viernes, 28 de junio de 2013

Man Ray: An influential modernist

Buenos Aires HeraldPublished October 15, 2000.

An influential modernist  
Photographs, litographs and objects by Man Ray at the Centro Cultural Borges.

By Alina Tortosa


Man Ray was well trained in design and the economical use of the material at hand since childhood, as his father, a taylor, worked at home. The bits and pieces, samples and left overs of cloth, where used by the mother, with the aid of the artist and his brother and two sisters to make carriage blankets and kilts. Economy, texture and design were inbred, not appropiated. His first known piece, true enough, was a tapestry made of different samples of cloth. 

As a young adolescent he was exposed to the art shown by Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) in his 291 Fifth Avenue gallery. Stieglitz was instrumental in introducing the latest work by talented and avant guard European artists to an attentive and cautious American audience, including photography, as Stieglitz was a talented photographer himself. This experience did not prepare him, however, for the reverberating shock suffered by himself and others on the opening of the famous and notorious Armory Show in 1913. This major exhibition -more than one thousand and six hundred pieces by European and American avant guard artists-,  was a commotion that unsettled the understanding and perception of artists and lay persons to a point of no return.  Man Ray confessed that after the show he did nothing for six months: I took me that time to digest what I had seen.

The Stieglitz influence, the Armory Show, and his reading of Rimbaud and Lautréamont prepared our artist to understand Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) when he met him in 1915. Their friendship and collaboration lasted for fifty years.  

Man Ray, who had evolved from abstraction to a vaguely cubist style,  became disenchanted with painting. He needed to go beyond the brush and the easel. The airbrush, an instrument used by illustrators to produce a light, even spray of ink or paint, provided the alternative he was looking for.  He enjoyed painting without touching the canvas. It gave him enough physical distance from the support he was working on to make him feel he was engaged in a cerebral activity. The first work, an aerograph, as work done with an airbrush is called, Suicide, 1917, is now in the Menil Collection in Houston. 

Influenced by Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia (1879-1953), Man Ray  investigated mechanical devices and the construction of objects. He was also involved with photography and the process of printing it. His photographic portraits of women and of men, of surrealist scenes and motifs and his self portraits have influenced the visual conscience of succeeding generations. He was also involved in film making, engraving, sculpture, illustration, philosophy and in the writing of essays and poetry. 

In 1921 Man Ray went to Paris, where Marcel Duchamp, who had left before him, was awaiting him. He was happy to leave New York, as he felt constrained by an unappreciative audience who did not understand his innovative spirit. He became acquainted with artists and intellectuals and made a living as a photographer, while he pursued his own investigations. Sylvia Beach, owner of Shakespeare and Company, the bookstore and expatriate literary gathering place, referred many of the prestigious British and American novelists to him for photographs. 

He was welcomed by the European Dada movement, together with Duchamp and Picabia, as a member of the small New York Dada group. Later, as Dada fell through and Bréton proclaimed the Surrealist Manifest, he became an independent member of the Surrealist movement as well. Though he would not bind himself to one circle or group, and liked to be able to move from one to the other freely.

When the nazis invaded France he returned to the US via Spain and Portugal. He lived in Hollywood for ten years. Then he returned to Paris, where he felt at home. He died in Paris in 1976.  

Clever, ingenious, mysterious, sadistic, ironic, Man Ray  rebelled in the energy and enthusiasm generated by the creative process, rather than by the action or the object accomplished. His portrait as a modernist artist is untarnished by the critical contemporary appreciation of avant guard totalitarian movements. His was a world without bounderies, open intellectual spaces unfettered by aesthetic limitations or dogmatic dialogues. 

Man Ray, was born in Philadelphia on 27 August 1890, the eldest child of an immigrant Russian Jewish family. It is possible that his iconoclasticism and anarchist leanings stemmed from his Jewish background. Christians were -and mostly are- expected to believe rather than to discuss the Churches teaching, while being Jewish implies generations (of men) discussing the Torah and its interpretation by diverse religious scholars, to a point in which even non religious Jews inherit this passion for dissent and reinterpretation. 

(Man Ray, Centro Cultural Borges, at the Galerias Pacífico.  The work shown in this exhibition belongs to Giorgo Marconi, an Italian collector and a friend of Man Ray. A hundred and forty photographs, fifty litographies and ten objects.) 


Antonio Seguí: A man who knows what he wants

Buenos Aires Herald. Published Sunday, March 25, 2001

A man who knows what he wants
An exhibit of graphic work donated by the artist himself illustrates his deep talent

By Alina Tortosa

Antonio Seguí seems to have had a deep understanding of what he wanted to do as an artist, from the very start of his career. He was born in Córdoba in 1934, were he grasped the essentials of conservative provincial life and the strong family ethos and psychological implications that go with it.  We can read in his work this language of manipulative interrelations, possessiveness and underhand eroticism that is at the root of claustrophobic, close family ties, little given to outside interests. He grasped this, and knew better than to stay put, so that after going to a local art school, he went away in 1951 to study in Madrid and in Paris, to return to Córdoba in 1954.

His first work shown in Buenos Aires in 1961 and 1962 were abstract compositions in thick sensual paint on canvas. In 1962 Seguí exhibited at the Galería Lirolay a series of ironic pieces called La familia de Felicitas Naón, manipulated photographs of an elegant bourgeois lady and her relationship with a lover who eventually murdered her.  That was the time when young enterprising artists in Buenos Aires were arguing the merits of the “new” figurative painting against the older and, by then, conventional abstract art. Seguí did not take an active part in the discussions, nor did he join the group Otra figuración, whose members were the vociferous exponents of the new art. Though he developed a distinct figurative style, he kept apart because he preferred to work on his own, and because he did not partake for the taste for scandal and limelight that the artists of this group enjoyed so much. 

The exhibition of Antonio Seguí’s graphic work held currently at the MAMba –the Museum of Modern Art of the city of Buenos Aires-, his generous donation to this museum, brings out clearly his strong psychological perception of character and environment. This body of work is a reassuring statement on his talent and sense of commitment to a profession and a way of life. From early pieces in 1953- 1954 to 2000, his articulate ability to draw, design, paint and print people and scenes, illustrate his capacity to work in a manner relevant to the time he lives in, spacing, constructing and deconstructing images, creating situations that draw from art history, from political history and from political and cultural contemporary realities.  The result, which may be funny, ironic or sarcastic, is always vital.

The artist moved to France in 1964, keeping in touch with Argentina, always, keeping in mind the essence of ways of being which he discusses again and again in his work. In his best known pieces, paint on canvas of small men of sizes irrelevant to the urban scene about them, who walk up and down and across the scene, he brings out the characteristics of those city male dwellers he knew in his youth, who act and live according to old fashioned structured codes and habits which are the quintessential of the native porteño, arrogant in his indiscriminate knowledge of who he is and of what the world is about, in the wilful belief that life is what he thinks it ought to be. The way Seguí describes body movement and gestures speak of his own psychoanalytical perception, quite unlike the somewhat stubborn character he depicts: the native urban dweller, who cannot see much beyond his own neighbourhood. He has understood and taken in different cultural and artistic influences that have enriched his knowledge of men and of life. He has redefined popular iconography in art, drawing on the vernacular, beyond the American POP. He also plays with international popular cultural icons, such as the film and song, Tea for two, in a series of prints, 1982, in which the polite and stereotyped elements and manners of the original subject have been turned by the artist into rather violent and absurd situations.

In a series of prints for a book by Silvia Barón Supervielle, in which he reproduces scenes from the argentine countryside from a window, there is a strong reminiscence of the feelings stirred by La jalousie, the novel by Alain Robbe-Grillet.

A hard workingman, one feels the energy and the sound academic background that have gone into his work.  Food, love, sex, violent politics, they are all there.  Life has not gone by without this artist taking notice. No ivory tower for him. Unless we believe that intelligence and talent are an ivory tower in themselves.

As usual in this museum, the curartorship by Laura Buccellato, the director, and by Celia Taricco is clear and didactic. There is a well illustrated catalogue with a bland text by Damian Bayon, the late argentine art historian and poet who lived in Paris for many years, written for Puerto Rico in 1993. It is a pity that a better analytical text was not written to go with this very interesting show.

I recommend the guided visits by Jorge Zerda from Tuesday to Sunday at 5 p.m., except on Thursdays, when Zerda is to be found in the mornings. 



(Antonio Seguí, MAMba – Museo de Arte Moderno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires-, on San Juan 350. The closing date is in May; there is no definite date yet).

Luis Seone: Artistic and political vocations hand in hand

Artistic and political vocations hand in hand
A man who used every medium he could to further the causes he believed in

By Alina Tortosa
For the Herald

Luis Seoane was born in Buenos Aires in 1910, the son of Galician immigrants.  In 1919 the family went back to Spain, where he went to school and graduated as a lawyer in Santiago de Compostela. He took an active part in the Federación Universitaria Escolar in leading roles, while he worked at his art and exhibited drawings and paintings. His artistic and his political vocations went hand in hand, aiding and abetting each other, in a rich personal and professional life, in which he took advantage of every means and media available to support and further the causes he believed in. The question of identity, always at the heart of issues related to people who are born astride different cultures, was not a deterrent, on the contrary, it seems to have given extra strength to his endeavours as a man with social and political preoccupations and as an artist. He returned to Buenos Aires in 1936 to avoid the Spanish Civil War -I imagine he felt that neither side represented the basic needs of his beloved Galicia.   So far, I have not found a comment on the subject-. In 1971 he returned to Spain, where he lived till he died in La Coruña on April 5, 1979.

His first known pieces are drawings described as some illustrative, others satirical, critical and political, by Valeriano Bozal, the curator of the exhibition of Seoane’s work currently on show at the MAMba -Museo de Arte Moderno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires-. These drawings do not foretell what was to come, neither do his first paintings, obviously the work of somebody in the process of learning how to. 

The lines in his drawings developed into lyrical and playful representations, social in essence -Bozal, again- but free from the restraining influence of propaganda art. Later on his drawings would describe with affection the women and men of his native Galicia as immigrants aboard a ship, or sitting in pensive or restful attitudes, or lounging naked. The nudes and some portraits have a strong influence of Picasso, and, at least one of the portraits, of Soutine.

His first paintings were figurative in earthy, brownish hues, far away  from the bold and colourful planes, drawn within black lines or cernes, as the French call them, which represent his achievement as an artist.    These later paintings are the axis in which the Romanesque experience of his native Galicia, his Celtic inheritance, his stalwart peasant background, his knowledge and appreciation of modernist developments join to celebrate with robust energy a meaningful past and an auspicious present. His human figures acquired serenity, a being there quietly and gracefully that denotes strength. Women as stable, worthy representatives of the community are the subject of many of his figure portraits.  

Luis Seone’s work includes ceramics, printing, scenography and murals as well. An impressive collection of his prints is owned by the MAMba, and on show in “Perpectivas”, the room on the first floor. As a printer he worked on wood, linoleum, metal and stone, he also engaged in serigraphy and stencil. He did not think that the technique chosen defined the work of an artist; he believed the artist ought to redefine techniques, if necessary, to suit his purpose. An old dilemma with traditional print makers, who tend to become too engrossed in the technical aspects of their work, leaving little or no margin for creativity. 

His mural work can be seen at the Teatro San Martín, at the Galería Larreta on Florida Street, Esmeralda 561 and at the Galería Santa Fé, on Santa Fé Av. 1600. To illustrate the scenes he wanted to depict on a wall, which he treated as a huge canvass, he used stone, marble, iron, bronze, ceramics, glass, mosaic and chemical paint.  He enjoyed this representation in public places as it gave him a feeling of sharing his art with the passer by who would not normally have access to his painted work.  


Publishing, graphic work and writing were also an important part of his agenda. 

A very well curated show that should not be missed. An enjoyable outing that will whet the appetite for more knowledge on this community conscious and versatile artist.  

Two very interested catalogues were published for the occasion. One, by the MAMba, with careful reproductions of paintings, prints, murals and ceramics in argentine collections. A larger and more comprehensive catalogue  was printed by the Xunta de Galicia for this show that started out at the Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea de Santiago de Compostela last December, is on now in Buenos Aires till August 20, and will move on to the Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes Emilio Caraffa de la Ciudad de Córdoba -October and November 2000.


Buenos Aires Herald. Published Sunday, April 6, 2003
Art On Sunday

Jorge Gumier Maier is back at the Rojas

By Alina Tortosa
For the Herald

On April 2 the art gallery of the Centro Cultural Rojas de la Universidad de Buenos opened its season with work by Alfredo Battistelli, once more under Jorge Gumier Maier.  

Gumier Maier, artist and curator, is definitely one of the best-known personalities in the local visual art scene. His decorative abstract figures and his own perception of art were central in the 1990s to open a mental and physical space to work that had never reached exhibition venues, other artists, the public, or the press, specialized or otherwise. 

In 1989, following Daniel Molina’s suggestion, the Centro Cultural Rojas de la Universidad de Buenos agreed to devote exhibition space to the visual arts.  Molina went further and said that he knew of an artist who could fill the role of curator. So it came about that Gumier Maier, who had never thought of himself as a curator, organized from scratch visual art shows that made history in what was then a corridor. How did he do this? Did he set out with definite ideas of what he wanted to achieve? No, he said he had no plans, no theories. He looked around to see what interested him that was not been shown elsewhere. He saw young artists working in isolation in ways that were not taken into account by anybody else.

He chose work that was mostly decorative, which then was a bad word in the local art world. Not to him. Gumier Maier reminded the Herald that decoration is at the very origin of man’s creative impulses, since art history begins with paintings in prehistoric caves and with the design of basic containers for domestic use.  He was concerned with work that celebrated domestic rituals as well as the identity of those artists involved. Soon people in the contemporary art world, particularly young people, spoke of “el Rojas” as an exhibition venue to take into account.

There was not much else going on then for the very young crowd except the gallery at the ICI, then Instituto de Cultura Iberoamericano – now the Centro Cultural de España - that had opened a year before under Laura Buccellato, currently the director of the Museum of Modern Art.   She was the contemporary curator by excellence then, the one and only, with a very clear-cut vision of the use of space.  Gumier Maier says that though they had different aims conceptually, he went to her shows to study her style, neat and perfunctory. By 1996, when his curatorship ended, he had helped to establish new parameters, created a convivial atmosphere that brought together young artists who had worked in isolation before, and he himself had become a legend.  A controversial legend, since much of the work he showed was considered too decorative by some curators and art critics.  Discussions issued on “light art”, and on the fact that a few of the artists he launched were gay. In practice, less than ten per cent -which is the given average in current society- of the artists shown were gay, but the fact that gay work had not been acknowledged openly before put the Rojas into the lime light and their acknowledgement was understood as a powerful statement.

In 2003 things have changed in the local art world. Quite a few art spaces, opened in the last three years, show very young work. Young artists are therefore well taken care of, some of them are even represented by prestigious galleries.  The schedule for this season is to work with artists from other provinces that have not shown in Buenos Aires.

The grand news is the University bought the house next door, so by late Spring the Rojas visual art premises will be three times larger and specifically designed as an art exhibition space. “It won’t be the Malba”, Gumier Maier says guardedly, but one can sense the pride in his tone.

As an artist Gumier Maier has exhibited extensively in Argentina and abroad. Though his work has changed throughout time –indented and meandering wooden structures that work as wall pieces, mostly in pastel shades-, it is always easily recognizable as his.  He has never shown his own work at the Rojas under his own curartorship, careful to keep his two activities apart to comply with his ethical principles. He has taught in the Buenos Aires, Tucumán, Rosario, del Sur (Bahía Blanca), and Cuyo Universities. He has been awarded the Konex Prize in 2002, the Fondo Nacional de las Artes Prize to career performance in 2001, and the Otium Ecology Prize in 1993.

The visual art community at large is focusing on this new period at the Rojas and looking forward to what our artist cum curator cum professor will propose.


Federico Klemm

Buenos Aires Herald. Sunday, December 1, 2002   

Federico Klemm

By Alina Tortosa
For the Herald

Federico Klemm, (1942, Checoslovakia), died last Wednesday, November 27, at 2 pm after a long bout of pneumonia.  Well known as an artist, who was not about promoting himself shamelessly,  he was also known as the director of his art gallery, the Federico Jorge Klemm Foundation, as a generous art collector, who shared his cherished acquisitions with the public that went to his art gallery, through the yearly Klemm Prize, and through his extraordinary cable art program: El banquete telemático.  Mr. Klemm’s  profile veered from the lovable to the ridiculous. He was an ultra extravagant, media character, larger than life itself, as well as a quiet and discreet benefactor of artists in need. 

His work as a figurative artist was strongly influenced by his profound love for his mother. Imbued with mystical feelings for her and of himself, and with an overwhelming sense of the theatrical, he painted several large compositions, esoteric representations of both of them, himself as Christ and the small blonde woman as the mother of God, reigning supreme. These paintings proclaimed gorgeously and proudly his Freudian attachment to her. He was influenced as well by his rampant homosexuality, his love for the human body, for physical pleasure and for the lyrical aesthetics that drove him to redesign his own image in several guises.

His sumptuous birthday party dinners at the Alvear Hotel were legendary glamorous evenings on which Klemm let his imagination lose, as much of a performance as any art event. 

The Federico Jorge Klemm Foundation hosts several art shows a year, promoting the work by young and not so young artists,  publishes books, and organizes lectures and seminars.  The Foundation will carry on the work started by its founder. 

jueves, 20 de junio de 2013

Ritual doméstico

Selección de poemas de Ritual doméstico
Grupo Editor Latinoamericano / Colección escritura de Hoy
Alina Tortosa, 1994. Corregido por la autora en junio 2013


Cuando escribo
las palabras están ahí
en el aire
suspendidas
al alcance de la mano

parecen enhebrarse
antes de ser escritas

bajo la lapicera
se resisten

la historia por contarse está ahí
en el aire
suspendida
al alcance de la mano

parece tener profundidad y textura
antes de ser escrita

bajo la lapicera
se resiste

****

El pensamiento
resbala
se detiene
decanta
define las áreas
del conflicto

hila ideas
tratando
de esclarecer
los hechos

retoma sensaciones
impresiones
que aclaren
el desenlace

no alcanza
a aclarar
los hechos
se aproxima
a ellos.

****

Miro

la mirada
se detiene
o se abstrae

interpreta
los colores
y las texturas
viendo más
de lo que mira.

****

Las formas
del sonido
dibujan
el espacio

****

Me despertó
el rasgueado
sobre la alfombra
de yute

prendí la luz

lo vi cerca de la cortina
negro
ágil
saltando como un sapo

levantó vuelo

el murciélago planeó
haciendo ochos
en el aire

sentí miedo.

****

La langosta saltaba
de una baldosa a otra
en la galería de Villa Aguiar

no quería acercarme   

papá me obligó
a matarla

le obedecí
a pesar mío

no se conquista
el miedo
con el miedo

no se aprende
a ser valiente
siendo cobarde.

****

Moléculas de luz
dibujan el contorno
y el entorno
de los objetos.

las moléculas se mueven
nosotros no las vemos moverse.

****

La hoja de los cuchillos
imantados a la pared
reflejan las cacerolas de cobre

reflejo sobre reflejo
reflejo cálido del cobre
sobre  la superficie espejada
del acero.

****

Se suceden en mi memoria
los espejos del pasado

un espejo se refleja
en el otro
ese en otro
formando un corredor

el tiempo
me acompaña

vestido  de azules y de grises
se introduce
en el corredor espejado
reflejándose en los cristales

no me molesta
que lo haga.

****

La memoria
y el tiempo
son espejos
empañados.    

****

La lluvia

I
En la madrugada oscura
la lluvia repica
sobre los toldos
y las baldosas del patio

hiervo agua
para el mate cocido

la heladera ronronea

las gotas estallan
sobre las baldosas

se cuela el agua
por la ventana
del lavadero
deslizándose
por la pared interior.

II
Las lluvia cae
en ritmo acompasado

trato de explicarme
el sonido de la lluvia
para poder describir
su mensaje

el sonido líquido
arrítmico
contiene un mensaje
que no sé descifrar.

****

El viento sacude
las ramas del eucalipto
frente a mi ventana

las acaricia
les murmura
las toma
las suelta

la luz y la sombra
dibujan
las ramas en movimiento
sobre las lajas grises
de mi cuarto.

****

Las calles angostas
del viejo San Juan
suben y bajan
las cuestas

subo y bajo las calles
de la ciudad vieja
respirando
el aire cálido

el aire húmedo
caliente
apura el recorrido
de la sangre

me dejo mecer
por los sentidos

entro en el juego
palpitante
de mi sangre.

****

En la Caracas vertical
apenas iluminada

Caracas sensual
semi oscura

mecida por música
que reconozco

magia y peligro
conjugaron
el sentido
de otras vidas.

****

Como una nuez
enclaustrada
en su cáscara
la poesía
se defiende
del abordaje
externo

es necesario
quebrar la cáscara
para llegar al fruto
y paladearlo
dejando que el sabor
nos conquiste.

****

La poesía no es
la palabra amable
que distrae

es la palabra tensa
que retrae.

****

La ternura opaca
adherente
tibia
delimita
y limita
excluye
ahoga

es el gesto
neurótico
y posesivo
del que no
diferencia
a los demás
de si mismo.

****

La ternura clara
y transparente
fruto del impulso vital
de las entrañas
se abre camino
en el espacio
oxigenando el aire
e iluminando el horizonte

reconoce al otro
como otro
y necesario.

****

El insomnio
desdibuja
el sueño
y subraya
la tensión
del cuerpo.

****

La tensión aguda
recorta la ausencia
del descanso
define una situación
alienante.

****

Los sonidos
de la mañana
en el campo
dispersan
y exorcizan
la zona gris
del insomnio.

****

La creación
es el espacio reparador
en el que
nos abstraemos
y distraemos

espacio oxigenado
vital
trascendente
que nos es propio
y ajeno.

****

Recuerdo la firmeza
de tus labios
sobre los míos
tomando un beso
que era tuyo.

****

En el centro
concéntrico
del vientre
la energía oscura
de la pasión
circula
y se entrelaza
con la energía
luminosa
del espíritu

las entrañas
palpitantes
oscurecen
el aliento

el brillo
del espíritu
ilumina
la sangre
alborotada.

****

El amor
redondo
como
una manzana
roja y pulida
firme al tacto
huele bien.

****

Pablo

Su muerte
es parte
intermitente
de mis días.

II
El poema
redondo
y complejo
se ahueca
y se tiñe
de negro

el tiempo
no desmiente
ni atempera
el dolor

no atempera
la necesidad
de la presencia
ausente

el tiempo
enfatiza
la necesidad
de recuperar
los rasgos
queridos

no resuelve
el conflicto

el tiempo
no puede
resolverlo.

III
Su ausencia 
es presencia

es el des-doblamiento
de su ser
desde el conocimiento
de su muerte

IV
Lo llevo puesto
piel sobre piel
los ojos
sobre los ojos

y  el corazón
dado vuelta
expresándose
o tratando
de expresarse.

V
El tiempo
y el amor
se acompañan
modulando
las imágenes

dibujan
y colorean
la piel mate
los ojos negros
dibujan la sonrisa.

****

La casa

La casa
en silencio
guarda
los secretos
de lo que
no se ve

y lo que
se ve
explica
el sentido
del ritual
doméstico.


II
Recorro
el pasillo
para llegar
de un cuarto
al otro

me sorprende
haber encontrado
mi camino.

****

La voz

I
He perdido mi voz
y la he encontrado
opaca y hostigada

he perdido mi voz
y la he encontrado
ahogada y queda

II
Encontré mi voz
en las entrañas
desgarradas
por el dolor
y por el miedo

voz azul
adolescente
que hube de tener
y que no tuve

¿qué se hizo
de ese sonido
no escuchado?

III      
Encontré
mi voz lentamente
y con esfuerzo

hube de respirar hondo
para poder
exhalando
modular
las palabras
clave

encontré
mi voz
clara y celeste
voz antigua
rescatada
heredada
oscura
y transparente
ahuecada
por el dolor
y por la alegría

****

La palabra
tierna
imprescindible
húmeda
envuelve
los hechos
y las cosas

nombra
la gente
requiere
los afectos

envuelve
devuelve
aleja
acerca
retiene

explica
complica
deleita.

es inevitable.

****

Primeras líneas

Cuando escribo
El pensamiento
Miro
Las formas
Me despertó
La langosta saltó
Moléculas de luz
La hoja de los cuchillos
Se suceden en mi memoria
La memoria
La lluvia
El viento sacude
Las calles angostas
En la Caracas Vertical
Como una nuez
La poesía no es
La ternura opaca
La ternura clara
El insomnio
La tensión aguda
Los sonidos
La creación
Recuerdo la firmeza
En el centro
El amor
Pablo
La casa
La voz
La palabra

sábado, 15 de junio de 2013

Centro y periferia

Selección de poemas de Centro y periferia

Grupo Editor Latinoamericano / Colección escritura de Hoy, 1992
firmado Alina Molinari , 1993. Corregido por la autora en junio 2013


No cabo
le dije al abuelito Antonio
cuando traté de meterme
bajo su sillón

no quepo
corrigió él


aprendí entonces
que las palabras
son misteriosas.

****

Bajo la piedra pesada
se encuentra
la tierra húmeda
que se adhiere
a las manos
y se introduce en las uñas
tiñéndolas de negro

es el lugar secreto
en el que escondí
mi paz golpeada
y la esperanza

los gusanos
ahuecan túneles
en la tierra

las raíces entretejen
su trama de encaje

tierra fértil y oscura
tierra espesa
que esconde la semilla
de la palabra mágica
esperada.

****

Intuyo las palabras
antes de usarlas

juego con la idea
que las pueda enhebrar

son cuentas de colores
desgastadas por el tiempo

guijarros ásperos
que sacudo hasta lograr
el sonido original
que signifique.

****

Moldeo la arcilla
para darle forma a las palabras

a veces se quedan
pegadas a la mano
y la oración no se da

otras la consistencia es perfecta
las puedo trabajar
hasta lograr el sentido
que busco.

****

Digo las palabras
con cuidado

esconden secretos

no se olvidan fácilmente
después de dichas.

****

Busco la belleza arisca
de las palabras
que develen
el pensamiento

busco el momento
en que el alma se expande
llegando al centro mismo
del hacer
el lugar original de la poesía.

****

El poeta se detiene
en el detalle
que otros no ven
y no se demora en lo aparente

****

Plantamos el rosal junto al farol
para que iluminase el ceibo y los naranjos

ellos lo vieron llegar agradecidos

les faltaba el rosa de la rosa.

****

El sonido del teléfono llamando
reverbera en el taller – galpón

golpea las obras apoyadas en la pared
           
Nora Dobarro no contesta

no está.

****

Jarabe de cerezas para la tos.
los niños lo escupen
y yo me voy

me voy por la ventana
gritando  loca

los niños me miran
con caras bobas

entro volando por la ventana.
los niños me sonríen y me aman.

****

El silencio
cava huecos
de comprensión
en el alma.

****

Sí no te dije
cuales eran tus derechos
antes de enseñarte
a respetar los míos
he violado tu libertad
con mi silencio

****

El propio cuerpo
es el terreno fértil
en el que se decide
nuestro destino.

****

Urgencia de encontrar
en otros
y en el otro
lo que uno es
y no es

de ser uno y lo otro.

****

Sentí mi sangre
sacudir el cuerpo
en latidos
que parecían estallar

creí que era el mundo
el que estallaba
en la oscuridad
de la noche insomne

sentí que el mundo
estallaba en latidos
sacudiendo mi cuerpo.

****

Imagino las noches serenas
y otras
que no tuve

las imagino
sin haberlas conocido.

****

Es difícil comprender
al otro
sin un conocimiento fino
de su lengua

la palabra es la arcilla
que  modela el carácter
y la expresión

sin esta posibilidad
todo quedaría
en imágenes abstractas
inasibles.

****
                                                                                                                              
La tarde se sostiene
en el tiempo

la luz
envuelve los libros
y las cosas

tenues sonidos
domésticos
marcan el tono mesurado
de una composición amable.

****

Un tiempo secreto
hosco
ambivalente
arcaico
espejado
cubre nuestras huellas
augurando los pasos
que aún
no hemos dado

misterio atávico
confluente
sangre  espesa del universo
vertida gota a gota
desde el día primero

latido áspero continúo
de las arterias del cosmos

círculos concéntricos oscuros
imágenes fluidas
que se explican a sí mismas
          
trenza cósmica
que hemos comenzado a trenzar
antes de nacer
y que seguiremos trenzando
después de muertos

mítico
mágico envolvente
trasciende la necesidad inmediata
del hacer material

trasciende el eco
de nuestros reclamos efímeros

hueco en el cosmos
que convoca
nuestros deseos
subliminales y aparentes

lugar gris marrón
lugar celeste
que seducen
nuestra memoria
y nuestra imaginación

ráfagas de luz dispersan
los destellos oscuros
de la noche cósmica
trenzando una trenza vital
que sostiene la energía primera

sostiene el hacer sucesivo y esporádico
de los habitantes que viven y vivieron
dentro de este tiempo mítico.

****

Trenzo  la trenza
pesada y sedosa
que acaricia la mano
que la trenza

trenzo la trenza
un mechón y el otro
se entrelazan

siento la fuerza
de la trenza
que se trenza

tomo las mechas ásperas
de la angustia
con las otras sedosas
de la esperanza

el peso de la trenza
en mis manos
me tranquiliza

trenzo la trenza
que se trenza lentamente
cuidando la forma en
que se trenza

II
sigo trenzando
las ideas centrales
de la existencia

sigo trenzando
la trenza que sostiene
el deseo

el deseo de ser uno
dentro del espacio
pre-determinado

la trenza sostiene
ese ser uno con otros

la posibilidad única
de comprender

sigo trenzando
la trenza sedosa y pesada
de la existencia.

****

La música 
última citadela
en la que podemos
abstraernos

es el orden
abstracto y teórico
que delimita el caos

se escucha  y nos escucha
absorbiendo en sus silencios
los nuestros
y nuestro ritmo biológico
en el suyo.

****

El egoísmo premeditado
de la ternura opaca
se desliza torpemente
gota a gota

se desliza torpe
como gotas de miel
rubias y espesas
cubriendo la piel

se adhiere por igual
a la piel sana
y a la lastimadura

confunde lo que es
con lo que no es

no distingue entre
el empalago y la dulzura.

****

Tomé la decisión
de ser centro
y no periferia
del otro

de no salir de mí
perdiéndome en el otro
sin  posibilidad
de intercambio

tomé distancia

me hubiese gustado
ser centro concéntrico
del otro

espiral enlazado
en el espiral
descendiendo o ascendiendo
graciosamente

me hubiese gustado
ser a la vez
centro y periferia
del otro

lo soy de mi misma.

****

No midas con las reglas del pasado
los dones del presente

no midas

el aire que respiras es otro
y otra la mirada

medir hoy para sacar la cuenta
es apurarse demasiado

hay tiempo aun
para saldar las cuentas
si de eso se tratase.

se trata de otras cosas.

****

Pablo

I
He visto  yo  su madre
su cuerpo muerto

he sentido el olor de la muerte
de pie a su lado
en la madrugada del domingo

vi bajar su cajón dentro de la fosa
que habían cavado para enterrarlo

esparcí granos de arena sobre su tumba
remedo de la tierra negra
que lo cubriría.

llevo conmigo el conocimiento
de mi hijo muerto
y el olor de su muerte.

II
Mis ojos se han ahuecado
para hacer lugar a la ausencia

el hueco llega al vientre
dejando en carne viva las entrañas.

se mezclan las ausencias
y los dolores

el corazón late vital
sin comprender del todo
lo que ha pasado.

III
Cuchillas afiladas
recortan la ausencia
hundiéndose en el vientre

manos descarnadas
hurgan en el pecho
estrujando el corazón

abriendo heridas que no cierran.

****

Raíces en la historia
y en la tierra.

raíces en el origen del ser
antes que la pre-ocupación
del qué-hacer nos confunda.

****

Primeras líneas

No cabo
Bajo la piedra pesada
Intuyo las palabras
Moldeo la arcilla
Digo las palabras
Busco la belleza arisca
El poeta se detiene
Pñantamos el rosal cerca del farol
El sonido del teléfono llamando
Jarabe de cereza para la tos
El silencio
Si no te dije
El propio cuerpo
Urgencia de encontrar
Sentí mi sangre
Imagino las noches serenas
Es difícil comprender al otro
La tarde se sostiene
Un tiempo secreto
Trenzo la trenza
La música
El egoísmo premeditado
Tomé la decisión
No midas con las reglas del pasado
Pablo
Raíces en la historia