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Friday, May 7, 2021

Chus Pato

 Every poet teaches the reader how to read her (in this case it is a her). I'm reading her in Castilian, since the translation I received in the mail is not a bilingual edition (original is in Gallego).  The difficulty is not in interpreting the meaning of a poem (though this can also be difficult), but in figuring out what it is all about, how the poem forms part of a larger poetics. Imagine trying to read Keats as though he were Samuel Johnson, or Vallejo as though he were Sor Juana, or Sor Juana as Manrique. 

But, of course, most of time we can rely on strategies we have learned from similar poets. Usually, the topoi are going to be similar (or identical). Such as ineffability (the incapacity of language to capture reality, blah, blah, blah.). Or the relation between the poet's subjectivity and the world outside of her head. How is the poetic voice situated in relation to all of this?  Originality comes in the particular angle of approach to these general problems.  

Sorting out these matters is a complex cognitive task.  We are also defining our own relation to the poet's relation to reality, an intersubjective relationship, of seeing through the poet's eyes, or refusing that sort of identification if we don't like those particular optics.  

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