The Oxford Hysteria of English Poetry

Back in the caveman days business was fair.
Used to turn up at Wookey Hole,
Plenty of action down the Hole
Nights when it wasn't raided.
They'd see my bear-gut harp
And the mess at the back of my eyes
And 'Right', they'd say, 'make poetry'.
So I'd slam away at the three basic chords
And go into the act ---
A story about sabre-toothed tigers with a comic hero;
A sexy one with an anti-wife-clubbing twist ---
Good progressive stuff mainly,
Get ready for the Bronze Age, all that,
And soon it would be 'Bring out the woad!'
Yeah, woad. We used to get high on woad.

The Vikings only wanted sagas
Full of gigantic deadheads cutting off each other's vitals
Or Beowulf Versus the Bog People.
The Romans weren't much better,
Under all that armour you could tell they were soft
With their central heating
And poets with names like Horace.

Under the Normans the language began to clear,
Became a pleasure to write in,
Yes, write in, by now everyone was starting
To write down poems.

Well, it saved memorizing and improvizing
And the peasants couldn't get hold of it.
Soon there were hundreds of us,
Most of us writing under the name
Of Geoffrey Chaucer.

Then suddenly we were knee-deep in sonnets.
Holinshed ran a headline:
BONANZA FOR BARDS.

It got fantastic ---
Looning around from the bear-pit te tho Globe,
All those freak-outs down the Mermaid,
Kit Marlowe coming on like Richard the Two,
A virgin queen in a ginger wig
And English poetry is full whatsit ---
Bloody fantastic, but I never found any time
To do any writing till Willy finally flipped ---
Smoking too much of the special stuff
Sir Walter Raleigh was pushing.

Cromwell's time I spent on cultural committees.

Then Charles the Second swung down from the trees
And it was sexual medley time
And the only verses they wanted
Were epigrams an Chloe's breasts
But I only got published on the back of her left knee-cap.
Next came Pope and Dryden
So I went underground.
Don't mess with the Mafia.

Then suddenly --- WOOMF ---
It was the Ro-man-tic Re-viv-al
And it didn't matter how you wrote,
All the public wanted was a hairy great image.
Before they'd even print you
You had to smoke opium, die of consumption,
Fall in love with your sister
Or drown in the Mediterranean (not at Brighton).
My publisher said: 'I'll have to remainder you
Unless you go and live in a lake or something
Like this bloke Wordsworth'.

After that there were about
A thousand years of Tennyson
Who got so bored with himself
That he changed his name
To Kipling at half-time.

Strange that Tennyson should be
Remembered for his poems really,
We always thought of him
As a golfer.

There hasn't been much time
For poetry since the 'twenties
What with leaving the Communist Church
To join the Catholic Party
And explaining why in the C.I.A. Monthly.
Finally I was given the Chair of Comparative Ambiguity
At Armpit University, Java.
It didn't keep me busy,
But it kept me quiet.
It seemed like poetry had been safely tucked up for the night.

-- Adrian Mitchell

Regionalisimo

El Bardo Abelardo sube al campanario
A gritar desnudo y engrasado:
“No me miren el canario,
Es la culpa del Erario.”

Arrebatado, despierta el Padre Manrique,
“Pero que es lo que pasa Gadamer!”
“Es Abelardo, va desnudo y bien tostado
A protestar la orden del Cacique.”

“Las tres divinas personas!
Que nos proteja el sagrado corazón!
Si se da cuenta el Cacique no quedara
Piedra sobre piedra y ya no habrá
Bardo Abelardo, condenado por gritón.”

Suena el bronce en la esquinas
Y comentan las niñas:
“Es el Bardo Abelardo, que bien
Pintado reclama al Matarife.”

Congrega al pueblo Abelardo,
Colorado, en la Plaza Principal.
“Yo ya sé, no soy gallardo,
Soy el poeta de Ocotal!

Abajo, Felipe comenta con Donilo,
“Yo te lo dije, el Bardo anda bien mal.”
“No es cierto Felipito, es cierto lo que dijo,
El Cacique es gran tamal.”

La Hora de la Mofeta

La heredera ermitaña de la isla Nautilus
aun sobrevive el invierno en su cabaña espartana;
sus ovejas aun pastan sobre el mar.
Su hijo es obispo. Su mandador
sigue siendo concejal en nuestra aldea,
ella vive su senectud.

Sedienta por
la privacidad jerárquica
de la era Victoriana
compra todos los adefesios
que ven hacia su costa
y los deja caer.

La temporada enferma--
hemos perdido a nuestro millonario veraniego,
que parecía haber saltado de un
catalogo. Su velero de nueve nudos
fue subastado a langosteros.
Una mancha, roja como el zorro, cubre la Colina Azul.

Y ahora nuestro remilgado
decorador alegra su tienda para el otoño,
sus medias repletas de corcho naranja,
naranja su banca de zapatero y su lezna,
no hay dinero en su trabajo,
preferiría casarse.

Una noche oscura,
mi Ford Tudor trepó la calavera de la colina,
busqué carros enamorados. Con las luces apagadas,
se arrimaban juntos, casco con casco,
en donde el cementerio engaveta al pueblo...
Mi cabeza no esta bien.

Una radio da balidos,
"Amor, ay amor descuidado..." escucho
mi espiritu enfermo llorando en cada celula de sangre,
como si mi mano estuviera en su garganta,
Yo mismo soy el infierno,
no hay nadie aquí --

solo mofetas, que buscan
bajo la luz de la luna un bocado para comer.
Marchan sobre sus suelas hacia la Calle Central:
lineas blancas, ojos lunáticos, rojos como el fuego
bajo el mástil seco y puntiagudo
de la iglesia Trinitaria.

Me paro encima
de nuestros peldaños y respiro el aire puro--
una madre mofeta con su columna de cachorros se abalanza sobre la basura
mete su cabeza picuda en un envase
de crema, deja caer su cola de avestruz
y no asustara.

- Robert Lowell

Simon Simple

"Pensar que el individuo esta siendo liquidado sin ningún trazo va mas allá del optimismo. Por su negación superficial, la abolición de la mónada a través de la solidaridad paralelamente prepararía el terreno para salvar al ser singular, el cual se convierte en particular únicamente en relación a lo general. La presente situación es muy diferente. El desastre no toma la forma de una eliminación radical de lo que ha existido previamente; mas bien las cosas que la historia ha condenado son arrastradas muertas, neutralizadas e impotentes como el lastre mas ignominioso." -Theodor Adorno

De Cierta Manera

Hace muchos años, es uno de esos festivales académicos de sillas vacías y mesa servida recuerdo haber visto esta pequeña joya de los tiempones de ICAIC. No recuerdo mucho pero habia algo subversivo en aquellas imagenes desgastadas que ahora se me escapa. De todas maneras el titulo de cierta manera ha quedado rondando en mi cabeza, si, de cierta manera.

Trad-unción

Si algún día la búsqueda por una creencia tranquila terminara,
tal vez el futuro dejaría de emerger del pasado,
de lo que esta repleto de nosotros; pero la búsqueda
y el futuro emergiendo de nosotros parecerían una misma cosa.

- Wallace Stevens, de "Como decoraciones en un cementerio de negros"

Nuevas Líneas de Andrés Maravilla

Ojala tuviéramos tiempo
Chiquita
Y espacio.

Te llevaría flores,
Te sacaría a pasear,
— nada seria condicional—
Y me haría amigo de tus tías,
Sabría el segundo nombre
De tu gato y te vería
Llegar al altar entre
Muecas y sollozos.

Pero con esto de la
Relatividad y lo de
Bretton Woods, no sé,
Mujer, si las agujas
Nos perdonen.

Es mejor si llego
A tu casa ahoritita,
Te envolvés en
Tules, faldas,
Fustanes Luis XV
Y nos vamos a dar un vueltin.

Rapidito conquistamos el universo,
Lo hacemos on the road,
Sin que nadie nos vea.
Y si nos ven, mejor,
Una erección y fluidos vaginales
Es lo que necesita la tierra
Debajo de los adoquines.

Si tuviéramos tiempo,
Te lo juro,
Seriamos abuelitos,
Pero mi tierna
Con esto del tiempo
Es esto lo que te ofrezco.

Pintura: Jean-Honoré Fragonard, L'escarpolette, 1767

À la recherche...

I remember one night in the dirty Sn Juan streets, surrounded by street gamblers, sitting by a roulette table. A drunken man opposite me was betting all of his money on number 6. He had colones instead of cordobas, and the owner of the improvised beach casino reluctantly accepted them. Sn Juan was only a few hours away from Costa Rica anyways, and the porous border was a blessing for the needy town. The intoxicated man’s face yowled as he emitted etheorous burps. For the first time that night I understood the concept of total abandon. He spent his entire wallet that night, and even tried to pay with futures; dirty papers that he placed with fury on his lucky square, salivating on the table, gesticulating an unknown plea for dignity.

Puerto Morazán

Luego de varias horas de estar pensando sobre el golpe de estado en Honduras me sentí desgastado. El ruido de CNN y Telesur me deprimía, creaba un hueco en mi cerebro, atacándolo con su vulgar uso del idioma y de las ideas. Es obvio que el golpe debe de ser condenado como una acción cavernaria que ha causado serios daños. Pero, de donde vino este golpe? El golpe es el resultado de la actitud autoritaria y patética de Mel Zelaya. De todas maneras, el golpe viene a oxigenar a la izquierda. En Nicaragua, por ejemplo, el golpe le ha servido como una gran distracción a Daniel Ortega, cuyo gobierno esta quebrado y con graves problemas de solvencia ante el FMI. En fin, al sentirme agobiado por tanta calamidad, busque refugio en las paginas de Martinez Rivas, y halle lo siguiente, que me parece resume muy bien lo que ha ocurrido:

Puerto Morazán

El bote sin querer encender
popeando y apagándose el

muelle al atardecer
los guardias con bayonetas

la bandera el agua turbia
sucia la oficinita

el gomero en el escritorio
el retrato del General

y los jejenes invisibles
picando en la humedad

cálida del atardecer
la bombilla eléctrica

prendida pálida y
el temporal y alguien

con un martillo
clavando en la caseta

y nuestros corazones
oprimidos centroamérica

extendida encharcada el bote
propeando apagándose

los jejenes picando
y la bombilla pálida

y la llovizna.

-Carlos Martínez Rivas

Madoff en el Infierno

"I urged the judge to sentence him for the rest of his life, so that when he leaves prison, which means after his death, virtually unmourned by anyone on this earth, that he will then go down to the depths of hell where he will join those other people who are in the 'mouth of satan.'" -Burt Ross

Institutional Critique at Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona

“Perhaps the museum gaze is sexual,” I told my friend as we stepped outside the MACBA, in downtown Barcelona. “It has an introduction, a climax and a resolution,” I insisted. “In that case everything does,” she said rather scornfully. I was confused, to say the least.
I had no idea what to expect from the immaculately white building near the boom and bustle of La Rambla. Perhaps I thought it would be like the MOMA, or the MOCA, or any of the modern art museums that sound more like drinks at Starbucks than serious artistic institutions. Moreover, the admission was somewhat expensive. I climbed a long incline, designed like a handicapped access ramp, draped in Maoist symbols. I entered the hall of the main collection and I was immediately struck by the subversive quality of the works. There were hanging mobiles, rotting chairs, rocks, sometimes just plain filth, displayed like objects to be admired. A particularly striking section contained works by Marcel Broodthaers. Most of his works were simply pieces of papers signed MB, but some were called 'Museum,' and looked like designs for a museum by an architect on peyote, or post-structuralism. I was getting dizzy. As I kept walking I found my friend staring at a chair that might have been a work of art. The next room was replete with digital screens. A particularly striking work by Vito Acconci was simply a mouth gagging for 20 minutes straight (one could faintly hear "I want you to understand," but my friend said she heard nothing). The rooms looked empty. Only a couple of Americans and a French woman seemed to be digesting the art work.
Alas, I left the nightmare room and sneaked into a floor for which one had to pay extra. It was an exhibition by Stephen Bayrle, of what they called ‘subversive pop.’ It was mostly lame, even lamer than Warhol so we decided to leave. I immediately decided that I hated it. Yet, as the day progressed I found myself returning to the same images—the Maoist stairwell, the gagging mouth, and that haunting painting, or poster, Museum. I realized that I was supposed to be terrified. I rapidly concluded that what I had done was the same as an Elephant visiting a cemetery. I, who love the old masters and works of studied profusion, had been handed a plate of emptiness, with that horrible word everywhere, museum, museum. It had been like visiting an empty room and forced to hear the walls breath impossibly. The cold concrete floors, the egg-white walls, and the eerie sound of Aconcci’s tongue flapping against his palate were like dynamite on my ideas about art and civilization. “What a wretched little white temple of doom,” I thought. It had forced me out of my comfort zone. Perhaps the inclination is meant to make you feel like an invalid, protected by the crutches of modernity. Well, they take away you crutches and give you this palliative of truth and horror.
Now that I look back I am more moderate about my opinion. It is definitely a pretentious place, after all. I remember a poster announcing an exhaustive conference on deconstruction and museum studies. I could picture the board of the museum talking about absence and presence, serenaded by Acconci’s diabolical tunes. And yes, the museum gaze is sexual Broodthaers told me, and I could not agree more.

Image: Marcel Broodthaers, Museum-Museum, 1972

Corre Conejo

"He feels the truth: the thing that has left his life has left irrevocably; no search would recover it. No flight would reach it. It was here, beneath the town, in these smells and these voices, forever behind him. The fullness ends when we give Nature her ransom, when we make children for her. Then she is through with us, and we become, first inside, and then outside, junk. Flower stalks.

-John Updike, Rabitt, Run

La Fábula

Los centauros están dormidos. Ellos
los primeros, y hace tanto
tiempo, que no los hemos conocido.

Bajo el pórtico, como bajo una ceja,
se cerro esa visión. Se retiraron
a dormir los centauros. Los varones.
A distancia unos de otros.
A un golpe de casco entre dos dueños.

Entre sus velos que el agua no empapa.
Encandiladas
bajo el potente foco de las profundidades oceánicas,
ignorantes de sus burbujas
las Nereidas respiran ciegas y dormidas.

En la cañada, entre el roció
y las anchas hojas, el grito
de la cerda salvaje
se apagó,

y los ángeles
amontonados en su incomodidad de alas
--de donde el aire sacudido
se desprende y viene
a veces y se esparce como un lienzo en la noche--
duermen también.

--Y tú, necio, ¿qué haces tu despierto?

Carlos Martínez Rivas, de La insurrección solitaria

Interrupción

El camisón sudado,
La mano embadurnada
De mantequilla.
El pan, cuadrado,
Con una groña negra
Y el olor a café agrio.

El bruñido telúrico
Espanta la escena

Y solo nervios y
Suda la mollera y
Borbotean los huevos
En el aceite, en
La cazuela negra.

Repique de bronce circular

Será mejor bajar el fuego
De este domingo tempraneado
Si, bajar el fuego.

Pero como olvidarse,
En la bóveda de calcio,
Del Gólgota.

Sal en la uñas
Un poco en los labios
Y sobre las yemas tiernas
Cae el vinagre hirviendo
Bajo el sol de los labios

Tercer toque. Ahora insistente.
Pronto vendrá, pronto vendrá
Y no estará listo ni el pan

Solo un poco de hielo en la frente, solamente un poco de hiel.

Futurismo: Avanguardia

Numerous posters around Rome are advertising the exhibit. On the dirty hallways of the Rome metro, flanked by pictures of glitzy models, an advertisement reads “Futurismo: Avanguardia,” announcing an exhaustive exhibition in the Scuderia Quirinale commemorating the centennial of the movement. Yet, where exactly is this Scuderia? I ask a couple of exhausted policemen, my broken Italian almost inaudible in the sea of mechanical shrieks, the crowd of electric bodies dragging me to the traffic of the Roman rush hour. Futurism surrounds me but it is nowhere to be found. It is my last day in Rome and there is no hope for the futurist exhibit. I walk labyrinthine streets and I reach the president’s palace. “Berlusconi is a fascist,” I mumble, and suddenly, like a bolide I see it: FUTURISMO. The ticket costs ten Euros and there is no student discount but I have to see it. The staff is rude and tired and the audio guides are twenty Euros, but it does not matter. I must see it. This is the chance of a lifetime. It will probably be the only time I am in Rome on the 100th anniversary of the publication of Marinetti’s manifesto. Yet, there is disorder in the air. I have the feeling that I will be disappointed.
I walk up a steep twisted staircase and I see a paragraph reflected on the wall in front of me but it is in Italian. I walk into the first room and the paintings are quite beautiful, astonishing really. My brochure tells me that the theme of this room is “Lights,” and as I leaf through I realize that the exhibition consists of ten rooms, each with its own theme. I am satisfied by the art work but there is a problem. As I admire a Boccioni I hear a loud alarm, and a crowd of security guards tell me to step behind the line. But the alarms keep invading my experience, they are extremely sensitive and everyone keeps setting them off. I feel defeated. The art is very moving, especially the landscapes, and the thematic groupings are quite effective, but the brochure is hard to read. It feels as if most of the ideas have been lost in translation, leaving one with descriptions like “a modeling that is ready to accommodate the dimensions of external reality.” I go up to the second floor feeling confused, at once exhilarated by the paintings but confused by the noise and the obscure descriptions.
The next set of rooms is even more puzzling. The exhibition moves away from Futurism and focuses on similar movements around Europe, including Cubism, Vorticism, and Orphism, with the last room reserved for the legacy of the movement. Futurism is nowhere to be found. Where is Forme uniche della continuità nello spazio? I leave the exhibit feeling defeated, as if I had just experienced something exciting but fleeting. I begin to wonder if the whole point of the exhibit was to convey the fact that futurism was short-lived but extremely influential. I remember Marinetti’s closing words:
‘Let us leave good sense behind like a hideous husk and let us hurl ourselves, like fruit spiced with pride, into the immense mouth and breast of the world! Let us feed the unknown, not from despair, but simply to enrich the unfathomable reservoirs of the Absurd!’
In the brisk Roman afternoon a military parade is taking place. I remember History, and I feel relieved that I attended the exhibit. With all its messiness and contradictions it was a show worth experiencing because it told me a story, a story like a lightning from the unfathomable reservoirs of Western culture.

Image: Umberto Boccioni, Le Forze di una Strada, Osaka City Museum of Modern Art

Psychopathia Migratorĭa

"Mira broder, déjate de mierdas, porque verdaderamente se puede vivir escribiendo cada paso, cada pequeña interacción, por pequeña o banal que sea." -Marvel Urrutia

I don't understand it anymore. I thought I did. When I was younger everything was lucid and perfect, even modernity. I mean pristine! But now, with two decades in my pocket, things--specially things--are complex. Take the airport, for instance. What is this maze of anonymous faces, screams, and convoluted orders:

-"I think you might need a visa."

-"Sir, what do you think you're doing?"

-"Why can't you smoke in here?"

-"I need you to give me your belt and wallet."

-"The machine beeped, you're not allowed in here."

It's just bizarre. Is this what civilized people do? Are these things worth it? These little gadgets, institutions, and authorities that are supposed to make life more comfortable transform the spontaneity of the quotidian into a meaningless, bureaucratic exercise. I am on my way to London, drinking a beer in Houston, the George Bush (!) Airport to be precise, and already I miss my language, the smell of my mother's curls, and the delicious insanity of Nicaragua. We Latin Americans are comfortable with our neuroses, we laugh all day, children starve, politicians are cynical and corrupt, and the streets smell like rotten oranges but we are happy. We are accustomed to strife. In this immense stainless steel building I feel as if America wants to hide the rust from under it's boot soles. "Any inappropriate remark, comment, or joke will be cause for immediate arrest," a gentle female voice informs me, and I cringe. I feel slightly buzzed and would like to scream "Shark!" as loud as I can. "Shark!" breaking the beer bottle on the bartender's face, laughing maniacally. The soft blonde with the large butt joining my deranged ritual, we drink all the bottles and dance with wild abandon. We would storm out and steal a private plane, set the automatic pilot and have sex until the jet fuel runs out, still copulating as the plane crashes on the Big Ben: No one is killed, no one is hurt, two people have extreme hangovers, triplets are on their way.

Miller Contagion

None of us are dead. We ride facing the sun; the wind blowing inside us, inside the car, music barely audible, empty cans echoing our filled stomachs. It’s a ritual this sequence, we have been doing this since we found out who we were and how we related to the landscape around us. We drive past cattle, long sprawling fields of rice, bustling towns driven by poverty, and tall imposing signs of the Man’s propaganda. But we are alive, and this is always the message in everything we say, all of our words are life-affirming, lies which keep us alive in the face of our incongruence.

Scottie’s driving, as he always does, and he holds Dee Dee’s hand, as he has always done. She drinks a beer with nonchalance and fiddles her fingers around his. They will take over the world one day, these two, and they know it, their hands behave as if they knew they hold the planet in their embrace. I take in the landscape, trying to remember every detail as pristinely as possible: a thatched stained roof, a couple riding a motorcycle, the woman sitting sideways like a chivalrous maiden, and a sign that reads “To Obey the People is to Obey God.” Taine is beside me, cleaning a bag of grass and throwing the seeds out the window. He tells me something about Florida and I nod, but all I can hear is the wind and the car radio bleating: “Nobody can live forever, and everybody is the same.” We don’t have a care in the world, and the beach is upon us, ready to embrace us in their blue blossom.

I’ve been in Nicaragua for five days now and already I am in it again. The wheel is up and running. I am fully in sync with the slow rise and fall of the tropics. The States doesn’t have that kind of rhythm. Everyone moves in a state of dejection, riding their electronic staircases, talking in their electronic boxes, paying in their glass boxes, and eating the grimy gravel they call food. I too am American in America. My heart is covered by the gilded silver of individualism and I feel compelled to smile, to walk in unison, walk fast, time after me, the snow covering my boot soles, forced to dance in the arctic circle to wild Washingtonian dreams. The layer slowly decays in the heat and insanity of Latin America. My heart throbs and whops to the cadence of the Sea, and for a second I am free. We are close now. I can see the sand from here. One more sign: “Love is stronger than Hatred.” The Man is right. He will save us.

Desayuno

El Sol es una estrella,
Una bola de gas incandescente
Cuya luz y color son generadas
Por reacciones nucleares en su interior (Carney, Schneider).

Ahí no hay mentiras,
Eso lo dijeron después de
1918 años,
Y pues,
Sería extraño,
hasta irresponsable,
Ignorarlo así como así,
Como la condensación de los líquidos
O la temperatura de las bujías.

Hay que vivir pensando siempre
Sobre este hecho irrevocable.
Viéndole los ojos,
Hurgando sus interiores radioactivos,
Haciendo incisiones sobre la
Naranja porosa, media amarga,
Antes de comérsela
Viendo el amanecer.

The Flaw

A seal swims like a poodle through the sheet
of blinding salt. A country graveyard, here
and there a rock, and here and there a pine,
throbs on the essence of gasoline.
Some mote, some eye-flaw, wobbles in the heat,
hair-thin, hair-dark, the fragment of a hair--

a noose, a question? All is possible;
if there's free will, it's something like this hair,
inside my eye, outside my eye, yet free,
airless as grace, if the good God... I see.
Our bodies quiver. In this rustling air,
all's possible, all's unpredictable.

Old wives and husbands! Look, their gravestones wait
in couples with the names and half the date--
one future and one freedom. In a flash,
I see us whiten into skeletons,
our eager, sharpened cries, a pair of stones,
cutting like shark-fins through the boundless wash.

Two walking cobwebs, almost bodiless,
crossed paths here once, kept house, and lay in beds.
Your fingertips once touched my fingertips
and set us tingling through a thousand threads.
Poor pulsing Fete Champetre! The summer slips
between our fingers into nothingness.

We too lean forward, as the heat waves roll
over our bodies, grown insensible,
ready to dwindle off into the soul,
two motes or eye flaws, the invisible...
Hope of the hopeless launched and cast adrift
on the great flaw that gives the final gift.

Dear Figure curving like a questionmark,
how will you hear my answer in the dark?

-For the Union Dead, Robert Lowell

The Dead Poem

«El hombre tiene que nacer de nuevo.»
-CRM

It lies motionless,
Pins and needles
In its veins
Dissected bowels
Overflowing
The gangrenous
Uterine walls.

Face like a prune
Made of wax
Its mouth of
Frothy spume
Beckoning us,
Etherized nurses.

We must resist this temptation
And save the newborn with some measure/pleasure.