Reading literature is a dangerous occupation

I'm trying to get back on track with the 2666 Group Read that is unfolding over at Las Obras de Roberto Bolaño. I've been avidly following along for the first several weeks but has unfortunately fallen by the wayside. I don't know. I got sidetracked when I started with "The Part About Fate." The L'Etranger-like beginning of that part got to me. Coming on the heels of the dissembling Amalfitano, I just find it so sad. I may already have withdrawal symptoms. I'm pretty sure I will not be picking this book up again (cover to cover) in the future.

I've read 2666 the past year and was just consumed by it. This time around, the same species of horror (hardly more understandable) creeps into the page and it's hard to look at its writhing form.

Let me just say kudos to the theme trackers of the group read. Their thematic explorations are a big help to the floundering reader. Their tenacious readings and courage allow one to form ideas and impressions on the book and on what Roberto may be up to. I find this whole group read experience a meaningful exercise. I'm not giving up. I'll pick "Fate" up again and get back to the main blog site and the discussions. I know I will trudge through again some of the evil deeds of the twentieth and the present centuries. I know that at the same time I will be treated with the consolation of the raw power of writing. Literature is a dangerous occupation, says Roberto. So is reading it, maybe.

"Ang Pangamba ng Makatang Nakapiit at Di-Makasulat ng Tula" (Axel Pinpin)

The Predicament of a Poet Incarcerated and Unable to Write a Poem

If the poetry-maker is dream,
his illusions are well-versed in that routine,
in half-sleep the dream is alive, resting
between freshness of memories
and nearness to truth of colors,
                 scurries,
                     scurrilous verses,
                         versed songs.
The colors of his hopes are singing.

But the poetry-maker is not dream,
the poet awakens in chains,
                                                   in haste
to escape the pull of hiss-hitch-heat
which dissects the pith of fury and hate,
the fitfulness to truth of techniques,
                 tactics,
                     counter-magic,
                         praxis and tricks.
The geometry of his experience is practical.

August 20, 2006



- translated from Filipino, from Axel Pinpin's Tugmaang Matatabil (Southern Voices Printing Press, 2008)

"Ang Tula Ko Ay Hindi Ako" (Axel Pinpin)

I Am Not My Poetry
by Axel Pinpin

I am not my poetry.
My poetry is unlaurelled, ungroomed in Barong Tagalog.
My own voice is not my own poetry.
My poetry is not a canvas of color, odor, shape or music.

My poetry neither fits into figures of speech
nor rhymes with the passages of mysteries.
It’s neither as free as fantasies in flight
nor as wild as lovely illusions.

My poetry lacks for love and love-making.
It is tone deaf and is ignorant of creative writing.
My poetry is lacking in playful wordplay.
Indifferent to the terror and tingle of meaning.

I am a poet with no self-made lines.
I am a poet who gatecrashes, impoverished.
I am a poet starkly starving, broken and destitute.
I am a poet begging for your alms of true lives.
I am a poet forgotten in the muck of poetics.

I am the poetry of the poet they can never recite.
I am the poet of poetry that they will never recite.
I am the poet, beginning and ending in poetry.

September 5, 2007


translated from Filipino
from Tugmaang Matatabil (Southern Voices Printing Press, 2008)

The last infrarrealista

While searching for "infrarrealismo" in Google, I happened upon a cool sketch of Roberto Bolaño in deviantart. I was looking for the text of his manifesto of the infrarealist poetry movement. Excerpts of the manifesto in English were quoted in many reviews of RB’s books. The only complete English translations that I found online were in two sites.





I liked the doble cara representation of Roberto as a mythological cult figure and as a serious writer. The decadent poet and the dying novelist, so to speak. I’ve adopted it as the group avatar for our Bolaño group in Shelfari.

As for the poetry movement that inspired vicerealism, I found it odd that the main page has gone extinct? Surely it was not just because the "last infrarrealista" no longer walked the jungles of this Earth?

In any case, I just relish Roberto's excerpted poem (in English translation by Erica Mena) in Words Without Borders. I'm just a bit disappointed that the whole poem was not posted online. I can't wait to read the entire sequence, and the entire "Three" collection.

Why one should not read

'It’s very bad to read books. The plain truth is that there is probably no greater obstacle to enlightenment than reading. Even those of us who have made a little progress read books like the Hekigan-shu without understanding much. When we get beyond the level of our experience we are completely at sea. Should one get the habit of putting his own subjective interpretations on the passages he does not understand, he will be handicapped considerably when he sits in zazen. He will not be satisfied with the stage he is at but will anticipate the next and wait impatiently for satori to come. The result is that for want of proper application at his present level, his way becomes obstructed. Reading can thus be a real poison. So I advise you not to attempt it….'
– Natsume Sōseki, Mon