Lima: Editorial Qwerty, 2022. 98 páginas.
As we know, the term “anthology” comes from the Greek “anthos” for flower and “logia” for selection. Therefore, it means a selection of the most precious flowers. In what follows, we won’t discuss the subjective process by which the flowers are selected, but rather the good faith placed in the chosen ones. Specifically, we focus on those in the anthology at hand: Ciertas formas de la soledad: Poesía 1992-2020 (2022), written by poet, musician, journalist, illustrator, and university professor Alonso Rabí.
The author’s selection begins with Concierto en el subterráneo (1992), a title that simultaneously evokes jazz as music from the margins and the wanton lives of its protagonists: Coleman Hawkins, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis. In “Charlie Parker está en casa,” we read: “Charlie Parker trepó de un salto al cielo / llevándose su saxofón, una jeringa, / la foto de sus hijos / y un inmenso tazón de popcorn” (Charlie Parker made his way to heaven in one fell swoop / carrying his saxophone, a syringe, / the picture of his kids / and a big bowl of popcorn). Parker arrives in heaven with his music and syringe, but he will not be judged there.
Readers will note a greater mix of styles and interests, but the same outlook, in Quieto vaho sobre el espejo (1994). He convokes musicians in this work—Frédéric Chopin, for example—as well as poets such as Ezra Pound. Here we find nature and love as recurring themes in Rabí’s poetry, and styles ranging from the very brief to the most informal poems. But a constant in his work is his admiration, never judgement, for those who create. In “Pound,” we read: “Pero quedó tu voz, / Más alta que el aliento de la noche / Y la felicidad de saber, al menos, que Dante / Sí lo hubiera perdonado”(But your voice remained, / Louder than the breath of night / And the satisfaction of knowing, at least, that Dante / Would indeed have forgiven him).
Platonic love, per Walter Benjamin, is love of a name. When we love, we endlessly speak our beloved’s name. We can read Dante’s Divine Comedy as love of the name Beatrice. And in Rabí’s En un purísimo ramaje de vacíos (2000), the name, not the body, of the beloved person is the object of love. We read in “Apuntes para un movimiento triunfal”: “Aún en medio de puertos asolados / por la peste o los corsarios oiría tu nombre, / profanando dulcemente el último vocerío / de los muertos, el silencio feroz / de los escombro”(Even in harbors razed / by plague or pirates I would hear your name, / sweetly profaning the latest clamor / of the dead, the fierce silence / of the debris). The price we pay for possessing the body is forgetting the name. Diminutives appear in intimacy. Platonic love emerges in Vago lirismo, the second-to-last chapbook in the anthology.
“Rabí’s work is concerned with poetry’s space, which is impacted by forces such as bureaucracy”
The dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy, like any dictionary, gives us a definition of “corazón” (heart) using positive terms: “Órgano de naturaleza muscular, común a todos los vertebrados y a muchos invertebrados, que actúa como impulsor de la sangre y que en el ser humano está situado en la cavidad torácica”(A muscular organ common to all vertebrates and many invertebrates that functions as a pump for blood and which, in humans, is located in the thoracic cavity). Rabí gives us a series of definitions that shed light on the heart’s human dimension. In the poem “XIII” from Y un día preguntaste qué cosa era el corazón (trece estancias), we find one of its definitions: “Luz que late, ritmo ensombrecido. / Dispersión pura la de mi voz. / He ahí el corazón”(Light that pulses, gloomy rhythm. / The pure scattering of my voice. / That is the heart).
Rabí’s work is concerned with poetry’s space, which is impacted by forces such as bureaucracy. Rabí differentiates the two in Cuaderno de cargo, a title alluding to administrative activities. In “Confesión” we read: “Este es mi oficio: esculpir estrellas cada tarde / y con cierto desdén nombrar las cosas. / Es la única manera, digo y me digo, de olvidar: / a) Las penurias que paso en la oficina / b) El sonido de mi anexo / c) La sonrisa de mi jefe / d) La buena marcha de la empresa”(This is my work: sculpting stars every afternoon / and, somewhat scornfully, naming things. / It’s the only way, I say and say to myself, to forget: / a) The travails of the workplace / b) The sound of my office phone / c) My boss’s smile / d) The firm’s forward march). Here, poetry is viewed as an activity that protects us from the arbitrariness of work, from human stupidity.
Going from a private high school to a public university, from one set of social relationships to another, from adolescence to adulthood, one career to another, all set against the backdrop of 1980s terrorism in Peru, certainly impacted the poet’s conscience. Rabí’s ironic, journalistic tone and poetic prose resound from the very title of the book Noticia del cerco del Patio de Letras, la caída del Che y otros asuntos de la juventud del yo poético, pronto en sus cines favoritos. In the poem “IV,” he stresses: “Ver al Che me estremeció. Ese primer día en la Ciudad Universitaria marcó en mí un antes y un después, incluyendo la hepatitis que contraje y que casi me manda literalmente a otro mundo. Luego fue una orgía de café y conversaciones interminables sobre literatura porque a decir verdad el derecho (nos) importaba un mojón. ¿Recuerdan, Mario de la Cuba, Alberto Ríos, Ricky Obando?” (Seeing Che shook me. That first day on campus marked a before and after for me, and included contracting hepatitis,which literally almost sent me to another world. Then there was an orgy of coffee and unending conversations about literature because, to be honest, we didn’t give a shit about studying law. Do you remember, Mario de la Cuba, Alberto Ríos, Ricky Obando?). This was a formative period that included visits to the Filmoteca movie theatre, conversations in downtown cafes, and love.
The critique and irony in Noticia del cerco del Patio de Letras persist in Meditación sobre el heroísmo, but here the targets become the education system, national symbols, heroism, and power. As for power, we read in “Crónica de tambores”: “Sardanápalo, / enfermo de gloria y melancolía, / mandó despellejar / a 100 de sus súbditos. Y con la suave piel fabricó tambores / para honrar las fiestas / Así explicaron los sabios de su imperio / el curioso enigma de la música gimiente” (Sardanapalus, / drunk on glory and melancholy, / had 100 of his subjects murdered. And from their soft skins he made drums / to grace feast days / This is how the wise men of his empire explained / the strange enigma of the moaning music). Perhaps fishing is the only job akin to politics. In “Día de pesca (A modo de crónica),” the poet concludes: “Del mar, en realidad, sabemos poco o nada. / Apenas que abraza las orillas y a veces / nos devuelve las huellas de la muerte.” (In all reality, we know little to nothing about the sea. / Just that it hugs the shoreline and sometimes / brings us our footprints back from the dead).
In the anthology’s last set of poems, Postales & retratos, Rabí expresses his vision of poetry through his favorite poets: Fernando Pessoa, Juan Gonzalo Rose, Jorge Teillier, Konstantinos Kavafis. He gets demiurgic names from Pessoa. The dangers of poetic work and the calm of working in solitude and oblivion he discovers in Rose. From Teillier, he finds poetry’s permanence. And from Kavafis, he takes the visionary power of words, their wisdom. In “Kavafis,” we read: “Para escribir leo con devoción a Kavafis: / sabiduría y contención, palabras siempre justas, / un lenguaje metáfora de un territorio, / de un país en el que la luz y sombra dialogan. Yo creo en Ítaca. / No en el viaje sino en su experiencia, / como reza el viejo en griego. / Es mejor aprender de los naufragios; / en esa soledad de las palabras / podrían llegar a ser una espada de fuego” (To write I devotedly read Kavafis: / wisdom and contention, always the right words, / a language metaphor for a territory, / from a country in which light and dark dialogue. / I believe in Ithacus. / Not in his voyage but in his experience, / as the elder prays in Greek. / Learning about shipwrecks is better; / in that solitude of words / they can become a sword of fire).
“Anthology,” as we noted at the beginning of this review, means a “selection of our most precious flowers.” With this book, Alonso Rabí shares with us a selection of the most precious works of his exceptional poetry.
Translated by Amy Olen
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
