A book first enters through the eyes, especially when it has a high aesthetic demand as a material product. This is the case with Miguel de Santiago’s latest and finest poetry book, whose design, typography, quotes and illustrations are a real joy to look at. Perhaps this appreciation should be left to the last lines, but I feel the urge to say it at the beginning, because of few books it can be said that the editors and those responsible for design are authors almost as much as the author himself. This is one of those books. See you soon my congratulations to the editor for such a beautiful result.
I just said it Autumn leaves It’s a good book of poetry. Yet it is prose. It is not a paradox because this prose is of such lyrical quality as to be pure poetry. Poetic prose is an entire literary genre and the author shows his taste in the preamble by citing the greatest: Bécquer, Juan Ramón, Rosales, Muñoz Rojas. Well, the author reaches them in this book and even surpasses them in some moments.
I know the poetic work of Miguel de Santiago, who in silence has been able to raise, and very high, one of the greatest works of religious poetry of the present. So I dare say that, knowing his work, this is probably his best poetry book. And also be prose. The fact that it is prose brings the book closer to the reader, makes it more accessible, since poetry sometimes provokes a certain rejection, even in the educated reader.
Autumn leaves it is a pure looking out and seeing the outside world, very often the natural world: the field, the crops, the harvest, the afternoon, the fog, the storm, the river … And a thousand other moments, which are transfigured into light and pure spiritual gold. The author says this with full awareness of the path to which this book invites and of the goal it proposes: “Here is a personal look at the external world, which is not described objectively, but trying to discover the existential metaphor and its meaning for the observer himself.
It must be added that the observer is no longer just the author but all of us who begin to read the book, because Miguel de Santiago knows how to infect us with the enthusiasm of his experiences in nature and the reflections that overflow his heart. And not only nature, but also the person, the friend, the blind man, the children, loneliness, living and suffering, the time that drags us and carves us like boulders …
In total, there are eighty scenes or images or gazes outside, even moments of pause, since nature often shows itself to us in its stillness; but a silence that comes quickly towards us to speak to us of his secret mystery, of the gift that never ceases to offer himself to us and, for those who see everything from above, of the God for whom everything is. Inevitable is the memory of those lines so beautiful that the reader immediately identifies: “A thousand thanks poured / passed quickly through these groves …”. So it is in this book by Miguel de Santiago. Everything speaks to him of God, first passing through the person who lives in that nature recreated in each painting. The author tells us in the preamble: “In each of the pages, together with the objective gaze, there is a sentimental experience and a reflection of Christian humanism”.
I just said that everything in this book is about God. Yet he is never mentioned. Or almost never. Nor is this a paradox. It is a very elusive literary and poetic marvel. Another from this book. The author, in order to remember God, does not need to refer to Him at all times, as sometimes happens to some believers, who seem to need to refer to Him at all times in order to notice that we have him in mind. In reality, it could be the other way around: God is all the more present the less we tamper with him with our verbiage. Before words, however necessary, there is the reality that we breathe, that constitutes us and from which we live.
It is also an editorial genius that the collection hosting this book is called “Prayer Manuals”, even though God appears to be absent. But no, he isn’t. The apparent absence of him gives the greatest presence of him. Miguel de Santiago’s poetry book before this was titled Contemplate to pray with nature. In Autumn leaves he reaches his personal fullness in prayer and contemplation.
Each stamp or painting, always on the left page, is generally structured in three parts that could be described as follows: an immediate view outside; a suspended gaze that opens the doors of the soul; finally, the collection of reality to carry it inside. It will be in here where everything will be seen again by more light. This pattern repeats itself many times, although not always, and in each new scene it acquires new shades and new bright iridescences.
Images and scenes always on the left page. On the right page numerous photographs of very beautiful landscapes are reproduced, as well as small moments of human intimacy as if surprised in an instant: of the hands, a face, of the fixed and pensive eyes, a child who makes the world rise with his balloon … On each of these illustrations, already expressive in themselves, a biblical quote is printed that concentrates in a few lines of great inspired wisdom some of the author’s intuitions on the previous page. I said it at the beginning: a beauty of editing.
The book begins with a prologue by Carmen Casado Linarejos, a good connoisseur of the poetry of Miguel de Santiago. From it comes the expression that gives the title to these verses and which is the best synthesis of its essence and form: the evidence of the prodigy. In the last pages there are five profound semblances dedicated to someone to whom it is understood that the author owes much of his being and feeling about him. His name appears only in the initials; again the luminous silence that is so present in this book. With a few more semblances, the author would have a splendid new book. I encourage you to do this.
And since great poetry, in the manner of light, cannot be described, I invite the reader to enter these pages and see for yourself. It will travel along roads that we hardly ever travel. They leave from the front door, just take the first step. Truth, beauty, humanity, transcendence … Faith This world is much more than this world.
