Seven Voices by Rita Guibert

Author:Rita Guibert
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2015-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

An absolutely visual poem, but it flows, glides and dissolves…In our language, Oriental literature, especially haiku, appears in the work of the Mexican José Juan Tablada. The two initiators of the avant-garde in the Spanish language were the Chilean Vicente Huidobro, a fine poet, and the Mexican José Juan Tablada. Although Tablada was a lesser poet, as to the dimensions of his poems among other things, some of them are unforgettable and will last. Poetry is concentrated language, and Tablada knew that better than anyone.

Rules for writing are a very individual matter. For instance, is solitude necessary to you?

One has to write in front of something—noise, the city, trees…Literature is transgression, of language first of all. And the subversion of language is also revealed in the writer’s attitude toward reality. A writer always writes in front of something, and often against something. When I say against I don’t mean with hatred. Against could be love. In any case poetry is a breaking up of the language.

Does this make actual writing painful?

Sometimes, not always. Sometimes it brings great happiness.

Have you favorite hours for writing?

No, my timetable is irregular. I work in the mornings or in the afternoons. I work a little every day, and I read too. That’s one of the things I enjoy most, reading. Reading and talking. The thing I like least is writing.

Before you answer some of my questions—a great many of them, in fact—you make a few brief notes. Why is that?

Lack of confidence in the spoken word. I still belong to the generation of the book, not of the tape recorder. Writing and talking are different and in a way opposite activities. That’s a curious thing. In France, today, writers often use the word “écriture.” Like Derrida, they think that writing came before speech. I don’t believe that. But without going into this problem, it’s curious that the concept of “écriture” should predominate in France, while in the United States and in England the notion of “speech” predominates. They are two different ideas of literature. In France writing comes first, and therefore reading: eyes and silence. In the English-speaking countries poetry is the spoken word: the voice and hearing.

Which do you prefer: writing or speech?

Poetry originated as spoken words. It has continued as such and always will. Fundamentally, poetry is rhythm. To think of poetry solely as writing is an error. But one must not forget another tradition: visual poetry. I distinguish between written and visual poetry. Or rather, I don’t think there is such a thing as written poetry. When we read a poem with our eyes, if we read properly, we say it mentally. Therefore there is oral and visual poetry.

Do both traditions exist in our poetry?

Hispanic poetry—that’s to say Hispano-American and Castilian, but also Portuguese, Galician, and Catalan—is one of the richest in the world. Basically it’s a spoken poetry—remember our marvelous medieval poetry and ballads—but there are also examples of visual poetry in the baroque period which really anticipate calligrams. Well, the

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