‘Canto desert’ comes to the voice of pure poetry, “without concessions”: Alberto Blanco

The 30 years that Alberto Blanco dedicated to completing ‘Canto desert’ give an idea of ​​the magnitude of that creation and why for him “it is not just another book.” It is “the culmination of the work” of that renowned Mexican poet, according to his counterpart Jesús Munárriz, director of the Ediciones Hiperión label in Spain, under which it was published in that European nation, according to the volume’s colophon.

Short in length, 188 pages and 36 poems, divided into four sections, what the plastic artist and musician born in Mexico City in 1951 does in this new collection of poems is to record a call: that of the voice of poetry. in its purest state.

“It is poetry without restrictions, without restrictions, without concessions,” says Alberto Blanco in an interview with ‘La Jornada’, during which he shares some reflections on what poetic practice has been for him, about what he has delved into in the books ‘ The call and the gift’, 2011; ‘Poetry and the Present’, from 2013, and ‘The Song and Flight’, from 2016, awarded that same year with the Xavier Villaurrutia Prize.

In his words, “poetry is a radically different way of using language.” It has nothing to do with everyday language, the utilitarian language of every day, he details, but rather with that which is used in the opposite sense: “not to communicate, but to be heard; not from the inside out, but from the whole inward, toward one or none.”

He clarifies, however, that not all poetry or not everything that is called that follows that parameter: “In my case, not all poems or all books exemplify 100 percent that attitude that can be considered very radical, but there are some who do adhere scrupulously to that notion of language used not to say, but to listen.”

In this regard, he considers that ‘Canto desert’ “is the perfect and perhaps the most refined example of all his work,” as it is “a finished and perfectly focused expression of what it is to hear news from the other side of language. In other words, they are poems dictated by I don’t know who, why, from where, how; What I know is that it is not me speaking, but it is me listening.”

He says that this book “began to be written three decades ago, and I say that it began to be written as if it had been written by itself, when I lived with my family on the outskirts of El Paso, on the border between Texas and New Mexico, where the desert begins. . So this becomes superpresent in this work, particularly in the first of the four parts that make it up. The first poem that ‘reached me’ is the one that opens the book, ‘Bad Memory’, which became the emblematic vessel; He gave me the way to follow, which is very open, and allowed me to articulate many different registers.”

deep messages

He insists on the large amount of time that the total architecture of this work required, starting in 1994 when he was awarded the first poem and gradually the others were added, along with many others that populate his titles, until which focused on fine-tuning the details.

“It took time to round out. It is not a book written voluntarily or with will; It is an endeavor where the most important thing, as with true poetry, has been to wait for the sign, the call, the message to come, and to be attentive and know what to do with it. From the moment I found the form in the first poem, I already knew what and how to handle those messages, I just had to recognize when they were messages that came from that depth, intermittent messages. That’s why it took so long to write,” he adds.

“Once done, it required a lot of space in what I call being rounded: polishing, removing impurities, unnecessary repetitions, little details; but the poems, basically all of them, are transcribed exactly as I heard them; I’m talking more about listening than seeing, although there are also several that have to do with image and sight, but it is not an external view.

“The poems are little or no anecdotal, although I know and can share the specific moment and circumstances in which they were written. There is no narrative or story to tell, beyond that which is the great journey of the work as a whole (…) No conclusion is reached, it is open poetry; in that sense, a rigorously contemporary form of poetry or even a book that in many ways looks to the future.”

The poems of ‘Canto desert’, according to Blanco, use everyday words that allow us to understand what each verse says, but together they are something else: they open in an unexpected way towards landscapes, realities, stories or dreams of the which he is the first to be amazed, because they do not say one thing, but many.

“The accumulation of readings that a book like this can provoke is potentially endless. Like any text of true poetry, it is not exhausted in one reading or in 10. It is very demanding, but also very hospitable, in the sense that it offers entries on many different levels. It has something to offer any reader at whatever level they want to approach it, from the pure music or the richness of the images to the taste for metaphors or surprises, but the effect is cumulative.”