GUY AMIRTHANAYAGAM: COMMITMENT IN LITERATURE

The text of a speech delivered as an invited delegate to the International Writers Conference held in association with the Edinburgh Festival in Edinburgh, U.K. (August, 1962)


The problem posed by the title seems to me an artificial one. Whether the writer deals primarily with his inner life or the world around him, in so far as he is a human being, he is committed the moment he begins to write. The writer uses words, and since words have meanings, he cannot conceivably avoid saying something meaningful about himself or the world in which he lives, unless he chooses to write nonsense. This may seem an unduly banal or simplified way of putting it, but the writer is immersed in the human situation or predicament; that is, after all, the pre-condition of writing, pre-philosophical, pre-epistemological, if you like.

I think 'commitment' is a live issue only for academicians, professors of literature and the clearly minor writers who have the time to bother with issues divorced and separate from the fervid agitation of creativity which should generate their work. I don't think the great writers ever raised the problem in this form, or judged themselves in relation to the extent to which they were "committed." That we should busy ourselves with the question is itself a major sign of cultural decadence and moral confusion.

Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Dostoievsky, Dickens--how would you see them in regard to this business of commitment? The writer should speak the truth and if in the process he concerns himself with, say, politics and has said the truth about it, he is worth reading, at least for his acumen in affairs of state.

However, you cannot dismiss writers who wrote without the least shade of a political thought, Jane Austen, Emily Bronte, or even T.F. Powys in this century as uncommitted and therefore inferior writers. It is rather like the position of the neutralist nations in the 'cold war.' If we in Ceylon are not committed to one of the power blocs, this does not mean that we are not committed: on the contrary we are so fully committed to the human situation in 1962 that we feel the only way we can help avert or at least protest against the possibility of man's suicide, is by being aggressively neutral.

Should a writer express the spirit of his age? Of course, whether he likes it or not, he will be conditioned by the times in which he lives but the particular age of history in which he lived does not altogether determine either the content or the form of his art. If the age in which he lives is given to trivial and worthless concerns, we do not require of the writer that his work merely reflect his triviality and worthlessness: what is valuable in a writer is not merely what he absorbs from his age, but what he, deriving from his own imagination and inner resources, contributes to transform and embed the reality he has encountered. Historians of literature may read a novel in order to discover in it a faithful mirror of its time, but a man interested in the novel and in life will read it for what it has to say directly to him and for what is valuable in it for all time.

Last afternoon there was considerable discourse about 'roots'; it ws said that a writer's work would sicken and die if he cut himself away from his roots. It is healthy and stabilising to discover and ground oneself in one's 'roots' but surely the quality of the roots in question affect the quality of the work. A great writer should be able to grow his own roots wherever he goes and if he cannot, obviously he should not travel.

I was astonished that a great poet like Hugh McDiarmed should be such a stubborn simpleton as to advocate so passionately a complete commitment to an elementary ideology and an inhumane closed system. Shouldn't we learn to cope not only with international but even with cosmic man? The little white rose of Scotland is a beautiful flower and has inspired great poetry, but is that all there is to proclaim? Will it bloom in outer space?

The problem is as simple as it is profound. The writer is a human being, more gifted, more aware but also more normal than the human average. It is the balanced normality of the writer that I wish to stress: a writer is committed to his craft, to himself, to the woman or women he loves, to his family and friends, to his country, to the world, to God or the lack of God, to death--why then discuss this problem of 'commitment' in such an external, such a superficial way?

Great art is not propaganda, not escapism, not even accomplishment; it is an act of radical seriousness forged in passionate logic, wrought out of the mind, the emotions and the blood of man.



--Guy Amirthanayagam c) 2008, Estate of Guy Amirthanayagam.


In collaboration with my siblings, I am preparing a volume of Selected Writing of Guy Amirthanayagam under the title "The Unplanned Flower". I will write further about this as the book takes shape.

NEW YORK

I have been walking and riding the subway in New York over the last few days. Have read from The Splintered Face and seen old friends. I have also noticed the orgy of lights at Times Square and am thinking we must find a way to reduce the footprint cast by those beams. The city has been sweet, sun lit and throbbing with its constant energy. The surprise meetings also delight...today by chance with Roberto Echavarren, the writer resident now in Montevideo, in town to lecture....we drank coffee in the Village and caught up with our lives since our last meeting at the Poesia de las Americas conference at College Station, Texas in April 2007.

I visited the Strand and picked up Allen Ginsberg's last book, a nice first edition, Death and Fame. I also met Valentine Daniel for the first time. Daniel is a legendary figure among the congoscenti...author of Charred Lullabies, his study of nationalist violence in Sri Lanka. Daniel is revising a long poem. I was thrilled to find that we agreed on getting rid of false barriers between areas of expression, that poetry can be another way to truth, as valid as the fieldwork of the anthropologist.

Tomorrow I read at the Asian American Writers Workshop at 7 pm. I will greet you there.

CARTA: UN POEMA DE INDRAN AMIRTHANAYAGAM

CARTA


Dile que espero su carta,
que hay unas burbujas
que salen de las aguas termales
duranguenses y no sé
cómo describirlas,
digo, de manera cientifica,
formal, de la Real Academia.

Dile que no quiero
llevar los 20 volúmenes
o el compact por todos lados,
que hace falta su lectura
de mis manos, de las ideas
americanas
de mi papá adoptivo.

Dile que eligió bien
la novia bailarina,
bailan así sus versos
a un tiempo nuestro,
fracturado, con saltos
pero con una línea
inteligible.

Dile que los extraño,
y a mi no me molesta
si algún critico comenta
sobre los sentimientos
crudos de esta poesía
de amistades. Dile
que la muerte y el mar

son compañeros
de los poetas románticos
y no nos da vergüenza
reconocerlo
esta tarde de espera
cuando un avión
ha llevado a mi familia

a otra ciúdad, otro mar,
y no hay manera
de contactarlos—
no quiero decir celulares—
dile que un pasajero
en un avión vuela
en otro mundo

de espera y de tiempo
suspendido. Dile
que me gustaría
que todos los aviones
aterrizaran al lado mio
y sus miles
de amores hambrientos

se reunieran a la vez
con sus pares.
Dile que me gustaría
que me escribieras
en ese avión una carta
antes de aterrizar
para leérmela.



-- Indran Amirthanayagam, c) 2008

ON READING FROM THE SPLINTERED FACE: TSUNAMI POEMS

On Readings from The Splintered Face: Tsunami Poems


The Splintered Face: Tsunami Poems began its tour of the world on the outskirts of London, in Kingston, where I read from the book for the first time in January on the way to my first home, the island now known as Sri Lanka. There I launched the book at the Galle Literary Festival. I then took it to Seattle, to Elliot Bay Books, in early March and last week to the central branch of the Vancouver Public Library.

Now, the story turns to New York in May. And the campaign has not gone on too long, not to worry.


The first New York reading promises to be a bit light hearted and optimistic given that it will take place in a laundromat.

Here are a few lines I sent the organizer for use on their website.

I began to use public laundries when I moved to New York, to East 4thStreet in the scruffy, bathroom in the kitchen, Pyramid Club-hopping days....At the time I realized I had to bring my socks to the local stream where instead of rocks to lay down clothes I was obliged to place them on benches and wait my turn while somebody else spun their week's whites dry. I would bring a poetry volume with my clothes and read and imbibe the starchy and powdered air (and look around a bit for a female with whom I could exchange a furtive glance or perhaps a few words about Constantine Cavafy.) Then I entered washing machine and later the dryer and closed my poetry volume and put it inside the hot and sweet smelling bag of newly-minted linen ready for the week and further chance encounters with poetry and its lovers.

The reading is on Sunday May 4 between

4-5pm at Klean and Kleaner, 173 East 2ndStreet between Ave A/B—


On Monday May 5, I will read with other poets in the West Village
at the

Cornelia Street Café, between 6 and 8 pm
29 Cornelia Street

And on Tuesday May 6, I will read from The Splintered Face: Tsunami Poems at 7 p.m. at The Asian American Writers Workshop,
16 West 32nd Street Suite 10A NY NY 10001.



I look forward to giving these poems the works. Cheers.

MARTIN LUTHER KING: A POEM

Remembering Martin Luther King 40 years later.


OLD KING


What if King wore mirrors,
and they refracted the bullet,
and he did not fall
into Jackson or Young’s arms?

What if he drove out
of Memphis in a car
cleaned of Hoover’s bugs
to meet Coretta

and father another child?
What if he grew old
watching Americans
wild-eyed, dancing,

reconciled, beside
cherry blossoms
blooming, one spring
day on the Mall?



-- Indran Amirthanayagam, April 4, c) 2008

WILL READ FROM THE SPLINTERED FACE, AT VANCOUVER'S PUBLIC LIBRARY, APRIL 16

This Splintered Face will be on display April 16 at the downtown branch of the Vancouver Public Library at 350 Georgia in the Alma Van Dusen and Peter Kay Rooms. Come to hear the Canadian launch of this new book, starting at 7.30 pm that evening.

SOBRE TRADUCCION, CON TRES POEMAS DE VIVIMARIE VANDERPOORTEN

Presento tres poemas de la srilankesa Vivimarie VanderPoorten. Subí uno de ellos a mi blog cuando regresé de Sri Lanka en enero. Ahora bautizo mi primer ensayo publico en la traducción del inglés al español con estos tres hermosos textos de su poemario nothing prepares you.

Hay tantas ideas curiosas y acontecimientos extraños que surgen cuando uno empieza la aventura de traducir un poema. Por ejemplo, debemos decidir guardar en el lenguaje de llegada la ortografia y relación idiosincrática que tiene un poeta con su idioma. Cada poeta sufre la tentación de romper las reglas, ver el idioma como debe ser, una energía dinámica, cambiante. Asi, escribo el titulo del libro en minúsculas y utilizo mayúscula al principio de cada verso de una de las traducciónes. Para hacerlo y asi respetar las decisiones de la poeta tuve que dejar a un lado mis propias prácticas de poeta.

Tal vez para algunos lectores este planteamiento es igual de extraño que la decisión original de la poeta. ¿A quién importa una mayúscula? me preguntan varios líderes de nuestras sociedades, presidentes, alcaldes, médicos, abogados, científicos, todos que son responsable desde la Iluminación para asegurar al ciudadano común y corriente que el mundo va bien y se conduce hacia un futuro más justo, intelegible, con salvavidas para todos y las demás criaturas , y también para los árboles y las plantas acuáticas…

Mi pregunta es sin duda retórica y evasiva, pero útil. Si, importa la Mayúscula. Sí importan las reglas de ortografía desarrolladas a lo largo de la historia. Y sí, importa que estas reglas sean creativas, que vayan hacia la luz y el agua como toda buena planta y además acepten la adición de un gene extraño extraido de un pez o un tomate. Y de ahi crecerá un nuevo árbol, un nuevo poema, el poema traducido y orgulloso de andar fuera del laboratorio de Mary Shelley or de Leticia Damm (mi maestra, que me ayudó con estas traducciones).


En otro momento llevaré este texto al inglés y al francés, además de reflexionar más sobre el arte misterioso, y nada menor, ni traidor, de la traducción. Un abrazo.





MAPAS


Perdida
en el viaje confuso
hacia la madurez
no había mapas para mostrarle el camino
solo una maraña de rutas sin letreros
encrucijadas sin flechas.
Sin mapa
ella tomó la ruta
que le pareció familiar,
que parecía ser la correcta—
“Cásate con un buen hombre que te cuide.”

Ahora, abusada y vieja
a los veintiséis años

le pregunta al adivino arrugado,
el profeta de futuros, vidente de destinos,
qué ve en los callos de su palma:
Dice con un suspiro

“Hay tantas líneas,
tienes muchas preocupaciones—
y demasiadas penas del corazón…
Estas líneas son como calles
en una ciudad
sin mapas. “



-- Vivimarie VanderPoorten, c) 2008 traducción Indran Amirthanayagam


MAPS

Lost
on the
confusing journey to adulthood
there were no maps to show her the way
only a mass of roads without signboards
crossroads without arrows.
Having no map
she took the road
that looked familiar
sounded right -
"marry a good man who will take care of you"

Now, abused and old
at twenty six
she asks the wizened fortune teller,
predictor of futures, seer of fates
what he sees in her callused palm:
He says with a sigh
"There are so many lines,
you are having so many worries -
have too many heartaches. . .
These lines, they're
like roads in
a city without maps".



--- c) 2008 Vivimarie VanderPoorten


DECRETO NISI

Hoy un juez
en una corte mohosa
Deciderá
que no podemos más vivir juntos,
tú y yo.
Declarará nuestro matrimonio
Terminado, nos transformará
en extraños. Otra vez.

Eres valiente al presentarte.
Amigas solícitas—
abogados—
me dijeron que No Fuera.
Asi, oculto a
miradas lujuriosas
(suponiendo, con manos sobre bocas)
y fuera de la vista
del Estado invasor,
tengo tiempo para recordar
algunos tiempos cuando la pasamos bien.

Paises visitados, millas recorridas al volante, vida salvaje
en bosques quietos
comidas compartidas, momentos tiernos,
incluso risas .

Basta de eso.
Ahora, como no puedo abondanarte de mala fe,
Y el adulterio no es más una crimen que podemos cometer,
Tal vez podamos ser amigos otra vez.




-- Vivimarie VanderPoorten, c) 2008 traducción Indran Amirthanayagam


DECREE NISI

Today a judge in a musty courtroom

Will decide that

we can no longer live together,

you and i.

He will declare our marriage

Terminated,

Transform us into strangers. Again.

You are brave to be there.

Solicitous girlfriends-

lawyers-

told me Not to Go.

So, hiding away

from lecherous glances

(surmising, behind hands over mouths)

and out of sight of

invasive State,

I have time to recall

some good times we had.

Countries visited, miles driven, wild life watched in still

forests

meals shared, moments of tenderness,

some laughter, even.

But enough of that.

Now, since I cannot desert you maliciously,

And adultery is no longer a crime we can commit,

Perhaps we could be friends again.

--c) 2008 Vivimarie VanderPoorten




VISITA A LOS GIGANTES

En la primera escapada ese verano
A Giant’s Causeway
Restos de una antigua erupción volcánica
Subiendo esas losas octagonales
Perfectas,
Contemplando la precisión
De forma,
Llena de asombro ante el mundo natural,
Me preguntó una hermosa familia perfecta
De cuatro, turistas de Estados Unidos,
De donde venia yo:
Les contesté

“En qué parte de Africa está?”
Entonces les expliqué
Que es la isla
En forma de una lágrima
junto a la costa de la India:
No les dijé
Que tenia un pasado espléndido
Pero ningun futuro,
Que su rico suelo
Está manchado de sangre,
Y que hay desesperanza
En los ojos
de sus niños.
Cuando me preguntaron
“¿Entonces, como es?”
Les dije solamente
“Es mi tierra.”


--Vivimarie VanderPoorten, c 2008 traducción Indran Amirthanayagam



VISITING GIANTS


On the first outing that summer
To Giant’s Causeway
Remnant of an ancient volcanic eruption
Ascending those perfect
Octagonal stones
Contemplating precision
Of shape
Full of wonder at the natural world,
I was asked by a
Perfectly beautiful
family-of-four,
- tourists from America
where I was from:
I answered.

“Which part of Africa is that?”
So I explained
That it’s the island
Shaped like a teardrop
off the coast of India:
I didn’t say
That it has a splendid past
But no future
That its rich soil
Is drenched in blood
And that there’s hopelessness
In the eyes
of its children.
When they asked me
“So what’s it like”
I only said
“It’s home”


-- c) 2008 ViviMarie VanderPoorten

ON ISLANDS, CAVAFY AND JEN HADFIELD

ON ISLANDS , CAVAFY AND JEN HADFIELD


I have been searching for islands since I left Ceylon in 1969. Ceylon no longer exists and not because of a rising ocean. Even the ravenous Tsunami of 2004 has gone back to its lair and islanders are picking up flotsam and getting on with their lives. What else are we supposed to do? Birth, love, death, a glance back sometimes, and blinkered, hatted, we march ahead

When I left the island I did not realize I carried it with me. I think of Cavafy and his bitter poem called The City, that “you will find no new lands, you will find no other seas/The city will follow you. You will roam the same/streets. And you will age in the same neighborhoods.” Cavafy becomes even more acerbic as the poem goes on. He says “there is no ship for you, there is no road.” (translation: Rae Dalven)

But of course there is always a ship, always a road. Like Auden’s “poetry makes nothing happen,” Cavafy’s powerful melancholy challenges us. But we do not have to listen. We can choose to ignore the poets' instructions.

And so can all musicians, painters, playwrights, every manner and species of artist fit for the new Ark. If we take Auden and Cavafy to the letter we would pack up our pencils and laptops and disappear. Even Kilroy would not choose to go for a walk.

In the course of my walking about, and thanks to writer Marie Carter, I came across poems of Jen Hadfield. Hadfield lives in the Shetland Islands. But she wanders about Canada in some of her latest book Nigh-No-Place. Spending time with her poems has taken me on a most pleasant journey, past Ithaca and back. She says in “No Snow fell on Eden,” “Eve knew no one who was dying/Adam never sat up late, drinking and crying.”

That is a beaut of a rhyme and full of the sadness of cold and remote climates. Hadfield has a deft ear for the sounds of windswept places. “I will meet you at Pity Me Wood./I will meet you at Up-To-No-Good./I will meet you at Stank, Shank and Stye./I will meet you at Blowfly.”

She has a wicked sense of humor and an ear tuned to fine lilts and jigs in the English language. Here is

Thou Shalt Want Want Want

It is in heaven as it is on thy neighbour’s deck—
a plume-tailed cat, a noodle-legged tin table.

You will covet your neighbour’s horse
and you will covet your neighbour’s land.

You will covet your neighbour,
crawling the apex with a blue tarp in tow.

You will covet bandshaws and braziers,
longbows and throwing knives,

parlour guitars,
shovels snuffling three feet of snow.

You will covet your neighbour,
planting a spittoon for the rain to hawk into.

You will covet your neighbour, hunched over the piano stool
to hammer out the wild, piratical waltzes.

You will covet polkas, quails,
painted pitchforks, a picket fence, a Dutch barn.

a chafing dish, a bain marie,
a kid, a civet, a trivet;

you must have a bodkin, an empire pram.

Thou shalt want want want.
You will covet your neighbour’s ass.

Thou shalt covet Warmbloods,
Arabians.



--c) 2008, Jen Hadfield, from Nigh-No-Place ( BloodAxe Books )


If I may be so bold: I covet the poetry of Jen Hadfield.

LAUREN MENDINUETA: SEIS POEMAS

Fue dificil para mi hacer una selección de la poesía de la colombiana Lauren Mendinueta por haber tenido que elegir entre tantos poemas poderosos. Recien descubrí su voz y sus intereses y he estado leyendo sus poemas durante días y noches sin fin. Lee muy bien y de tradiciones unidas por su concentración en el oficio solitario y sin compromiso del monje poeta. Me dió gusto ver el poema dedicado a Thomas Merton, el monje que fue el guia de Ernesto Cardenal en el monasterio de Gethsemane en Kentucky. Además Merton era un poeta político y filosófico, uno de los mejores anunciadores de esos años de profetas, de los sesentas de Bob Dylan y Allen Ginsberg y John Lennon. Hay varios poemas sobre el oficio del poeta, la poesía, la creación y la muerte en la antología Poesia en si misma que reune versos escritos durante 10 anos (1997-2007). En fin decidí presentar seis poemas con mi recomendación sin reserva de buscar este libro y otros de la poeta radicada ahora en Portugal.


RELATO DE VIDA


Antes de estos poemas
la claridad de los astros.
En otro tiempo En otro lugar
la transparencia de la música
dentro de mí.

Me deslicé
entre las piernas de la tierra
y al primer aniversario
le siguieron otros.
La tarde se volvió
una estación pequeña del día.

La memoria me dice que existo
y aunque soy un punto
sobre la tierra
no me encontraré en los mapas.

Soy sana
como un árbol en el cementerio.
Estoy hecha
de la más antigua levadura
y sin dificultad me multiplico.

Mi descendencia tiene las manos desnudas
y anudadas a la tristeza.

Ignoro completamente mi destino
a pesar de llevarlo indeleble
en las líneas de las manos.




EL CLIMA DE LAS CAMPANAS

No distingo un golpe del siguiente o el anterior,
y si escuché una campana en Paris
lo mismo la recuerdo como si fuera en Barranquilla.
¿Qué cosa distingue un aire de otro?
¿Qué sonido volará hasta lo que soy
para dar cuenta de lo que he sido?
Soy la mujer que más he detestado,
incapaz de hacerlo como lo merezco,
me detesto con tibieza.
Hay un repicar de nada contra nada,
un clima de campana en mi oído.





EL ÁRBOL DE ORO

El árbol de oro transforma la apariencia del paisaje.
Lo que nosotros llamamos naturaleza está ahí,
pero la vida del árbol le trajo un relieve,
una claridad que antes no tenía.
Crecen en sus ramas resplandores sin sol,
y sus altas luces obligan a mirar hacia arriba,
hacia la amplitud del cielo,
que él, con la delicadeza de sus hojas, resalta.
Su firme presencia
hace visible el espacio invisible del aire.




REPRESENTACIÓN TEATRAL


Los telones de la realidad
se levantan temblorosos
sobre mi enlutado país.
Un coro de espectadores,
la vida del mundo,
espera el inicio de la representación,
pero no escuchará el parlamento de tanto actor,
ni verá sus bocas enormes
que se abren en un gesto desesperado;
sus ojos vacíos, de invitado importante,
no verán el fondo.
Sólo el recuerdo intemporal conoce los libretos.
Porque lo sabe, la memoria calla lo perdido.
Estoy aquí sobre el escenario y sufro:
nada sé del anónimo silencio
que ignoro otra vez.



VIDA MONACAL

El alma es un cristal y la divinidad su brillo.
Ángelus Silesius

En el claustro de la memoria
los monjes caminan con hábitos ondulantes como el agua,
no puedo verlos pero escucho la vocación de las olas.

La adoración exige templos y deberes,
un canto que narre a quien lo escuche
la gloria que asoma en lo real.

En el silencio del deambulatorio
la paciente maduración de la hoja
que abandona el árbol,
deseosa de entrar sola en el misterio.

Para Thomas Merton


VISITA TURÍSTICA

Estoy en medio de una Acrópolis nunca visitada.
Aquí, señores, en Atenas,
existió cuanto el hombre creyó posible:
La civilización, decrépita hoy, pavoneándose
más espléndida que ninguna antaño.
Me estremece saber que fue diseñada noble,
astuta como Cécrope,
útil para el culto y propicia para el cuerpo
de los graciosos adolescentes griegos.
Todo esto fue antes de que yo caminara entre sus ruinas.
Me sobrecoge lo que en la Acrópolis ya no es,
y me siento aún más pequeña
perdida en mi insuperable condición humana.
Me conmueve la armonía de sus formas,
me intimida la grandeza de sus espacios,
pero lo que más me asusta es el tiempo
que como un niño la derribó a patadas.



c) 2008 Lauren Mendinueta

JUAN CARLOS GOMEZ RECINOS, CUATRO POEMAS

Juan Carlos Gomez Recinos vive en Colima, México. No conozco sus lares pero he vivido y viajado en otras tierras mexicanas y estoy seguro que si los poetas que he encontrado y que se han convertido en mis amigos podrían agarrar aún una porción mínima de la visión y energía de este poeta natural, ambiciosa, listo para abrazar de nuevo al mundo con una retórica aprendida de los grandes, de Neruda principalmente, de Borges…no habrá necesidad para llorar sobre la muerte del poeta y su evicción de la plaza pública. En unas semanas van a ser editados sus primeros dos libros ¡Imaginate, gemelos y a los veinti- tantos años…y premios…y pronto una editorial….y lectores en todas partes! Le felicito a Juan Carlos Gomez Recinos, la poeta igual de ésplendida Ana Gabriel, su esposa y co-conspiradora en el arte medicinal de mantener sano, y salvo de extinción premadura, la poesía y sus poetas. Aqui van cuatro poemas de uno de estos nuevos libros “Art Poetica.”


Los enamorados lloran como ausentes,
anticipando el último día.
Hoy los vi en la horizontal isla,
con los ojos interrogados, con sus baúles viejos.
Son vistosos al sentir la primavera,
hacen el amor ebrios, con pájaros y flores,
se reconocen en un incendio sinfónico,
en el nimio litoral de sus acompasados sexos.

Se funden en un Adán y Eva,
a goterones lentos, zumbando su dulce alegría.



*



Conviene que la sombra
escuche la voluntad del relámpago,
con su silencio espeso.

Te recuerdo al amanecer del día,
inmóvil como las estrellas,
con salvajes besos que se anclan
a mi nuca, y débilmente, esta noche
de palabras confusas, necesita
de poetas y biógrafos.



*
Esto es mi carne temblando,
extraviada en tu cuerpo.

Hay peces sin escama,
palabras, voces nocturnas
empapadas de licor.

Tus ojos parecen practicar
su vuelo, en mi atento silencio.




*



Tu vientre:
ciudad y templo,
río y cascada.

Eres relámpago de colibrí.
Mis palabras cantan tu nombre
en silencio, y un Dios justo
entra en este poema.

De mi oficio, tu nombre,
mis ojos ciegos.

La noche tiembla desnuda
tu ausencia, en un perpetuo
planeta inocente, persigue tu carne.




-- de Art Poetico, c) 2008 Juan Carlos Gomez Recinos

WORDS FOR A PRESS CONFERENCE, GALLE, JANUARY 16, 2008

I returned from Sri Lanka last month. At the Galle Literary Festival I was asked to speak to reporters about the relationship of the festival to Sri Lankan readers and writers abroad. Here are my remarks:


Words For a Press Conference, Galle, January 2008

At times I have trouble in the diaspora. I don’t know all the rules. There are so many groups gathered in the world’s cities. Do we share the same mother? Have we been weaned to long for the same distant father? I have been asked to reflect on the possibilities that this festival engenders for Sri Lankan readers and writers throughout the world. I remember sitting in my office at the Embassy in Abidjan one morning in 1998 when I got a call from the front desk. A countryman had come to visit. Out of the blue. He invited me to his flat in Treichville. On the wall I saw the blue sea off Trincomalee and the curries were finely spiced, lentiled and mutton hot. The young men in that flat arrived via the Middle East; had stowed away on ships bound for the remote West African coast where another Tamil representing the United States had come to rest.

How to make sense of these multiple loyalties, carrying cards from birthplace, landing status in one of the Schengen countries, the euro? How about—in dancing with locals-- forgetting slowly that jarring speech, treacle and curd, called the mother tongue?

But we are here to celebrate a different mother. Yes, we are children of many diverse parents. This particular long haired beauty rode a white horse stark naked into my dreamery. Godiva, Mary Queen of Scotts, Twiggy. But the sexual is only a partial answer to the pleasures of exile, the adoption of the new tongue. Certainly, for many of us it has been a very old tongue, passed down from missionary teachers through generations, or whipped up by a dedicated colonial servant. But the language has been made Ceylonese, jellied up in a Christmas cake or a bruda, pickled by Malays. I put my poems in the dickey the other day along with my sarong. But I forget. I need to return to the island to stock up on the Sri Lankan English language.

So this festival can encourage the return of the island’s diasporas, to have them come back for cutlets and tea, to walk upon Galle Face Green, to visit the bird sanctuaries and climb Adam’s Peak.

But then how to fend off the accusation of being a tourist, a visitor in one’s own country? I wish rather that we would be made to feel at home, our Sri Lankan roots honored with national identity cards, recognition that even living abroad we are welcome and continue to be citizens of this island.

Another ideal I wish to pursue is the notion of the Garden of Eden, paradise on earth. In 1948 we numbered 8 million; we have doubled that and continue on the way up—around 20 million according to Wikipedia. At the same time, we cull our elephants, shoot monkeys, scissor thalagoyas, and keep cobras at bay. We grow our own ecologists, and persevere in trying to keep some of the other species alive, but we cede our tropical hard woods to the top bidder. There is of course a defensible logic to development, the need to feed and clothe and prosper. Yet, in this conference dedicated also to reflection on the climate, let us think about Sri Lankans abroad and how we can help in the preservation struggle, contribute a bit of Sri Lankan sun vision to the ecological challenges of our host countries.

So many words….we will hear a lot these days. Not enough I say, not enough colored by the particular variant of English modified on a tear of the Indian Ocean-- this Ceylon, this Sri Lanka we love and want to see at peace with itself. Let us work to make that peace. Let us remove from the stage the possessed beast whirling and whirring in a fevered dance trying to find and eat its own tail. Let us make commerce with metaphors, and let us talk sense, and over drinks, nonsense.




-- c) 2008 Indran Amirthanayagam

Will Launch The Splintered Face: Tsunami Poems in the US, at Elliott Bay Books in Seattle, March 1, 7.30 pm

Elliott Bay Books sent me the following. If you're to be in Seattle this weekend, do come:



INDRAN AMIRTHANAYAGAM Saturday, March 1 at 7:30 p.m.

Noted poet, essayist, and U.S. Foreign Service Officer Indran Amirthanayagam makes his way down from his present north-of-the-border Vancouver home to give his first U.S. reading for his newest collection, The Splintered Face: Tsunami Poems (Hanging Loose). Born in Sri Lanka, raised in London and Hawai'i, he is a poet who writes in English, French, and Spanish, has been published in the U.S., Mexico, and Sri Lanka, and whose accolades include a fellowship with the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Paterson Prize, a U.S./Mexico Fund for Culture award for his translations of the work of Manuel Ulacia, and more.

"These poems both about those who died in, and those who survived the Tsunami of 2004, memorialize with anger and beauty one of the most devastating tragedies of our time. In its largeness of heart, bold artistry, and admireable desire to bear witness, Amirthanayagam's consoling, life-affirming, and triumphant volume reminds me of Neruda's great Residence on Earth." - Jaime Manrique.

TROIS POEMES DE JOANNE MORENCY

J’ai connu Joanne Morency à Trois-Rivières l’année dernière pendant le festival international de poésie qui est célébré dans cette ville chaque septembre. Nous nous sommes rencontrés dans un parc où quelques jeunes étaient en train de présenter des poèmes « hip-hop ». Les poètes se reconnaissent dans les parcs publics. Il y a des signes formels : les cahiers, les lunettes, le visage béni par la lumière intérieure. Et l’on trouve aussi ce désir d’apprendre les secrets du langage, de saisir l’esprit dans les mots qui prennent leur vol comme le petit oiseau que j’ai vu ce jour-là, assis sur le trottoir, objet de la sympathie humaine jusqu'au geste de lui donner une petite tasse d’eau. À ce moment-là de rapprochement humain, l’oiseau s’enfuit, bondit vite comme une illumination d’idée, une épiphanie.

Dans les poèmes de Joanne Morency, je trouve un lien très beau entre le langage et les inquiétudes de l’humanité, entre les mystères des mots et les charpentiers, les poètes qui doivent saisir l’esprit du bois, pour faire des oiseaux, petits ou pas, afin que nos enfants puissent jouer, pour toujours, dans un écosystème balancé.



Extraits de : Qui donc est capable de tant de clarté ? de Joanne Morency, Prix Piché de Poésie 2007, dans « Poèmes du lendemain 16 », Écrits des Forges, 2007
-----------------------

j’ai vidé mes boîtes
une à une
de chaque petit morceau d’autrui


il n’y a pas de porte entre les idées d’en arrière
et celles d’en avant

la nuit
les gens se déplacent à leur insu


j’envoie les changements d’adresse


* * *

la seule idée d’un mouvement
façonne l’espace autour de soi

le vent
même s’il l’ignore
obéit aux branches


dans une maison
sans murs ni plafond
des mains se sculptent un homme

j’assiste à la multiplication


* * *

quand la noirceur tourne sur elle-même
il n’y a qu’à sauter de montagne en montagne

mais comment distinguer
le haut
du bas
dans le ciel ?

il arrive que l’on tombe en haut

* * *

Two Review: A Poetry and Nonfiction Journal from Anchorage, Alaska

I have been thinking again about how poetry thrives in the little magazines, the whispered conversations that take place between furtive poetry lovers throughout the 50 United States and beyond. I have yet to visit Anchorage or go further into the white capes of Alaska. From that space comes Two Review, "an independent, limited edition journal of poetry and nonfiction." The journal publishes writers from beyond the steppes. It reminds us that we are all marooned on private glaciers and that we need visitors. The poems in the journal have been my guests over the last weeks. They have opened my eyes again to the bitter and the sweet in human experience. Here is a poem by Sean Brendan-Brown, a poet based in Olympia, Washington. This story haunts me, the punch in its last lines. Now, don't jump ahead! Read the poem in order. I have a hunch it will make you glad and sad and you will feel a little less alone.

KING OF WOUNDS

He worked our ranch since before I was born—
more uncle than hired hand—Pawnee,
changed his name to King of Wounds
after Korea. Part serious, part joke.
He believed fighting the Chinese
had changed his vision forever at Chosin;
the vision he had at fourteen of a black owl
flying loop-the-loops around a waxing red moon,
talons clutching a shrieking white rabbit.

His name then had been Johnny No-Horses.
He returned from Korea with a cigar-box
of medals, face & chest as scarred
as Frankenstein, but with enough disability
pension it didn’t matter no one wanted Indians.

King of Wounds. Odd even among men
reluctant to judge. He rode his circuit
of fence at night when cattle broke out
or men in; he loved stars and meteor showers,
considered insomnia a blessing.

A beautiful woman once lured him
to the city. Tried to give him everything.
They had a good time and he even wore
the pearl button shirts she bought him.
But at evening’s end, she went home alone.
When I’d heard the story enough from others
I asked him about it, and all he said was
on those barren islands
they die, blamed and blaming.



-- Sean Brendan-Brown, from Two Review, 2007

THE PAST: A POLITICAL POEM BY INDRAN AMIRTHANAYAGAM

As we engage fully in the presidential race in the United States I thought I'd dust off and revise a poem from 1996 about a trade unionist from what's now known as Old Labor. The U.K., the United States and other liberal democracies may wish to ponder what the fellow has to say:


THE PAST


English trade
unionist
and hoary
member
of Old
Labor
testifies
as ornithologist:

It’s like
a bird.
It has a right
wing
and a left
wing.
If it loses
a wing,

it has only
one wing,
and
plummets
to the ground.
You CAN’T
fly with one
wing.



-- Indran Amirthanayagam, c) 2008

BELEAGUERED NEAR THE SEA: A POEM BY GUY AMIRTHANAYAGAM

My father, Guy Amirthanayagam, spoke to me once about this dark meditation, this elemental study of reason and madness. I believe he wrote it in his youth and the ocean must have been the same one that led Neruda to his own melancholic and foreboding lapping of sea water in Residence on Earth.

I can’t think of a stronger opening to a poem than the hammering in the brain and desperate rush to seek solace in a calm sea, and as I think incessantly about the tsunami, “the still older tide” turning evil that—in some strange way--my father prefigured in these verses.



BELEAGUERED NEAR THE SEA



As the old, primal images
Kept drumming in my brain,
I went to the land’s edges
To assuage my pain.
The calm sea stretched its hand
Bathed me in felicity.
My cut mind in balmy waters
Regained its unity
Till the still older tide turned
Evil, pushed me back to land
Gasping in sanity.



Guy Amirthanayagam, Selected Poems, Ceylon Printers, Colombo, 2002

SOBRE EL NEOBARROCO: UN POEMA DE INDRAN AMIRTHANAYAGAM

Escribí este poema después de una visita a Monterrey en Octubre 2005 del maestro José Emilio Pacheco. Me interesa mucho el imaginismo. No creo que sea necesario buscar la palabra rebuscada más bien seria genial ver la belleza desnuda con sus colores primarios: rojo, bermellón, sangre. Esta poesía me agita, me despierta, me da animo para afrontar la noche sin fin, andar en el amanecer brillante.


SOBRE EL NEOBARROCO
--para José Emilio Pacheco


Se me acerca el vaquero
con sombrero arco iris
y la mujer se pasea
con su armadillo--
estamos en la Alameda—
esto es surrealismo.

Un hombre medio calvo
me dirige la palabra
con preguntas comestibles
sobre duraznos,

O dame mil veces
ese retrato de la estación
del metro y su llovizna
de pétalos blancos.

Pero ¿dónde dejé
los oídos para escuchar
la música asfixiada
si no resucitada
de estos embalsamadores

que tocan el tambor
de Góngora
ensuciado a propósito
con cenizas modernistas?

Les felicito
su reconquista
de la lengua
y regreso
a la página blanca,
el dibujo del hombre,
el árbol, el sol.


c) 2008 Indran Amirthanayagam

BEYOND THE BACKYARD: REFLECTIONS ON CONTEMPORARY LATIN AMERICAN POETRY

An Esssay by Indran Amirthanayagam c) 2008


Midnight has passed and I wonder still how to speak about the backyard. How could I have let the grass, weeds and bracken grow so thick? There must be all sorts of insects, butterflies and rodents flying and scampering about….rivers with mysterious Indian names: Orinoco, Amazon, Parana…gold, shawls and quixotic guerrillas with masked faces….a few Nobel laureates as well celebrated on birthdays and prize days and in some houses on ordinary Sundays. How to speak of people, squat and brown in highlands, where the air fails to deliver oxygen to the bones, and tall and bronzed on the beaches of Rio and on the cobblestones of Cartagena. How to speak of a continent which I know through poems and fictions, where I have set foot in just a few places, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, El Salvador.

I came to Latin America following Neruda back home. He had been consul in my birth country in the 1920s, set up house in a then pristine Wellawatte, where he entertained a mongoose and assorted visitors from the multiple ethnic groups of the richly hued island. Neruda wrote Residencia en la Tierra when not kept company in that blindingly-lit island where the sun’s rays shone through decorum and clothes: “That Ceylon light gave me life/gave me death at the same time/because living inside a diamond/is a solitary lesson in being buried/is like turning into a transparent bird,/a spider who spins the sky and says goodbye.” He wrote from that solitude of the diamond while gazing upon the wild surf on the Southern beach. Later in life, he sought that surf again, in Isla Negra, Chile where he set up a dream house and wrote “That Light,” one of the poems from his book of memories: Isla Negra: a notebook.

I first learned of Neruda from a fellow Sri Lankan, J, whom I met in Honolulu in the early 80s. J had been imprisoned on a political charge for six years in the island but had access to hundreds of books from the Red Cross. He read all of them including a selection of Neruda. I was presented then to Latin American poetry as one of resistance, read by political prisoners in jail. How lovely to discover that the resistance rose out of a profound sense of love and loss—I think of Neruda’s 20 love poems: “tonight I can write the saddest lines…love is short, forgetting is long.”—and that this Spanish language writer was indeed singing the whole of America with his ample throat.

Neruda was a monster, to use the Latin American phrase to describe a great figure, one who changed the landscape or named it for the first time. Whitman had that kind of reach in the United States and throughout human history we find in all cultures some version of the epic poet. Yet, what Neruda gave us was infinite variety, from the surreal complexities of Residence on Earth, to the ever popular odes to common things like onions and shoes, to the great work of his late period, the zen-like distilled and impossible inquiries of The Book of Questions.

I begin with Neruda because he served as my Spanish Virgil leading me through the circles of America (while Whitman had that role in English). Of course, I say America to include the whole continent, even Canada at the risk of falling into perhaps a false idealism. I also should dispel with that polemic and silly notion of the backyard. I will say it in a sentence. The backyard exists only for those who wish to persist in the folly of making distinctions between peoples and positing one set of influences above another. I realize the sentence has become a bit long. Let me try again. The backyard is a misleading invention of the smug and mediocre fellow who can’t see beyond his own red, white and blue nose. One more attempt: the backyard exists only in the mind.

I come from Sri Lanka but I am resident in the front yard of my house, seated on a canvass chair, with a book of poetry in my hand along with a pipe. I also have a sign. It says I have arrived (along with countless other immigrants). And we too are America.
I also advocate Whitman’s contradictory impulses—“I am grand, I contain multitudes.” This is a useful posture to assess the conversation between North American and Latin American poetry. And I believe there is a conversation despite what some Spanish language poets tell me almost every day.

The naysayers are of course poets who have access to both North and South. They are often resident at US universities and move in a subculture of Latin American literature that circulates through the fifty states. Of course, Whitman’s boast also includes the idea that all groups have a role in America, even Latin American literature hands, as present company demonstrates.

So these friends tell me that US poetry, the sort written in English, does not draw inspiration from reading contemporary Latin American poets. Of course, this is hard to defend when looking at reality with a microscope. Countless festivals take place in Latin America with US poets invited or self-invited. They come to read and listen, break bread, exchange books, and go back to the fifty states with the sounds of contemporary Latin American poets buzzing in their ears. Now, I agree that some of these US poets know little Spanish and find themselves marooned at these festivals, dependent on a translator and bemused by the vast numbers of gathered poets.

There is no greater discouragement for the poor listener or reader than to be obliged to confront round table after round table with five or six poets on each one. My mentor at university used to ask me if I could imagine for 10 seconds the awful implications of the atomic bomb—ten seconds of pure concentrated thought. In the case of poets I would have to say that 120 minutes marks my limit for a day, the rest of which I can spend in reading them quietly back in my room, or as some awfully impolite fellow bards have done, leave the twenty pounds of donated verse in their rooms for the cleaning ladies and the not so amused organizers of the festival.

I mention festivals to point out that reality is always more complex than the popular and emotional feeling of being left out, of belonging to a minor stream within the United States. Why do we worry so much about our place in the conversation? I suppose receiving an invitation to a conference, especially if the ticket has been paid, assuages one’s ego, fortifies the idea of having some expertise, some unique knowledge to share.

Having purchased my own plane ticket I take the Whitman approach—the Whitman who self-published various editions of Leaves of Grass—who had to hawk his poetry as some poets and critics gathered here. Come out of the closet those of you who paid for your own books. No harm in a bit of investment in your own future. Here we can agree to engage in those ancient practices among insecure and ignored poets, namely execution of M.A. and M.D. The acronyms mean Mutual Appreciation, and in the case of poets safely dead or engaged in such horrors as writing simple, declarative sentences, Mutual Destruction. But of course the mutual is a fiction in the latter as the attacked poet is indeed very dead, although he may have been a monster in his time—I think of Ezra Pound for example with his early lyrics or the T.S. Eliot of Prufrock—subject to diatribes by some contemporary poets tired of his overreaching influence like hearing 15 hours straight of heavy metal music during an interrogation session that otherwise features four hours of brightly-lit and broken sleep and a few minutes of temptation when a member of the opposite sex straddles the poor prisoner and reads neo-baroque verse.

I refuse, by the way, to endorse any particular candidate for the title of monster except of course the usual, and most likely dead ones, that we all know and have incorporated into our languages: Neruda, Borges, Vallejo, Paz, Huidobro. And I mean both our principal languages, as these poets have helped shaped both English and Spanish sensibility. I imagine they have also shaped poets who write in some of the indigenous tongues. An urbane and yet mythologically-rooted poet like Natalia Toledo writes in zapotec and Spanish, and I have a hunch has incorporated the monsters into her incantatory zapotec. There are also living masters, Parra, Pacheco. There are great novelists who have poetry in them: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Fernando Vallejo. And there are fine upcoming poets who deserve wide readership: the Argentine Ariel Schettini, the Mexicans Jose Eugenio Sanchez and Julian Herbert and others here united.

I understand that the age of the dinosaurs has passed. I think of Jose Donoso’s novel Donde Van a Morir los Elefantes (Where the Elephants Go to Die). I don’t have a copy of the novel but understand that the elephants or monsters end up on obscure American campuses, removed from the hurly burly of Rio or Santiago, Mexico City or Havana, not to mention Los Angeles or New York. Here their only tasks are to bicycle about between classes and guide graduate students on theses and of course teach, try to preserve the collective memory, to include even Eliot and Pound, and to mention someone now forgotten, Conrad Aiken.

How many Latin Americans know Conrad Aiken? I think concern that the conversation goes one way is misguided. With the exception of John Ashbery and a poet like Charles Simic who writes in an easily translated style, few contemporary Latin American poets know new poems by contemporary American poets like Mary Oliver or Louise Gluck or Sherman Alexie. Again, translators keep busy and microscopic examination can always reveal new strands of conversation in and between the Americas. The NEA collaborated with Mexico’s Conaculta recently to publish two bilingual anthologies of Mexican and American poets. So Sherman Alexie is now part of Spanish language poetry. Writing programs—inspired by the U.S.’s MFA—have sprung up now in important universities like Diego Portales in Santiago, while transnational poetry movements have expanded thanks to the internet. In 2002, a UN-mandated Dialogue Among Civilizations led to coordinated poetry readings in hundreds of cities around the world on the same day. I organized one in Chennai, India where I had been posted at the time. A vina player strummed in between the poets. A bharata natyam dancer turned head and hands with fast and deft gestures. The evening became a feast of cross pollination between different art forms.

I like these global events. They help dispel solitude and the feeling of being left off the head table. Let us put all the poets at the head table. Let us write vigorously and with economy and clarity. Let us display our linguistic prowess and our common sense. Let us work to create a public television channel in Spanish in the United States. Let us move Univision and Telemundo towards creating a conversation with authors series. Let us work in our communities and globally to increase readership for poetry. And yes, let us have standards. “Let us go, then you and I, when the evening is spread out against the sky/like a patient etherized upon a table.” Let us advocate clear and searing metaphors. And let us always support the translators. Alastair Reid educated me about Neruda and Borges. Rae Dalven brought me Cavafy in high flown and demotic registers. Cavafy became Cavafis in the Spanish of Cayetano Cantu.

I mention Cavafy to remind all of us that our influences are catholic and have no end. We are poets shaped by the sun, wind and stars, by the books we read in original tongues and in translation. And we must put our queer and straight shoulders to the wheel. There is much to do and little time. We can stretch that time if we take our neighbor as our reader and not resign ourselves to communication between specialists in university refuges.

I believe poets should exercise their social obligations as bards of “the past, what is passing, and what is to come”. They should write frequently to the opinion pages, contribute book reviews, insist that newspapers like the LA Times return to writing about poetry. Surely, a bit of advocacy would help, a letter writing campaign, even contacts with House and Senate representatives. April was the cruelest month but is now the month when poetry is celebrated all over the United States. Let’s find other hooks to capture the imagination of our peoples. And let’s not be snooty about our secretaries and oil rig workers, fishmongers and bus conductors. We belong to them as much as the Medicis. In fact, we belong to neither. We are our own society within the larger society and we have our charge, self-appointed perhaps, but powerful. Auden, Ginsberg and Neruda should serve as our models-- la poesie engagé but written with vigorous and fresh metaphors to be etched in the hearts and minds of readers and listeners.

Let me finish with a sampler from three poets who gladden the imagination and make me feel confident about the new Latin American generation. These poets read the United States and will be read in the United States. The wave has already begun to move the sand. Julian Herbert’s poems were featured in the last Americas issue of BOMB magazine. Jose Eugenio Sanchez has just returned from Iowa and publications in US magazines and acclaim on US stages. Ariel Schettini, an earlier Iowa grad, returned to Argentina to be a poet, critic and reader of the Americas from his perch on Arenales Street in Buenos Aires. I expect to see his work come out in English very soon. I have taken the liberty of translating the poems. Here is Ariel Schettini’s The Annunciation


THE ANNUNCIATION

I do not know if he was an alien or angel
(but surely he came from outer space).
He looked at me without knowing
if I was a genius or charlatan.
He needed a description
and I gave it to him,
because I thought
that everything wandering up there
wants to know how. Besides
I only had descriptions.
When I could no longer speak, he told me:
I am sick. I know, I know, I told him.
And that night we made love
because the rest was the enemy
and sex appeared the only safe thing to do.
He told me: I am sick. This is war. No?
I replied: No. No, I told him.

I could have fallen for that alien
as easily as I could have not.
Afterwards, he told me:
I am sick. And I could not make
a pact.
But I kept watch
over the imaginary night
like those who fear and wait
for life in space.
He left like the dead, or thieves
or the nun in The Sound of Music:
without a farewell.
I don’t know if he was an artist,
the kind that give reasons for
trips to the planets.
But that night I saw
him kiss the world
as if he was kissing me.

--c) 2008 Ariel Schettini, trans. Indran Amirthanayagam


NEW YORK WAS LEFT SUDDENLY
WITHOUT JOSEPH BRODSKY


an old car guffaws by
a trembling fellow offers what you want
prostitutes in overcoats huddle together against the wind
some uniformed gents leave a bar completely smashed
a vagabond stretches out his hand
at street’s end a police patrol car
lights up as it moves slowly to the right
a couple leaves the theater
two black men speak to each other
and in the shop window in front
a pair of silk socks
hang silently
they seem more indispensable than us.



--c) 2008 Jose Eugenio Sanchez, trans. Indran Amirthanayagam



THE ASS’S HEXAGRAM


What’s to say of an ass?
I never said a thing.

An ass stood next to Leticia’s mouth:
his ardor sprang from the moon
and he scratched
against me furiously.
There was an ass in Juan Luis’ house
and they charged us five pesos to ride him.
I never rode him.
There was one swollen and black floating in a stream,
another very yellow in an Arctic dream,
and the ass of the comic strips,
and an ass a little crosseyed in Gabriela’s gaze
looking over its shoulder from a country of scent.

Ass.
So beastly this word
that it disgusts me still. How to found
the angels’ flight in a back kick.
How to be the fur and chew
upon the blinking
of a sonorous breath among the sunflowers.
Without carriage drivers or feats, hardly honeycombed
by modesty
or a girl’s insolence.
Without laws or allegory, just submerged
in the copperish afternoon
like a train by Turner.

The sameness—I never told you—
this same ass
detained in his rat-colored skin
in front of a vulgar backdrop of green stalks.
The pleasure of living like an animal and striving
but bitter
like the sage or the laurel.



-- c) 2008 Julian Herbert, trans. Indran Amirthanayagam

If you use any quotes from this article or from any of the poems on this blog, please advise the author via this blog or by email (address in the Author's Profile)

READING TONIGHT AT THE RAILWAY CLUB, VANCOUVER

I will read tonight from the Splintered Face Tsunami Poems at the Railyway Club, 579 Dunsmuir, in Vancouver. The Railway Club is a very agreeable place for a drink and a poem. The evening begins about 7 pm with a number of poets and writers each on for 15 minutes. I will read around 8 pm. For those of you in the Vancouver area, do come!

ON CONTEMPORARY LATIN AMERICAN POETRY: A LECTURE

I will deliver a lecture on contemporary Latin American poetry at the American Centre on Galle Road in Colombo, on Wednesday January 23rd at 6 p.m. Some months ago I was invited to a gathering on poetry in the Americas and I have for some time thought about the idea of seeing Latin American poetry from the vantage point of its Northern neighbor. I will post the lecture here in due course.

For the moment, let me leave you with the first paragraph

Midnight has passed and I wonder still how to speak about the backyard. How could I have let the grass, weeds and bracken grow so thick? There must be all sorts of insects, butterflies and rodents flying and scampering about...rivers with mysterious Indian names: Orinoco, Amazon, Parana...gold, shawls and quixotic guerrillas with masked faces...a few Nobel Laureates as well celebrated on birthdays and prize days and in some houses on ordinary Sundays. How to speak of people, squat and brown in highlands, where the air fails to deliver oxygen to the bones, and tall and bronzed on the beaches of Rio and on the cobblestones of Cartagena. How to speak of a continent which I know through poems and fictions, where I have set foot in just a few places, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, El Salvador. "

-- from Beyond The Backyard: Reflections on Contemporary Latin American Poetry c) 2008 Indran Amirthanayagam