Louis Esterhuizen. Wat is ‘dringende poësie’?!
Thursday, September 19th, 2013
Soos almal weet, het die digkuns ‘n enorme reikwydte ten opsigte van aanbod sowel as tema. En tog is dit vreemd hoe graag die denkers des poeticas probeer om deurentyd nuwe etikette en boksies vir dié veelkoppige monster genaamd “poësie” te bedink. So besin Valerie Mejer in ‘n onlangse skrywe op die Poetry Foundation oor een van die meer onlangse etikette, genaamd “urgent poetry”. Ten einde meer duidelikheid hieroor te kry, het sy ‘n aantal digters genader vir hul sienings rakende dié fenomeen.
Van die digters het soos volg reageer:
“When entering any categorization of a writer, I’m suspicious of reductionism. One of the most interesting aspects of poetry is its complexity, its resistance to simplifications. Having said that, “urgent poetry”? I suppose you could talk of urgency whenever the poem surrenders a demand for transformation, whenever the poem pushes someone to act as soon as possible. Urgent poetry is what moves us to write, what leads us to live or commit some act of life.” (Benito del Pliego)
“I know ‘urgent poetry’ one of the titles of Celaya and that it intends to associate with the poem ‘poetry is a weapon armed with the future…’ Then the Basque poet, committed to some manner of socialist ideas and the idea of art as an instrument of social change, perceived the ‘urgency’ of a poetry less influenced by styling, slow reflection, and imagery. A poetry written in exact time, for a time that he wanted to perpetuate when it already started to rot. An urgent action from the field hospital. However, for me it’s more “poetry of urgency” by Leopoldo María Panero, for example. It’s a scream, an expulsion, an excresence—between beautiful and fetid—like a short breath before returning to drowning.” (Esteban Martínez Serra)
“Urgent poetry, for me, would be the opposite of poetry: poetry requires time, “tempo,” places where the word is delayed, turns in on itself, and so produces a “poesis”: I think urgency is political, contingent, even very neoliberal: and poetry must oppose this way of thinking about society, life, the world. For me, poetry is just the opposite of urgency: it’s slow, it’s time in waiting, it’s the spirit looking at himself: it’s the Being of speech, of words, of forms. Poetry is formed like waves crashing into the cliffs: its time is the time of the ages, of geology, of, finally, death.” (Tomás Harris)
“Urgent poetry: a grotesque, violent, humiliating, indecent poetry that does with language what state and corporate bureaucracies do with money and power, that instills words with a similar, abject effect in order to devour bodies, to anonymously absorb bodies, to privatize bodies in our rotten, carcass economies. A poetry that uses extreme, urgent, grotesque, piercing language, movement and imagery as a means of responding to politics and policies that are themselves grotesque. A poetry that is concerned with pain and its infinite varieties: a poetry that lodges itself in our bodies, that embodies how we live with pain, how we survive pain; an urgent poetry that shows the body-in-pain relentlessly and furiously creating itself only to eat itself alive again and again.” (Daniel Borzutzky)
Nou ja, toe. Vir jou leesplesier volg ‘n gedig van die Chileense digter Raúl Zurita. Dié gedig is deur Valerie Mejer uitgesonder as ‘n voorbeeld van wat met poëtiese dwingendheid bedoel word.
*
from Sunday Morning
XXXVIII
Over the cliffs of the hillside: the sun
then below in the valley
the earth covered with flowers
Zurita enamored friend
takes in the sun of photosynthesis
Zurita will now never again be friend
since 7 P.M. it’s been getting dark
Night is the insane asylum of the plants
XLII
Enclosed with the four walls of
a bathroom: I looked up at the ceiling
and began to clean the walls and
the floor the sink all of it
You see: Outside the sky was God
and he was sucking at my soul —believe me!
I wiped my weeping eyes
LVII
In the narrow broken bed
restless all night
like a spent candle lit again
I thought I saw Buddha many times
At my side I felt a woman’s gasp for air
but Buddha was only the pillows
and the woman is sleeping the eternal dream
LXIII
Today I dreamed that I was King
they were dressing me in black-and-white spotted pelts
Today I moo with my head about to fall
as the church bells’ mournful clanging
says that milk goes to market
LXXXV
They’ve shaved my head
they’ve dressed me in these gray wool rags
—Mom keeps on smoking
I am Joan of Arc
They catalog me on microfilm
XCII
The glass is transparent like water
Dread of prisms and glass
I circle the light so as not to lose myself in them
(c) Raúl Zurita (Uit:”Sunday Morning” from Purgatory, vertaal deur Anna Deeny.)
