This one, a French one, is my favourite caricature of the ones that have caused trouble in Denmark lately (the original ones weren’t that good). It’s not from the original ones, but a French reaction to the protests against the Danish initiative.

You’ll hear two things: one, the protests are taking place because the caricatures are seen as an insult; two, the reason of the protest is that Muslims feel offended that non-Muslims are not obeying the Muslim law of not representing Mahomet. Both are lies. The cartoons were originally published in October and the reason why they are an issue now is because the were published as a challenge. A writer couldn’t find an illustrator for his book and a newspaper wondered out loud, "is it because illustrators are scared? we dare them to submit their cartoons of Mahomet". Some Muslims were offended by the open bravery.

The French cartoon is entirely made up of the sentence "I should not make make a Mohamet cartoon"

Self-referential

This haiku is dedicated to Zifra , because I think he likes this sort of thing.

A haiku has three lines,
seventeen syllables,
and one idea.

Un haiku: tres versos,
diecisiete sílabas,
una idea.

Juliet Wilson

Juliet Wilson’ s work is an excellent example of how incredibly difficult it is to write political poetry, by which I mean poetry about "issues", not just about whether you vote this or that party. It is very easy, if you want to take poetry beyond the personal, to become boring or preachy: having a worthy cause to defend has nothing to do with an ability for creating interesting language. Personally, I stay self-consciously away from political poetry because I think I’d suck at it. Prose satire, maybe. But I don’t think I can put the thoughts of my prose satire in verse. Alexander Pope managed to rhyme sarcasm well enough and there’s no point at me copycatting.

Anyway, back to Juliet. In her case, political means environmental. I’ve read about fifty of her poems and there’s always an air of melancholy, of a forest very slowly losing the battle against asfalt, and the cries of seagulls in a landfill, but never losing rhythm and original images. Even so, the poem by her that I read again and again and that I feel like translating is not political at all. It has the best of lyrical poetry:so well-written I don’t care if it is autobiographical. It must be because it is so intense. It can’t be because no one can analyse their own feelings so painfully.

Making of a Muse

There was urgency, then,
in my love for you.
Sudden in the sunlight,
your beauty and laughter,
tight-reined passion
followed me, ghostlike,
everywhere.

I sensed your feelings, recognised
love that could not speak,
to dare being too brave
in such strange circumstance.

I loved you well enough to know
my silence kept you safe;
knew there was no easy way
to tell you how I felt.

Now continents and years away,
your likeness sits here in my soul,
a symbol, cipher, set in stone
for e to bring to mind
when I find a word or line
on which to hang another poem
of unrequited love.

La Creación de una Musa

Había ansia, entonces,
en mi amor por ti.
Súbita e iluminada,
tu belleza, tu risa,
pasión refrenada
me seguía fantasmal
a todas partes.

Intuía tus emociones, reconocía
un amor con miedo a hablar,
a atreverse a ser valiente
en circunstancias extrañas.

Te quería y sabía que mi silencio
era tu seguridad,
sabía que no había palabras fáciles
para decir cómo me sentía.

Ahora, tras años y continentes,
Tu imagen se sienta en mi alma,
un símbolo, un código, grabado en piedra
para que lo recuerde
cuando encuentro una palabra o una frase
en los que colgar otro poema
de amor no correspondido.

Underwear ordeal.

I confess I am posting this because I need to rant, and I am certainly shocked, although the connection with culture shock here is flimsy at best.

Yesterday I commited a stupid mistake: I went to an underwear shop that specialises in fashionable, cheap, very colourful and almost never "sexy" stuff. There are at least three different chains in Spain that do exactly that, and the shops are appearing like mushrooms after a rainy night. The thing is, I don't understand who buys in them. Who can fit into their bras? Certainly not me.

Let's see. For the information of readers who do not use bras, this is what you need to know: a bra size has a number, which means circumference in centimetres (in Spain) or inches (in the UK and USA), and a letter, which means how big the breasts are.  A is almost flat, the average woman uses a B, and so on.

First bra I see that I really like: cups A or B. Sizes: 70 to 85 (that is 28 to 34). Look here. The skinniest of East Europe supermodels are a size 85 (34). When I was twelve years old I had a 80. Who needs a 70 size bra? I'm not asking the right question. Who in bloody burning hell needs a 26/28 size bra? Seriously?

There was more fun awaiting me. I tried on bras of three different sizes and cups. It turned out that all sizes were too small: the back was more or less always the same, and the only front was wider and wider. It is as if the people who designed them forgot that bigger breasts tend to come attached to wider chests and stronger ribcages.

It is also as if we lived in a world in which suits came in assorted lenghts for taller or short men, but always with the same wide shoulders and narrow waist, to fit athletes. Or as if male underwear came with different sizes for genitals of different sizes, but with the back made to fit _only_ tight little buttocks. There are days in which, if I could ask for one wish only, I'd ask that the quality/pricing/sizes of clothes for men followed the tendencies of clothes for women and viceversa.

Euphemisms.

The world insists in shocking me. Those of you reading from outside Spain should know that people in Southern Spain are said to exaggerate a lot and that is considered a vaguely negative, humorous thing; the underlying thought is that people from more civilised, sophisticated countries, tell it like it is, or believe less is more. Spanish does not have a word to say "understatement".

I wonder is there is a word to say "understatement" in Swedish. The Swedes, in their wisdom, use the polite, discreet word that means "Hidden", instead of the blunter "illegal". That does not mean that unwanted foreigners are treated any better; if they go to the hospital, for example, the doctors are likely to call the police. There are 15,000 hidden people in Sweden. Out of these, 400 are children who have simply lost the will to live. These children one day refuse to do anything, get out of bed, eat. One such girl was on TV yesterday; she had a tube down her nose through which her mother injected a yellowish liquid food. If there is no place to go and the country you live in wants to kick you out, there aren't many options left but trying to see if you can let yourself die by sheer depression.

The small, understated word of the sophisticated, civilised, advanced Swedish society for this mass collective suicide is "apathetic children".

Seen every day.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH IS GLORIOUSLY ABSENT.

ANARKY IS INEVITABLE.

Grafittis on the walls near my dance school.  Originally in Spanish (in Spanish, anarquists call themselves anarkists).

I WANT TO SEE MY SON.

Graffiti on the ad of a realtor. Originally in Spanish.

DON'T WORK BE HAPPY

Printed on the oversized handbag of a beggar.  

Happy Burns Night

Spain and Scotland have a day each dedicated to clebrate the national writer: Cervantes, who invented the modern novel, and Robert Burns, who dignified and used creatively the Scottish language.

It says a lot about Scotland that, while Spaniards spend Book Day buying books, and we're supposed to give a book and a rose to the person we love most, the Scots give a party, eat local food and drink whisky. On the other hand, the Scots traditionally recite poetry after dinner tonight, insted of merely buying it.

I should live in Scotland, so that I can celebrate both holidays. Book Day is engraved in my genetic code and I must celebrate it wherever I am, but a Burns night  outside of Scotland wouldn't feel right.

Roots

The town where i live is surrounded by suburbs that used to be villages. There's always a handful of old streets, with the traditional houses who don't like anything special, identical in all the villages, a small square or two with a few orange trees, and then row after row of new houses à la American Beauty in the places where the olive trees used to grow. For anyone living in a 30 kilometers (that's 20 miles) radius of Sevilla, the only difference between these villages turned neighbourhoods is how distant from town, or how well communicated, they are. They is absolutely nothing special, unique, even interesting about any of these villages.

Not for the locals, the people from the old houses.  The other day I went to the bank, and in the long queue I heard a few women chatting. The conversation started with one of them saying that locals who had moved to villages A, B and C a long time ago had just moved back to ours, and everyone agreed iin that they had been stupid to leave the village in the first place. They were talking about places that were two to ten kilometers away in the exact same tone that most people I know would say "La Guiri spent a year in the USA, and she just came back. Good for her, I can't understand why she went so far away in the first place". the conversation revolved around the same subject for twenty minutes: not about the advantages of our village, but about the perfect foolness of anyone who moved to a different place. It reminded me of a conversation I overhead a long time ago, also in my village.

-... and then Juan came to live here, because originally he is from Village B.
-Village B!? Why on earth did he come to live here then? 
-Because he married his girlfriend, and she was from our town.
-Ah, OK then.

It seemed to these people that the only reason why anyone would want to live more than two blocks away from their birthplace is to marry someone who lives a little bit (not too much) farther away.

What is it that makes people love home so much?

To Martyn Bennett, now immortal.

Wilson Pickett, the singer of soul classics like In The Midnight Hour, has just died. January 30th is the first anniversary of Martyn Bennett 's death. Wilson Pickett was the sort of artist whose work everyone knows, but whose name is only known by his few dedicated fans. Martyn Bennett, on the other hand, was too brilliant and original for his own good and never got the success he deserved.  I knew he was diagnosed with a nasty type of cancer in the year 2000, and I suspected he was depressed, and we had emailed occasionally in the three vyears or so before his death. I'm still mourning him in the same way other people mourn family members or "real" rock stars.

This is my only poem in free verse in which the English version came before the Spanish one. It mixes my own feelings for Martyn with my memory of having to study in the hospital on my grandfather’s last days: I had an oral exam the morning after his death, and I pretended to be strong about the whole thing for a few days. And I stole an idea here and there from Jeanette Winterson, who has a novel, Written on the Body, that you should go and read right now.

A hospital is not a library.
A needle’s not a pen.
We sit and wait as your blood is replaced by ghosts.
As I think of your inky hair,
Most beautiful when sweaty,
Long wet tendrils falling over us.
Ink.
Ink’s the key.
I used black ink to write poems about you,
As you mocked me (people use computers these days,
You know).
Your body is still waging war on itself,
And not
all
the
hospitals
in
the
world
will
HELP.

So,
I’ll write poems about you
until the future gives up and makes you immortal.

 

Un hospital no es una biblioteca.
Una aguja no es una pluma.
Nos sentamos a esperar mientras los fantasmas sustituyen tu sangre.
Y pienso en tu pelo entintado,
Precioso cuando sudabas,
Largos tirabuzones húmedos sobre los dos.
Tinta.
La tinta es la clave.
Tinta china para componer poemas sobre ti,
Y te burlabas (eso se puede hacer a ordenador,
Por si no lo sabías)
Tu cuerpo sufre un golpe de estado,
Y
ningún
hospital
del
mundo
entero
va
a
enviar
AYUDA.
Por eso,
voy a escribir poemas sobre ti
hasta que el futuro se rinda y te haga inmortal.

Adjectives

I love the Spanish writer (columnist, novelist) Elvira Lindo. now that she is living in New York City she so often tells in her columns things that remind me so much of my own reactions to Americans.

This little fragment  from her latest column is originally about political journalism, but it applies very well to many other things!

Sé de un profesor de redacción periodística tan extravagamente sensato que escurre los periódicos ante sus alumnos como si fueran estropajos y sacude los aparatos de radio para que se vacíen de adjetivos. Es lo que hace el artista cuando madura, decir lo que quiere de la forma más simple.

I know of a professor in a Journalism school who is so extravagantly sensible that he squeezes newspapers in front of his students as if they were cleaning rags and he shakes radios to thrwo out the adjectives.  That's what artists do when they mature: they say what they mean in the simplest possible manner.

Hmmm.... erotic haiku!

Jose Angel has been as kind as to leave me this haiku in the comments. He doesn't mention an author so I assume it is his. The translation into Spanish is, as usual, mine. It reminds me a lot of Leonard Cohen's Chelsea Hotel

At long last we made love-
Somehow it seems like a fake memory, but
There was a lovely tune on your radio.

Por fin  hicimos el amor-
Parece que fuese un recuerdo inventado, pero
sonaba una canción preciosa en tu radio.

 

Democracy in Chile

I just saw this in the news: In Chile, it is compulsory to vote in the presidential elections! Another shocking thing: Chileans abroad cannot vote. I haven't found a source to tell me if there is regional absentee vote.

Isn't compulsory vote a contradiction in terms? If we are free to vote, shouldn't we be free not to?  

The Chello

After fooling around for a week with the idea, I'm not sure this catches the sensuality of the situation. The Spanish version comes first because it is the original one.

Los hombros de la violonchelista,
Curvas blancas.
No recuerdo la música.

The chellist's shoulders,
White curves.
I don't remember the music.

 

 

Language death and the death of gods.

I like to study the process of language birth and death. Languages die when people don’t use them anymore to talk to their babies; only children learning a language keep it alive.

There are three main reasons why languages can disappear: One, if Culture A which speaks Language A kills or enslaves all native speakers of Language B. Two, if Culture A invades Land B and people in Land B need to use Language A to deal with their new bosses, with their new government, etc. Three, when people in Land B think that by learning Language A they will prosper and have more opportunities in life because people in Land A are richer or more numerous than them. In all three cases, the B People first become bilingual for a few generations, and then their children prefer one language to the other until Language B dies. The professor who taught me this process said once that when there is only one person who speaks a language, there is actually two: there is the last speaker, and God, when the last speaker prays. Coming from a country with several different minority languages, and after having lived with hardly any chances to use my native language for a whole year, I think I understand how it feels to think in a language that no one else understands!

Anyway, that was a bit of an oblique introduction to Yehuda Amichai. He composed in Hebrew and my translation into English isn’t credited. I’m just going to put together a few bits and pieces that I like from a very long poem by him.

Tombstones crumble, they say words tumble, words fade away,
The tongues that spoke them turn to dust,
Languages die as people do,
Some languages rise again,
Gods change up in heaven, gods get replaced,
Prayers are here to stay.
*
I declare with perfect faith
That prayer preceded God.
Prayer created God,
God created human beings,
Human beings create prayers
That create the God that creates human beings.
*
After Auschwitz, no theology:
The numbers on the forearms
Of the inmates of extermination
Are the telephone numbers of God,
Numbers that do not answer
And are now disconnected, one by one.

Las lápidas se parten, dicen que los planetas mueren, las palabras se olvidan,
Las lenguas que las dijeron vuelven al polvo,
Los idiomas se mueren, igual que la gente,
Algunos idiomas resucitan,
Los dioses cambian, allá en el cielo, los dioses se sustituyen,
Las oraciones llegan y se quedan.
*
Declaro con fe perfecta
Que rezar fue antes que Dios.
Rezar creó a Dios,
Dios creó a los seres humanos,
Los seres humanos crearon la oración
Que creó al dios que crea seres humanos.
*
Después de Auschwitz, no hay teología.
Los números en los antebrazos
de los presos del exterminio
son los números de teléfono de Dios,
Números que nadie contesta
Y que ahora se desconectan, de uno en uno.

Surreal haiku

Y tu mirá
se me clava en los ojos
como la voz de Lole.

No os preocupéis, no me he vuelto Neosurrealista de repente (al menos eso espero). Este haiku no se puede adaptar de verdad al inglés porque está demasiado relacionado con la cultura española. ¿cómo le explico a un extranjero quién es Lole?

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

And your gaze
pierces my eyes
like Lole’s voice.

Don’t worry, I haven’t suddenly become a Neosurreal poet (I hope and pray). This haiku cannot be properly adapted into English because it is too culturally bound. Lole was a flamenco singer, popular when I was a wee child, and her most famous song said “And your gaze pierces my eyes like a sword”. A normal way of saying “stare” in Spanish is “to stab/pierce with your eyes” so the image is not as absurd and violent as you think.

A list poem

In Spain, Christmas gifts are traditionally given on January 6th. The Three Wise Men, not Santa Claus, bring them. Some time ago I  spoke about list poems; they are a good way of writing poetry when you think you can’t write, for lack of inspiration or anything else. The previous entry is a list poem I like a lot. This is my Christmas 2005-06 letter to the Three Wise Men.

Secret Wish List

A pink car.
Pink hair, extensions, a beauty salon voucher
including manicure.
Jeff Buckley’s second studio album*
and tickets to a Martyn Bennet concert*.
A plane ticket to Glasgow.
Or maybe New york instead.
No, to Glasgow.
Inspiration to finish everything I’ve started writing.
A Powerbook.
An ipod, with every single audiobook by Neil Gaiman,
and read by Ian McKellen.
A nicer accent when I speak in English.
Lots of rain,
and one thunderstorm.

 

* That might be hard, as they’re both dead.

Because at this time of the year we all have New Year resolutions, here you have a little beauty by Noah Grossman, who published a few poems in Cornell University’s literary magazines. This one is taken from a 2004 issue of Rainy Day, the undergrads-only literary magazine. One of the things I love about it is that I can’t figure out if it is being defeatist or sarcastic. It is also extraordinarily hard to translate.

TO DO
lower standards
split infinitives
forget manners
be more submissive

skip my vegetables
read in the dark
say never
call my ex and apologize
for being reasonable.

^^^^^

Ya que en esta época del año todo el mundo hace buenos propósitos, aquí tenéis una pequeña belleza de Noah Grossman, que ha publicado unos cuantos poemas  en las revistas literarias de la Universidad de Cornell; así fue como lo conocí. Éste lo he sacado de Rainy Day, la revista que sólo publica a estudiantes de licenciatura. Una de las cosas que más me gustan de este poema es que no se sabe si es derrotista o sarcástico. También es extraordinariamente difícil de traducir.  

POR HACER
Bajar expectativas
Hablar malamente
Perder las formas
Ser más cortado

Dejar la verdura
Leer a oscuras
Decir "nunca jamás"
llamar a mi ex y disculparme
por ser razonable.

Cars and computers

What I'm going to say today is so commonplace I was doubting about posting it. Anyway, here it goes.

My computer,  a relatively new HP laptop,  is currently being repaired. For the year or so that I have had it, it has given me a great number of minor problems. Stuff that any PC user will be familiar with: programs that refuse to work today and work perfectly well tomorrow, a need to restart once in a while, mysterious error messages, and the like.

Yesterday I was telling the friend of a friend about this and about the relative pros and cons of the alternatives to Microsoft, which as far as I know, are Macintosh and Linux. Both have good and bad points. My acquaintance had used Linux, and he only knew about Macs what the average non-user knows. He disagreed with me on everything, because his PC hadn't suffered any major crashes in the last year or so (someone reminded him of a virus scare this summer). The end of the conversation was when I said this:

"I don't need anything special and I'm not asking much. All I want is a computer that works like my car."

Isn't that easy? My car stops when I brake. It turns when I turn the wheel. I don't understand how the motor works, but there is always a clear cause for anything that breaks. All buttons and pedals do what they are supposed to when I push them. My car is predictable.

Well, this guy's reaction was laughter. He started laughing and couldn't stop. The naïveté! The audacity! Someone who wants a reliable computer!  

Why does the average Microsoft user think that this guy's attitude is normal and mine isn't?  

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Today is Saint Stephen, which is an occasion as good as any other to talk about Stephen Dedalu, a self-parody of James Joyce with a starring role in his novels Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses. The Portrait tells Stephen's life from early childhood until he decides that, if he wants to be  An Artist, he needs to leave Ireland and go to Paris where all the cool Bohemian kids are.

Stephen's problem is that he tries too hard to be cool. The chronological end of his adventures, as far as Joyce wants to tell us, is that after he has gone back to Dublin and can barely survive on his teaching salary, he meets a truly nice and generous man, Leopold Bloom. Optimist readers may think that after this encounter, Stephen will go and live for free in Bloom's home, sorting out the older man's loneliness (Bloom lives with his wife, but to say they have a communication problem would be the understatement of the year), and the young man's housing problem.

What of Stephen as a poet? The narrator likes to be ambiguous and never tells us if Stephen is a good artist. All you get of his style is that he is or wants to be very complex. The only poem of Stephen's in the books is this one, included near the end of the Portrait. Critics say that with it, James Joyce wants to tease readers: we are predisposed to like or dislike the poem according to our like or dislike of Stephen and we always need someone to tell us that it is OK to like something. The professor that introduced me into the Portrait said that the poem is there to show that Stephen wants to be a rebel but will not succeed because he has chosen a poetic form, the villanelle, that is formally very demanding: putting form so far above content is not a good sign. I think the poem is just like Stephen: too complex, and it takes too long to say too little. But the most interesting thing about it, as I say, is not whether I like it or not, but the way it is placed near the end of a novel whose ongoing enigma, its tiny plot, is the question, "Will Stephen ever manage to be A Great Artist as he wishes to be?". Instead of having qa comfortable narrator that tells you yes or no, all you have is Stephen's poetry so that you have to make up your own mind about poor Stephen's artistic ability.

Ok, now, judge for yourselves.
 

Are you not weary of ardent ways,
Lure of the fallen seraphim?
Tell no more of enchanted days.

Your eyes have set man's heart ablaze
And you have had your will of him.
Are you not weary of ardent ways?

Above the flame the smoke of praise
Goes up from ocean rim to rim.
Tell no more of enchanted days.

Our broken cries and mournful lays
Rise in one eucharistic hymn.
Are you not weary of ardent ways?

While sacrificing hands upraise
The chalice flowing to the brim,
Tell no more of enchanted days.

And still you hold our longing gaze
With languorous look and lavish limb!
Are you not weary of ardent ways?
Tell no more of enchanted days.

Happy holidays.

Grrrr. Blogia has destroyed my edited copy of a post in Zifra's blog with Christmas greetings and happy New Year wishes in several dozen languages. Anyway.

 I hope you don't have to be anywhere near a computer in the next three or four days. Celebrate whatever you feel like (I remember that curious little American Academese expression, "have a nice Winter Break" with lots of food and with everyone you love, and see you some time next week with more poetry (and occasional culture shock).