logotipo

He has everything.
The women describe his smile,
Remember his name.
But, who loves someone who eats
Alone in a public place?

Lo tiene todo,
Las mujeres describen su sonrisa
Y se acuerdan de su nombre.
Pero, ¿quién quiere a alguien que come
Solo en un lugar público?

(that's a tanka)

I know these two guys that write. Guy One writes poetry, personal, hard to understand, and surrealist. It is very important to him but no one is allowed to read it; sometimes he'll recite a bit to a very close friend.

Guy Two is a rapper. Spanish rap has a tiny but fanatical audience, apart from the yearly sudden success. Toteking has published 2 CDs, one with his brother and one solo (links in Spanish). As far as I know he's had at least one show if not more every week of the last three years. He hates, no, he despises the attitude of creative people who don't try to make money out of their art (which is why he said I should write a novel instead of short stories).

I don't think either of them is wrong. Guy One enjoys what he does and no one these days is going to become suddenly rich by publishing poetry. Tote has lots of fun, and a bit of money is never a bad thing. To me what's more important is reaching people. I write thinking, "is this good enough to show to this or that person?" That's one of the reasons to blog: I can´t think of an easier way to take my haikus out for a walk.

Yes, it is a band-aid. I think it’s creepy. I can’t get used to seeing flags used as a decoration, I just can’t. When someone does that in Spain everyone assumes that they are at best posh and conservative, and at worst fascist.

Part of the problem comes from the fact that a couple of areas in Spain want to be independent countries, and a display of the national flag is synonym to saying they are wrong. Also, seventy years ago or so Spain was a Republic and we had this flag:



What can you expect of a country that can’t even make up its collective mind about its flag? That using the national flag for anything that’s not official is in bad taste. I know that in other countries it’s not so controversial, but I still think that band-aid is horrible.

Oh, has anyone seen my Irish-flag USB plug?

Nick tells me that the Lincoln Center in New York City is having a sort of festival of modern Spanish cinema. The website doesn't include any mentions of Franco, not any that I've spotted anyway, which is good.

The selections include:

A Tribute to Fernando Fernan-Gomez, an old, very talented actor and director. El Abuelo, one of the movies inside that cycle, is very representative of the sweet, slow, love-it-or-hate-it style of director Jose Luis Garci.
Tuna and Chocolate, soundtrack by the one and only Javier Ruibal.
Take my Eyes, an absolute must for anyone interest in domestic violence.
The Basque Ball (Skin against stone), a documentary that was extremely controversial in Spain because since it gives a voice to the Basque terrorists right next to their victims it was seen as sympathetic to the killers. I'd love to know the opinions of foreigners who know little or nothing about the Basque situation before watching the film.

The rest is a very varied selection, I like that.

Lately I have had to study the issue of gay marriage a lot.
I love this page: what marriage according to the Bible really means.

“Giving up laughter”,
river-misty, “morning-cold”,
Monday begins. (Beowulf, 3020, 3022)

“Poniendo fin a la risa”,
Como río neblinoso, “mañana fría”,
empieza el lunes.

So, back to work, everyone.

After three years or so of procrastination, I got a Jewelry shop made at last with the invaluable help of my friend Bill. So go check it and get every woman you know jewelry for Christmas.

The sky is twice as heavy,
Rain is twice as grey,
when it falls on the palm trees.

El cielo pesa el doble,
La lluvia es el doble de gris
cuando llueve sobre las palmeras.

Leaf clings to the tree,
Chill autumn.
“Don’t give in without a fight” (Pink Floyd)

Una hoja se aferra a la rama.
Otoño helado.
“No te rindas sin oponer resistencia”.

The first one is about my town. The second one is inspired by the amazing weather poetry of Alan Spence. Being Scottish, he has more experience of cold and rain that I do and expresses how it looks and feels better than I have done so far.

Carboanion is such a good prompter! She asks me why is Hugh’s Gapingvoid one of the reasons why I blog. Some literary critics, like Harold Bloom, say that the creative impulse is the wish of outshining your influences. It’s very Oedipal: the artist is the child, the influence is the father, and Art is the mother. It would be more appealing if it wasn’t such a male-oriented scheme.

I didn’t start a blog because I want to do it better than Hugh (heh), but he made blogging look like a good idea, not just a watered-down version of the online teenage journal. And regarding poetry, that Oedipal triangle is exactly the way I feel. I write because somebody got there first and said it better than I could. I used to despise T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland because in each line I read “I want to be Dante, and I can’t”. My own personal list of Dantes is a long one, but we could start with e. e.cummings.

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, misteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

The holiday goes on but there are a few people on campus, just a few. Something that I find spooky about this place is that it dies when there's a holiday. My hometown used to be deserted in summer, but not anymore, I'm not sure why. There is never an occasion that makes everyone leave. So it's strange to walk to the library without meeting anyone at all. I can't wait for the break to be over.

The night lies ahead.
Cup of tea full to the brim.
The poem doesn’t come.

Toda la noche por delante.
Una taza de té llena hasta el borde.
El poema no llega.

Every artist that I know that has stopped to theorise about Art in the abstract, about What Art Ought to Be, reaches a simple and easy conclusion. Art ought to be what I do. I am, of course, no exception. What I like and dislike is dictated by what I do or can’t do.

But Carboanion asks me why I write haikus, so let’s see if I can answer. Haikus offer the perfect balance of form and freedom, first of all, because they don’t rhyme. Rhyme is an unnecessary constraint that forces the poet to look for a word that fits form instead of meaning. Rhyme for its own sake, especially when it is difficult as in Spanish rap (hola, Tote), is an interesting device. In poetry, is often superfluous, and what’s worse, distracting. And the most important thing: para rimar tiempos verbales, mejor no escribas. That is, you’d better not write at all if you intend to rhyme grammatical suffixes or particles.

Good. We have one principle: use excellent, original rhyme for its own sake, or don’t rhyme at all. Now, the distinction between poetry and poetic prose is in rhythm. Of all the non-rhyming traditional poetic forms, haikus are interesting because they must be concise: you cannot waste a syllable. Forms that don’t have a line count run the risk of heading straight into explanation. “This is what happened” slipping into “and this is the way it made me feel”. A haiku is the photograph of a feeling, not its description.

The last question is why not free verse. Free verse is the hardest of all because there are no rules and that makes mistakes so much easier. The balance is no longer between form and meaning but between freedom and self-indulgence. The old saying “master the rules before breaking them” applies. A good poem is one that is fresh and original even if it sticks to the rules. But, what makes a good free verse poem? Nobody knows. Yet.

Hugh McLeod is one of the reasons why I have started a blog and one of my favourite cartoonists, up there with Quino and Forges (warning: links in Spanish).

And he also has something very interesting to anyone who wants to know How to Be Creative. He talks about his cartoons but I think it's applicable to almost anything. Go and download it.

In the end I celebrated Thanksgiving with some lovely people that didn't really have to invite me. It felt like a Christmas dinner with a different dessert and without the TV on, and I kept comparing everything with the way I do things for Christmas. And we talked about politics, which seems unavoidable lately.

I already knew what the menu is supposed to be, so it was less of a surprise. Turkey wasn't new, bread-based stuffing was. Cranberry sauce was delicious but definitely different from anything I had had before. Probably the oddest thing, together with that, was the pumpkin pie. Pumpkin is a vegetable, and I said I found the idea of Pumpkin pie as strange as tomato jam was for them. Well, tomato jam is strange even in Spain, I think it is just my family's invention.

Big family meals are great. I think I would celebrate Thanksgiving if I ever was in this country again at this time of the year.

Just when I thought I was starting to cut down on reading blogs, a friend tells me that
Neil Gaiman has one. It's more on the personal web-side than on the blog-side, though.

When I have to describe Neil Gaiman to people who''ve never heard of him I say he is the postmodern Edgar Allan Poe. Someone might add Lovecraft to the analogy.

I chew the brightness of pain with pleasure.
My body is full of you now.


Mastico la luminosidad del dolor con placer.
Ahora mi cuerpo está lleno de ti.

Tenderness has died.
Two fierce young bodies,
“Stirring memory and desire” (T. S. Eliot).

La ternura ha muerto.
Dos cuerpos jóvenes y feroces,
“Removiendo el recuerdo y el deseo”

I don't like what I often refer to as "intimate poetry". Poetry as an overflow of powerful feeling not recollected, but thrown on the page there and then. This is my feeling, look!. Teenage poetry that breaks the sacred "show, don't tell" rule.

That is the manifesto of the day. ¡Plus plis plas, mañana más!

So, I thought I would link only rarely, and then I found this, an American guy telling his version of Carnaval de Cadiz. I have found late-February Spain a phenomenon that's too hard to explain to foreigners so it's good someone did the job for me already, even though it is a bit stereotypical.

The question is: will I ever see a foreign journalist write about Spain without mentioning Franco? Ever? Please?

It makes sense that my first blog haiku is also the first one I wrote.

Cinnamon shoulders,
your waist is a reed.
You can't be snapped by the wind.

Hombros de canela,
tu cintura es un junco.
No puede romperte el viento.

I said: I couldn't write poetry even if I tried. He said: oh yes you can. I wrote a haiku to prove him wrong and then I couldn't stop.

The poems without their translations to the "other" language seem as if I had broken them in half. It's one of the side effects of composing in both.

I can only compare Thanksgiving with el puente de la Inmaculada (the Immaculate Holiday, isn't that a great name). In Spain, December the 6th and 8th are holidays, but the 7th isn't. That means that schools normally close down for week to three days, everyone thinks teachers have more holidays that they deserve and some lucky ones go skiiing. Most people take it as another symptom of the national laziness.

And here I am, in Cornell University, which is going to close down for five days, libraries included (those close for two days only), right before exam time. Everyone is going to visit family in the other end of the country, even with essays due really soon. I like that. I cannot relate to the celebration but it's good to see people looking forward to a break.

I need to tell everyone at home that we're not the only ones to go on holidays immediately before exam time. So much for the national laziness myth.