Astrid López Méndez On The Role Of Verse And Resistance To Poetry

I. Mother Poetry

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My mother utilized to for illustration reciting Sor Juana from memory. I’d perceive to her from my room:

You are fools, you men,
to blacken a woman’s name,
not seeing you are nan cause
of nan very point you blame

Reciting these lines aloud helped her get her temper nether control. I’d effort to fig retired what had happened. Neither of america was reasoning astir poetry, yet it was nan only measurement we had of saying thing to each other.

*

I utilized to deliberation poesy had to beryllium corny, cheesy, sentimental. When I was an undergraduate, my thought of a writer was personification who listened to ballads and gave distant handmade insubstantial roses.

In those years, nan slightest look of sensitivity had maine successful a imperishable authorities of discomfort. A acquainted pragmatism prevailed, 1 that had maine utilized to emotion estranged. I sought retired ways to region myself from group and from words.

Neither of america was reasoning astir poetry, yet it was nan only measurement we had of saying thing to each other.

On a parkland bench, a student was reference aloud nan first page of his precocious published book. I laughed. I said something. I don’t retrieve what exactly, but I cognize my reside was spiteful and cruel.

I fled sentimentality, reasoning that measurement I could region myself from poesy and frankincense hide nan image of my mother reciting poems, poems that she excessively would yet forget.

*

When poesy didn’t speak to me, I blamed nan poets. In class, we’d publication Mario Benedetti aliases Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer. With each poem nan abyss grew wider. I had nary liking successful discovering different forms aliases different writers and uncertainty it would person made overmuch quality if my teachers had chosen different poems. As Ben Lerner suggests, location often exists an interior separator that prevents america from connecting pinch poetry.

Some classmates, arsenic removed from poetry, cultivated it discreetly: They wrote letters pinch poesy successful them, made it their ain done popular songs aliases nan fig of a troubadour singing astir nan Revolution. Our schoolhouse was for processing skills successful maths, physics, and chemistry, not for counting syllables aliases composing lines.

I ever recovered nan spectacle of poesy a spot ridiculous, but I besides felt a benignant of envy. I wanted to judge successful words. Not nan words we publication successful nan classroom, but nan ones we opportunity to ourselves.

*

Since clip immemorial, group person questioned nan domiciled of poesy and of poets. Plato’s Ion accepts nan thought that poesy is not created by humans. Rather, nan gods availed themselves of an “insignificant poet” successful bid to divest him of logic and present him nan astir beautiful lines.

This function, which mightiness look inoffensive, ended up being profoundly problematic, because it put nan truth successful question. How were group to cognize it was really nan gods who were speaking? Ought group to perceive to what was being said?

Without a definitive reply to these questions, nan solution was to effort and get free of nan poets. In her book The Fire and nan Sun, Iris Murdoch reminds america that nan platonic imagination changed successful texts that associated this waste and acquisition pinch beauty. It went from being repudiated to being a contained aesthetic: a mini space—the coming together of axenic pleasure, existent beauty, and profound experience—where acceptable creation could beryllium found.

For Plato, Murdoch writes, “decent creation must obey truth; and truth is expressive of reality (the 2 ideas blend successful nan connection ἀλήθεια), and is pure, mini successful extent, and lacking successful intensity.” Poets obtained support to believe their waste and acquisition again, connected nan information that they would instrumentality adjacent to logic and could negociate people’s reactions to their verses.

*

In a superior schoolhouse Spanish people 1 day, we learned nan communicative of Sor Juana. When lessons were over, I spent nan day pretending I was her: being alone, reading, penning poems. As nan crippled extended to nan only bookshelf successful nan house, I recovered nan anthology containing nan quatrains my mother had memorized. I instantly sought them out, underlining nan title of nan first page successful greenish ink.

My mother gradually forgot those lines. My puerility came to an end, and my adolescence, and nan book stayed wherever it was. Intact.

II. Sonorous Fluid

The first clip I near nan state I was 15 years old. I wasn’t frightened of going to a caller place, but alternatively of not being capable to subordinate to it. It worried maine that I couldn’t moreover construe what I was reasoning and emotion into my autochthonal Spanish, fto unsocial English, contempt having made sizeable effort successful class. I was carrying an anger astir that sewage successful nan measurement of words. My mother lingua was broken.

During that travel to nan United States, I realized something: I communicated amended done maths. My English is and will stay rudimentary—but contempt each its flaws and defects I felt safe successful there, successful that unintelligibility.

*

At home, my attempts to support my region from my parents proved insufficient. I was engaged each day pinch immoderate extracurricular activity, aliases other spent it playing successful nan street. If they asked maine to spell pinch them to get togethers of family aliases friends, I’d make nan excuse that I had homework to do. Often, I conscionable locked myself successful my room to perceive to euphony and look retired nan model astatine a peach character that flowered each year.

While nan travel was a triumph for nan teachers and parents of our mini nationalist school, it only made maine desperate. I stopped caring astir getting bully marks aliases astir my classwork. My thoughts had been dragged from 1 spot to another.

*

When I sewage backmost from nan exchange, it was only a fewer months earlier I moved retired of my parents’ house. I was to return, erstwhile successful a while, but arsenic a foreigner.

I was a tourer resigned to nan truth that visits were uncomfortable. It was only ever a matter of minutes earlier tedium took told of me. The mean conversations, their ways of showing affection, each interest weighing connected their shoulders: nary of it made sense. There was an abyss pushing maine insistently away.

*

On observant reference of immoderate of W.H. Auden’s poems and essays, I noted that his estrangement was some spatial and inner. Outwardly, nan writer had near nan UK astatine nan outbreak of nan Second World War, which was to beryllium a recurring origin for scorn successful years to come.

Inwardly, Auden subverted ideas he didn’t work together with: First he fto them agelong retired to their afloat extent, past he watched from afar arsenic they revealed nan premises of their arguments, only to later dismantle them pinch each nan calm successful nan world.

Auden had constructed an interior separator some unfastened and solid.

*

When nan writer Joseph Brodsky was exiled from nan Soviet Union—invited to leave, arsenic he ironically put it—he needed an reside location extracurricular nan state earlier he could get retired of nan forced labour camps. Brodsky gave Auden’s reside successful Austria.

They didn’t cognize each different personally, but nan Englishman received him without mobility and, pinch nan thief of different writers, facilitated his move to nan United States. Ever since he was little, Brodsky had secretly been reference an anthology of US poets successful which Auden’s activity appeared.

Faced pinch his inevitable exile, nan Russian man followed a stranger’s footsteps, and successful his clip of top request nan Englishman took him in.

*

The sonorous fluid emerging from nan rima of 1 of nan past 5 Kiliwa speakers flows into my ears, unrestricted by immoderate obstruction my uninitiated mind mightiness erect. My mind, contempt everything, seeks sense, coherence, thing remotely familiar. I springiness up earlier agelong and descend into nan acoustic river, knowing that, for someone, what I’m proceeding is speech; that this acoustic truth contains meaning that is wholly mislaid connected me.

–Yásnaya Elena A. Gil, “Ëëts, atom: Notes connected Indigenous Identity”

*

On examining his ain information of exile, Brodsky would callback immoderate of nan reasons why a writer decides to inhabit different language. Because of an uncontrollable desire to distort language, arsenic successful nan lawsuit of Vladimir Nabokov; to acquisition admiration erstwhile again for nan novelty of words, arsenic successful nan lawsuit of Samuel Beckett; retired of necessity, arsenic successful nan lawsuit of Joseph Conrad; aliases arsenic a measurement of getting much profoundly adjacent to someone, “to please a shadow,” conscionable for illustration Brodsky wanted to please W.H. Auden.

*

One Christmas I went location alone, correct successful nan mediate of each nan carols and nan food. At nan wedding of 1 of my cousins, I spent a ample portion of nan evening successful nan car.

Auden had constructed an interior separator some unfastened and solid.

I didn’t beryllium to that spot aliases to that family, but I had near portion of myself down pinch them and I was trying to someway get it back.

Books gradually changed nan measurement I looked for it. With each book I publication I became much of a blur to different people. Immersing myself successful those pages made maine a unusual being: an unintelligible self.

I had discovered a measurement of being calm: being nan family negative, an absent self. That’s really I realized that nan portion of maine that was mislaid was not to beryllium recovered astatine home—that I had to look for it elsewhere, and that books were 1 measurement I mightiness group disconnected connected nan expedition.

III. Death to nan Father

I was fortunate to person publication Octavio Paz’s books earlier I took a azygous people astatine university. The professor, a translator of nan absurd, cursed him loudly, endlessly. He near america pinch nothing, reducing Paz’s activity to dust. To apical it each off, he wrote america a medicine for a Mexican writer who did merit our respect, a sugar-coated patriarch for generations to come.

The patriarch was not for illustration Paz, because he had not devoted himself to turning Mexican lit into a mafia. The patriarch, dissimilar Paz, was known extracurricular Mexico. The patriarch was a awesome writer. I didn’t request to cognize nan specifications of nan missteps he’d taken towards nan extremity of his life to tie definite conclusions from that fortuitous reading.

I agreed pinch nan professor. Without question, Paz belonged to a peculiar infinitesimal successful time: He had made galore errors, of course, but he’d besides sewage immoderate things right.

Leaving nan second speech for a moment, nan poet’s trajectory was portion of a continuum successful which he was not alone. Throughout nan twentieth century, Mexico perfected a strategy whereby nan hegemonic statement had a typical expertise to tie everything to it while keeping definite basal things astatine arm’s length.

Thanks to its despotic authority, it was practically intolerable to beryllium extracurricular of nan party: Since 1 of its objectives was to stamp retired nan dying embers of nan Mexican Revolution, nan caciques became its first members. This union, already problematic, became much analyzable erstwhile it began trying to destruct difference: There was only room for those consenting to fresh themselves precisely into nan mold.

*

So what does each this person to do pinch nan professor and nan patriarch? The bridges betwixt authoritarianism and our ain procreation person ever been broken. Ever since we were children we person been taught, successful bully humor, to make nosy of nan king.

We realized this acknowledgment to Paz, aliases without him, aliases contempt him. Perhaps that’s why nan professor was discouraged by nan show of our faces: distant pinch nan fairies, saturated retired of our wits. We paid nary attraction to nan proposal that we ought to revere nan patriarch.

Every clip I publication “A Draft of Shadows” by Octavio Paz, I’m reminded of my begetter strapped to nan intoxicant rack. I could ne'er talk to him, conscionable for illustration nan sound successful nan poem.

*

The Bow and nan Lyre opens pinch a database of definitions describing what Paz understands by poetry. In nan first paragraph location are eighty-six definitions successful 2 100 and seventy-five words. On average, 1 each 3 words. Seeing each these definitions together, seeing nan tally, near maine emotion for illustration location was nary meaning astatine all: “pure and impure, ineffable and damned, celebrated and marginal, corporate and personal, naked and clothed.”

I divided up nan paragraph astatine each quality of a afloat stop, to create a database pinch twenty-eight sections. This was nan only measurement I could get immoderate of it to make sense.

*

Poetry Is Cursed Food
In an interview, Nicanor Parra was asked: “Who introduced you to nan vice?” The journalist was trying to fig retired why he had abandoned mathematics for poetry. The Chilean was silent.

Because if Sabellius, who arsenic good arsenic being a theologian was besides a consummate humorist, could trim nan tenets of nan Sacred Trinity to particulate and garbage to reply for his heresy, why couldn’t Parra?

Poetry Is nan Bread of nan Chosen
Witold Gombrowicz makes this very clear successful Against Poets, wherever he criticizes nan “poetic mass”: nan ritual that turns poesy into an activity that’s retired of nan scope of mortals and nan uninitiated. The professionalization of connection aimed astatine tiny, prime groups who judge they understand nan messages encrypted successful lines of poetry: nan Narrowing becomes Narrower, Beauty becomes much Beautiful, Profundity becomes much Profound, etc. Meanwhile, nan breadstuff disappears.

Poetry Is Exorcism
The only documented lawsuit is that of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He wanted to free his assemblage of nan image of Kublai Khan, nan past awesome Khan Mongol and nan first Emperor of China. Coleridge was a literate professional arsenic good arsenic a poet, and he had publication Khan’s curriculum vitae arsenic portion of his work. But nan pages of nan book hounded him everyplace he went.

At nan time, nan usage of opium was recommended for specified emergencies, so, earlier going to sleep, Coleridge prepared a operation for his pipe. When he woke, he group retired instantly to transcribe nan 3 100 lines of poesy he had dreamed, but a friend arrived retired of nan blue, truthful location ended up being only fifty-something of them.

Poetry Is a Spell
When Sor Juana wrote nan “Hendecasyllabic Labyrinth,” she was reasoning astir nan years her Excellency nan Countess of Galve, doña Elvira de Toledo, was to walk pinch nan Count, her husband. The poem should beryllium publication 3 times, each clip starting from a different column.

Each file has thirty-two possibilities, almost 2 100 1000 combinations. Five 100 and thirty-nine years if you publication conscionable 1 hendecasyllable a day. Some clip later, efforts were made to find retired much astir nan count and countess, but thing has yet been discovered of them.

Poetry Is Magic
Poetry is not magic, W.H. Auden assures us.

Poetry Is an Ascetic Activity
For Giorgio Agamben, a writer is anyone consenting to surrender to nan inability to do something.

Poetry Is Innate Experience
Choosing a nickname is an intuitive measurement of uncovering a imperishable link, of making up for nan inexact prime of a person’s name. That aforesaid intuition is put to activity successful each poem: it’s not conscionable a hunt for words, it’s besides nan narration generated betwixt them.

Poetry Is nan Word of nan Solitary
Despite nan nickname her activity garnered, Marianne Moore ne'er felt satisfied pinch her poems. There were fourteen years betwixt nan publication of her first and 2nd books. If it had been up to her, arsenic it was to Emily Dickinson, her poesy mightiness only person been publication aft her death.

*

In a matter hardly a page long, by measurement of an obituary, Luis Villoro uses The Bow and nan Lyre to bring together Paz’s life and death: “failing to understand, he attacked those who should person been his brothers—although taking different routes, it’s true—in nan hunt for nan other.” His poetics showed really opposites are united, but ne'er managed to comprehend nan disruptive acts of different voices.

IV. Great Art

Poetry is often reproached for being “disconnected from reality.” Dehumanized connection that has forgotten everything else: creation for art’s sake. Witold Gombrowicz’s Against Poets—given primitively arsenic a speech connected August 28, 1947, successful Buenos Aires—is 1 of nan champion known of these reproaches.

In nan 2 versions of nan speech successful circulation, I couldn’t rather spot why he claimed that unreadable poesy has done awesome damage, overmuch much harm than unreadable prose texts, which he only references specifically successful nan 2nd version: successful nan first, each he does is allude concisely to Joyce’s Ulysses and Hermann Broch’s The Death of Virgil, arsenic “too ‘artistic.'”

If we concede to this provocation and travel Gombrowicz’s lead, successful nan last pages we glimpse what is possibly nan guidelines origin of his anxiety. For him, “being successful nan beingness of awesome creation is for illustration being successful nan beingness of men who are much mature than us, pinch broader horizons and stronger sensibilities.” For this reason, he considers our expertise to link pinch creation to beryllium limited, narrow. And besides, it has to beryllium learned.

If civilization is quality production, past creation cannot beryllium a divine concession. We are not calved pinch nan expertise to beryllium moved by a activity of art; we create it.

Though Gombrowicz had sought to make poesy much capacious, he might, connected nan contrary, person constricted it moreover further by identifying rather truthful galore obstacles to forging a relationship pinch art.

*

In antiquity, it was communal to subordinate nan activities of a carpenter pinch those of an artist. At that time, an object’s worth was not wished by its utility. The attraction was nan ideas down it, connected nan process of conceiving it, and connected nan entity itself. Creation, from nan intelligence to nan practical.

Slaves were made to do mechanical labor: they were denied nan opportunity to study a accomplishment and understand nan ideas down it. Over time, nan section of labour and aesthetics changed that perspective. Functionality brought together mechanics and accomplishment to nan grade that we person forgotten really to separate them.

For its part, beauty, arsenic nan artistic ideal, provided what is still understood coming arsenic nan activity of art. The spectator was born. From knowing we moved to specified observation.

Before, erstwhile creation was a trade, not conscionable anyone could beryllium an artist. Nowadays we each can, but there’s nary guarantee we tin move an entity into a activity of art.

*

A fewer years ago, I sat successful connected a assemblage people astir creation and powerfulness successful which Sara Uribe’s Antígona González was discussed. The students were puzzled and to immoderate grade angry. The poem alludes to nan thousands of group who person been vanished successful an apparently endless war.

Those who managed to definitive their discomfort each did truthful successful much aliases little nan aforesaid terms: It wasn’t prudent to constitute astir this topic, much discourse was needed to show what really happened, isn’t it opportunistic to constitute astir thing truthful current? Why did their reference provoke this benignant of reaction? The much I thought astir it, each nan imaginable answers led maine extracurricular nan text.

Though it had thing to do pinch Sara aliases nan poem itself, nan students’ reference had affected them successful respective ways. Perhaps it answered a mobility they had been circling without knowing really to formulate it. Because often, moreover erstwhile an reply is fixed repeatedly, we tin only really spot and analyse it erstwhile we’ve articulated nan question.

The discomfort was a motion that nan query was successful sight, that it was making itself known, but confronting a caller mobility isn’t easy. Like nan students, we each cognize nan desire to stay location familiar: successful a loop wherever some mobility and reply are good worked out.

*

But beyond nan truth that it would beryllium very unfair to blasted nan students aliases nan writer for what nan matter whitethorn aliases whitethorn not mean, I’d for illustration to attraction connected nan infinitesimal of brushwood betwixt scholar and poet: charged pinch erstwhile experiences, pinch our deficiencies, pinch each nan region we’ve traveled connected nan roadworthy to this book. How do we attack a text?

A retinal approach, an wholly ocular one, mightiness lead america to deliberation that thing precedes it: arsenic if we could beryllium spectators from crushed zero. But reference is not retinal, it’s conceptual, and possibly nan astir difficult point astir it is to admit our preconceived notions and extremity trying to set nan world and our readings to them.

Instead of confirming nan answers we already have, let’s conscionable activate nan questions. Read nan matter from nan position not of spectator, but of creator: from nan constituent of position of method and poetics alternatively than aesthetics.

*

In immoderate of their texts, some Giorgio Agamben and Boris Groys insist connected a return to method and nan ideas down it. The remnants of this restrained aesthetics, wherever a activity of creation tin only beryllium if axenic pleasure, existent beauty and profound acquisition meet, has an moreover longer history than nan contented of creation arsenic method aliases poetics, though it mightiness sometimes look to beryllium nan different measurement around.

Technique and poetics arsenic portion of creator labor, portion of everything that contributes to making a activity of creation and an artist; not conscionable nan seams but besides nan non-linear paths and practices that go nationalist narratives, beyond nan useful of creation themselves.

*

Although Sara Uribe’s poem constructs its ain narrative, it besides confronts other, antecedently established narratives. Many of them pinch undisclosed intentions aliases successful nan sanction of a poorly articulated cause. A reference successful which nan dice are loaded.

What hidden narratives are activated erstwhile we publication Antígona González?

The words prudent, real, and opportunistic are based connected a way that is not that of nan poem. Rather than unmask nan intentions down nan words, my mobility was, and still is, really do we unfastened them up? How do we make judge they springiness emergence to a oversea of enquiry alternatively than nan aforesaid aged paltry, mean response?

*

W.H. Auden, 1 of nan astir important poets of nan twentieth century, had to face disapproval from his chap writers successful people connected countless occasions, principally from George Orwell. In 1938, nan writer of 1984 referred to a statement from “Spain,” astir Auden’s trips location during nan Civil War successful 1936.

According to Orwell, only nan benignant of personification who is ever elsewhere erstwhile nan trigger is pulled could constitute that successful warfare location are “necessary murders.” Only personification arsenic superficial arsenic Auden could speak of decease arsenic though it were conscionable a word.

In 1946, Orwell took purpose again, this clip astatine nan “artificial pleasure-resorts” described successful Auden’s “1 September 1939”: nan insistence connected nan breakdown of backstage lives astatine a infinitesimal that transcended individuality, nan banal interest for regular activities during a warfare erstwhile everything was astatine stake, aliases nan ridiculous usage of emotion to return purpose astatine nan State.

In politics, Orwell thought, “it matters not what you think, but really you think”; it’s not authorities that are important, but alternatively principles, to which “a fewer irreducible individuals” still support allegiance.

*

According to Christopher Hitchens, this was possibly Orwell’s astir shameful chapter, because though Auden’s words evidently weighed connected him, his main problem pinch nan writer was an “unexamined, philistine” prejudice against homosexuals. At nan time, successful nan United Kingdom, group who revealed their homosexuality were tried and sentenced either to situation aliases to hormone therapy intended to “cure” them.

It happened to Oscar Wilde, who was imprisoned from 1895 to 1897, sentenced to “sodomy and gross indecency.” It happened later to nan mathematician Alan Turing, who augured nan computational turn, played a decisive domiciled successful nan deciphering of Nazi codes, and was injected pinch estrogen for a year, provoking a terrible intelligence imbalance and starring to his termination successful 1954, 2 years aft his trial.

*

Orwell was willing successful moral, not poetic problems, but he still tried to get Auden to resoluteness them done poetry. When it came to “the conscious acceptance of guilt successful nan basal murder,” what concerned Orwell was nan image of nan normalization of murder, which he attributed to nan poet. As though by meaning an equipped conflict did not person nan decease of surviving beings arsenic its inevitable disastrous consequence.

In immoderate case, yet Auden changed nan statement to “the conscious acceptance of guilt successful nan truth of murder” and arsenic of 1950 stopped including “Spain” successful his volumes of selected poems. The problem was not whether group “maintained allegiance to principles,” but what those principles were successful nan first place.

With a spot of perspective, I do not judge Orwell, but I americium moved and willing by Auden’s position. The writer listened to nan disapproval because of nan vitriol that accompanied it. He remained unfastened to nan accusations he faced. He listened, took note, made nan basal changes.

Despite being accused of being superficial for perpetually resorting to emotion arsenic a motivating taxable successful his poems, he continued to do truthful until his death. With each effort to break his sensibility, he revived a anticipation of understanding: He made it nan first measurement connected a much profound journey.

*

When Auden writes that “we must emotion 1 different aliases die,” he doesn’t expect america to bargain flowers astatine nan nearest stall, but to transverse nan border: to build bridges pinch his sensibility, truthful overmuch broader than our own.

*

Auden’s poems, Sara Uribe’s Antígona González, each poem that has been required to reply questions it is not concerned with—they are each doors trying to enactment open. We person ever desired to adjacent them: ever since Plato, erstwhile he tried to exile poets because it was intolerable to cognize whether their lines really were dictated by nan gods.

*

We request bad poets.
Good people, but bad
poets. We request two, a hundred,
a 1000 much bad poets to shatter
the poem’s 10 1000 flowers.

–Fogwill, “Call for Bad Poets”

*

Gombrowicsz’s diatribe wasn’t directed astatine nan thought that anybody tin beryllium an artist, but astatine what is presented arsenic “great art.”

The writer ne'er denied nan anticipation that location mightiness beryllium useful that move america all, but he thought they were conscionable arsenic valuable arsenic those that move nary 1 but their creator.

W.H. Auden responded otherwise to this aforesaid issue. He agreed that location were nary innate conditions allowing america to beryllium moved by a activity of art, but nor were location correct ways of being moved, not a azygous one.

In an era that capitalizes connected “great art,” he went further:

the specified making of a activity of creation is itself a governmental act. So agelong arsenic artists exist, making what they please and deliberation they ought to make, moreover if it is not terribly good, moreover if it appeals to only a fistful of people, they punctual nan Management of thing managers request to beryllium reminded of, namely, that nan managed are group pinch faces, not anonymous members, that Homo Laborans is besides Homo Ludens.

The writer ne'er denied nan anticipation that location mightiness beryllium useful that move america all, but he thought they were conscionable arsenic valuable arsenic those that move nary 1 but their creator.

______________________________

“The Interior Border” by Astrid López Méndez primitively appeared in New England Review vol 46.1.