Book of the Month

April 2003

Translation seems to have died a death in the UK recently, other than for the umpteenth version of Rilke, and we never see anything at all from Latin America apart from the usual Nobel-prize-winning suspects. In the USA by contrast – aided by good university presses and by comparative proximity (partly illusory: La Paz to Los Angeles by air takes about 7 hours) – there are large numbers of modern Latin American poets receiving respectful attention and getting good translators.

Here is a case in point. Saenz's name will probably register with very few people in Britain, but I have come across him in a couple of anthologies, such as the Mexican Antología de la poesía hispanoamericana actual (1987; he gets 3 pages). I don't recall ever seeing a collection of his work in Spanish. The last big US anthology of poetas iberoamericanas, Stephen Tapscott's Twentieth-Century Latin American Poetry (University of Texas Press, Austin, 1996) fails to include Saenz (1921-1986) but, happily, a forthcoming OUP anthology edited by Cecilia Vicuña and Ernesto Livon Grosman will include some of the versions in this new book. (That book is of course from the American side of OUP; too much to hope that it would be commissioned by the burrowing creatures on this side of the Atlantic.) Immanent Visitor is one of the most beautifully designed paperbacks I've seen, which makes up for the rather high cover price. As with Forrest Gander's recent versions of Pura López-Colomé, reviewed in Shearsman 53, the policy here is to place the originals in the second half of the book, thus giving the reader a book of translations followed by a book in Spanish, an arrangement I rather like.

So, who was Saenz? A bisexual, alcoholic, bohemian, baroque symbolist somewhat out of synch with the rest of the literary world, who was also the author of two of (apparently excellent) novels that seem to be virtually unknown outside of Bolivia. His work is mystical and baroque & given to the overladen rhetoric typical of a lot of Hispanic poetry, but it barrels along, sweeping the reader with it, leaving meaning in its wake as a secondary issue:

Alive at the edge of language, the head floating in a body not there
a finger in the fog
the running water in the world of those who embroider their presence with a border of flax
and another finger in wind that swings the suns of a miracle named by summer and rain
and the ancientness of light still unrobed, unseen
then one night another finger twitching to a vague melody on the bridge
and the heaviness of sobbing in the bouquet, bequeathed from offspring to offspring
when the swollen fury of the gleaming torrent roars past
but the bond calls you and calls you and another finger sheathed in flame, prods and prods at your heart
— you bat your eyes ay the magical sign that orbits your body and licks at stubborn life
— you're on the way to a city, and someone straining and straining to be born snaps the lighter off
and you eat his desire and the cauldron of a drum disenchants itself before your eyes.

(from Immanent Visitor VII)

Vive a la vera del lenguaje, la cabeza flotante en un cuerpo que no hay
un dedo en la neblina
el agua corriente en el mundo de los que agracian su estar un borde de lino
y otro dedo en el viento que mece los soles del milagro nombrado por el verano y la lluvia
y ancianidad de la luz que todavía no viste
una noche otro dedo paralelo a una ambigua melodía en el Puente
y el peso del llanto en el ramillete guardado generación tras generación
cuando las modulaciones y la furia del agua fija y reluciente pasan de largo
mas el vínculo te llama y te llama y toca y toca tu corazón otro dedo con el apoyo del fuego
— parpadeas a poco la fórmula mágica que ronda tu cuerpo y lame la áspera vida
— a una ciudad vas, y tiene apagado el mechero alguien que está y está por nacer
y le comes su intencón y un fondo de tambor se descencanta ante ti.

(de Visitante profundo, VII. 1964)

I believe this to be an important book, which, like a lot of the better 20th-century Latin American poetry, offers a radically different experience from that to which we are used in the Anglo-American tradition. It's the heritage of the Spanish baroque, religious mystical poetry, French surrealism, and the early Latin-American vanguardia — poets such as the Peruvian Vallejo, or the Chileans, Huidobro and de Rokha. It's a heritage we don't share and it's all the more fascinating for that. Other paths, other ways, other modes of expression. Yes, it's OTT, it's excessive in places to an English ear, but the hell with English reserve: it's had its day; we don't need it any more.

If you have Spanish, you'll find more of Saenz's poetry at the wonderful online Latin American poetry anthology palabravirtual .

The Book of the Month series was founded on the Shearsman site at the end of April 2003, with the aim of highlighting certain significant publications that the editor has found particularly exciting. Books of the Month have been selected for earlier months of the year, retrospectively, and one of the 12 chosen volumes will be Book of the Year in December 2003. Click on the months below for other Book of the Month selections in 2003.