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Friday, November 29th, 2013

🦋 Enseñame a bailar

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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🦋 Let's listen to

Ampersan: this is Orlando Guillén's "ABCD", from Muchachos desnudos.

posted evening of November 29th, 2013: Respond
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Sunday, November 24th, 2013

🦋 READIN Family Album -- the earliest known photo of your humble servant

(The pre-Modesto kid!)

posted afternoon of November 24th, 2013: Respond
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🦋 ¿Quiénes son los «verdaderos» Detectives Salvajes?

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 Suardíaz, 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.

--Efraín 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 Suardíaz, 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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🦋 11 muchachos desnudos bajo el arcoiris de fuego

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

Sunday, November 17th, 2013

🦋 Fish

What a fantastic prompt this is, from Breytenbach's Intimate Stranger: "Poetry is fishing for memories in time." Reckon I'll go drop a line in the murky waters...

posted morning of November 17th, 2013: 1 response
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Saturday, November 16th, 2013

🦋 In the spirit of W.H. Mearns

The other day upon the stair
I met a boy who didn't care.
Again today he didn't care.
And by the way, his name's Pierre.

posted evening of November 16th, 2013: Respond
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Friday, November 15th, 2013

🦋 Sueños

posted evening of November 15th, 2013: Respond
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Thursday, November 14th, 2013

unresponsive like this inky page before you
like your heavy-lidded gaze
framing the text.
unresponsive
like the blankness of the page that I approach,
like ash to the flame.
insensate reality.
luxurious islands
of syntax and semantics
floating on the page beneath you
gaze out
upon this scintillating jungle
of sensibility

posted evening of November 14th, 2013: 2 responses
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Tuesday, November 12th, 2013

by Jeremy Osner

But why not just sit silent a moment
without words.
But why not pay close attention
to the timing of your statements.
But why not count backwards
to onehundred from seventythree
but using letters
not digits.
But why not deem yourself
unworthy
of being taken seriously
and play the fool. Alas, poor Yorick
I knew him, Horatio. A man's
got to know his limitations

Briggs. But why not switch
forever back and forth between the two.
But why not alienate
the very people
whose support you most depend on. Send them
back to me, I'll try to make you whole.
But why not tell me then
you can't have forgotten already again
come on. But why not
listen
just a minute
to the street now as we walk
its shifting melodies and humming
swarms of insects in the grass
and on the trees.
But why not try to relate
this ambient cloud of noise
creative destruction
of silence
to the ideas you've been trying
to get across, so why not listen
to the moral core
of the cicadas' ceaseless roar.
But why not listen to the cicadas' roar
and the thin shrill whine
of creeping hearing loss
beyond language in mazes
and repetition.
But why not tangle yourself delighted
in these strictures and obstructions
and obligations
make concrete these abstractions
forge an idiom
one you alone will ever
understand. But why not admit
you just don't know
or at last
give a damn.

posted evening of November 12th, 2013: 1 response

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