By Luisa Castro
The title of this book of poems, false, it is well placed. There is no other feeling that one has when entering them, that of stepping on a shifting, slippery territory, and yet it catches us from the first moment. It catches us because we lose our footing, because what is certain begins to wobble as it does when we cross a sacred line. The spell is undone when you leave the poems, but the feeling of loss does not disappear, and you would like to return to them, but the poems are already different, they do not allow themselves to be manipulated. There is a poetry that can be talked about, that can be paraphrased, but there is another that can only be explained from within. The same thing happens with the mystery, although the words that name it are everyday.
The five parts in which this book is organized account for that progression, from the sacred to the common, to the ordinary. But what is common? And how is language organized to reflect this sacred dimension of the ordinary? Gabriela Kizer invites us on this journey, embarking us from the beginning on that ship, Charon’s, which seems to take us towards the edge of life, and which is basically an initiatory journey towards memory, towards the first glimpses of memory of a people and a family. First, Gabriela Kizer welcomes us in an introit, a church portico, and then very soon the images appear, the fragility of life, the vision of the living as a dangerous state, the girl who falls, who peels knees and discovers in that blood a message from God. The Eucharist of childhood wounds, and drink that blood. The stone thrown at the school bus, and later understand the forecast and the message. Gabriela Kizer writes about the drive of mystery and matter, which are the same, and from there she embarks on a journey in two opposite directions that meet at the end of the book, closing a precious circle: that of genealogy through the father , of the grandmother, the girl. Ascent and descent begin their vertiginous and opposite journey until both lines converge.
But in the beginning there is a question: “Who gives us a face?” And a response that comes from the father: “I dreamed of writing on my body whose meaning I did not understand.” Adolescence, wonder, the unknown of the girls and the discovery of Eros, the memory of the city, the promises that filter through the thin walls of the floors. It is at the end of this first part of the book that Gabriela enters a new sphere. The poems are becoming more diaphanous, narrative, sealed messages open to the exploration of the common. The knowledge of love fifty years after starting the journey, and then another very powerful voice appears in the book, which is the same but now dressed in the nakedness of the classics, poetizing reality between irony and drama: «Ocean and Thetis quarreled for life with the sole purpose of giving stability to the world. What are you going to order?». This is how Gabriela Kizer accurately describes the acceptance of transit, of the unreality of life and its inscrutable motivations, those of “those rivers into which we enter and do not enter, and how we are and are not the same.” Or the only lesson that loss teaches us, with its firm and inescapable count of disappointments: “And you don’t know how sorry I am that this love has not served you well to live.”
With this first lesson, and as a way of shelving the infinite stories of the milkmaid, the book goes into a third part composed of prose poems as luminous essays. It is no longer about life, but about how to look at life and how to tell it, because perhaps there is nothing more certain in the world: a poetic. The serenity and intelligence of Gabriela Kizer’s writing break through, and she thinks about herself. Like her from a summit she has already invested herself with the attributes of the Maker, and it is she who gives us lessons, instructions for use. How to deal with the fable, the muse, the language, and that poem of noble and deep Flemish wisdom, when one no longer seeks the truth but carries it within, offers it as if on an altar through dance, music, art chill. Gabriela Kizer also rehearses in her “Philosophy of Composition” a beautiful paragraph about “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe, and the principles of art begin to be enumerated: “That the ultimate goal of poetry has nothing to do with the intoxication of the heart. (…) That the ultimate goal of poetry has nothing to do with achieving the truth. (…) That the contemplation of beauty is the most intense pleasure and makes us shed tears». Or learning about orphanages and the absence of love through Coco Chanel and Marilyn Monroe. Or that immeasurable power of life against art, expressed by Mark Strand. Or how a pelican dies after its impeccable hunting exercise. Like the poet, like the poem, both armed with a double hook: one to kill and the other to die.
The fourth part of this book is once again a return to memory, but now the jump is filtered by the signs of the poetic and moves towards another sphere. It is no longer about the ancestral or intimate memory, which we have left behind, but about the social memory, of the violence and hunger and indigence of a country taken over by the army. Recently dead Paco de Lucía, dead art and the lambs of José Agustín Goytisolo attacking the wolves, as in the poem. Or a vision of the sad Caracas where a Caribbean Naomi Campbell roams, a hungry prostitute full of beauty between absurdity and despair. The perfection of this part, which acts as a mirror between humor and clarity, makes us wonder if this is not the true black box of the book, from where it is born and organized, the germinal explosion of art as the only refuge, as only salvation from pain and chaos.
And this is how the book closes in on itself in the last and fifth part, picking up sail and letting go of moorings. In her last poems, Gabriela Kizer, as if it were a synthesis, reaches her own transformation through the alchemy between art and life, and asks herself the foundational question of the poet and the historian: can the word name the real? ? Or is it just that trying, and that helplessness, the closest we are to our nature? And it is here, in that last poem that gives the book its title false where we understand that only time works on the features of our face. And only he can tell us about mystery, and beauty.
*false. Gabriela Kizer (1964). Prologue: Luisa Castro. Editing by Nicole Brezin. Editorial Visor and the Foundation for Urban Culture. Spain, 2022.
*Luisa Castro (Lugo, Spain, 1966) is a Spanish poet, short story writer and novelist. At only 17 years old, in 1984, she published her first book, Definitive Odyssey: Posthumous Book. Two years later, with The Eunuch’s Verses (1986) won the Hyperion Prize for Poetry. his novel the bed frame (1990) was a finalist in the VIII edition of the Herralde Prize. Another novel of his The secret of bleach (2001), won the Azorín Novel Prize. the second womannovel, won the Biblioteca Breve Prize in 2006. His book of poems Gunner’s Habits In 1988 he won the VI King Juan Carlos Prize for Poetry. In 2018, the Visor publishing house published two books: Actors in street clothes Y Strength. Collected work (1984-2005).
