sexoPUROsexoVELOZ and SEPTIEMBRE
Dolores Dorantes
Subhro Bandopadhyay/Aryanil Mukherjee
Cuando alguien escribe que de todo esto (el proceso, el crecimiento de la poesía en el autor) le queda claro que es una guerra prologando su propia colección de poemas, no quedamos asombrados, sino nos sorprendemos un poco que el poeta (aquí la poeta es Dolores Dorentes) ¡ya ha abierto todo en el prólogo! además, de este prólogo ya hemos podido saber que Dolores Dorantes es su seudónimo, así nos llega el significativo de la guerra a través de dolores que ha citado la poeta antes, pues tendremos que acercarnos hacia estos poemas con una idea ya prefija.
Esto es un problema general de cada colección antológica, que lleva un prólogo que a veces mata la poesía dentro, el territorio blanco habitado por las letritas negras prediciendo la poética.
Mas la incitación a leer este libro queda en dorantes la palabras inexistente en un diccionario demasiado usado… uno estos diccionarios nos avisa que viene del verbo dorar cuyo significativo ya sabemos cubrir con oro o dar el color de oro a algo o tostar ligeramente… la incitación es del conocimiento al dolor dorante o en plural Dolores Dorantes.
Dolores is pain in its plurality and this plural pain has a corollic presence in Dorantes’ poetry. She is well versed in the language of emotion, and emotion, as some scholars fail to appreciate, can still serve as the richest source material for a poet. It is perhaps unwise however to read her poetry without an understanding of the historical source of her work. A valve her rich emotivity seems to draw is the notorious recent history of
Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, where the poet has lived most of her life. Socio-economic inequality and brutality against women coupled with political turmoil have given much shape to her poetic vein. The body (both physical and textual representations), for example, becomes a sexual abode where pain resides. She writes :
Beneath a dress
you’ll brandish the sickle
anchor my tide will devour
There is a sad acceptance of conditionality which goes as far as to suggest a kind of self-immolation. Conjointly, the sexual self immolates to an orgasm and a destruction.
If stranger you were to work once again
in my pain
polishing with sharpened thoughts
this gold of seeing
I would take what is blind in you
that
pain with no footprints
The pain does make footprints though, all along, camouflaging under both the poet’s first name Dolores and a sensual eroticism that marks virtually every single poem of sexoPUROsexoVELOZ. The intended metonymic plurality helps Dorantes identify with the larger section of her feminine society – the brutally tortured and missing women of Ciudad Juárez.
Al entrar en septiembre sentimos un vacío, el septiembre mismo una crujiente dorada hoja oscura, y la espera nos lleva a una cuchilla de la respiración, y ya sabemos que falta poco cuando llegaría un tren con soldados - y aquí empieza la poética nueva de la lengua castellana que Dolores Dorantes comparte con el maestro español Antonio Gamoneda. No hablo de la influencia sino el mismo espacio de una poesía que construye un diálogo distintamente con su alrededor sintiendo, conociendo sus latidos como propios - no como un poeta que habla de un podio a la gente como un santo que ha llegado en este mundo para salvarlo - construyendo una poesía con su política en voz baja.
Es una poesía donde el escritor de esas frases nos trae en un mundo de las frases pequeñas, casi hímnicas, donde cada palabra lleva una inmensa fuerza que nos provoca participar, y sin darnos cuenta, entramos al mismo dolor de esa poesía que nos intenta comunicar por imágenes profundas, por muy pocas palabras pero con frases complejas aún pequeñas que nos relieve de la poesía descriptiva que nos confirme encima: mano izquierda sin identidad mano derecha sin identidad.
The pronoun plays an important role in Dorantes’ work by creating a certain multiplicity in the second book (sexoPUROsexoVELOZ) of her project Dolores Dorantes, "You" and "I" assume the roles of the predator and its prey more than that of two lovers. This differs from her third book (Septiembre). In it the "You" begins to point to itself and at times collides with "I". As Love begins to take center stage, a tapestry of bountiful silence weaves the language. The fuller, tempting, vulvar body that was crushed in book number two, is now a dead leaf of September. Embrittled. Waiting to empty the body. Giving way to the viscous flow of silence. The poet confesses – "I might attempt to define these books as reflections of excitement, massacre and peaceful silence in the aftermath of devastation, at least in the case of September...". She writes :
plank with no handhold
empty
of all sorrows.
En Sexo puro sexo veloz también hay un vacío, más que un vacío una espera que encima es provocadora con un poco más largas frases con el uso un poco más de palabras que Septiembre – es una experiencia nueva con unas chispas filosóficas como el poema entera que empieza con Para oírnos/ hay una vida entera/ que no quiere quedarse. Con unas expresiones que podemos sentir que son nuevas como como si amor/hubiera la ciudad/ que construyo para ti que van con unas imágenes así como Alas de acero/tiene (de fuego) / ese pájaro que al leer nos parece que hemos oído estás palabras.
Speech, language and their structures are at play in a quintessentially defiant manner in the work of Dolores Dorantes. Her intentions here, as spelled out in the introduction, need mention. Several Mexican authors and scholars have pointed out, most notably Carlos Fuentes, in a relatively recent video interview on Frida Kahlo, that Surrealism was not something that had to be extracted from a dream, it was part of the common Latin thought-process, part of common Latin life in Mexico ages before the French invented it. Upon his visit to Mexico, André Breton said of Kahlo's painting, "I find Surrealist Mexico in its relief, in its flora, in its dynamism conferred on it by the mixture of its races, and also on its highest aspiration". Breton and the surrealists however, were perhaps the most instrumental in accentuating the use of opulent imagery in Mexican art and poetry subsequently. Pablo Neruda's grandiose use of the metaphor was to blame too. All this and more had led to a style of "confessional poetry that prevails in Mexican literature, a mode imposed on writers through government-sponsored workshops", Dorantes adds, which "venerates the creation of image after image with no importance whatsoever given to meaning."
Accordingly, meaning (or maybe "suggested meaning") in both sexoPUROsexoVELOZ and Septiembre, makes a conscious attempt to show itself, sometimes parenthesized for divagation, often riding against the flowing thought or mood, sometimes completely constrasting the unleashed image. The first person, as expected, is austerely re-established although a poetic haze of dual-identity is spun around it. Italicized lines/phrases are used to emphasize the "added" value of meaning. The fact that these experiments do not hinder readability nor dry up the sap of imagery bear testimony to the poetic achievement of Dolores Dorantes. As aspired, Breton has indeed been abolished and Neruda "exorcised".
Finally, we thank Jen Hofer for her impeccable translation.
Y el amor, en el silencio monstruoso de estos poemas, en la rama de la nada, brota un amor inexplicable que celebra la espera que ya hemos podido sentir antes, celebra el vacío hasta Mi boca/ es el único/ refugio de/ tu boca. Y ese amor sigue como un susurro como si algo ha pasado fuera, y estamos hablando en voz baja, pero ya en el prólogo la autora ya nos han dicho que este es el caso del Septiembre pues, como dijo propia poeta, yo la repito: tampoco lo sé, pero siento perfectamente aquí también lo mismo en los inmensos edificios del silencio después de algo muy grave.
sexoPUROsexoVELOZ/Septiembre by Dolores Dorantes
Chicago: Kenning Edition, Denver: Counterpath Press. 2006. 130 Pages.
This collaborative review is essentially a threading of two separate review texts, done in the two languages of this bilingual book. The Españolic text is contributed by Subhro Bandopadhyay and the English by Aryanil Mukherjee.
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Subhro Bandopadhyay is a polyglotic young poet who speaks four languages including English and Spanish. He is connected with a whole generation of contemporary Spanish and Chilean poets. Himself a prolific translator of Spanish poetry, Subhro also edits Padyacharcha, a Bengali poetry magazine. He has published three books of poetry. Subhro was recently awarded Beca Internacional Antonio Machado de creación poética (2008) by Fundación Antonio Machado. Subhro lives in both India and Spain.
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Aryanil Mukherjee writes in both Bengali and English; has authored four books of poetry and a collection of hybrid-prose; recent English work has appeared in Maverick, ZNine, RainTaxi, Open Spaces, Jacket, CRIT, Moria, Helix and is forthcoming in Big Bridge and Drunken Boat. His poetry has been translated into Hindi, Spanish and Danish.
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