“Notes on a Journey to Ever-Dying Lands” article series
NOTES ON A RETURN TO AN EVER-DYING LAND: Arturo Desimone’s series on Latin American poetry. Originally for the Drunken Boat Poetry Interview, later Anomaly and Democracia Abierta.
Below is a list of links to online publications of the articles, essays, interviews and poetry translations that together compose ”Notes on a Journey to the Ever-Dying Lands”, a series exploring movements in Latin American poetry that might be less known by the Anglophone general public. I name the series in homage to Martiniqan poet Aimé Césaire’s ”Notebook on a Journey to the Native Land”
Bob Zimmerman’s (”Bob Dylan’s”)sparrow-song and broken lute awarded as literature, only a fortnight since I faxed Stockholm with my essay on Latin American poetic incursions into music and folklore in “Notes on a Journey to the Ever-Dying Lands” Pure coincidence? Are the Swedes being coy or forthright? You never know with the Swedes.
On September 11th, 1973 the military coup in Chile killed or imprisoned the Chilean democratically elected government. The coup, backed by theUS Nixon-Kissinger administration, grabbed power shortly before Pablo Neruda died in hospital and marked the discontinuation of any progressive or humanitarian ideas in the politics of that country. Decades earlier, undera progressive Chilean government long before that of Allende, Neruda smuggled around 2000 Spanish civil war refugees into his country. https://medium.com/anomalyblog/notes-on-a-journey-to-the-ever-dying-lands-6723ff01be9c
CUBA, 2017
Part 1 of a report ona recent literary journeyto Cuba to attend thecaucus of young Latin American and Caribbean writers! This is part of my blog “Notes on a Journey for the Ever-Dying Lands” (which began as aseries on Latin American poetry for The Drunken Boat Poetry Review and now for Anomaly review or magazine.)https://medium.com/anomalyblog/notes-on-a-journey-to-the-ever-dying-lands-a80898824659
<<Under the Buenos Aires Night>> : Interview with Argentinian independent publisher, returned exile and political activist Miguel Martínez Naón about poetry, memory, and revolution.
Both new, and 20th century Latin American poetry has been largely obscured due, in great part, to a scarcity of translations. Clayton Eshleman’s translation of Cesar Vallejo is known as a rare milestone in this regard, though Vallejo is a household name in Latin American countries and in Spain. While Blanca Varela of Peru obtained world-wide recognition in her lifetime and was supported by Mario Vargas Llosa, the translations in the Anglo-sphere are few.
Mia Couto of Mozambique says writing serves to re-enchant the world, if it serves at all. This series, too, originates partly in disenchantment and to quest to re-enchant: much of the presentation and curation and recent Anglo-American editorial attempts to highlight Latin American poetry at this stage seemed like academic attempts following a predictable agenda of deconstructing and classifying the sociological issues of the continent from an Anglo, Western and academic perspective–though that may be risking a slightly too radical dismissal, I heard my view often reciprocated among other Latin American poets when I attended literary gatherings in Havana. Here I seek to mend the situation to the best of my abilities (as Juan Perón said, from each according to his ability.) Notes on a Journey to the Ever Dying also collects very personal reflections, because I am an Argentinean citizen who was, oddly enough, born and raised on the island Aruba, off the coast of Venezuela and one of the last territories still corresponding to the Kingdom of the Netherlands in the Caribbean. I later emigrated to the Netherlands, but after some years began to spend long periods in Argentina and to live and write there.
Initially the name of the publication that owns the blog was Drunken Boat International Poetry Review. My interviewees knew of the reputation of the Drunken Boat and were very happy to see their work published there, but due to an unexpected crisis the original managing editors went their separates and the name of the publication had to change to Anomaly; retroactively the logo above all the posts I had published up to a certain point in 2017 also changed to Anomaly. I remain an unwitting foreign correspondent regarding that imbroglio.
-Arturo Desimone
author of Notes on a Journey to the Ever-Dying Lands, among other things.
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