Marginalia Nº 7 - June 2004
DIFFUSION BODY OF THE IBEROAMERICA ACADEMY OF POETRY,
CUENCA, UNIVERSITY CITY
ATHENS OF ECUADOR
CULTURAL HERITAGE OF HUMANITY
Interview
MARIO JARAMILLO WALLS
Rector of the University of Azuay. President of the Culture Commission of the Association of Universities of the South of Ecuador and North of Peru, and Vice-president of the National Council of Higher Education (CONESUP). Former Minister of Education and Culture of Ecuador.
Journalist and essayist.
We reproduce, below, this brief interview:
MARGINALIA: What is poetry to you?
MJP: A superior form of communication and of sharing experiences, hopes, fears and joys. In short, to share life.
MARGINALIA: You have resolutely supported the "La Pileta" Literary Creation Workshop at the Universidad del Azuay. Do you think that both literature and the other arts should occupy an important place in Ecuadorian higher education?
MJP: Higher education should encourage the approach of young people to the world of art. Also work in the direction of discovering skills in this field and give them the opportunity to develop.
MARGINALIA: Do you think that poetic and artistic creativity, in general, will be maintained despite the growing pragmatic mentality of society?
MJP: There have already been other equally pragmatic eras in humanity's past and yet the poetic activity has endured. The reason I think is simple and forceful: the human being is a duality of matter and spirit and the two parts struggle to survive. The ideal occurs when a society creates the conditions for these two elements to be equally cared for.
MARGINALIA: Now that we are commemorating the centenary of Pablo Neruda's birth. What thought comes to mind?
MJP: Talking about Pablo Neruda will always be for me to talk about the most powerful voice the continent has ever had. Powerful and tender in a perfect balance.
MARGINALIA: Thank you very much for your words and your time.
Cuenca poetry
THE BARCAROLA
I'll go to sea with you at twilight.
It will be a sea of bitumen in the darkness.
You will see how, suddenly, in your hair
The Southern Cross becomes entangled.
The splintered music of the waves
It will bring the wind that widens the tides,
Girdling algae, stained in tars,
You have to tell me seafaring stories.
Your soul will be charged with clouds.
I, instead, will play with the stars
The phosphoric nacre of your body:
And the chimera will shout in the distance!
I'll go to sea with you at twilight.
And in the night without candles
I will tell you: "Hope
I have stayed on the ground,
As in misty ports they remain
Drunken sailors and dead seagulls ".
So the tropical trade winds
In a stroke of the sea, without you knowing it,
Like a marine tree they have to throw you
In my arms, in time
To unfold my sails.
Universal poetry
THE TRAIN OF FIRE
VI
SOMEONE HAS COME to ask about his eyes, about the time of his eyes, something has happened, his long transit in a region of hunger.
They told him: do not wake the tiger, it is not good to wake him, what would he understand his sins of loneliness, friend of shadows, long pestilential crows.
VII
POMONA APPEARED with her broken trees and cold debris winds in ruins.
Eater of white rootlets, sick birds, a one-armed and old locomotive polishes the rails.
He told the angel that he was leaving the house and the memory of another season was already darkening in his teeth, grass transplanted into the intestines with spots of sulfur and ant and sand crickets.
The feet were filled with fatigue and salt of intoxicated music, long roads, narrow and curves; looking back, the tiger was still in the brain, slayer of flesh.
Francisco Azuela (Mexico)
Guest poet
CÉSAR ANDRADE Y CORDERO (Cuenca, 1904 - 1987)
César Andrade y Cordero is a good representative of Cuenca and national postmodernism.
His cultural activity was diverse: poet, storyteller, musician, literary critic, journalist. From the editorial page of El Mercurio, he defended with height and courage the interests of his land. And he masterfully presented the profiles of Alfonso Moreno Mora, Rapha Romero, Remigio Romero, Emmanuel Honorato Vásquez, from the people of the Austral Magazine; aristocratic bohemians that contrasted with deep-hearted bohemians, popular serenaders ...
Among his books, we mention: Barro de centuries (stories), Two Poems, Ventana al Horizonte, Ruta de la Poesía Ecuatoriana (criticism), Cúspides Doradas (poetry), Poetry (posthumous selection).
His poetry is a testimony of the Cuenca of the first half of the XNUMXth century; It was born with the century, and it loved its people, its esdrújulo song, its neighborhoods, its cobbled streets.
The height of his lyrics is equated with that of his generation companions: Jorge Carrera Andrade, Escudero, Gangotena.
FORBIDDEN MUSIC
I could look for you with an old crook
Of music at dawn.
I could look for you in the blues
Chrysanthemums that waters the moon on the mountain.
For you I would group flowery bouquets of conversations,
Kisses of wet stem and a country white dahlias.
Bring fireflies waists at night
And the gentle smell of almond trees that ignites the morning.
Bring you guitars and swings and smiles
And a wind of songs that will anchor your eyes.
I could look for you in all the needles
Of the dew and its hinges that open the dawn.
I could look for you in the tides
Of wide music that the bells pour.
But you were already the imprecise glimpse of yourself,
The hollow skin of the fruit that the hand cannot reach,
The buried name that is never spoken,
The ungraspable scope of the distant song,
The flattering stanza that we long ago forgotten,
The closed orchard and its useless fragrance.
Reviews
TREE WITH WINGS
Gonzalo Espinel Cedeno
House of Ecuadorian Culture, Núcleo del Guayas
under the auspices of the MI Municipality of Guayaquil
Ecuador Letters Collection, No. 184
Guayaquil, 2003
Espinel Cedeño, a poet with an austere and sweet word, this time gives us his fifth collection of poems. Suggestive work from the title, which evokes the brotherhood of the earth with the air. Verses that are rooted in the hard crust of everyday life, but that at the slightest push rise above it, to dance freely on the weightless wings of thought, beauty, poetry ...
ÁRBOL CON ALAS is a book whose theme goes "from the profound to the naive and from the romantic to the sardonic" (GEC), but from whose pages a great tenderness is never absent, tinged with evocation and nostalgia. With texts that make us reflect, like this one, with an undoubted Borgian accent: "what will we be, if everything we have experienced / will remain by decree of oblivion / without us, when we die." (From what heaven). Others, with elegant tellurism: "And in your hours of languid crystals, / turn me off in your coral bed / and turn me on at the sunset of your sun." (Sea). Or romantics, without more: "Sometimes you come back like some ship / that returned at the will of the wind. / Like the southern bird that out of breath / returns home when it feels cold." (Sometimes you come back).
Clean sonnet, well written and with beautiful resonances.
Sara Vanegas Covena
IN THE SHADOW OF THE CORSAIR
Franklin Ordonez Luna
University of Cuenca,
House of Ecuadorian Culture, Nucleo del Azuay
The (h) wave of David
Basin, 2004
The work is a song unfolding to eros, to nostalgia, to pleasure. Transparent and free song that moves, that captivates.
Ordóñez Luna marks with this, his second collection of poems, an indisputable advance over the previous one. He has refined his word, has largely overcome that crypticity, which made him somewhat dark and inexpressive.
His current poetry -of agile, short and fast verses-, the result of experiences and readings, of a patient and loving walk through universal literature, invites us to enjoy his best texts, passionate, full of encounters, disagreements and suggestive evocations, where a bright carpe diem hangs; moments of life enhanced in beautiful and daring images: "What does your name matter / if in that portal, / naked, / our lips are still kissing." (Chueca).
"Hands of fire destroy the city, / Rusty gods fall, / hail. / Your mouth is the mana for which I go to hell." (First trumpet).
Intense book.
Sara Vanegas Covena
ORIFLAME
No. 4
Literary gathering "Prince of Asturias"
Cardeñoso Editions
vigo, 2004
ORIFLAMA, a literary magazine of the Tertulia "Príncipe de Asturias", is biannual, and is directed by the renowned Spanish poet Isabel Díez Serrano.
The present number 4 appeared in June of this year and presents Ecuador as a Guest Country. The national poets who participate in it are: Sara Vanégas Coveña, Rodrigo Pesántez Rodas, Carlos Eduardo Jaramillo and Magaly Vanégas.
The magazine opens with a reminder of the tragedy of March 11, which occurred in Madrid ("… .. Poison / we swallow one like a stabbing spear" Isabel Díez), to later give way to international collaborations: Rosa María Sobrón (Argentina ), Isabel Díez, Alfonso Enríquez de Salamanca, Alejandro Palacios Cabanillas (Spain), Nela Río (Canada); the Ecuadorian authors already named, and many more.
ORIFLAMA closes with News from the Gathering, News of Cultural Interest and a list of books and magazines received.
Agile, interesting publication, whose mission is to unite people through literature, and spread their artistic word. Congratulations!
Alexandra Andrade
Credits
Year 4, Number 7
2004 June
Brazil 3-101, Cuenca
Fax: 2818 840
email:svanegas@uazuay.edu.ec
Director:
Sara Vanegas Covena
Collaborating in this issue:
Mario Jaramillo, Gonzalo Espinel, Alejandra Andrade, Francisco Azuela, Carolina Escobar Sarti, José Kozer.
Layout:
Engineer Katherine Ortiz Vidal
The management is not responsible for the opinions contained in the signed articles. Partial or total reproduction is allowed, if the source is cited.
Correspondence and collaborations:
box: 01-01-1178,
Ecuador basin
email: svanegas@uazuay.edu.ec