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Monday, December 12th, 2011
Todas las lenguas, todos los murmullos sólo una forma vicaria de preservar durante un tiempo azaroso nuestra identidad.-- Jacobo Urenda
July, 1996
I had forgotten all about Urenda's narration, about this story of Angola and Rwanda and wartime Liberia. It started coming back to me when I was reading about Belano's duel with Iñaki and I've been feeling anxious about it ever since. (Anxious and a little mystified. "I remember that being a long story. How is there going to be space to fit it in to what little remains of part 2?") As it turns out, not really that long a story at 23 pages; but powerfully dense. This narrative could be a book almost by itself. Luigi's death is one of the most frightening, most moving moments in Savage Detectives.The action here is more precisely pinpointed in time than anywhere else; Urenda says he got to Monrovia in April 1996 -- only a few months before he is speaking, and I wonder why he says "April 1996" instead of just "April"* -- I wonder if this has something to do with its being the end of Belano's story.
 ...And we get to the end, the final two interviews in part 2: after Urenda's story we hear from Ernesto GarcÃa Grajales, the only scholar specializing in the Visceral Realists in Mexico and, so he believes, the whole world. The interviewer asks if he has heard of Juan GarcÃa Madero, the first time GarcÃa Madero's name has come up since part 1; he has not. (Is GarcÃa Madero the interviewer? This would kind of work, except he could not have interviewed Amadeo Salvatierra in Mexico City in January 1976.) And finally we get to the end of Salvatierra's story, dawn of the following day, the two young poets promising him that they will find Cesárea Tinajero. *This may just be an idiomatic thing. In Wimmer's translation, Urenda says "I got to Monrovia in April."
posted evening of December 12th, 2011: Respond
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Tuesday, December 13th, 2011
The incantatory force of GarcÃa Madero's invocation here brings to mind Judith Weissman's take on the "Wanderings of Oisin"...
Una excursión: nuestro Impala enfiló por la pista que cuelga a un lado del golfo de California, hasta Punta Chueca, enfrente de la isla Tiburón. Después fuimos a El Dólar, enfrente de la isla Patos. Lima la llama la isla Pato Donald. Tirados en una playa desierta, estuvimos fumando mota durante horas. Punta Chueca-Tiburón, Dólar-Patos, naturalmente son sólo nombres, pero a mà me llenan el alma de oscuros presagios, como dirÃa un colega de Amado Nervo. ¿Pero qué es lo que en esos nombres consigue alterarme, entristecerme, ponerme fatalista, hacer que mire a Lupe como si fuera la última mujer sobre la Tierra? Poco antes de que anocheciera seguimos subiendo hacia el norte. Allà se levanta Desemboque. El alma absolutamente negra. Creo que incluso temblaba. Y después volvimos a BahÃa Kino por una carretera oscura en donde de tanto en tanto nos cruzábamos con camionetas llenas de pescadores que cantaban canciones seris.
Also thinking vaguely of Dorfman and of Rivera Letelier and of the Atacama Desert as I read about the poets' journey through their desert. And here again!
Lo seguimos por la avenida principal del cementerio, un paseo bordeado de cipreses y viejos robles. Cuando nos internamos por las calles laterales, en cambio, vi algunos cactus propios de la región: choyas y sahuesos y también algún nopal, como para que los muertos no olvidaran que estaban en Sonora y no en otro lugar.
posted evening of December 13th, 2011: Respond
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Thursday, December 22nd, 2011
«Hasta los confines del sistema solar hay cuatro horas-luz; hasta la estrella más cercana, cuatro años-luz. Un desmedido océano de vacÃo. Pero ¿estamos realmente seguros de que sólo haya un vacÃo? Únicamente sabemos que en este espacio no hay estrellas luminosas; de existir, ¿serÃan visibles? ¿Y si existiesen cuerpos no luminosos u oscuros? ¿No podrÃa suceder en los mapas celestes, al igual que en los de la tierra, que estén indicadas las estrellas-ciudades y omitidas las estrellas-pueblos?»
In Savage Detectives group read news, Rise links to some translations of Bolaño's First infrarealist manifesto.
posted evening of December 22nd, 2011: Respond
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Wednesday, January 4th, 2012
 Jenny Volvoski is an artist with a very cool project: To design one or more covers for each book she reads, as she reads it. Check out her blog From Cover to Cover to see what she's come up with so far. (via Richard of Caravana de recuerdos, who reminds us that the Savage Detectives group read is coming up)
posted evening of January 4th, 2012: Respond
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Sunday, January 8th, 2012
The Infrarrealismo FB page today features some grade-school photos of Mario Santiago Papasquiaro:
posted evening of January 8th, 2012: Respond
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Monday, January 9th, 2012
via Bifurcaria bifurcata: Argentine sculptor Amalia Pica speaks with the Dalston Literary Review about a series of sculptures inspired by Juan GarcÃa Madero's reference to catachresis in the final section of Savage Detectives.
 Catachresis #8 (head of the nail, teeth of the comb, eye of the needle, head of the screw)
posted morning of January 9th, 2012: Respond
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Sunday, November 24th, 2013
Early poetry from Bolaño and comrade infras. I'm now reading and translating Hiram Barrios' fantastic essay on Infrarealism from Cuadrivio.net, Visitando al infrarrealismo.
posted morning of November 24th, 2013: Respond
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Once son ellos, once, ferozmente poetas:
Hernán, Roberto y Montané, chilenos;
el ecuatoriano Nieto Cadena;
de la patria de Sandino: Beltrán Morales;
el peruano Enrique Verástegui,
el también peruano Jorge Pimente;
Luis SuardÃaz, del primer teerritorio
libre en América: Cuba, cubanamente;
más tres meshicas que son, qué remedio,
Orlando Guillén, ¡impresente!,
Mario en el camino de Santiago
y Julián Gómez... once son, pues,
y, ¿se fijaron?, ni una sola hembrita,
con tan buenas, guapamente sabrosas que son
y que escriben como Afroditas que surgieran
no de un pantanoso taller literario
sino de un bárbaro océano de pantalones de mezclilla.
--EfraÃn Huerta
It's eleven, eleven, ferociously poets:
Hernán, Roberto and Montané from Chile;
Ecuadorian Nieto Cadena;
from the land of Sandino, Beltrán Morales;
Peruvian Enrique Verástegui,
and Peruvian too, Jorge Pimente;
Luis SuardÃaz, from the first-ever free
territory of the Americas: Cuba, Cubanly;
and there's three Meshicas, what else can I say,
Orlando Guillén, absent!,
Mario on the road to Santiago,
and Julián Gómez... so they're eleven,
and notice? Not a single chick,
for all the lovely, sweet things out there
that write like Aphrodites sprung
not from some fetid literary workshop
but from a savage ocean of blue jeans.
posted afternoon of November 24th, 2013: Respond
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Friday, November 29th, 2013
Ampersan: this is Orlando Guillén's "ABCD", from Muchachos desnudos.
posted evening of November 29th, 2013: Respond
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Here is a poem of Bolaño's from Pájaro de calor. (It is quoted in Hiram Barrios' fabulous essay on the infra poets, Visitando al infrarrealismo.)
Teach me to dance
by Roberto Bolaño/ tr. Jeremy Osner
to draw my fingers through the cottoncandy clouds
to stretch out my legs tangled up in your legs...
(translation redacted, write me if you'd like to see it)
posted evening of November 29th, 2013: 1 response
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an informative post