My Favorite Poets (I):
The South Americans

I will now start this brief series in a scatter fashion with my favorite poets from all around the world. In this part, I will cover some of my favorite South American poets.


In my early years, I started reading poetry from verses that my mother had written such that I could recite during mother’s day. But I also think that I had read a few from Benjamin Franklin, such as, "The Cock", which I read during my exploratory readings of the English Language in Hamilton’s book entitled "A Travel through the United States", one of my first English books. I was later quite excited about studying and analyzing French poetry, and perhaps, there is one that I particularly recall entitled "Consolation à Du Perrier" by Malherbe. So, recently, I wanted to reread it, but could not find it on the shelves of the French Institute Alliance Française Library in the City of New York, where books by Malherbe, including his complete works were missing that day and I could not be found anywhere after I asked for assistance. I believe that most of my poetry reading has been accomplished during my first twenty years of life, half of my life, so I had enormously read the French, the German, the British, the Spaniards, but above all the South Americans by then. At the top of those that I could highlight is obviously Pablo Neruda, who is considered by a great number of poetry experts, and arguable to others, as the greatest poet of all times, i.e,. the best poet ever. Indeed, I have read Neruda extensively, step by step, for many years, since my early school years, and have encountered great messages in his poetry from "Veinte Poemas de Amor y una Canción Desesperada" through "Canto General" to "Confieso que he vivido". What is intriguing about Neruda’s poetry is that he recites it with a vivid feeling and sentiment over what happened to him, romantically, socially, and spiritually, which can easily transmit to the reader. This is the greatest value of this Noble Prize. I have read other books by Neruda, and some of his antologies over time, but no other had the impact of his twenty love poems. From Neruda every Latina remembers and likes:

"me gustas cuando callas porque estas como ausente
y me oyes desde lejos y mi voz no te toca..."

Among the South Americans, I seldom read other poets than the Colombians, such as Porfirio Barba Jacob, Eduardo Carranza, Jose Asunción Silva, and the one that I admired the most Guillermo Valencia, the father of a president by the same name. Barba Jacob had written a poem that everyone loves in Colombia entitled "Canción de la Vida Profunda" where "hay días en que somos tan fértiles tan fértiles que nos depara en vano su carne la mujer", which could be literally translated as "there are days when we are so fertile, so fertile, that the women offer us their flesh in vain". Asunción Silva writes about the pure water by stating "refleja el agua pura su inocencia en la quietud sin peces ni sonido" ("the pure water reflects her innocence for her soundless quietness without fishes."

Besides, I admire Carranza and Valencia beyond their poetry for having my grandfather’s names. I had heard from a relative that my grandfather Hermengildo Carranza Valencia was related to Eduardo Carranza, but I could never corroborate it, and when I personally asked him, when he was already reaching his eigthies, one night that I stayed at his colonial Bogotá home, he just remained silent and gave me no answer, a strange behavior for a strong man at his age. A couple of years ago, I was stunt when I heard about the tragic death of his daughter, María Mercedes, who committed suicide at her home while working for El Tiempo, the largest national newspaper based in Santa Fé de Bogotá. She had written the national best seller "Carranza por Carranza" about her father, Eduardo. Thus, with "Cuando yo digo Francia", Carranza and Valencia are probably the greatest Francophiles in the Colombian literature of all times.

Among the poems that I enjoy the most from the Colombian poets is this one entitled "Las Dos Cabezas" (The Two Heads), by Guillermo Valencia, which reflects all the flavors of his extremely French education. And Valencia is the paradox of his time when relating the beheading of John the Baptist in his poem. But Valencia’s poetry also remains in full the antithesis of his own time, the years that followed him, and the present of other poets’ vision and their styles for generations to come, as I learned in French from Emiscu (rather than in Latin): "…car la vie est un bien perdu quand on ne l’a pas vecu comme l’on a volu." (…for life is a loss asset when we have not lived it in the way we want to…", mostly what Colombian and South American poets reflect in their plural message. Valencia’s poem has an epigraph from a book appearing mostly in Catholic and Orthodox Bible versions, Ecclesiasticus, in Latin, "Omnis plaga tristitia cordis est et omnis malitia nequitia mulieris", which could be translated into English literally as "All vice is sadness to the heart, and all evil is woman-born." Or in contrast as posted on the web at http://www.tldm.org/bible/Old Testament/eccltus.htm: Ecclesiasticus (25:17). "The sadness of the heart is every plague: and the wickedness of a woman is all evil." (The latter translation is questionable.)

From Guillermo Valencia (Colombian Poet)
LAS DOS CABEZAS

"Omnis plaga tristitia cordis est et omnis malitia nequitia mulieris"
( Eclesiástico)

JUDITH Y HOLOFERNES

Blancos senos, redondos y desnudos, que al paso
de la hebrea se mueven bajo el ritmo sonoro
de las ajorcas rubias y los cintillos de oro
vivaces como estrellas sobre la tez de raso.

Su boca, dos jacintos en indecible vaso
de su sutil esencia de la voz. Un tesoro
de miel hincha la pulpa de su carne. El lloro
no dio nunca a esa faz languideces de ocaso.

Yacente sobre el lecho de sándalo el Asirio
reposa fatigado, melancólio sirio
los objetos alarga y projecta en la alfombra...

Y ella, mientras reposa la bélica falange,
muda, impasible, sola, y escondido el alfange
para el trágico golpe se recata en la sombra.

* * *

Y ágil tigre que salta de tupida maleza
se lanzó la israelita sobre el héroe dormido,
y de doble mandoble, sin robarle un gemido
del atlético tronco desgajó la cabeza.

Como en ánforas rotas, con urgida presteza
desbordase en oleadas el carmín encendido
y de un lago de púrpura y de sueño y de olvido
recogió la homicida la pujante cabeza.

En el ojo apagado, las mejillas y el cuello,
de la barba, en sortijas, al ungido cabello
se apillaban las sombras en siniestro derroche.

Sobre el lívido tajo de color de granada...
y fingía la negra cabeza destroncada
una lúbrica rosa del jardín de la noche.

SALOME Y JOKAMAN

Con un aire maligno de mujer y serpiente,
cruza en rápidos giros Salomé la gitana
al compás de los crémalos. De su carne lozana
vuela equívoco aroma que satura el ambiente.

Danza todas las danzas que ha tejido el Oriente
las que prenden hogueras en la carne liviana
y a las plantas deshojan de la déspota humana
o la flor de la vida, o la flor de la mente.

Inyectados los ojos, con la faz amarilla
el caduco Tetrarca se lanzó de su silla
tras la hermosa, gimiendo con febril arrebato:
"Por la miel de tus besos de daré Tiberíades"
Y ella dícele: "En cambio de tus muertas ciudades,
dame a ver la cabeza del Escenio en un plato!"

* * *

Como viento que cierra con raquítico arbusto,
en el viejo magnate la pasión se desata
y al guiñar de los ojos, el esclavo que mata
apercibe el acero de su brazo robusto.

Y hubo grave silencio cuando el cuello del justo,
suelto en cálido arroyo de fugaz escarlata
ofrecieron a Antípas en el plato de plataque él tendió a la sirena con medroso disgusto.

Una lumbre que viene de lejano infinito
da a las sienes del mártir y a su labio marchito
la blancura llorosa de cansado lucero.

Y -del mar de la muerte melancólica espuma-
la cabeza sin sangre del Estenio se esfuma
en las nubes de mirra de sutil pebetero.

LA PALABRA DE DIOS

Cuando vio mi poema Jonatás el rabino
(El espíritu y carne de la bíblica ciencia)
con la risa en los labios me explicó la sentencia
que soltó la paloma sobre el Texto Divino.
"Nunca pruebes -me dijo- del licor femenino
que es licor de mandrágoras que destila demencia;
si lo bebes, al punto morirá tu conciencia;
volarán tus canciones, errarás el camino..."

Y agregó: "Lo que ahora vas a oír no te asombre:
La mujer es el viejo enemigo del hombre;
Sus cabellos de llama son cometas de espanto.
Ella libra la tierra del amante vicioso
y Ella calma la angustia de su sed de reposo
con el jugo que vierten las heridas del santo..."

Please note that Valencia’s perception of women could probably be encountered in some of Baudelaire’s poetry and personal notes or a clear match to Racine’s character Phèdre.

My Novel

Planning the Novel of Self-Analysis

The True Facts

“One night, when I returned to my second year of law school, I suffered an unexpected attack. I had spent an hour in a Shotokan karate class, and two hours in a constitutional law class with Dr. Castañeda. During the break, and while standing near a few trees and the campus main gate, three heavyweight men assaulted me. Although, I was able to block most of their punches while holding my book bag, the heavier man was able to punch me in the face, and broke my nose with his ring and left a small scarf between my eyes, but they could not knock me down. My best strategy was to evade them while I could, so I ran towards the Law Faculty indoors, which was also gated and on a second floor, but I was first reached by a kick on the back of the head, a kind of punch that is illegal in most sports and martial arts. After the Dean, a man whom I featured as an attorney in one of my short stories, learned about the incident, the woman, who has ordered her three “bodyguards” to beat me, admitted that she had made a mistake attacking the wrong man. Although I never knew the details of a parallel incident, the woman never apologized for the attack, and I never got the chance to confront her, as she graduated that year, as a member of a powerful political family.” This is how politics were present early in my life, and as French writer Julien Freund wrote, in his book Qu’est-ce que la politique?, “La politique n’est pas le royaume des beaux sentiments.” Like another close relative, I had been the target of campus violence. In fact, this is the incident that broke my education life into two parts, the first part, where I was outstanding in anything I did, except probably in accounting and music (playing the guitar or the violin), and a second where I have been outstanding at a few things and intermittently at a few others. Therefore, I thought that a campus violence novel would be easy, but instead, attempting to write the semi autobiographical, semi imaginary novel is a difficult task, not only because you can hit scenes of your private life that you would rather keep private. However, in my commitment to be truthful to myself, I promise to tell the entire tale as it happened. For instance, I believe that my great success as a young writer and overall career wise had to do with my spiritual life. I had been a very devout Catholic, and around fifteen had been invited by one of my best friend of the time, to a Christian Gnostic (CG) conference, which drove me into a good understanding of both esoteric and exoteric spirituality, as they strive to reconcile any cosmologic discrepancies. There are many similarities between these two beliefs and I was extremely surprised that both were quite compatible, and both viewed Jesus as the center reason for that spirituality. For instance, I learned about the Gnostic gospels long before their discovery was release to the public. In particular, St. Thomas Christian-Gnostic gospel uses a particularly naïve language that would makes easy for non-spiritual readers misinterpret it. CGs believe in many special things such as the practice of tantric sex (not the old paradigm between Apollonian or Dyonisiac love, but rather mystic and free of morbo, perhaps the unconceivable for many), the delivery of life to others, the extermination of the psychological ego, and many other esoteric secrets also praised by many other alike movements. For instance, currently, Scientologists talk about the pre-clear, a state of the soul that Nietzsche calls the “ugliest man” in some of his aphorisms. However, my novel is not even close to be Leonardo’s code. One of the interesting experiences I had, is how Christian Gnosticism easily drove me into tantric love, with my second girl friend and fiancée, a red head white woman, like my first girlfried, but with a great deal of class. There were many failed attempts by others, and when I wrote some short stories about these anonymous incidents, which deserved a few national literary prizes, my older and more senior colleagues came to the attack by stating that I need to be more consistent about those erotic scenes, probably never lived. And they were right, since my fiancée and I had forgotten about wild sex, and had been exclusively dedicated about tantric sex. There was nothing wrong with it, except that we had gone to far and we were not married, but it no longer matter, as we did not believe we were sinful but blessed. This was a beautiful time to recall. The five years that we spent together deserve a special page in my adolescence time. The fact is that otherwise I practiced sexual abstinence with a military firmness, and this had become a discussion with contemporary friends that were rather extremely promiscuous, and who ended up in Russia and Germany. And although I was a good lover, I still remember years before when I contemplated the first woman who lied next to me nude under the transparent red silk after staying home during a storm, which made me a very young voyeurist. The contemplation of all these events made me an analytic young man more than one would seek a quick development from a simple caress or a kiss. I used to remain with a cold character until the right moment, and I must admit that unless there is a planned attitude towards love passional love will easily overcome and override tantric love. My novel attempts to find a self-analysis as to why he after all we could not wait for one another, as I further went to both the engineering and law school, and she had no further time to come into my room and go sightseeing around the city. This is the introductory chapter of my novel. During the next chapters, I expand in my writing of how I became rather independent based on my education, where my language professors, and previously even my high-school had had a great impact. First my French literature club, and then my advanced literature class had become a major cosmopolitan center for all sorts of philosophical discussions à huis clos, where European, Arabic, African, and Latin American students had a chance to delight each other with the French culture and her literature. Among the women that entered my class were a couple of German women, one of which I liked very much since she reminded me one of my beloved fiancées. But I realized that then I had limited accessibility and little time to think about a conquer. I also remember a few large Arabic women who were quite cultivated. The men in my class were intellectual, and I had started their humanistic steps, but could probably not compete with them, including the industrial, engineers, and business men that attended it. The years that came after the campus incident were followed by lower or mixed grades in engineering, and I only returned to the law school after the completion of my engineering degree. After my graduation, I immediately became a bilingual Mathematics teacher and also the Department’s Dean or Principal, in an international school where the staff was mostly British. I had little to say about my interaction with them except when we got the chance to meet a one of the Scottish women’s house for a private party and refreshment that was full of fun and rather quite. Unlike my parties with the French and the conglomerate of European, Asian, African and Arabic which were loud and noisy and full of plentiful goodies and other desserts, the British parties were quiet and followed by private conversation unusually interrupted by a less conservative guest. My interaction with the American people was intermittent after a few years of English studying where I had met people from Boston, New York, and California, and had got the chance to meet a few religious members and Peace Corps missionaries. My love stories after missing my beautiful read head fiancée were short ones, and I had basically stopped attending the CG conferences, which I had attended for at least five years in different camaras (levels), but I never stop attending the Sunday mass, getting a confession, or taking the communion, as a good Catholic. I had left for Santa Fé to either complete my degree in law or start a master’s degree in Statistics at the University of La Salle, which never happened although I had been formally accepted. I started trying to derived pleasure from my night life in Bogotá, and for the first time in my life I had started to build up muscle, against the CG belief, based on Jesus. Nigh t life in Bogotá is sparkled with colorful lights. Telling why I would never let unknown women seduce me was an issue. My girl friend and fiancées in Santa Fé were very young, and none reached twenty years, as if in fact I was just that, a growing adolescent, and just kept growing and growing like that, and as if passion would never be enough to grow enough. So, if like novel that have class and sex, you will love mine. The arrival of my immigration visa cut my links to a global computer manufacturer that preached to become the company of the twenty first century, as in fact they have done so. The US has offered me some opportunities to grow career wise, but I still believe that I have not understood the culture quite well, in particular, as I feel detached from those that I would like to have closer to me, and eventually, just like marketing become unreachable. Thus, trying to maintain relationships of any nature is difficult, and this will be a secondary idea in one of the “American” chapters.

A sample romantic scene about my younger years, could be narrated as follows:

“And it was the first time that she entered my room to meet me. She was wearing white clothes, and her pink white skin turned into a beautiful vanilla nuance as she was partly illuminated by the light filtering through the semi-open window. She stood behind me watching me typing without uttering a single word. When I stopped typing, she turned over in front to me and I kissed her lips that had a cherry flavor, like we went to the movies. That flavor is still in my mind today. I touched her body for body for the first time. Slowly, we leaned on my bed to talk about one another…”

In the past, I have had several attempts to write a novel, but I did not have the endurance, the time, the organization, and the motivation to maintain and keep the manuscript that travel many places before finally disappearing.

The Fiction
(where I refer to myself as the author of the novel)

The author driven by imagination and after completing his graduate becomes a secrete agent for B-NSI unexpectedly being signed by somebody else into that game, and recalls his campus violence experience, as he finds himself dumped in a Maryland cliff, nearby Baltimore, during his second duty trip to the area. This is the second incident affecting the author’s life, since there is not a clear recall of it, and it is presented as an uncertain imaginary event. The intimate life in the US is vague, and it is usually sparkled by the uncertainty of not sharing the space with the same person, which spoils the sense of spiritual assurance that I learned an adolescence during the formation of my strong spiritual character, a key identified aspect that drives committed relationship into failure. The contemplation of this reality is the final chapter of my novel, where spiritual and natural laws point at the fact that love synergy is to take place between a man and a woman to become one together, and any affair or aberration will drive the synergy created into disastrous events. Although, the novel is not intended to be tragic, it conveys the final expectation of trust and fidelity, which is key to an individual and a couple’s success altogether. The novel ends when the author survives another vicious attempt of campus violence. The novel will also cover the unknown Davis game of sex, infidelity, and videotape. Although the novel exposes my religious beliefs, it is not to be written in the style of Brown’s code, but rather more dynamically in the style of Forthsythe’s “The Day of The Jackal” or Camus’ L’Étranger with a full-sense of originality in both fond and form. It could also be that by witnessing a rape scene, in particular, if the rapist could easily be identified. The author is the target of kidnapping to build false evidence against and thus becomes the object false accusations and testimonies against him, while in captivity… the novel becomes a thriller.

Indeed, I try to explain some times of loneliness and gaps in love, and the in the end the novel ends with a lovely encounter where a young love brings happiness into my life. After all, I only write the truth.

A Poem About True love, Physical love and Sex Without Love

A few weeks ago, an evening coming back from New York City, I wrote this poem on the train. The commute was so slow, that I got the chance to read it and rewrite it on my notepad in a cleaner fashion on the next page, with some typos. Interestingly, it was one of the few times I rode one of the new two-level trains. Indeed, I was mulling over physical love, and true love, as someone had sent me an email to invite me to an anti-Valentine's Day party, after I my flowers remained in my mind just undelivered. I did not go, so I wrote Sex Without Love.

Sex Without Love

Sex without love is a thorn in the heart

that exults the flesh as it weakens the soul…

Sex without love is the city at large

with all her scents of casual events

that entices the passion and denies the true love.

Sex without love is not a word or two

that soon got together and sooner turned apart.

Sex without love is the not thought step

to deliver her inner realm without getting to know

that the spirit is good when dominating the flesh

and forgiving the bones for they have gone wrong.

Sex without love is the paradox of solitude

for it suddenly turns into repeating déjà vu.

Sex without love is the city of no control

it is rejection at large, pressuring true beings

not the integral ones that are hidden below

like two flowers that open together at once.

Sex without love is the gross risk

to give away what is destined to the wise.

Sex without love is a thorn in the heart

that grows in despair with the kidnapped soul

the body surrendered, submitted to the violent power

the flesh delivered, the entangled carmine silhouette.

And at times, also, sex without love

is the price and the rest of the vicious lover.

And is it perhaps that sex without love

is always the paroxysm of the hedonic lover,

and the reward or freedom of the pleasant lover…