Love Poetry, Poetry for Love

I have been trying to write poetry since I was about fifteen years old. I found it more difficult to write than short stories, which I have written since I was twelve or so. I wrote most of my poetry out of images that came from inside, like Plato’s view from within the cave. I wrote most of my short stories overnight. I have probably written a couple of hundred poems mostly in Spanish, from which over sixty are still reachable in my drawers and briefcases, but most of which are at risk of getting lost, if not published. Indeed, I have planned to published my best poems under a book that would be entitled Alma Mater One, as part of a series, since the muse usually comes from the mother, even when the on campus thing could create ambiguity to the title. Likewise, my short story book “El Retrato del Fantasma” (The Portrait of the Ghost) still holds a copyright at the US Library of Congress, and remains unpublished, after a dual feedback from Vantage Press send it back to me a few years ago. Perhaps, it sounds awful to say that I had written some other poems that vanished with a misplaced computer hard drive, which contains mostly literary meditations about overnight star watching, that I entitled The Remains of the Constellation, all of which are still misplaced in several literary and technical research mixed boxes. Recently, I restarted writing in French. The following is a poem with an extremely straight but multidimensional literary time, and a Parisian street taste. A friend of mine suggested it was good enough for it to be published.

Rendez-Vous

Je t’attends chaque nuit.

J’attends comme l’enfant sous la pluie,

et je rêve des nuances fardées

par la pluie et la lumière…

Ma belle amie, je t’attends

comme dans mes rêves

l’enfant rêve sous la pluie

et il dort s’amusant avec

des jeux infantiles

dont il ne sait rien…

De l’autre côté, les géants

ne dorment pas, ils bataillent

au regard de l’enfant

qui rêve encore sous la pluie

et auxquels il y voit comme des inconnus.

Voilà, je reviens, je me réveille...

et jusque comme toi, je t’attends aussi

j’attends comme l’enfant sous la pluie

et à nouveau je rêve aussi de tes rêveries.

Nos âges ne comptent plus

nous sommes qui nous sommes

et je t’attends finalement

c’est le rêve accompli.

I enjoyed being able to write in good French, because even many famous writers could not do that, including someone as great as Rilke who complains so in his letters. At times, and quite often, I think in French, and despite my vocabulary concerns, it holds sometimes as my main thinking and analytical language (to write), probably due to some sentimental factor.

Surprisingly, I have also recalled my shortest poem ever written in Spanish:

La Mar

La mar me ama con sus olas y sus besos
que vienen y se van con la resaca.
Es intermitente
como el amor de una mujer.

In English, I heard that I have recently received another Editor’s Choice awards from the International Library of Poetry and poetry.com with the following poems:

Declaration of Love

Your candid rose wet lips

sweeten mine on contact

the night illuminating the bright stars

little dots sparkling the full moon.

Je t'aime.

When I pass by near you I say it each time, whispering

the sound of happiness, the years to come,

first in the new century calendar.

Je t'aime.

The sun wakes us up, unknown

to the present, the past, the future

unknown to our everyday joy

strange to my solitude, our recall.

Je t'aime.

The Gallic voice rises up

under your surrounding path,

straight, feeling your body next to mine,

and the dream wakes up, becomes real.

Perfection

The lovely voices sound inside

as the song of truthful love aligns the awaken souls both

the feeling of the unified heart.

The painter ballyhoos his art

Detained in time is the age

That turned around the page

Aligning each delicate body part.

The floor moved piece-by-piece away the parlor is turned round around

the art fades, skepticism is my way...

The coffee aroma has waken me up

spreading delicious flavor in my room

joyful morning, the labyrinth is my map.

Intellectual Elite

Anthony Noriega Carranza

Symmetric perfection derives the strength

the sharp eyes, the beauty in the heart

the motherly nuance that makes the beat fast

robust feeling reaching the path through the end.

The perfection of shapes is Gestalt without myths

the geometric imagination goes beyond any dimension

the wonders of lines deceive all natural counts

shaping the entangled, the imagined ideas to come.

The matrices of all thoughts convey the new findings

they gather with passion in art and pervasive science

to discover the new facts leading the real world.

They awaken the imagination with celestial aroma

they distinguish the physical rules of love and her chemistry

and in astral dimensions join their hands tightly together.

Anthony De Jesus Noriega
Copyright ©2007 Anthony De Jesus Noriega

I just finish a new poem draft, which I had been writing for a few weeks:

Wandering Soulmates

We talk to each other in the distancelike two wandering souls…
After all, how could I think
without thinking of you
and how could I dream,
without dreaming of you…
How could I love, without loving you…
I could no longer desire when thirsty…
My deer friend, return through the trail
that you missed…
Take my hand into your solitude
and break the crystal transparent to the past.
Take my hand and walk away
and you will find me ubiquitous wherever you go.
Thus, you will see me until you surrender
your destiny to mine
until you discover truthfulness.

And almost finally, meeting a special person’s expectations:

A simple relationship

I see you arrive with the wind waving your hair
I feel your tender voice talking running near me
as my spirit raises to reach you at every instant
where the oriental sounds clear my mind...

And I have no other thoughts but you to be truly you
and no doubts about you being honestly yourself
when your voice talks to me and calls me each time
there are no waits from the past, the present, the future.

And I understand your words as present verses
future bouquet of flowers that open our hearts
to friendship, love, and all beyond our endless dream
as I embrace you with a Parisian kiss at the Arc.

And I listen to you saying what it takes to love me
to render the day-to-day worries and vanish fear
and seriously persuade you that we love each other
not like others, like two lost wanderers in a hill.

Waiting to escape the mountainous wilderness
we shall enter the sky, without limits or circles
and navigate the stateless, etherless sound of words
and timely encounter ourselves at dawn without despair.

In the end, we discover a simple relationship with a rose
to get to know each other where time does not count
where past, present, and future are just uncountable words
uttered from your tender lips that I get to feel again.

Lastly, writing and reading poetry generates a great deal of freedom spiritual peace to the mind, and it elevates one’s soul into unmistaken happiness.

On the Liberator: The Poet-Hero who died in Santa Marta

“Yo venía con un manto del iris”, Bolívar writes in his famous poem Mi Delirio sobre el Chimborazo (My Delirium atop Chimborazo), talking about his military campaign stress. “Había visitado las encantadas fuentes amazónicas...” “I had visited the enchanted Amazonic fountains”, Bolívar continues, “Y quise subir al atalaya del universo…” talking about the majestic Chimborazo volcano view and ambience. It is quite possible that Bolívar had a rather mystic experience around the Amazon and Orinoco rivers basins, possibly in the middle of his campaign, and his well-known Masonic view of the world. Although Bolívar military leadership has been compared to that of Napoleon Bonaparte and Gengis Khan, he had derived a courage seldom seen in the military history of the world being in front of his army each time. Consistently, he was always in the front of each one of his campaigns, and was always victorious and nearly unhurt. He also survived many attempts of assassination, by enemies and political friends who might have turned back against him. But Bolívar, the hero, the politician, the president, the forceful dictator, the man, The Liberator of five South American nations, there was Bolivar the writer, poet… His political writings include his famous Jamaican Letter (La Carta de Jamaica), El Discurso del Congreso de Angostura (The Angostura Congress’s Discourse). His letters and collective political writings on The Great Colombia, and the unification of Colombia, where he lived most of his life, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia talk about his dream to create an economic regional superpower. German historian Gerhard Mazur, who is by far, the biographer who has best studied Bolívar’s life suggested that Bolívar really wanted a united republic and end all anarchy among all the nations he had liberated. In particular, he wanted Peru further away from San Martin’s influence, while he also calls Bolivia “The Liberator’s pampered daughter…” Bolívar most significant political adversary was Francisco de Paula Santander, “the law man”. But like Sucre, known as “the man of war”, he was also seen as partners in the process emancipation from Spain. Thus, Bolívar was known as the “man with the difficulties.” General Páez proudly talks about Bolívar saying: “Bolívar’s sword is in my his hands…” Although, Bolívar visited Europe, in particular, England, and other nations, he unfortunately never saw The United States as a committed political ally beyond what he saw as economic interests; the English language was a primary factor and communication channels were possibly others, at a time when the Monroe Doctrine was not quite known. However, he dreamed as he used to write of a virtual Americas economic market envisioning the world centuries ahead of him. Bolívar was not a tall man. In fact, the bed where he died in Santa Marta did not reach 6 feet in full length. It is said that Bolívar used to sleep sidewise and normally bending his legs forward in angle, so he could fit in his colonial Spanish bed. Bolívar had suffered the loss of his wife shortly after marriage and enjoyed a well-known affair with an Equatorian woman by the name of Manuela Sáenz de Thorne, la mújer-hombre, an alias which I would carefully translate in good American English as “the woman with cowboy’s pants” rather than literally, due to her heroic character and participation in the liberation process. During my senior years as a systems engineering student at Universidad del Norte, I wrote my only script for an audiovisual (sonoviso), Bolívar y la Soledad de América Latina (Bolívar and the Solitude of Latin America), which was recorded at Uninorte FM Stereo and later on presented at Uninorte’s Auditorium in Barranquilla, at a time when I was paying the delayed date for my graduation, as a disciplinary action for registering more credits than I was authorized for. The images presented in the audiovisual included pictures that I researched from a variety of books, such as Mazur’s biographies on Bolívar, and several iconographic studies, such Iconografía de la familia del Libertador and Iconografía del Libertador. On the December 17, 1830, Bolívar was lying in bed on his final day. He had left Santa Fé de Bogotá after his last political defeat. He said already physically consumed in Santa Fé: “If my death contributes to the cessation of parties and the consolidation of the Union, I will step down peaceful…”. Finally, in Santa Marta, Colombia, at his bed, at La Quinta de San Pedro Alejandrino, Bolívar dreams with a ship. In his delirium he talks about this boat ready to undock from port. “Let’s go… Take my luggage on board!”, Bolívar says. It was the ship of death!. German Historian Gerhard Mazur’s ends his book by saying that Bolivar’s glory was to grow as the shadows grow when the sun sets. Instead, indeed, I would much rather say that Bolivar’s glory has grown and continues to grow as the light is enhanced when the sun rises.

Mi Delirio sobre el Chimborazo

By Símon Bolívar

Yo venía envuelto con el manto del iris, desde donde paga su tributo el caudaloso Orinoco al dios de las aguas. Había visitado las encantadas fuentes amazónicas, y quise subir al atalaya del universo. Busqué las huellas de la Condamine y Humboldt; seguílas audaz, nada me detuvo; llegue a la región glacial; el éter sofocaba mi aliento. Ninguna planta humana había hollado la corona diamantina que puso las manos de la eternidad sobre las sienes excelsas del denominador de los Andes. Yo me dije: este manto del iris que me ha servido de estandarte ha recorrido en mis manos regiones infernales, surcado los ríos y los mares y subido sobre los hombros de los Andes; la tierra se ha allanado a los pies de Colombia, y el tiempo no ha podido detener la marca de la libertad. Belona ha sido humillada por el resplandor del iris, ¿ y no podré yo trepar sobre los cabellos canosos del gigante de la tierra ? Si podré; y arrebatado por la violencia de un espíritu desconocido para mí que me parecía divino, dejé atrás las huellas de Humboldt empañado los cristales eternos que circuyen el Chimborazo. Llegó como impulsado por el genio que me animaba , y desfallezco al tocar con mi cabeza la copa del firmamento; tenía a mis pies los umbrales del abismo. Un delirio febril embargaba mi mente; me siento como encendido por un fuego extraño y superior, ERA EL DIOS DE COLOMBIA QUE ME POSEÍA. De repente se me presenta el tiempo. Bajo el semblante venerable de un viejo cargado con los despojos de las edades; ceñudo, inclinado, calvo, rizada la tez, una hoz en la mano ... "Yo soy el padre de los siglos; soy el arcano de la fama y del secreto; mi madre fue la eternidad; los limites de mi imperio los señala el infinito; no hay sepulcro para mí, porque soy más poderoso que la muerte; miro lo pasado; miro lo futuro, y por mi mano pasa lo presente. ¿ Por qué te envaneces niño o viejo, hombre o héroe ? ¿ Creéis que es algo vuestro universo ? ¿ que levantaros sobre un átomo de la creación es elevaros ? ¿ Pensáis que los instantes que llamáis siglos pueden servir de medida a mis arcanos ? ¿ Imagináis que habéis visto la santa verdad ? ¿ Suponéis locamente que vuestras acciones tienen algún precio a mis ojos ? Todo es menos que un punto a la presencia de lo infinito que es mi hermano". Sobrecogido de un terror sagrado, ¿ como ¡ oh tiempo ! respondí, no ha de desvanecerse el mísero mortal que ha subido tan alto ? He pasado a todos los hombres en fortuna porque me he elevado sobre la cabeza de todos . Yo domino la tierra con mis plantas; llego al eterno con mis manos; siento las presiones infernales bullir bajo mis pasos; estoy mirando junto a mí rutilantes astros, los soles infinitos; mido sin asombro el espacio que encierra la materia; y en tu rostro leo la historia de lo pasado y los pensamientos del destino. Observa, me digo: aprende, conserva en tu mente lo que has visto, dibuja a los ojos de los semejantes el cuadro del universo físico, del universo moral; no escondas los secretos que el cielo te ha revelado; di la verdad a los hombres ... la fantasma desapareció. Absorto, yerto, por decirlo así, quedé exámine largo tiempo, tendido sobre aquel inmenso diamante que me servía de lecho En fin, la tremenda voz la tremenda voz de Colombia me grita: resucito, me incorporo, abro con mis propias manos mis pesados párpados; vuelvo a ser hombre y escribo - DELIRIO -

From the Book to the Large Screen: Love in Time of Cholera

A few days ago, I took a brief break of my IT consulting work to see the romantic masterpiece Love in Time of Cholera (El Amor en los Tiempos del Cólera), based on the Colombian Noble Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez’s novel by the same title. The Colombo-British production provided a refinement to the nearly poetic book featuring García Márquez’s magic realism. The leit motif of the story is love rather than cholera. While being very successful flirting, Florentino loses his great love, Fermina, to Dr. Juvenal Urbino, who has the chance to meet Fermina during an emergency medical examination. They promptly get married and enjoy a one-year Paris honey moon. Florentino who has the poetic gift to write conquers all sorts of love, but not the one that fills him beyond the physical, and continues to seek his spiritual conquer through his senior years. After the accidental death of Dr. Urbino, Florentino gets to accomplish his late conquer.

The action takes place in the Northern Colombian City of Cartagena for the most part, but it expands the Magdalena River basin through the city of Neiva, where Fermina’s father has an important farming business.

Having once entered the world famous Castle of San Felipe de Barajas, I personally experienced the unrealistic view of looking at a hypothetic military attacker who could not see me through the square rock solid castle “windows”, which reached lower levels were the sea water gradually invaded the castle foundations. This is one event that romantically linked me to Cartagena. A second one was my recall of college friends who certainly deserved my attention. But Cartagena will also be in my mind, not only for just being 200Km from my city of origin, Barranquilla, but also because it was there, at Bocagrande beach, where the sea almost swallowed me when I was just around 18, during a school entertainment trip. These personal impressions actually fed my external perception of the movie, but they do not affect the highly emotional and vivid romanticism living in GGM’s poetic magic realism. Significantly, I believe that Love in time of Cholera is worth studying and analyzing. Watching the moving was outstandingly emotional for me, so I could experience every feeling accordingly. In fact, the last time I visited Cartagena, I sat with the Colombian Navy leaders for an elegant dinner at their Yatch Marina Club to receive the University of Cartagena’s Department of Economics literary prize for my short story “No me sigas, María” (“Don’t Follow me, María”), later published by the well-known El Espectador’s Magazín Dominical (Sunday’s Magazin). It was an exciting moment that I got to recall again during the movie’s life action.

For at least eight years, my French literature teachers at the Alliance Française expressed their concerns that García Márquez had received his Noble Prize due to “his only great book” One Hundred Years of Solitude. Many other literary critics worldwide now agree otherwise, while he has greatly enhanced his work since 1982 when he was awarded the Noble Prize. The fact is that Love in Time of Cholera has great content, and elevates love as its main idea rather than cholera, that becomes a background topic, literarily lived.

The characters are vivid, the presence of the cocheros chambaculeros, to designate the drivers of the century’s cars, patent a love story driven by a poetic approach, where the art of seduction by writing is frequently used as part of Northern Colombian courtship history, by Florentino, Juvenal, and with some latency in Fermina’s responses. In fact, it is also used by those who will attain love by making a line and to pay for Florentino’s verses.

Furthermore, the secondary characters have also great power, such as those suffering from cholera. The servants, both urban and farmers, and other supporting characters fill the scene. But significantly the most important collective character is represented by the prostitutes, who play a complex, but magically impressive role. Unlike Erendira, one of GGM’s shortest novels, they are quite free! Indeed, they are not either kidnapped, abused, or exploited by a visible or hidden pimp, nor under the influence of any voodoo black magic keeping them catatonic, and apparently not against the law either. There are no pimps, unlike many fiction and real stories worldwide today. Instead, they are free and happy to deliver themselves on demand for love and money, so they are sweet, such that we can state that both the novel and the movie idealize the sex workers, as García Marquez has called them many times in this and other books “putas felices”. These happy characters are not surreal, but magically real, such as indianism —not indigenism— idealized the South American Indian through the colonial literature. Most of these scenes reflected factual and authentic environment in spite of my lack of experience in the field limited to pure perception, yet they were sparkled with the well-known hot British “have it off” in a couple of scenes, and I hope not to lie on this one. So these women, who dance cumbia and vallenatos indoors and outdoors, are definitely the best counterpart to both the physical and platonic loves of the main characters. Besides, the relevant sex scenes are strongly vivid. Whether they involve marital, or extra-marital affaires, or simply casual sex, the sex is always good, but it has been elevated to a good artistic level, and they cannot in any manner be compared to Ovid’s eroticism or today’s date pornographic literature, in particular, that available in the web.

Similarly, the violence is actually sudden but minimized, and love related. The first violent scene comes from Fermina’s father who threatens Florentino with a gun, while Fermina has already pointed a knife to her own neck in rebellion. The second and most dramatic scene features a wife’s infidelity. After Florentino seduces a nearby wife, inking in indelible red her belly with the message “This is mine” and an arrow pointing downwards, her husband goes on to cut her throat with a kitchen knife, while she attempts for the last time to remove the scarlet ink. This reminded me of Musset’s puritanical perception of love when stating: “On ne badine pas avec l’amour”. There are not too many violent scenes as in his novels “One Hundred Years of Solitude”, GGM’s masterpiece, and “Chronicle of a Death Foretold”, and therefore love and the poetic colonial landscape prevail at times nuanced by the wilderness of the Colombian mountains.

The movie, which ends, with the final conquer of Fermina by Florentino, after 53 years, 9 months, and a few days, features the so expected spiritual conquest of Florentino’s beyond his physical love. Thus, Florentino, already senior, gives up his young college lover of the moment for his unique love.

From my readings of García Márquez, I am certain that this is by far the least scatological of his novels, in both the biblical and sordid sense of the word. The movie also reflected the gaps that I had during my reading in visualizing the scene environment and ambience, which could force me to reread the book, as it happened with One Hundred Years of Solitude, even after two outstanding high-school and college literary analyses. Incidentally, I personally consider The Autumn of the Patriarch one of García Marquez’s best and most poetic and well-written books, and the one that I read in chunk with great pleasure.

On the other hand, the novels published by García Márquez after 1982, his Noble Prize year, have been sparkled with a good level of Kafka’s mystery, and his great inheritance from Honoré de Balzac, William Faulkner, James Joyce, and John Dos Passos.

Upon reviewing the movie, I realized it had been scored with a two and a half stars, which seemed to me rather low, since it beautifully presents a universal love story beyond any cultural boundaries in the Northern Colombia region of the 19th century.

When I left the movie theater, I realized that only about a dozen people had attended the only daily showm that early Monday afternoon, but perhaps someone else was still hiding behind the hall curtains.

Voltaire and Rousseau: Two different viewpoints to Approach Life and Society

Voltaire and Rousseau: Two different viewpoints to Approach Life and Society

François Marie-Arouet was to create an exciting name to be remembered forever. He had carefully thought about revolter, voltiger, and finally Voltaire. The French philosopher with a great literary temper had always taken advantage of his liberal viewpoints to consistently attack Rousseau’s naturalist approach to life and society. Voltaire who had enjoyed a successful life with great style enjoying the courtesan love, while Rousseau contradictory attempted to express himself through the l’Émile, ou De l’éducation, but living otherwise.

My reading of Candide (ou L’Optimisme), one of the most beautiful philosophic novels I have ever read, coincided with my reading of Rousseau’s Dialogues et Rêveries d’un Promeneur Solitaire, possibly Rousseau’s most personal and biographical writing, where he confirms his naturist viewpoints and his love for nature. While Voltaire explored the novel and the theatre among others, Rousseau was more involved with social issues, as in the Social Contract, where he suggests that man is born free and pure but corrupted by society itself, and only freedom can be attained by being part of the so called “social contract”. Voltaire attacks Rousseau’s naturist viewpoints and shows his choleric (emotive, active, primary) character which often made him look slightly over-aggressive, satiric or consistently grotesque, and as usual a strong critic of society from any point of view. I got the chance to read quite a bit of Voltaire’s literary and philosophic work.

Candide’s perception of optimistic life reflected many of my viewpoints as a young man, in spite of my extensive reading of Nietzsche, and other philosophers like Sartre, which had completed my way to approach life beyond an ethical perspective, where my Catholic education was a key factor. This period of time was particularly useful to me to evaluate spiritual writing’s such as Hesse’s Glass Bead Game and Sidartha, which I used to accept my perception that Candide’s optimism required a certain level of spiritual elevation and like Dostoiewski put it “the pre-destined man”.

I read The Social Contract while I attended the law school, while I also attended the engineering school. My day usually started early in the morning around 5am, in order to arrive at my first 6:15am civil law class. On Wednesday, in particular, after a long day of engineering classes, and three other law classes, I would escape my constitutional law class to attend my French literature class at the Alliance Française, just a mile away from my law school. I enjoyed this itinerary of the French for several years. My French reading of Rousseau overlaps with my required reading of Montesquieu, and therefore the two together proposed a truthful philosophical view of the naturist philosopher in relation to the State.

Similarly, I believe that reconciling the two philosophers is beyond the reader’s perception to admired them, from both the literary and philosophical value. While Rousseau’s extraordinary social value is unique and can span both literary and philosophical worlds, Voltaire fits both as well. The idea of living by Candide’s standards in today’s world requires the perception that freedom is not attained by the social contract but it is rather a matter of understanding the world to overcome fear, and reach affinity and positive communication, which could easily be matched to a Nietzche’s will to power.