The Complete Poetry: A Bilingual Edition by C�sar Vallejo | PopMatters:
The second Vallejo is that of “Trilce”; there isn’t anything much like it. “Trilce” forecast poetry that didn’t get written for generations, from the field poetry of Charles Olson to “language poetry.” It’s like a furious rainstorm: hard to see, hard to get your bearings, blinding flashes, fresh blasts of breeze, a cleansing darkness ..
... Vallejo makes a statement of what poetry and art should be, as modern a statement as any:
“Refuse, all of you, to set foot /on the double security of Harmony./ Truly refuse symmetry.”
And that is what much modern art—what much art, period—has done ever since. /hmm./
Human Poems
Then Vallejo stepped away—away from modernism this ferocious, as if there were nowhere else it could go. He fled Peru and settled in Paris, where he starved, slept in parks, was very sick, and slowly built up a livelihood from freelance journalism, grants and teaching. His poetry changed: It loosened up into a rolling verse, playful, a dark, rich loam of wry, humane humor and intensity. //oh, smart sad wry playful.// He writes some of the best prose poems in any language. His poem “The Soul That Suffered from Being Its Body” is a splendid treatment of the mind-body dualism—and the soul’s disappointment at finding there is no dualism! //yes there it is. love.//
And his elegy for a dead friend, “Alfonso: you are looking at me,” is full of nostalgia and love. As a starting point for Vallejo, these verses—collected by his widow under the title of “Human Poems”—are ideal.
said...
- "The Soul That Suffered From Being Its Body" by césar vallejo
translated by clayton eshleman
You suffer from an endocrine glad, it's obvious,
or, perhaps,
suffer from me, from my tacit, stark sagacity. _________________________ / :)
You endure the diaphanous anthropoid, over there, nearby,
where the tenebrous darkness is.
You revolve around the sun, grabbing on to your soul,
extending your corporal Juans
and adjusting your collar; that's obvious.
You know what aches you,
what leaps on your rump,
what descends through you by rope to the ground.
You, poor man, you live; don't deny it,
if you die; don't deny it,
if you die from your age, ay, and from your epoch.
And, even if you cry, you drink,
and, even if you bleed, you nourish your hybrid eyetooth,
your wistful candle and your private parts.
You suffer, you endure and again you suffer horribly,
miserable ape,
Darwin's lad,
bailiff spying on me, most atrocious microbe.
And you know this so well,
that you ignore it, bursting into tears.
You, then, were born; that
too is obvious at a distance, poor devil and shut up,
and you put up with the street fate gave you
and you question your navel: where? how?
My friend, you are completely,
up to your hair, in the year thirty-eight,
Nicolas or Santiago, someone or other,
either with yourself or with your abortion or with
me
and captive in your enormous freedom, _________________________ /y
dragged on by your autonomous Hercules ...
But if you calculate on your fingers up to two,
it's worse; don't deny it, little brother.
You say no? You say yes, but no?
Poor ape! ... Gimme your paw! ... No. Your hand, I meant.
To your health! Keep suffering!
- March 4, 2014 at 6:45 AM
this is a blog about living through body. it is a no comment blog as i
try to focus and learn but if you are so moved you can email me at thetinyleaf gml
trying~
Introduction trying~ /// oh even the ~ //
Interests being, art, life and death, beauty, poignancy, crossing lines, growth, now, then too, oh, and tomorrow.
from Ontario, Canada.
fvr music:
ólafur arnalds /hm?/ , bon iver /ok/ , alexi murdoch /like nick
drake, to me fr MikeO in mailroom: All My Days and (beneath an) Orange
Sky/ iron and wine /ok/, arvo pärt /oh! just on rectify 2-7
charlie the chaplain tape player "beauty will redeem the world" ~ I tht
he said "there is beauty in the world, it runs all through it" -
comments some questioning some loving the music, as ~ discordant.
ólafur arnalds /hm?/ , bon iver /ok/ , alexi murdoch /like nick
drake, to me fr MikeO in mailroom: All My Days and (beneath an) Orange
Sky/ iron and wine /ok/, arvo pärt /oh! just on rectify 2-7
charlie the chaplain tape player "beauty will redeem the world" ~ I tht
he said "there is beauty in the world, it runs all through it" -
comments some questioning some loving the music, as ~ discordant.
fvr books: the good ones, many /y nice.
photographs from a white space
i can't care if it means anything to anyone else. it is my breath, even if not to capture it, even if i fail time and time again, even if the camera stays on the seat beside me as it did with the horse, to be in the same world as the horse without the impediment of human language, but rather deeply bruised by the language of horses, bruised so hard i am convinced, shudderingly, of being here in this moment.
***
due to a series of small events i have no ability to process and post photographs any more. this absence is an absence of myself to myself. and is curious. and so i post these words in lieu of photographs.
( // I break horses _________
-
photographs from a white space
i can't care if it means anything to anyone else. it is my breath, even if not to capture it, even if i fail time and time again, even if the camera stays on the seat beside me as it did with the horse, to be in the same world as the horse without the impediment of human language, but rather deeply bruised by the language of horses, bruised so hard i am convinced, shudderingly, of being here in this moment.
***
due to a series of small events i have no ability to process and post photographs any more. this absence is an absence of myself to myself. and is curious. and so i post these words in lieu of photographs.
( // I break horses _________
-
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