Tag Archives: Beat

Into the Wilds of Roberto Bolaño

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The Book Bench

Loose leafs from the New Yorker Books Department.

Posted by Sanders I. Bernstein on June 15, 2011

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We’ve known for a while that Roberto Bolaño was a queer cat. He’s certainly enjoyed multiple lives—four, by my count (so far: scholars will undoubtedly invent a few more in the future). There was his actual life; there was the one he made up (claiming, at one point, to have been in Chile when Pinochet came to power, a claim later refuted by those who knew him); the life he lived in his poetry and fiction; and his afterlife as a worldwide literary phenomenon, which he’s been living since his death in 2003. That year also marked the translation of his work into English (beginning with New Directions’ publication of the novel “By Night in Chile”), and the birth in the United States of a new critical darling: he became to us a Latin American Jack Kerouac, his “Savage Detectives” another “On the Road.” We’ve wanted to know all we could about Bolaño, though separating fact from fiction has proved difficult.

The task got a little simpler (or maybe more complicated) with the publication this year of the English translation of “Between Parentheses,” a collection of fragmentary essays, articles, and speeches, which a panel of five literary wise men and women gathered to discuss last Monday at the Galapagos Art Space, in Brooklyn. “Between Parentheses” has been the subject of some small notoriety. It contains the (perhaps fictional) essay “Beach,” which has contributed to the Beat-ification of Bolaño by suggesting that he, like Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs before him, had done his share of experimenting with mind-altering substances. (It begins, matter-of-factly, “I gave up heroin and went back to my town and started on the methadone treatment administered to me at the clinic.”) But, by design or coincidence, not a word about that infamous article was mentioned. Our flock’s leaders flew right over “Beach” and never looked down. (For more on “Beach,” and the period of Bolaño’s life it covers, see Daniel Zalewski’s elegant 2007 piece in The New Yorker).

The panel did begin with a nod to “Parentheses”’s unique role as the lone collection of non-fiction (or near-non-fiction) that we have from the author. The moderator read from the beginning of the introduction to the book: “This volume collects most of the newspaper columns and articles that Roberto Bolaño published between 1998 and 2003. Also included are a few scattered prefaces, as well as the texts of some talks or speeches given by Bolaño during the same period. Taken together, they make up a surprisingly rounded whole, offering in their entirety a personal cartography of the writer: the closest thing, among all his writings, to a kind of fragmented ‘autobiography.’” Of course, as the moderator admitted, “the closest thing … to a kind of fragmented ‘autobiography’ ” doesn’t mean that much at all.

But the panelists certainly felt that the essays were entertaining, and that they showcased some of Bolaño’s more feral elements. As Natasha Wimmer, Bolaño’s translator, put it, “It’s not that his non-fiction is that brilliant. He just goes for the jugular. It’s shocking.” The novelist Francisco Goldman agreed, and chided North American critics for playing down Bolaño’s shock value: “It’s as if they’re trying to domesticate him, make him seem like he’s a McSweeney’s writer.”

This suggestion that McSweeney’s writers are somehow constrained brought a swift retort from Heidi Julavits, one of the editors of a McSweeney’s publication, The Believer. “Or a Paris Review writer,” she said.

Goldman shot back, “No. They’re different animals.”

Julavits reminded him that he was in DUMBO, Brooklyn, a.k.a. prime Eggers territory. “This is a Lars Von Trier moment. Keep digging,” she advised.

Lorin Stein, the editor of the Paris Review, and Wyatt Mason, a contributing editor at Harper’s, wisely kept out of the fray.

Had we tamed the wilds of Bolaño by the end of the discussion? Not at all. We in the audience were lucky to make it out of our seats alive (or, rather, dry). All throughout the night-club-ish space, murky black ovals dotted the floor, surrounded by a subtle shimmer of metal railing, but otherwise invisible. It was only when someone’s chance remark on the heat drew a “Well, there are pools all over here. Why don’t you just take a dip?” that I realized that the dark spots were full of water. The name of this savage setting now made a whole lot more sense—and not merely because the night had been dedicated to Roberto Bolaño.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2011/06/into-the-wilds-of-roberto-bolao-1.html#ixzz1gZ5a4I36

The Lion for Real

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I came home and found a lion in my living room
Rushed out on the fire escape screaming Lion! Lion!
Two stenographers pulled their brunnette hair and banged the window shut
I hurried home to Patterson and stayed two days

Called up old Reichian analyst
who'd kicked me out of therapy for smoking marijuana
'It's happened' I panted 'There's a Lion in my living room'
'I'm afraid any discussion would have no value' he hung up

I went to my old boyfriend we got drunk with his girlfriend
I kissed him and announced I had a lion with a mad gleam in my eye
We wound up fighting on the floor I bit his eyebrow he kicked me out
I ended up masturbating in his jeep parked in the street moaning 'Lion.'

Found Joey my novelist friend and roared at him 'Lion!'
He looked at me interested and read me his spontaneous ignu high poetries
I listened for lions all I heard was Elephant Tiglon Hippogriff Unicorn
        Ants
But figured he really understood me when we made it in Ignaz Wisdom's
        bathroom.

But next day he sent me a leaf from his Smoky Mountain retreat
'I love you little Bo-Bo with your delicate golden lions
But there being no Self and No Bars therefore the Zoo of your dear Father
        hath no lion
You said your mother was mad don't expect me to produce the Monster for
        your Bridegroom.'

Confused dazed and exalted bethought me of real lion starved in his stink
        in Harlem
Opened the door the room was filled with the bomb blast of his anger
He roaring hungrily at the plaster walls but nobody could hear outside
        thru the window
My eye caught the edge of the red neighbor apartment building standing in
        deafening stillness
We gazed at each other his implacable yellow eye in the red halo of fur
Waxed rhuemy on my own but he stopped roaring and bared a fang
        greeting.
I turned my back and cooked broccoli for supper on an iron gas stove
boilt water and took a hot bath in the old tup under the sink board.

He didn't eat me, tho I regretted him starving in my presence.
Next week he wasted away a sick rug full of bones wheaten hair falling out
enraged and reddening eye as he lay aching huge hairy head on his paws
by the egg-crate bookcase filled up with thin volumes of Plato, & Buddha.

Sat by his side every night averting my eyes from his hungry motheaten
        face
stopped eating myself he got weaker and roared at night while I had
        nightmares
Eaten by lion in bookstore on Cosmic Campus, a lion myself starved by
        Professor Kandisky, dying in a lion's flophouse circus,
I woke up mornings the lion still added dying on the floor--'Terrible
        Presence!'I cried'Eat me or die!'

It got up that afternoon--walked to the door with its paw on the south wall to
        steady its trembling body
Let out a soul-rending creak from the bottomless roof of his mouth
thundering from my floor to heaven heavier than a volcano at night in
        Mexico
Pushed the door open and said in a gravelly voice "Not this time Baby--
        but I will be back again."

Lion that eats my mind now for a decade knowing only your hunger
Not the bliss of your satisfaction O roar of the universe how am I chosen
In this life I have heard your promise I am ready to die I have served
Your starved and ancient Presence O Lord I wait in my room at your
        Mercy.

Allen Ginsberg

Paris, March 1958

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سر المكان

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معنى أن تغادر…

موضوع قد يستغرق الأبد.

أن تغادر المكان الذي ألفتَ زواياه كأنها في

خبايا فكرك انعطافات الحلم الذي لا يلوي على شيء –

المكان الذي سره أبداً لم يُستكشف، لأنه صار أليفاً وأنت

لن تقبل إلا بما لا تعرفه، قابلاً لما تعرف لكن عارفاً أن هناك

شيئاً خبيئاً وراء بابك، شيئاً لن تطاله الأضواء التي

لن تعرف سرها ولن تراها…

أن تغادر المكان الذي يلتف سره بالأحاجي

لأنه صار أليفاً، والأليف حين يُستكشف يُطرح جانباً في العادة؛

قد يحدث هذا، ذات يوم، عندما تركب قطاراً

إلى الريف أو المنفى:

أن تجد كل طريق، كل حقل، كل بيت

مغتسلاً برونق بهاء ليس سوى بعضاً من ترنّقه

في مرآة الترف: اللون، والشكل، زوايا التظليل، إطار المتعة

الباذخة في العين – حصان يرعى في المخيلة.

جسر يتجسد فوق ضفتين، ما وراء النظر

لكنك ترى في غفلة

ظله العابر.

وإذ تعبر بالبركة (في أية قرية!)

وتحجز في نظرتك الماء الساكن، وباحات البيوت

والقارب المقيّد بالحبل

إلى رصيف المرفأ، وتفكر، ولا تدري أنك فكرت إلا فيما بعد:

«كم ساكن هذا الظل وأسود في الماء»

فإنك تدرك، في الحال، أن المرأة الملفعة بعباءة

سوداء في الحديقة، تبكي لأن أحدهم أجبرها

على أن تقبل بالحقيقة.

ولستَ متأكداً إن كان هذا جزءً من الحلم، أو شهادة

سمعت تفاصيلها ذات مرة

لكنك تدري أن ما جاهدتَ أن تدريه في تلك اللحظة

شيء يمكن لك الآن، في عمرك هذا، أن تعرفه أكثر

لأن الخليقة وضعتك في هذا الموضع بالذات

حيث ترى، وتمتلك الرؤية.

إنك آنذاك، حين يتقمصك الوضوح، وتكون في

حال من فرط انجلائها، أنك لا تفكر حتى بأن تفكر:

آنذاك قد يحدث أن تحدس السر الذي لم تستكشف طواياه

في المكان الذي غادرته، ذلك الشيء الخبيء ما وراء أستار وأبواب

ذلك الشيء الذي لن تطاله الأنوار التي رأيتها في منامك.

تلك التي لم ترها سوى في منامك.

(نص قصيدة سركون بولص من «عظمة أخرى لكلب القبيلة»)

Obituary, The Guardian

Sargon Boulus

Iraqi poet who joined the Beat generation

In 1967 a penniless 23-year-old Iraqi, with no documentation, applied to the American embassy in Beirut for a visa to enter the US. A writer, he claimed an intimate knowledge of American poetry. He was called to meet the ambassador, who asked him about poetry. He started with Walt Whitman and referred to many contemporary Beat poets, of whom the ambassador had not heard. But he was impressed. “Enough!” he said, “you’ve got it.” The young man went to New York, and on to San Francisco, which became his home for the next 40 years.The young man was Sargon Boulus, who has died in Berlin aged 63, after some months of poor health.

Sargon was born in al-Habbaniyah, on the Euphrates in Iraq, to an Assyrian family. The British had provided the Assyrians, an ancient but threatened Christian sect, speaking its own Semitic language, with a safe haven near a military base. His family moved to Kirkuk, where Sargon had his secondary education. He started writing poetry aged 12. His first published poem came a year or two later since when, as he wrote, “I haven’t stopped. It just grabbed me, this magic of words, of music.”

It was an exciting time for Arabic poetry, with a rejection of classical forms that had held sway for a millennium and more. Beirut was the centre of experimental poetry, especially the magazine Shi’r (Poetry), edited by Yusuf al-Khal. When he was 17, Sargon sent some poems to Yusuf al-Khal that were immediately published. He was encouraged to go to Beirut and made the journey from Baghdad with no identification papers, avoiding public transport and official border posts. He was warmly welcomed by the innovative poets based in Beirut and lived a hand-to-mouth existence, gathering at the Horseshoe cafe with other writers, and writing for the newspaper al-Nahar. He was picked up by police as an illegal immigrant and jailed. Friends intervened and he applied, successfully, for entry to the US.

In San Francisco, he became part of the Beat generation. Sargon lived on the edge, running a Middle Eastern restaurant, writing and translating, demonstrating for native American rights and against the Vietnam war. He introduced Arab readers to Allen Ginsberg, Carl Snyder and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. He became intoxicated by the classical English poets and translated Shakespeare’s sonnets, as well as Shelley, Ezra Pound, Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath. At his death, he left uncompleted a major study and translation of the writings of WH Auden.

He wrote his own poetry, feeling savage about the limitations of Arabic and the upholders of formal classical traditions. He talked about “linguistic fundamentalists”. Arabic, thought Sargon, “is always too full of decoration, unnecessary words and fat – linguistic fat. I’m cutting it like a butcher and I’m trying to show the bones behind the flesh and I think that’s something worth doing.” He wrote poetry in Assyrian, Arabic and English.

He spent time in Athens and Germany, where Iraqi publisher Khalid al-Maaly helped promote his work. He was also a journalist and translated romantic novels into Arabic. From 1998 he was a consultant editor of Banipal, a London-based magazine of Arab literature, and a prolific contributor, translating a range of contemporary Arab poetry into clear and concise English.

Sargon worked hard, played hard and travelled hard. His last years were dogged by ill-health, but he was working and writing to the end. He is survived by his partner of several decades; she shares a name with film star Elke Sommer.

· Sargon Boulus, poet, born 1944; died October 22 2007

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