Hechizo seco, de Kevin Young

The Dry Spell, en inglés, lo encuentras abajo)
Por Margarita Ruiz-Soto

Cuando no perteneces a un país, a una cultura, a una región, tu lectura de piezas poéticas como The Dry Spell, de Kevin Young exige proyectar sobre el texto los límites de tu propia historia (Tu propia ignorancia podrían decir algunos). Kevin Young (1970, Lincoln, Nebraska) se conoce como poeta del Blues y muchos de sus poemas reposan en la horma acústica de esta tradición.
La poeta Lucille Clifton dijo “El talento que tiene Young para narrar y entender la música inherente a la tradición oral de la lengua recrea para nosotros una historia íntima, tan poderosa como auténtica y norteamericana” (La traducción es nuestra; el texto fue tomado de www.poets.org)
EL poder cultural y familiar de la comida; la textura del clima estacional y el ritual del vestir al compás de los vientos locales y personales; el hábito amoroso de los cuerpos. El ciclo primigenio de regar y ser regada; la mirada del tercero, el poeta que atisba, que se deleita en la cadencia de los días, y se comprende en la tradición de sus mayores. (Allá el Blues; aquí sus abuelos).
Una voz narrativa en tercera persona, interpelada por el yo del poeta (“so can I”, tercera línea en la tercera estrofa) que se diluye en la palabra del abuelo. Tres estrofas; tres sucesos; tres presencias. Podríamos decir entonces que es un poema trinitario. Cielo y Tierra se bisquejan, de cuya unión provienen la semilla y la prole humana. Linaje, fluir de una historia que se continúa.
Volvemos al inicio: Young inscribe el jadear de sus versos en la corriente de celebración de la tradición a la pertenece. Y para lograrlo es abismalmente actual. Su lírica en Jelly Roll : A Blues (2003) es la evidencia. Actualidad que escapa a mi comprensión, su literalidad anglosajona desborda mi parco bilingüismo. Por ello les deseo con la mejor de las lecturas, aquella limpia de mi palabrear.

Abril 20 de 2010
Margarita Flora Ruiz-Soto
El Paso, Texas.

The Dry Spell
by Kevin Young


Waking early
with the warming house
my grandmother knew what to do
taking care not to wake
Da Da she cooked up a storm
in darkness adding silent spices
and hot sauce

to stay cool. She ate later, alone
after the children had been gathered
and made to eat
her red eggs. Da Da rose
late, long after
the roosters had crowed
his name, clearing
an ashy throat
pulling on long
wooly underwear
to make him sweat

even more. The fields have gone
long enough without water
he liked to say, so can I
and when he returned
pounds heavier
from those thirsty fields
he was even cooler
losing each soaked
woolen skin
to the floor, dropping
naked rain in his
wife’s earthen arms.

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La música de Kevin Young

Oscar Godoy Barbosa

El blues, esa música que encuentra sus raíces en África pero nació en América para expresar la angustia, la tristeza, el desamor, la decepción, la frustración y la rabia de los trabajadores negros, y que ha entrado a formar parte de la cultura occidental contemporánea en muy diversos géneros y subgéneros, es el ritmo que colma los poemas de Kevin Young en su libro Jelly Roll: A Blues.
El título del libro parece ser un homenaje a Jelly Roll Morton, reconocido pianista, compositor y cantante nacido en Louisiana, pero curiosamente son pocas las referencias que se hacen a este artista en los poemas. En lugar de eso, Kevin Young cuenta historias oscuras, explora sus sentimientos de rabia y decepción, o de exaltación amorosa, y captura el espíritu de esa música que seguramente hace parte de su formación como ser humano y como poeta.
¿Cómo se hace presente el blues en los poemas de Young? Lo primero que salta a la vista es la estructura escogida para darles forma. Cakewalk, Dixieland, Siren o Jive, por ejemplo, llaman la atención por su armado a partir de couplets (estrofas de dos líneas), con líneas muy breves pero cargadas de significado:

I want the spell
of a woman –her

smell & say –so-
her humid

hands and seek –zombied-
The bayou

(Dixieland)

A pesar de las líneas cortas, o como resultado de ello, Young acepta y da forma a una idea constante de encabalgamiento (“enjambment”) entre las líneas, aún si conforman estrofas separadas. Con este recurso, la tensión se mantiene tanto en el nivel horizontal (la fuerza de la línea) como en el nivel vertical, con una palabra que no se interrumpe y un interés constante que pasa de una línea a la siguiente. Al mismo tiempo, la separación en couplets marca una pausa reiterada, una especie de cadencia, un compás que el lector siente de inmediato. Música.
El logro musical de la forma se complementa íntimamente con los temas de cada poema, que son los mismos que han alimentado al blues desde siempre. Dixieland, por ejemplo, hace referencia a una especie de ritual en el que un hombre y una mujer se sumergen en un pantano y son encontrados luego por la policía; Cakewalk alude a ese estado de encantamiento que acompaña el sentimiento amoroso, siempre al borde de la fatalidad; Jive narra una situación de acoso de un ciudadano negro por parte de la policía; Can Can juega con las palabras de origen africano y la identidad, y Siren alude a las angustias del fuego y el incendio.
Son exploraciones en muy diversas direcciones, miradas del poeta hacia sí mismo y hacia las realidades (objetivas y subjetivas) de su entorno. Pero con un elemento que las cohesiona y sin ninguna duda las hace trascender: la música.

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Chroma

Chroma: A Queer Literary and Arts Journal is based in London and is published twice a year. Ben Fergusson is the editor. Saradha Soobrayen is the poetry editor and Andras Gerevich, Sophie Mayer, Mike Upton and Pascal O’Loughlin are the commissioning editors. Like many arts organizations in the UK, Chroma receives support from Arts Council England.

Noted gay literature pioneer, Richard Labonte, calls Chroma, “the premier print magazine for gay and lesbian prose writers, poets and artists.” Submissions are accepted from all people who identify as queer, regardless of their sexual orientation. Issues are themed and the scheduled themes are provided more than two years in advance. The next available submission deadline is August 1, 2010. The theme for that issue (#12) is Youth. The February 1, 2011 submission deadline is for Issue 13 the theme of which is “Faith.”

Chroma’s recent 2009 International Queer Writing Competition winners were announced on their website with prizes awarded to three poets and three short story writers. Additional contest submissions were acknowledged as “poetry shortlist” and “short story shortlist.”

Issue 7, the theme of which was “There” featured the work of LGBT writers and artists from around the world. Some represented writers received their first English translation with that issue.

The magazine appears to represent a full range of queer and LGBT sub groups rather than focusing on gay men or lesbians as is the case with some niche publications in the LGBT community.

There are very specific submission parameters provided by the editors. Submissions must be identified as either a prose, poetry or art submission in the subject line. Work must be submitted in Word (.doc) format or .rtf. No other formats are accepted. Prose writers may submit only one story at at time which may not have been published previously. 5,000 words is the maximum length. Poetry submissions may be no more than three poems at a time and poems should not exceed sixty lines per poem.

The notification time is within three months. The editors acknowledge that they wish they were able to provide more personal responses to submissions but, at present, they are not staffed to do so. If writers have not gotten a response before the issue for which they submitted work is published, they are no being considered for that issue. In some cases, a writer or artist’s work may not be able to be used in a current issue but the quality of the submission catches the eye of the editors. In those cases, the writer will be asked to submit additional examples of their work for possible inclusion in a future issue.

DB

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Deepstep Come Shining

POR: Rubén Varona

“Lead me, guide me to the light of your paper. Keep me in your
arc of acuity. And when the ream is spent. Write a poem on
my back. I’ll never wash it off.”


Como si se tratase de la película de una cámara fotográfica, cada uno de los poemas que componen Deepstep Come Shining, de la autora norteamericana Carolyn D. Wright, o C.D. Wright; ofrecen al lector una imagen, una sensación, una visión de las carreteras sureñas y rurales de Georgia, en los Estados Unidos. Cada poema o mejor, cada fotografía, construye un universo en sí mismo, autónomo, pero a la vez interdependiente, pues se perfecciona con la lectura secuencial de la obra; es decir, con el revelado de la película y la puesta en un álbum de cada una de las imágenes, para ser apreciadas en su conjunto.
En las imágines que encierran los versos, la sensación de movimiento, contrastado con algunas dosis de quietud, son una lectura muy aguda de la vida, de alguien que se hizo al lado del camino; que se detuvo para observar al detalle, con la lupa del demiurgo, del creador, para de esta manera seguir avanzando, haciendo partícipe al lector de sus visiones.
Los poemas de C.D. Wright contenidos en este libro, son el resultado de una continua experimentación tanto en forma como en contenido y lenguaje. La anterior es una de las razones por las cuales ella es considerada por la crítica como una artista irreverente, que encierra en su lenguaje poético la misma demencia de la vida que se siente al conducir a altas velocidades, atravesando diferentes parajes; pero también haciendo un stop, una parada para hacer propio aquel lugar, para que no le pertenezca a nadie más, diferente de ella.
El “boneman”, así como el “snakeman”, son alusiones recurrentes en el libro, son los demonios de la autora que hacen parte del imaginario recreado en su poesía, como si a través de ellos Wright se desdoblase para purificar su espíritu salvaje, vital e irreverente:
"In my book, poetry is a necessity of life. It is a function of poetry to locate those zones inside us that would be free, and declare them so."
El ritmo de su poesía se marca por la secuencia de ideas, por el universo de imágenes y símbolos utilizados insistentemente; por la repetición de objetos, personajes y lugares. Toda su poesía pertenece a un tiempo determinado; a un momento donde florecen sus visiones e ideas del mundo; donde la poeta llena su vida de sentido, y su viaje se catapulta de un plano físico a uno metafísico, de búsqueda constante de sentido en un mundo en construcción.
No queda más que disfrutar del lenguaje, de la lirica C.D. Wright, de su imaginario, que apropiamos al sentarnos como pasajeros y disfrutar de las caricias del viento.

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Boston Review

Boston Review is probably best known for its current fiction editor, Junot Diaz who received the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for his novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao in 2008. BR was founded in 1975 and is an independent, nonprofit institution. It aims to expand political debate combining politics and poetry down the page. It has a national readership, and currently seeks writers in both poetry and fiction. Submissions are accepted through the online submissions system, or by mail: Boston Review, 35 Medford St. Suite 302, Somerville, MA 02143. A self-addressed stamped envelope must accompany all snail-mailed submissions. Faxed or emailed submissions will not be accepted. Payment varies. Response time is generally 2-4 months.

POETRY:  
BR reads poetry submissions between September 15 and May 15 each year. Use the online submissions system.

FICTION:
  BR reads fiction submissions between September 15 and May 15 each year.

From Junot Díaz, fiction editor: “I’m looking for fiction that resembles the Thirty-Mile Woman from Toni Morrison’s Beloved: ‘She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order.’ Or as Takashi Murakami puts it: ‘We want to see the newest things. That is because we want to see the future, even if only momentarily. It is the moment in which, even if we don’t completely understand what we have glimpsed, we are nonetheless touched by it. This is what we have come to call art.’ I’m looking for fiction in which a heart struggles against itself, in which the messy unmanageable complexity of the world is revealed. Sentences that are so sharp they cut the eye.” Keep submissions under 4,000 words and use the online submissions system.

BR also runs an annual short story contest. The 2009 contest is closed; the next deadline will be in Fall 2010.

-- Lisa Reyes

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Notes on imagery in three books by James Wright, Mary Ruefle and Mark Levine

Effective poetry images, descriptive or figurative, have the capacity to spruce up in the reader not only physical sensations but, more important, feelings in the soul.

Imagery in ancient Chinese poetry was keen in relating human emotions and sensations to images of nature. Numerous stereotypical associations were made, which the reader, educated or not, was expected to identify and draw from the written, or rather painted, characters. Many complex sounds and words have been catalogued as “non translatable”. Usually, these poems bear no title. Classic “stanza” examples are Ono no Komachi’s “the pearl of dew” and Tu Tu’s “alone in her beauty”.

Fast forwarding a few centuries, Ezra Pound (1885-1972), founder in 1912 along with other artists of the literary movement Imagism, considered poetry to be the highest of arts. In their 1914 manifesto The Imagistes declared that the natural object is the adequate symbol. They recommended not mixing abstraction with the concrete and obtaining clarity of expression through the use of precise visual images. This was an opposition to the French Symbolist movement. In other words, to Imagistes poetry should be a photography made up of carefully chosen words or diction.

In “Selected Poems”, James Wright (1927-1980) shows a display of purity and clarity in his depiction of images. Evocative and down to earth, Wright does not use figurative language as much as descriptive. Reading his poems, I felt compelled to liberate my self and to cleanse my soul with the holy water of poetry. Employing an uncomplicated language and the quasi absence of abstractions, Wright reaffirmed to me the suspicious simplicity of language: “lashed blind by the wind”, “her face was smooth as the side of an apricot”, “and the shade crawling upon the rock”, “I hear the horse clear his nostrils”. All these images appeal to the physical senses, visual, tact, aural, taste, and in doing so they immerse the reader into the poet’s body, and eventually, his feelings.

Mary Ruefles’s collection “Post Meridien” appeals to the senses in a different way. A direct connection between one or more physical stimuli is usually paired with a concrete mind or soul situation: “the baby’s screams were berserk, like a bird over the ocean”; one can discern the sound of the baby, the image become clearer by hearing the bird squawking and flying over the azure, then one lives the desperation of the mother. In the image “the corpses are clean, like diamond in a museum”, one sees the bright, dry diamonds in a place of quietness, then the corpses, resting, arid, and finally the sadness and solitude of lost beings emerge in the heart.

In “you can open your mouth like the doors of a theater being unlocked in the evening” you foresee the crowd of people storming out, but by closing with “and speak the truth”, you realize how the truth cannot be held inside. One must speak out, or implode trying not to.

In “Enola Gay” Mark Levine is much more abstract than Ruefle or Wright, yet since the opening verses one is violently drawn into the chaotic oppression of post-modernity. The world that surrounds the subject “the dark altar / where among paint cans and tar paper / and a microphone with its wires torn out” is at once cause and effect of the inner anguish. Appeals to the senses abound: “everybody is rubbing ice across their necks and chests”, “he smelled the resinous traces of the others”, “and it stood upright, like a sagging fence”, “he could hear the rasp of his servant’s breath”. The fact that he writes in an epic way makes a wider audience empathize with these metaphors and similes, action clips, and video-dreams. This confused canvas or collage is more evident in the barrage of images listed in “The Holy Pail” and “Event”, where one cannot avoid feeling with just the physical senses but also question our present worldview and ask: What will I do?

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The Kenyon Review

The Kenyon Review, founded in 1939 at Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, is another prestigious magazine that has gone through the transformation from pure love of the arts to a combination of high quality art and business-like structure. The reading period for 2010-11 runs from September 15, 2010 through January 15, 2011. They look for poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and reviews. As part of the financial modernization of the magazine, they now have a web site, blog, ability to receive submissions on-line (an account must be open), and a host of other initiatives, like contests, festivals, a bourgeoning blog and others.

As with any magazine you wish to contribute to, it is highly recommended that you buy a subscription or one issue, peruse the magazine at your favorite book store, and get familiarized with the type of work they publish. TKR has seen in its pages poets like Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren, and Robert Lowell. Consult the guidelines during the reading period. The current issue is for Winter 2010 and features contributions by Evelina Zuni Lucero, Jorge Antonio Vallejos, Mark Turcotte, Eric Gansworth and many others. Visit their web site at www.kenyonreview.org for further information.

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Louise Gluck- Wild Iris

Wild Iris is a collection of poems by Louise Gluck. This group of poems is comprised of serene titles such as "Clear Morning", "Violets" and "Lullaby." At first glance this serenity can be deceiving. If one expects from the smoothly orchestrated language subject matter that reflects that demeanor, then they're expectations will be disappointed.
In various parts of the book, the poems switch narrative register. They move from the human "I" to the God-heah "I" and back all within pages of each other. This sounds like a daunting task, but it is this exploration of self-identity that makes the poems as profound as they are.
The juxtaposition of earthly physicality and abstract philosophical wanderings creates a balance between these two aspects of the poetic voice. When the speaker physically enters the world around her, it is not surprising but it makes sense in the logic of the poem.
depressives hate the spring, imbalance
between the inner and the other world. I make
another case- being depressed , yes, but in a sense passionately
attached to the living tree, my body
actually curled in the split trunk, almost at peace
in the evening rain
almost able to feel (pg 2)
From the position of the speaker, neither the identity of the God-head nor the human is written as superior. Instead, both inhabit a space that is full of despair, regret, nostalgia. Both have the capacity to recall a world that is long past. And it is because of this delicate balance that the poet can manage two seemingly grand extremes.

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Crítica Louise Gluck

Louise Gluck y la voz de dios

Oscar Godoy Barbosa

En los poemas de The wild iris, de Louise Gluck (New York, 1943) aparece una y otra vez un recurso que a fuerza de su reiteración acaba por caracterizar la intención de la autora: siempre parecen establecer un diálogo entre una voz hablante y un interlocutor (You, que bien podría ser “usted”, o “ustedes”). Veamos algunos ejemplos: “Hear me out: that which you call death/ I remember” (The wild iris); “You want to know how I spend my time?” (Matins); “Do you know what I was, how I lived?” (Snowdrops); “When I made you, I loved you. / Now I pity you” (Retreating winds).

La magia de este recurso es que al tiempo que parece interactuar con el lector (el lector podría ser ese ‘you’ al que se dirigen) poco a poco van perfilando al hablante, a esa voz que se expresa a sí misma en el diálogo con el otro. Y esa voz, por las claves que va sembrando, bien puede ser una entidad distinta al poeta, una voz narrativa que en ciertos momentos parece ser una especie de dios creador que se interroga sobre su existencia y sobre los seres que creó.

En el poema que le da el título al libro, esta voz parece haber pasado por el padecimiento de la muerte y encontrarse más allá, y desde ese otro lado se da cuenta que ha regresado del olvido para tener una voz. Esa voz pareciera que es la que va a resonar, con un tono entre sentencioso y casi mítico, a lo largo del libro. Y el “You”, el narratario, puede muy bien ser el hombre como especie, o los hombres, esas criaturas mezquinas que pueblan la tierra, más bien decepcionantes para el creador:

As I get further away from you

I see you more clearly.

Your souls should have been immense by now,

not what they are,

small talking things. (Retreating winds)

Esa voz del dios nota que ahora, después de la muerte, se encuentra despojada de pensamientos, que ahora solamente siente, y esa condición le da la posibilidad de observar a los hombres con desaprensión, aunque con gran sagacidad:

Never forget you are my children.

You are not suffering because you touched each other

but because you were born,

because you required life

separate from me. (Early darkness)

Y es una voz que hacia el final presiente que morirá de nuevo:

As I perceive

I am dying now and know

I will not speak again, will not

survive the earth (The gold lily)

Esa voz que habla va desarrollando a lo largo del libro otro tema que complementa al anterior: el del jardinero, el jardín y las plantas sembradas en él. La voz narradora en ocasiones pareciera ser un jardinero que habla a sus plantas también como el dios que puede ser para ellas. Las flores, el paso del tiempo, el clima, las estaciones, son elementos que reaparecen una y otra vez, trazando una especie de gran metáfora acerca de la condición humana, de la fatalidad de esas criaturas (plantas y hombres), unas capaces de sentir miedo y otras que no, durante su paso sobre la tierra:

I planted the seeds, I watched the first shoots

like wings tearing the soil, and it was my heart

broken by the blight, the black spot so quickly

multiplying in the rows. I doubt

you have a heart, in our understanding of

that term. You who do not discriminate

between the dead and the living, who are, in consequence,

immune to foreshadowing, you may not know

how much terror we bear, the spotted leaf,

the red leaves of the maple falling

even in August (Vespers)

La propuesta de Louise Gluck se apoya en dos elementos fundamentales para llegar con fuerza al lector: por una parte, un manejo del lenguaje sencillo, cotidiano, pero con gran riqueza expresiva, que permite al lector conectarse de inmediato con la metáfora de la vida que se está planteando. Y por el otro, un manejo limpio y efectivo del verso, la línea poética. Cada línea, aún si tiene encabalgamiento con la anterior o la posterior, es valiosa por sí misma, cuenta con su propia fuerza tanto en significaciones como en su construcción poética. Y son estos dos recursos, al servicio de un tema ambicioso y trascendente, los que hacen de este libro de Louise Gluck una experiencia incomparable.

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Bellevue Literary Review

Daniel Greenhalgh

The Bellevue Literary Review is published twice a year in the Fall and Spring by the Department of Medicine at New York University Lancone Medical Center. The Bellevue Medical Center is the oldest public hospital in the U.S. and their literary journal has been published since 2001. The BLR specializes in poetry and prose that discovers the human experience that can be found only through the lenses of illness, health and healing. All published pieces reflect this sensibility and although such a specialization seems rather narrowly focused, the poetry and prose published is quite beautiful.

The editors prefer prose and poetry that appeals naturally and easily to a broad audience. Interested writers should consider this when preparing a piece for submission to the journal. They prefer the pieces they publish to be readable and clear to broad, non-technical or overly-literary readers. The editors believe that health and illness are aspects of humanity to which all can relate and so they strive to publish work that reflects this point of view. Due to the subject matter, issues can sometimes be weighed down by the tragedy of early death and/or a hopeless affliction, however, generally the editors try to emphasize works where tragedy gives way to hope.
The BLR accepts unsolicited manuscripts all year ling except for August and September. They allow simultaneous submissions but will only consider previously unpublished work. They only require the rights to first publication, after that rights revert back to the author, but they request acknowledgement in any further publications. They do offer prizes for outstanding poetry, fiction and non-fiction related to their primary themes through their annual contest which runs from February through June, but payment for accepted work occurs only in the form of two copies of the issue the work appears in and a year’s subscription.

Although Bellevue Literary Review is a relatively small journal, several writers who have had work published in BLR have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, which celebrate small press literary work. Other writers published in BLR have gone on to publish complete books in both fiction and poetry.

Submission guidelines request that prose be limited to 5000 words and only three poems at a time. Poems should be submitted in a single document. They try to have several readers consider each submission for possible inclusion and sometimes it can take a while to hear back from them. However, they encourage you to follow up if you have not heard back for six months. Submissions are only accepted electronically and can be submitted through a link on the website. (http://blr.med.nyu.edu/)

The following poem by Nancy Naomi Carlson was published in the Fall 2009 issue which can also be viewed < href="”http://blr.med.nyu.edu/content/archive/2009”">here.

What Bears Your Name

by Nancy Naomi Carlson

for Matthew, who lived 13 1⁄2 hours

In Haifa an old cypress bears your name—
planted from seed to honor your one day

of life—above a bay I’ve never seen,
no doubt blue as your room, your layette sheets.

No way to hold back deserts. Miles and miles
away, still they invade our walled-in heights,

our measured roads, our album faces pressed
and saved. I should have named you Redwood, made

to last the wear of centuries, each growth
ring a celebration of your birth.

Or Air—fickle, but true. This atom raised
in hand or floating through me like a wraith,

might have brushed an ancient olive crest
or tamarisk, or blushed you pink with breath.

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