few Don’ts By an Imagiste,
Spicer replaces Lorca’s cockless cock with the more 15 See Leslie Ullman’s Deep Imagists: The http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/
flagrant bepenised flamingo.] Subconscious as Medium. http://www.colby.edu/ article/335
13 The Lorca Working, boundary 2, Vol. 6, personal/i/isadoff/cap/Ullman.doc 17 The House that Jack Built, p. 52. 21 http://www.youtube.com/
No. 1, Jack Spicer (Autumn, 1977), p. 47. 16 My vocabulary did this to me, p. 133. 18 The House that Jack Built, p. 52. watch?v=pn811yIALPw

número 02
Short story
David Roas

Das
Kapital
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

Overbooked. The lips of the lady instructions of the kind employee. I pass
attending me at the Swiss Air counter all the checkpoints with no difficulties,
just pronounced the feared word. The I get close to the company’s counter
one time I get to the airport with plenty and, after explaining my problem to the
of time, it turns out that the plane is two people who attend me, they ask me
already full. The employee, very kind, to sit down and wait. Apparently, I am
apologises (Désolés, monsieur), gives not the only one with such a problem.
me a ticket to check-in with no seat A couple stare at me, smiling, as if they
assigned and asks me to go to gate A-8, were saying Yes, the same happened
where her colleagues will try to sort to us. I open my backpack, take a book
out the problem. I know I should trust and get immersed in reading as an
Helvetic efficiency, but, given my natural entertainment for the waiting.
pessimism, something inside warns me
that the day will not bring me any good. After a time that seems eternal, one
of the Swiss Air employees that had
I set aside those bad feelings and attended me comes and gives me a
head towards gate A-8 following the check-in ticket. But when I revise it, I
 Semitic faces around me, they’re giving our hostess. As if I were a child caught
them the plane on a plate; but my fears at a prank, she pulls an angry face of
are unfounded). reproach, takes my hand and, after
delicately closing the curtain, takes me
I get up and go to the toilet. Before to my seat.
going back to my seat, I have the
irrepressible temptation of looking at Before sitting I ask her if she can bring
the other side of the curtain that the me a whisky. Without uttering a word,
hostess, as usual, has drawn after taking she takes the bottle from the metal
off to isolate the first class area (an trolley, serves me a generous quantity of
act that in my previous flights I always scotch and gives me the glass with a big,
perceived, from my second class seat, delicious and sedative smile.
as an insult). But my curiosity is not
motivated because now I consider Sprawled on my grey leather seat, I let
myself –circumstantially– superior to the myself become intoxicated with the taste
other passengers from that side of the of the malt and pretend to think about
plane, but for a question of perspective. the revolution.
In other words, to experience what can
be seen from this side of the curtain
border, light but insurmountable.

I move the curtain a bit and I

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
40 41 pray, some shout, the crew, sitting at the
end of the aircraft, cannot repress their
panic… a heavy shaking open some of
receive the second surprise of the day, a wide smile, (their usual blue uniform the compartments and the suitcases
thus they have assigned me a seat in seems more sober and elegant than fall, objects, clothes, over the horrified
first-class. There is no doubt that it is a ever). A deceptive thought flourishes heads of the passengers.
mistake, so I’m swift to communicate to in my mind: now I am sure she will
the employees of Swiss Air, who, without say they cannot give me any of those But I do not feel anything. I look
abandoning their kindness, although things because I have not paid for the behind and I realise that in the first
with certain sarcastic complaisance, say right ticket. I am mistaken (again), and I class everything is as calm as the start:
I should not worry, it’s not a confusion, receive, grateful, the same presents as my companions have finished their
it is usual to move a second-class the rest of my companions. After eating dinner and some have started reading,
passenger (said like it’s awful) to first. a chocolate, I open the water container. others chat slowly, some even snooze,
It is delicious. First class water, I think, meanwhile the hostess serves coffee
When I get in the plane I cannot doing an easy joke. with her placid smile.
repress a shiver. A new world (yes, I
confess, it is my first time) opens before The plane takes off comfortably, I stick my head through the curtain
me. Nervous as a child on Christmas neatly. In a few minutes, it stabilises again and I see the same hair-rising
Eve, I head towards the seat they and the kind hostess from before starts scene. The passengers are still shouting,
assigned me: there waits for me an serving dinner. More surprises: the trout many crying hysterically, a woman hugs
enormous grey leather seat where I was exquisite, the wine a marvellous her baby desperately. The turbulence is
sprawl with a slight grunt of pleasure. I Mosela (250 cc.), the chocolate so violent that I sense the plane will not
check, almost in tears, that I can stretch dessert sublime (the hostess, seeing be able to save them.
my legs with complete comfort. my enjoyment, brings me another
plate, winking an eye), even the coffee Scared, I almost say something to
Before take off, a hostess gives is excellent… And all with unexpected the guy siting closer to me when I feel
newspapers, chocolates and water with metal cutlery (I look, surreptitiously, for 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
like a half-crazed weaver of tweed. Look at those lizards – mini-
Greguerías
crocodiles
Six is the only number panting like heart patients.
After keen nights all the puddles expecting a baby. Trying to make out the quietest
look cauterized. waves of all:
listening to this ancient radio’s Our ancestors taught themselves to
The blind man carefully angles blood transfusion. live one-handed
Withered leaves wait for rain his white stick speaking on their clunky
to infuse autumn tea. as if taking the telephones.
temperature The cock’s comb? God’s tailor
of our cool indifference. just ran it up from remnants.
Grains in the egg-timer are The rocking chair was born for
pouring you this:
a nice cup of sand. 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.
He used to stare Our little son’s ears
at the blank eyes the gull’s so perfectly shaped
46 47
of his nails. wings’ Good morning, wisps of cloud – for holding a pencil –
oars God’s beard-trimmings.
let’s apprentice him to a joiner.
Where have all the dead gone?
Dunno. My map has blue and red After helping a blind person across Dandy pianist donning
veins. the street we find the keys’ fine- X is the alphabet’s
ourselves fingered gloves deckchair
a bit
Night peeps at day blind and confused.
through a horse’s eyes. 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
Why the tears? Because, my falling on their all-weather gear. starts: a fancy S
darling, this is
the time of our lives.
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. yir tears’ll Tony Lopez
hing aroon lang enuff tae string a
necklace.
Good shot When You Wish . . .
Year by year the bow
of summer fires off flights of Broon eyes ayways say come in
swallows at our hearts. 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
Space
brand name moulded in negative.
In the sky’s graveyard In the wean’s schuil bag, wan blunt
She leans back and shuts her eyes
the moon’s the oldest tombstone. pencil in silky excremental colours –
Can’t quite … read … the date. 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.
Dead stop And the first sign of this anxiety
Listen. Lift it up There’s nae consultants in the is one among the applications
to your ear. Shake. Still nothing Royal to the hardship fund,
from the skull’s stopped clock. for whit you’ve got: days on end like this
48 49 might as well stay in bed.
idiobloodysyncrasy.

Rouge shadows the cheek bone

Glesca greguerías
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,
Who’s that in yir shiny black Selección 1940-1952. Argentina:
Colleción Austral, 1952. runs a few steps and slows at risk.
piana’s mirror? Little white leather boots and mini skirt.
Music, oan a dreich night, dreepin
at yir door. Lock up when no-one’s about
to try on the too-small jeans.
Who right away lies on the bed
Loch Katrine watter’s loast its when the visitor enters
memory, a print by Patrick Proctor
that’s how it ayways rins oot cauld called My Gardenia.
Slight folds on the lip skin
an clear.
stand proud of the surface
tissue suffused to smoothness
of just-solid emotion
An dinnae bother greetin – nane o
moulded in a block of scent

número 02
to give him the staggers nicotine gum, flavoured liquid bulk
like oysters ripped open. of seaweed glue and apple fibre.
Spots of caviar on soured cream.
Dried porcini soaked overnight. On the woodpath where oxlips peep
Will you or will you not give in? a runner passes at the edge of vision.
Some kind of thin fabric leggings
The body image goes round stomach tucked, looks like nothing at all.
from adverts to street gaze Part of the lips removed
up the seams woven into nylon. or sewn together with a tube or reed
I am an emergent formation inserted to ease the flow of fluids.
inside this cellulite monster where wires applied to fix the jaws
intake instantly becomes body after surgery only liquid food
and must be paid back in privacy through a tube there inserted
leaning on perfect white tiles. and opened at the time of marriage
with a knife, fewer relapses
She walks and turns and walks some more, from this new treatment regime.
sees on whom the longing gaze
bestows a special glow; A man in ear-muffs and overalls
the slim magic of sleeping beauty strims cow parsley where it shades
wrapped in furs, touched with snow. bluebells and snakeshead fritillaries
The light gait goes ahead 50 51 in the reconstructed wildflower meadow.
on a ribbon of flagstones tap tap tap tap. Nylon chord rips through lush and juicy stalks
A typist works late, goes Network South East composing a self-sown woodland glade
in a class of her own, home in fear with an adroit surgical motion,
lays out food in microwave containers – leaving a whiff of petrol on the breeze.
as any father who has a daughter Starving faces in the compound watch
fears the perfidious and drunken monster multi-ethnic commercials on TV
confined into this rock, prevented, the perfect remodelled features on screen,
peopled else this isle with lookalikes. relief grain sacks piled at the quayside
Thus they waited in the garden a convoy of burnt-out trucks on the road.
under the loose vine, secretly,
fearing the apeface in the mirror. Who says that white means innocent?
Sugar and vanilla a Spanish idea
So was I then transfixed who kept the secret a hundred years
in amazement by a flowering cherry taken at the court of Montezuma.
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

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 Jack Spicer
A perdut sos uèlhs
Raubats a la vèsta d’un soldat.
Tres gojats son venguts Aquatic Park
Qu’an escampat sas tripas pel sòl
Per i prene qualque dròlla mal pintrada.
Una traducción para Jack Spicer
Privat de son còs de seda saura,
Una barca verde
L’espaurugal
Pescando en el agua azul
Fa de sòmis descabestrats English
Que desvarian los ausèls. 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
Català Without his body of golden silk
The scarecrow
Entonces,
Dreams ungovernable dreams
El Rei de Seda Rossa Tumbándose en la barca
That bewilder the birds.
Enganya l’ocellada i tuteja el vent. Un precioso pez negro.
Arborat en l’herba salvatge, tr. James Thomas
Ha perdut els ulls
Robats del vestit d’un soldat.
Han vingut tres xicots tr. Jessica Pujol
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.
From Moon Shadows : (Aurélia Lassaque, Ombras
de luna – Ombres de Lune, Nîmes, éd. de la
tr. Laia Noguera. Margeride, 1ère éd. 2009, 2ème éd. 2010).

número 02
Amy De’Ath

Three Poems

El cristal alto
Eres el cristal frente. Hay
de Poemas para pescetarianos
más claro, solitario una diferencia entre
y alto, tú y yo
y eres libre, una buena razón para
y te veo pálido, Sé que el mundo es calamidades, lugar
intercambiar saliva, o para
más pálido que un montón que unos monos obstinados llamaron casa
que te describas
de chicas jóvenes fregando, hace tiempo, al comienzo de la vida,
a ti mismo desde
condensándose al máximo en la esquina de un cojín de Rectory Road
allí y entonces
en una lágrima inmensa, te alejes
eres el anuncio cuando cocinar pescado requería
rápidamente
del cristal mucho tiempo. Sé que el mundo se enlentece
Sí, pero
del que bebes, hasta que me adentro en ti, sé que las hormigas
no tienes que hacerlo,
es este tienen respuestas, ya me convenciste de ello
se nos viene encima
el cristal el niño robusto
del que bebes, y de su forma ingrata de hablar a los niños.
de la primavera 58 59
es este ese cristal, Sé que el mundo es calamares, y me pregunto
y está a punto de vaciar
te preocupan los años ¿por qué digo que las barritas de merluza son mías?
sus cálculos en
el día Oh Cenicientas, sintonizo con vuestra cara mojada,
nuestras cabezas
en que se te comieron y decide que estamos bien
en francés, el mito huele rancio pero me recuerda a los langostinos
para seguir viviendo
del volcán social Benjamin, ya sé: acrimonia en un tiempo en que
si queremos, la esperanza
siendo una chica bandas de los noventa del tipo Cotton Eye Joe
pende del aire entre bloques,
concibes la felicidad imagino que fueron lo más parecido que tuvimos
madre bendita de la nieve
como un pajarito te echo de menos-
o un globo a un oráculo, quiero decir que conozco
la altitud de las abejas, pañuelo
sólo a nuestro alcance- el hondo hervidero del amor, las migas de la fritura
alto una riqueza, lo sé,
algunos pájaros lo más preciado, millonésimo candidato,
yo también
seguirán aquí estaré allí además de mi bolso de almeja y un saco de espinas.
cuando haya muerto. en el cristal
hay tanta tr. Jessica Pujol
Me gustaría riqueza.
desligar un par de climas
y lo hago,
resbalando por los charcos tr. Jessica Pujol
de sudor de tu

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? Situació agreujant
Són taques solars. Has dormit al sol
Igual que una tempesta, va dir, els colors trenats
més temps que l’esfinx, i no ets qui en surt més ben parat.
em banyen i no em serveixen de res. O iqual que aquell
Entra. I em va semblar que una ombra cobria la porta,
que, en un banquet, no menja res, perquè no sap escollir
però era només ella que arribava per tornar-me a demanar
entre els plats fumejants. Aquesta mà tallada
si entrava, i em deia que, si no, no tingués pressa.
defensa la vida i la llibertat de vagar per on vulgui,
per l’est o per l’oest, pel nord o pel sud, sempre
La lluentor de la nit s’imposa. Una lluna pàl·lida i cistersense camina un estrany al meu costat. Ai, estacions,
s’ha enfilat al bell mig del cel, instal·lada, cabines, chaleur, curanderos amb barret negre
finalment compromesa amb això de la fosca. als afores d’alguna festa rural,
I sorgeix un sospir de totes les coses petites del món, el nom que eviteu i no dieu mai és el meu, el meu!
els llibres, el paper, els lligacames vells i els botons dels calçotets llargs Algun dia em queixaré de com n’estic de cansat
guardats en alguna capsa de cartró, i totes les versions per culpa vostra, però mentrestant el passeig
més baixes de ciutats aplanades sota la nit que tot ho iguala. continua. Tothom està llest per sortir,
L’estiu exigeix i s’emporta massa coses, segons sembla. I és que què més tenim?
però la nit —la reservada, la reticent— dóna més del que s’enduu. Els jocs anuals? Sí, hi ha ocasions
per als uniformes blancs i per a un llenguatge especial
mantingut en sectet davant dels altres. Tallen
66 67
les llimes tal com cal. Tot això bé que ho sé
tr. Melcion Mateu 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: Dirceu Villa
“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. cefalópode
“Este vento é retido em cortinas de gaze...”
Nenhum vento é o do rei... leio que o polvo gigante é silencioso,
  fluindo sem ossos em noite profunda;
Os cameleiros sentam-se na volta da escada, sem corpo: cabeça e tentáculos só.
Miram Ecbátana de ruas planejadas, hectocótilo, o seu sexo imóvel;
“Danaë! Danaë! & comer, um plano de lentas ventosas:
alcança, então prende, consome e se move.
Que vento é o do rei? produz uma tinta e escreve com ela
Fumaça se apega à corrente, arabescos ilegíveis no oceano,
Os pessegueiros espalham folhas radiantes na água, água que os esquece quando estão impressos
O som flutua na névoa vespertina, [se diz: rapida scribere oportet aqua]
            A barca arranha o vau, na melancólica tinta que o camufla.
Vigas douradas sobre a água negra, também os zoólogos comem sua carne?
            Três passos num espaço aberto, — imenso, mas sem corpo, o mole covarde
Pilares de pedra cinzenta à frente... escreve apenas quando foge ao que não sabe.
  pegajoso, e o que expele suja o azul.
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, cephalopod
Cabestan, Tereu,
            E tens o coração de Cabestan no prato, 70 71 i read the giant octopus is silent,
Vidal, ou Ecbátana, na torre dourada em Ecbátana boneless flowing in deep deep night;
Deita-se a noiva do deus, deita-se sempre, para a chuva dourada. bodiless too: head and tentacles only.
No Garonne. “Saave!” hectocotylus, its unmoving sex;
O Garonne é espesso como tinta, & eating is a plan of sluggish suckers:
Procissão, — “Et sa’ave, sa’ave, sa’ave Regina!” — it reaches it, then grabs it, gorges it and then moves.
Se move como um verme na multidão. it makes an ink and writes with it
Adige, filme esguio de imagens, illegible arabesques in the ocean,
Através do Adige, de Stefano, Madonna in hortulo, water that forgets’em when already printed
Como Cavalcanti a viu. [we say: rapida scribere oportet aqua]
            O calcanhar do Centauro fincado na lama. by its camouflaging melancholy ink.
E nos sentamos aqui... zoologists would also eat its flesh?
            lá na arena... — 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

número 02
72 73

número 02
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.

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 Lorenza Ippolito evasió (2004), Incendi (2005), No et puc dir res (2007), Els llops (2009), Triomf (2009), L’U (2010) i
Born in Johannesbourg (South Africa) in 1979, she is a fine art photographer based in Brighton, Parets (2011). Ha gravat el disc Carboncle amb el violista de roda Adrià Grandia, amb qui ha creat
working out of the Blank Studios, and on behalf of Fabrica Art Gallery, and the organiser of Armchair diversos espectacles de música i poesia, i és guitarra solista en el grup de thrash Red for more, amb
Critics. She completed an MA in Photography at Brighton University in 2007, having already el qual ha gravat la maqueta Red for more.
obtained a degree in Fine Art in Italy. Her work is concerned with topics relating to cross cultural Mazal Oaknin
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. 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,
Elizabeth James el estado de Nueva York y París, Mazal se instaló en Londres en 2007 con una licenciatura en
lizabeth James is a 'resting' poet (Base to Carry, Barque Press, 2003) and a librarian at the Traducción, un máster en ELE y bastante experiencia (y paciencia) como profesora de español.
Victoria & Albert Museum, London. 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
Aurélia Lassaque trabaja, estudia y se divierte. No ve la hora de terminar su tesis en 'Women's Literature and Public
Born in 1983, Aurélia Lassaque is a poet in both the French and Occitan languages. She is keenly Reception' (UCL).
interested in the relationship between poetry and the visual arts and has collaborated with a number Richard Parker
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 Richard Parker was born in 1978 and had his D.Phil. conferred upon him in the summer of 2010
have been translated into Catalan, Italian, English, Albanian and Arabic, and have been published for a dissertation on the work of Louis Zukofsky and Ezra Pound. He’s also published books of
in various magazines and anthologies. In 2010 she was responsible for the artistic direction of the poetry, including China and from The Mountain of California… in the summer of 2010. He’s the
Festival of European and Mediterranean Minority Literatures (organized in Italy). In 2011 she is in editor and printer of the Crater pamphlet series, which is available at www.craterpress.co.uk.
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 Jessica Pujol i Duran
Cinquena Sason (Letras d’oc, 2006), Ombras de Luna / Ombres de Lune (Éditions de la Margeride, Jessica Pujol i Duran was born in Barcelona in 1982 and is currently living in London, though
1st 2009, 2nd 2010), E t’entornes pas / Et ne te retourne pas, (Éditions de la Margeride, 2010), Lo her home is Mataró in tropical Maresme. In London she is working on a Ph.D. on Julio Cortázar
sòmi d’Euridícia – le rêve d’Eurydice, (Éditions les Aresquiers, février 2011) ; Lo sòmi d’Orfèu – le and experimental writing in the 1960s at UCL. She is also a poet and has written and translated
rêve d’Orphée (Éditions les Aresquiers, juillet 2011) ; Solstici lo bram de Janus – Solstice, le brame de extensively in Catalan and Spanish. Her first book in English, Now Worry., is forthcoming from
Janus (to be published by Éditions Jacques Brémond, Autumn 2011). Department Press.
Tony Lopez Roberta Quance
Tony Lopez is an English poet best known for his book False Memory (The Figures, 1996) a Roberta Ann Quance was born in Canandaigua, New York in 1950 and received her Ph.D. in
political poem composed in multiple registers of public language. His most recent poetry publication 78 79 Romance Studies at Cornell University in 1982. She is at present living in Belfast, where she is a
is Only More So (University of New Orleans Press, 2011), the latest of 25 books of poetry, fiction and senior lecturer in Spanish at Queen’s University. Prior to this she lived and worked in Spain, teaching
criticism. He has received awards from the Wingate Foundation, the Society of Authors, the UK Arts on the English faculty at the Universidad Autónoma of Madrid.
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 William Rowe
(RSE), Other: British & Irish Poetry since 1970 (Wesleyan) and Conductors of Chaos (Picador). His William Rowe is a Professor at Birbeck, University of London. He is the author of several books on
critical writings are collected in Meaning Performance: Essays on Poetry (Salt, 2006) and The Poetry Latin American literature and culture, including: Ensayos vallejianos (Lima, Latinoamericana Editores,
of W.S. Graham (Edinburgh University Press, 1989). He taught for many years at the University of 2006) and Cesar Vallejo: El acto y la palabra (Lima: Fondo Editorial del Congreso del Peru, 2010).
Plymouth where he was appointed the first Professor of Poetry. His website is at http://tonylopez. William's book on Spanish American poetry since 1950 was published in 2000 by Oxford University
org.uk 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
Melcion Mateu and Britain, and has published widely, read and broadcast translations of Latin American poetry.
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 Dirceu Villa
format per sonets, que va sorprendre pel seu domini tècnic i la intensitat del seu vers. Més tard Dirceu Villa was born in 1975 in São Paulo, Brazil, and is the author of three books of poetry:
va venir Ningú, petit (Edicions 62, 2002), un homenatge al còmic Little Nemo in Slumberland, de MCMXCVIII (1998), Descort (2003) and Icterofagia (2008). He has translated Joseph Conrad’s
Winsor McCay; es tracta d'una filigrana poètica en la qual la infantesa i les petites coses centren short stories (2009) and Ezra Pound’s Lustra (2011), written essays on the revision of Portuguese
bona part del discurs. Finalment, Jardí amb cangurs (Edicions 62, 2005), un llibre divers i marcat and Brazilian poetry canon and organized an anthology of 12 contemporary Brazilian poets for the
especialment pel llarg poema 'Veritable Panamà', tercera part del volum, una composició de 368 literary magazine La Otra (Mexico City). He has also written introductions to the works of Marlowe,
versos que actualitza la tradició èpica. 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.
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

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