READIN

🦋 Read out loud

Sergio Chejfec turned out not to be the highlight of the evening. His work -- the portion of it that is excerpted in BOMB -- is lovely and introspective; but because it is introspective it did not lend itself to being read aloud. You want room for your mind to wander while you're reading it. My favorite thing I heard this evening was the poetry of Nicanor Parra, read by his translator Liz Werner from the recent book Antipoems: How to Look Better & Feel Great. For instance, from the poem "Something Like That":

THE TRUE PROBLEM of philosophy
is who does the dishes

nothing otherworldly

God
      the truth
                  the passage of time
absolutely
but first, who does the dishes

whoever wants to do them, go ahead
see ya later, alligator
                and we're right back to being enemies

Also very nice to listen to was Lina Meruana's short story "Ay" -- she writes a flowing, engaging narrative that pulled me in. She only read the first half of the story but it was enough to make me want to read the rest of it on the train coming home. Raúl Zurita was also there, reading some oddly dream-like poems about the coup of 1973 and about Akira Kurosawa; he has one of the most pleasant reading voices I've ever heard -- it was almost hard to get past the immediate sensory delight of listening to him speak, to get at the content of the poems. Zurita also has a piece in this issue of BOMB about Nicanor Parra, sort of bringing me full circle.

posted evening of Thursday, January 29th, 2009
➳ More posts about My Two Worlds
➳ More posts about Sergio Chejfec
➳ More posts about Readings
➳ More posts about Reading aloud
➳ More posts about Nicanor Parra
➳ More posts about Poetry

Respond:

Name:
E-mail: (will not be displayed)
Link:
Remember info	Send