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Conversations with Martín Gambarotta(May - September, 2010)Constanza Ceresa

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Constanza Ceresa

CONVERSATIONS WITH MARTIN

GAMBAROTTA (MAY - SEPTEMBER, 2010)

Martın Gambarotta is one of the most renowned poets of the poetic generation of the ’90s inArgentina. During a period of five months we held an electronic conversation via email.In our exchange we explored themes relating to the cultural scene of the ’90s in BuenosAires; Gambarotta’s relationship with various poetic predecessors; the politicalpossibilities arising from what has been considered his return to ‘realism’; and various‘objectivist’ literary strategies, focusing specifically on his texts Punctum (1996) andSeudo (2000).

(CC) There are many questions I would like to discuss with you. I would like to beginwith a rather general one, relating to the cinematographic or visual references whichseem to be present in your poetry.

(MG) I’m not sure I like thinking about the poetry in cinematographic terms.Televisual perhaps? But televisual only in the sense of its explicit references. Actually,the theme of the image comes primarily from the Anglo-Saxon Imagists, from EzraPound’s somewhat delirious theories. From that point of view, an image which isuniquely cinematographic would be ineffective in a text. According to Pound, a poeticimage must be visual, with a verbal and musical imaginary power – all combinedwhere possible. So yes, if you like, I tried to create a subjectivity and a perspectivebased on a succession of Poundian images. In Punctum, for example, now thatI think about it, I invented dogmas for myself. As an example: each verse shouldbe a verbal image, or, in more Poundian terms: each verse must be a poem withinthe poem.

(CC) Whereas the Imagists were in dialogue with contemporary visual or pictorialreferences like Vorticism or Cubism among others, what are the contemporaryreferences that you see as influential in the process of creating the imagery in Punctum?Reading Punctum I have the impression that the televisual, as you say, is present at timesnot only as an explicit reference, but also as a specific mode of perception which seemsto signal a velocity even more urgent than that of Pound. I’m thinking of the passagewhere the succession of televisual images recalls the rhythm of channel-hopping, or ofthe way advertising images from the street infiltrate the home, or of the fragments ofconversations between characters who seem to enter and leave the text withoutwarning. Perhaps there is something here of the poetry of Tom Raworth, for example,in the dynamic way in which all these external voices and images from the present enterinto the poem.

(MG) Pound is my point of departure. In fact to a degree, all those movements likeVorticism, arising from a Europe which was in a wilder state at the beginning of the

Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, Vol. 20, No. 3 September 2011, pp. 197-216

ISSN 1356-9325/print 1469-9575 online q 2011 Taylor & Francis

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twentieth century – more terrestrial and political like South America – seemed tomake a lot of sense in Argentina in the ’90s when we really had no cultural politics atall. The minister for culture at the time was a very conservative woman and that wasthat. I agree that the velocity of the work is different (although there is velocity inPound’s Cantos) and now that I think about it, that the televisual is not solelyreferential. I prefer to talk about the televisual rather than the cinematic in any casebecause it creates a sense of something less complete, less tidy, more immediate (likeJarmusch’s first film, made before the label ‘independent cinema’ existed). And at thesame time the poems themselves were urgent: they are poems which are trying torelate something which is happening quickly and so, almost naturally, in practice theyrun rapidly. It’s almost like trying to see how quickly you can drive/write withoutcrashing or how many words you can gasp out with just one breath. I first readRaworth’s work after writing Punctum and Seudo. One day in Santiago (Chile), AndresAnwandter introduced me to his collected works. Afterwards I found out that Raworthreads his poems very quickly. Anyway, that urgency – that poetic velocity – can befound in Punctum I think. And at the tonal level – especially in Punctum – there is theintention to make noise, to distort (which is a term used a lot by LeonidasLamborghini). It’s more or less the equivalent of the punk gesture (although notexclusive to punk) of just plugging in your instrument and starting to play. And I’ll addsomething to what you say at the end of your question: that urgency arose preciselyfrom the need to document the present, the outside world entering into the home.Anyway, your question was about velocity. And the truth is that I decided to respondvery quickly, as an experiment (so as not to lose the interview’s rhythm). I hope someof it makes sense.

(CC) We’ve spoken about velocity, but I’d also like to talk about temporality,about that ‘poetic present’ which relates aspects or objects from very different timesand places. That, I suppose, is how Pound, Lamborghini, punk, television, Jarmusch,the city, noise, light, and speech, among other things, all come together in your poems.But at the same time, it seems to me that your velocity is not an appeal to automaticwriting (in the Surrealist style), nor does it move in a pre-established direction whichwould impose a certain ‘thematisation’ in the act of reading. For example, in the caseof Punctum, what motivates your use of the temporality of channel-hopping?

How does that ‘verbal image’ (which we spoke about previously), which inPoundian terms requires precision, accuracy, and autonomy, relate to that velocity andsense of urgency which you mention, and which seems more likely to open up a spacefor disorder, chaos, and instability? In other words, in the domain of the image, at whatlevels do these two apparently contradictory forces function, and, if we can think aboutit as part of the same question, how can they influence the present, whether as socialreality, the act of reading, and so on?

(MG) Rather than rapid or automatic writing, I was referring to the fact that mypoems flow swiftly (in spite of the fact that they may have taken months to write, or bethe final result of several, innumerable versions). And the limit of that velocity is thatthe poems must contain those Poundian concepts which we spoke about earlier: that iswhat they are required to transmit. In the end, a poem is only a means of transmittinginformation. Writing poetry – and I can’t remember who said this – implies that youare dissatisfied with all the poems already written, however wonderful they may be.And in my case, one cause for dissatisfaction was that many poems are rhythmically

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slow or jolting. Now in real terms there must be more grounds for feeling thisdissatisfaction than simply the question of velocity. Otherwise why bother writingwhen the Divine Comedy already exists? Out of dissatisfaction I suppose. And, tocontinue with this example, obviously Dante was writing in a time in which televisiondidn’t exist (although his Terza Rima is rhythmically very rapid). So to a degree, thevelocity of my poems is an attempt to document the current state of reality, and mynatural dissatisfaction. In a neo-conservative context like the 1990s, in which a smallpart of the ruling classes had control of everything in Argentina – of government, themedia, finance, and the Ministry for Culture – it was very obvious that one of the fewremaining ways to express dissatisfaction within the social context was to pick up a penand start urgently writing poetry (even if this does make me sound a little like a Cubanprotest singer). I read an essay once, written by Heaney I think, which argued that atext (or a book of poetry) acquires greater meaning when it is written underextreme political conditions. I think this was in reference to a Serbian poet orsomething similar – although now I’m really being free with the facts. Anyway, theseextreme conditions, as we now know, existed then in Argentina.

(CC) If we can focus now on that contemporary reality which you so appropriatelydescribe as being neo-conservative and driven by a market logic, I wonder what werethe cultural references and counter-references used to express dissatisfaction with itthrough the act of writing or creation ‘under extreme conditions’. It would seem thatyour dissatisfaction was largely focused on the discourses created and established by thesociety of the time, which included, for example, a literature and a cinema of resistancewhich were equally conservative. In other words, they operated as mouthpieces for acertain ideology or discourse of liberation. The case of Neruda’s politically committedpoetry is probably the most iconic in that sense, as Neruda was a poet coming from anavant-garde past. On the other hand, we have poetry’s contrasting neo-baroquetendency which, in its own way, questions institutional discourses and exploits theirtensions.

From another point of view, this reminds me of a film like Rejtman’s Rapado forexample; a film which commits itself to ‘documenting the state of affairs’ from a verydifferent position and – returning to your concept – which tends to ‘de-dramatise’reality and to open up spaces for other elements to come into play over and abovemorality and narrative. This is perhaps true also of Trapero and others. I don’t know ifyou are able to expand a little more on this, especially on those counter-culturalreferences (cinematic, literary, musical, ways of occupying the city, etc.) which arise inorder to express this discontent, or to resist in the face of an adverse reality. How dothese discourses come into tension in and through a text, film, or artistic practice?I suppose that the concern of the time was with the possible ways of ‘documenting’ thepresent, in spite of the fact that this term ‘documenting’ perhaps sounds like or smacksa little of nineteenth-century realism.

(MG) Well in part this was related to the realist project. It was an attempt toredefine realism; I was dissatisfied also with the state of realism. I haven’t seenRejtman’s film, although I can guess what you are referring to. But I took an almostdeliberate decision not to see the film. I think I also began deliberately not to watchcinema – there was a frustration with it, at least as far as I was concerned. I have seenTrapero’s first film. But Rejtman and Trapero are not influences on my work –although of course their cinema does have resonances with the same situation. There’s

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a poem, however, which did evoke and synthesise many things for me: NestorPerlongher’s ‘Cadaveres’. ‘Cadaveres’ is not a collection of poems. It’s a single poemin a book which, in its entirety, is not as good as Perlongher’s first collection, Austria-Hungrıa, published by Fogwill. But ‘Cadaveres’ is Perlongher’s political poem, hispoem about the desaparecidos. What was striking about this poem – and which caughtour attention at the time – was that technically speaking, Perlongher was a neo-baroque poet in the extreme (and what is more, he had begun to publish his books withUltimo Reino, the ‘neo-romantic’ publishing house belonging to Vıctor Redondo). All ofthis couldn’t have been further removed from a realist project, at least on the surface.And yet it is impossible to think about a new realism without including this poem. Onthe other hand I find many problems with Neruda’s work. One of the difficulties ofempathising with Neruda’s political poetry comes from his having been the poet of theParty. But the fact is that after the death of Neruda, a new catastrophe arises which ismuch better expressed, for example, in Gonzalo Millan’s great poem ‘La Ciudad’, orin the poems of Jose Angel Cuevas from his 1992 book onwards. In Chile, in otherwords, there are many more texts redefining realism than in Argentina. Returningto Perlongher, I think that the most frustrating point of reference is that particularpoem – and Alejandro Rubio says the same thing. What’s more, ‘Cadaveres’ isdedicated to a desaparecido; and in the poem Perlongher expresses himself as a politicalmilitant. In other words, he set out to make a much broader political gesture than anyof the lacklustre realist poets of the era. That is another point of departure for me:‘Cadaveres’, or the dissatisfaction which I felt on having reluctantly to admit that thepoem was after all a key influence.

It occurs to me now that the best counter to dominant neo-conservative discoursecan be found in poetry, in texts. I’ll elaborate on the idea: there was no record, film, ornovel which was better than ‘Cadaveres’ or the poetry written by the Lamborghinibrothers. These poems contained all the discourse necessary, everything that couldpossibly be usefully said. I think this explains my somewhat suicidal impulse to beginwriting a book of poetry when in reality the chances of being asked to reflect on it now,fourteen years later, were almost inexistent.

(CC) This leads us to the big theoretical question. Realism is a very loaded word,which is often ascribed meanings we wouldn’t agree with, but we can nevertheless takeit as our point of departure. When you talk about creating a realist project, or aboutredefining realism for the contemporary age, what exactly do you mean? Whatrelationship is your poetic language able to establish with that reality? I imagine that thisrealism has nothing to do with the mimetic and didactic aims of the nineteenth-centurynovel. You mentioned Perlongher’s poem, which entered into a real tension with thepolitical situation of the time. But what effect does ‘Cadaveres’ or the Lamborghinibrothers’ poetry initiate such that the poem transforms itself into a reference, andfunctions differently from ‘socialist realism’ for example? And at the same time, asidefrom its affinity with the neo-baroque, what makes the poetry of Perlongher and othersdiffer from a realist project, and effect conflicting sentiments, as you have alreadydescribed? Is it a question of style? Is Gonzalo Millan more realist than Perlongher?These are all questions which all immediately come to mind.

The North American poet Lyn Hejinian provides an interesting response to all thiswhen asked about the possibility of classifying Gertrude Stein as a realist. According toHejinian, Stein’s realism comes from her scientific approach to questions and from her

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need precisely to represent both her internal and external reality. Stein said that ‘A factis a fact’. But in spite of the fact that Stein’s questioning arises as a reaction againstromantic lyricism on the one hand and the didactic-moralising tendencies ofnineteenth-century realism on the other, it develops into the search for a possiblelanguage. ‘I had to feel anything and everything that for me was existing so intenselythat I could put it down in writing as a thing in itself without at all necessarily using itsname . . . ’ Stein writes in Tender Buttons. And later, ‘The name of a thing might besomething in itself if it could come to be real enough . . . ’ The problem for Stein is that‘names’ are obstacles, because they tend to overshadow experience. By names, shemeans pre-established modes of signification. That is why she attempts to create preciseor ‘real’ forms, through the subversion of conventional structures of language likesyntax, for example. This is perhaps what poetic language is able to offer her whichscientific practice cannot. I don’t know if that makes sense to you. Perhaps thisproblem of the means of representation might be a way of approaching the concept of‘realism’ which receives so much attention these days.

(MG) What you say about Stein is certainly relevant because my work does tendsubstantially towards that kind of objectivism, in Seudo for example. I’ll return to Steinlater. But to begin with, I believe I was thinking about realism as a counterpoint to amore extreme version of the neo-baroque, also found in Perlongher, which seemed tome to fail to take account of reality. The first description that came into my head whenI was writing Punctum was realism. I told myself that the poetry had to be realist, evenat the most basic level of being realistic about reality. What I mean to say is that havingestablished realism as a foundation for my work, it quickly became evident that it didn’tfunction at all as I meant it to. One way of expressing it is that reality is too harsh to bedescribed only through realism. That same idea is found in Millan’s text, and in thetexts of the Lamborghinis (especially in the raw quality of Osvaldo’s aesthetic). So anew way of defining realism quickly becomes evident. I have read Stein’s book. And ifwe return to Millan’s poem, we can think about realism insofar as the text is, as Steinsays, an object. Now we encounter a definition of a realist-objectivism which I think isappropriate for describing Seudo: the text as an object, as a physical thing, ‘a thing initself’, as Stein says. What Stein says about the problem of names also fits Seudo (andPunctum as well). In Punctum, the characters are always asking what things are called,they pick up a piece of fruit but they don’t want to give it a name. In Seudo, what isintended is never explicitly stated, things are not directly named, there is a skirtinground the real subject matter. And in all this I think we find the building blocks for acertain definition of objectivism. I once interviewed Millan and he told me that whenhe wrote La Ciudad, he was influenced by the work of the North American Objectivistpoets: Zukofsky, Reznikoff, Oppen, Rakosi. You mentioned Raworth earlier. Wellobjectivism understood in this way – the poem as an object, almost as a visualinstallation – becomes an excellent alternative aimed at bringing an end to thegrandiose rhetoric of dominant discourse (and of its great conservative poets likeLarkin). I mention Larkin because I saw a review, in the London Review of Books I think,which, very pertinently to my mind, set him up as a counterpoint to Raworth. I’d liketo add to all this that my re-reading of realist-objectivism is done from an Argentineperspective, somewhat taking advantage of what Borges called the benefit of being onthe margins and of being able to read these things somewhat eccentrically, in a waywhich might not be permitted from a more central global position.

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(CC) Following the line of thought about realist-objectivism, in his long essay-poem ‘Spring and all’, William Carlos Williams wrote that ‘The only realism in art isof the imagination’. For Williams, only the power of the imagination was capable ofnaming without deceit, since the imagination does not construct a mimetic illusionof reality. Rather it creates a reality in its own time, which is probably also the presenttime of reading: ‘When we name it, life exists’. This act of naming things as if for thefirst time exists in Punctum and Seudo, and both texts establish a unique temporalitywithin each of their poems. How do you think the power of the imagination functionsin your poetry?

(MG) Well, when you talk about the ‘power of the imagination’, I’d be inclinedto define it more precisely as verbal imagination. And it seems to me that the fieldfor deploying this verbal imagination must be the poem. That is to say, I think verbalimagination can be deployed in its most pure form – although not necessarilyentirely freely – in a poem. I felt a certain urgency to document reality, but I alsogave priority to verbal imagination. To digress a little: I wanted to give anaccount of novelty in the most novel form possible. Doesn’t Williams say that?‘Make it new’?

(CC) As you say, we are talking really about verbal imagination and with it, about apossible definition for your poetics. What is the scope of such a force, and in what wayis verbal imagination, which gives form and movement to the object-poems of Punctumand Seudo, able to intervene in, interrogate, or draw into tension the different sectorsof the social order? In other words, what possibilities does poetic language open upwhen it comes to ‘documenting’ our reality?

(MG) I think we have uncovered various definitions. At times it sounds ratherpretentious, but the main question is finding the means of saying what needs to be said.To begin with, I think there needs to be something one wants to say. But then oneneeds to find a way of saying it. And it is at this point that all those definitions weuncovered come into play. Perhaps we are complicating the issue somewhat. But Ithink that there is also something to be said for such complication. Now I believe thatthe precise advantage of poetic language (for want of a better name) is that it is able toapproach events first, and to use a discourse which, if it works, can be completely new.And by the way, it was actually Pound who said ‘Make it new’. So once again, wereturn to him.

(CC) Pound said ‘Make it new’, and William Carlos Williams ‘Everything is new’.Following on from what you say, it seems that novelty is achieved as a result of aconstant friction with established discourses, with an attempt to ‘beat them to it’ whenit comes to describing events. It seems to me, however, that this search also encountersits own impossibility within the poem since, to a degree, language is already inscribedwith those established forms and even tends to reproduce them. I see this, for example,in the multiplicity of voices in Punctum, or in the disjointedness of speech in Seudo.Could you a expand on this a little more?

(MG) I think that my idea was that the poem should pose a problem. The idea isalso precisely to try to beat, or at least usefully to oppose, dominant discourses – withthat I agree. Can’t that be the object of a poem? I don’t know how well it works, but inany case in Punctum and Seudo the idea was to use those voices, the ruins of dominantdiscourse, to see if I could generate sufficient distortion to challenge that discourse.Most obviously in Seudo, at its best, all affectation and all rhetoric disappear entirely.

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I would suggest that all this can be achieved in the domain of literature and hardlyanywhere else.

(CC) I’d like now to leave behind the immanence of the poem and talk a little bitabout those discourses. What were the ways of thinking, living, speaking, interacting,and inhabiting the city with which Punctum and Seudo entered into tension 10 or 15years ago in Argentina?

(MG) I would have to think a little bit about that. One thing which was noticeableat the time was that the city was not yet as stratified as it is today: it was still possible tointeract with somebody from a very different social class who used a very differentdiscourse. That seemed to me to be something characteristic of Argentina at the time,something already beginning to disintegrate rapidly in 1990, but still in existence then.Other things do occur to me, but I definitely wanted to point this out, and to make it afocus for the interactions between the characters in Punctum – this moment ofdisintegration (which was deliberate in terms of economic policy) and the precedingmoment where a very specific mix, in a State school for example, was still possible. Ithink that the disintegration was absolute; to the point, in fact, that a marginal spacewas opened up entirely apart from the new stratification, where that mixture lasted alittle longer, and where class difference did not matter: I’m talking about thealternative literary scene of the ’90s, to label it somewhat hastily. The disintegration isshown even more profoundly in Seudo – it reaches the level of discourse. From thismoment of disintegration, the city itself changes. It occurs to me now that you couldperform a similar reading on Millan’s poem ‘La Ciudad’, or on Lihn’s poem about ElPaseo Ahumada. What was really being identified was a state of disintegration (and aNation-State in disintegration). At the discursive level there is not much difference: if thecity and the State are disintegrating, discourse is also disintegrating (or dissolving). Andto return briefly to our label: non-official literature of the ’90s was to a degree a place – aconcrete place in the case of the Belleza y Felicidad gallery, for example – which was bornout of that disintegration and which at the same time refused to accept it.

(CC) Continuing with this same story, how did this ‘apartness’ from socialdisintegration, or in other words, this marginality in the works or projects generatedby the Belleza y Felicidad scene, manifest itself? Are you able to give some exampleswhich you feel stand out from that era?

(MG) The truth is that I wasn’t particularly involved in Belleza y Felicidad at thetime, but all the same I think it offers the clearest example. The artists involved heldexhibitions of the visual arts, published small photocopied books, and hosted parties ormusic recitals at the venue. The small poetry publishing houses, like VOX, Del Diego,and Siesta, which produced our texts, were doing something similar. This self-production was something unknown and ignored by the literary supplements from themainstream press. But gradually, alongside the disintegration of neo-conservativediscourse, all this became increasingly visible – to the extent that today FernandaLaguna, one of the founders of Belleza y Felicidad, is well on the way to being arenowned cultural figure. At the time it was almost literally all that remained in acountry culturally laid to waste. Belleza y Felicidad came to mind because it occupied aconcrete place in the city. But the publishing houses were also alternative sites whichfulfilled the same role as the small Anglo-Saxon poetry magazines. For example, one ofthe publishing houses, Del Diego, used to organise recitals after nightfall in a square inBuenos Aires. It was in a fairly central location but there were still homeless people

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living there. There was a sculpture of greyhounds in the square and so it was known as‘Dog Square’ (‘la plaza de los perros’). But that’s the kind of place I’m talking about.And, in short, my texts gave an account of this: of what had remained outside officialdiscourse.

(CC) And how do you think that the productions themselves – the books,artworks, and performances – which were brought to the public sphere through thesealternative means of circulation, made their rejection of stratification clear? How wasthis goal of ‘democratising culture’ intrinsic to the artworks themselves? Whataesthetic practices arose from this attempt? Perhaps you could speak about a specificcase or cases which seem especially interesting or radical to you.

(MG) I think that this goal has been displayed in artworks and by their authors inmany different ways. And it is certainly not the first time that this has happened inArgentina. However, Washington Cucurto, for example, who comes from a working-class family in Greater Buenos Aires, is someone who transformed himself, for betteror worse, into a figure who was central to these radical processes which I have beentalking about. Cucurto (whose real name is Santiago Vega) wrote a couple of bookswhich are – to categorise them somehow – part of the canon termed ‘poetry of the’90s’. One of these books is called La maquina de hacer paraguayitos (originally publishedby the small publishing house Siesta). Later he also founded the publishing companyEloısa Cartonera, which produces books made from photocopied pages and with coversmade from recycled cardboard. They are pirated editions. At the beginning, Cucurtohad a little workshop in the Almagro district, quite close to Belleza y Felicidad. Butafterwards he moved his premises to La Boca, which is a more working-class district,but also more of a tourist location. In brief, Cucurto’s intensely radical gesture was thesubject of significant fascination in the mainstream media (although bear in mind thatwhenever Herralde comes to Buenos Aires he also visits the workshop). Gente magazine(a local version of ¡Hola!) published articles about the project, and so it continues. Thisis a contradictory example, with many potential criticisms to be made (as is the casewith the entire ’90s poetry movement). But I think it is one of the best examples toillustrate the point I am trying to make. Cucurto was first and foremost one of the poetsof the ’90s and now he enjoys a certain (limited) celebrity. And the publishing companyusing cardboard covers is a direct descendent of those earlier small publishing houses,although it was created much later. Without trying to pass judgement, Cucurtobanalises the original gesture, he expands it to a larger scale, takes it to another place,boasts of having been rejected even by his own circle, and at the same time he does allthis from a very strong symbolic position: Cucurto is from Greater Buenos Aires, he isthe son of a street vendor (which really means he belongs to the working under-class).And the place where Cucurto is welcomed, where he is first accepted and (to put itsomewhat ostentatiously) where he is sanctified as an artist, is first of all in that classlessmovement, the poetry of the ’90s.

(CC) You envisage the ’90s as a poetic movement which at some point becomes acanon. What does this ‘canon’ of the ‘poetry of the ’90s’ comprise? What are theaspects of it that seem to you to be questionable or contradictory?

(MG) It is almost a canon I suppose. The other night some friends were saying tome that the University of Buenos Aires could create a new professorship calledLiterature of Argentina II which would include a course on poetry of the ’90s. I think itis a movement which is still under discussion, but at the same time it is almost

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canonical: articles about the members of its circle are being published in literarysupplements, etc. There is a series of texts which is almost never mentioned: SergioRaimondi’s Poesıa civil, Alejandro Rubio’s Musica mala, Daniel Durand’s Segovia, etc.Also the work of Fernanda Laguna. The curriculum would include Fabian Casas’ Tuca,and Laura Wittner’s La tomadora de cafe (as well as Poesıa civil and Punctum). It is almost acanon, isn’t it? It certainly sounds like one. As far as criticisms and contradictions go,I’m not sure. I fear that there may be more confusions than contradictions. In any case,the projects of Laguna and Wittner, for example, are totally different. Almost the onlything connecting them is the fact that they were written at the same historical moment.

(CC) Yes, it can be difficult talking in terms of literary generations, although Isuppose that if we are considering these texts as part of a movement, they must havesome elements in common in order for us to construct such a fiction. You were talkingabout the case of Cucurto as an example of the way in which marginality waslegitimated at various levels during that period: in terms of the social provenance of thepoet, or of alternative methods of distribution, etc. So at the level of writing, do youthink that this ‘re-branding’ of marginality has any genuinely innovative elements, or isable to suggest forms alternative to conventional ones, far removed from the pictorial,paternalist, didactic gaze? Do you think there has been a change of direction? How doyou see this happening in your own poetry, but also, if you prefer, in the work of thosepoets you mention like Durand, Raimondi, and Rubio, who are marginal figures withinthe canon?

(MG) I think that there is originality in the work of all the authors we have beendiscussing. To begin with, there are original readings and re-readings. For example,Raimondi performs a re-reading of Lucrecio (and Pound). There is also a re-reading ofZelarayan, an Argentine author who is supposed to be a marginal figure from hisgeneration, in the work of Durand and Cucurto. I think that these are all originalreadings, even from a Latin American perspective. And these original readings can befelt in the texts. I can say that much to begin with. In many texts from the ’90s, evenwhen we think about them today, there is a different way of looking at reality – a non-literary way of looking (which has nothing to do with the way of looking at realitywhich Cortazar, or Saer, or other celebrated and established literary figures practice).

(CC) I’m intrigued by this idea of non-literary literature. I read somethingsomewhere by Josefina Ludmer in which she spoke about a similar change of directionwhich she called ‘post-autonomous literature’. We are talking here about poeticoeuvres based on original re-readings of past authors and, at the same time, about thepredominance of a non-literary gaze. I imagine, therefore, that the non-literary mustbe found more in the composition of the poem itself, in its specific use of language, andin its relation to the real. Is that right? Or better still, if we turn to Saer’s novels, howdoes that literary gaze, which contemporary reality declares to be redundant, function?

(MG) There may be something intriguing there. Although actually, now that Ithink more about it, ‘non-literary’ sounds too extreme. Briefly what I want to say isthat this new and distinct gaze ends in being equally literary. Is what remains a criticalreading of a certain literary presentation? I prefer to leave this as a question. Thereshould be a critique of any outdated literary discourse. I once carried out a similarcritical reading of Saer, who seems to be describing a world in which none of us haveany part. Perhaps there is something to discover in that world. But I don’t think so.In the end, if literature were simply a systematic practice, or a mere parlour game,

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there would have been very little to say after Dante’s Divine Comedy. And the same istrue for Saer: his work is spectacular, but distant. Returning to our starting point, it isperhaps true that the new gaze began by seeming ‘non-literary’, and that is not a badthing, but in the end Rubio and Cucurto and the rest continue to employ a literarygaze. But it’s good that at the beginning it emerges violently, on the threshold of the‘non-literary’. Does that make sense? How can anyone write after Neruda, the greatpoet of the Party? And yet Lihn and Rodrigo Lira (to name just two) manage it. Thereis undoubtedly a ‘non-literary’ gesture there.

(CC) I wonder what is the influence of a poet like Nicanor Parra on these poeticsand on your own, given that he was perhaps one of the first to articulate that synthesisbetween Anglo-Saxon poetry (Pound and Eliot) and the ‘non-literary’ through arejection of ‘poetic’ poetry (with the inclusion instead of various idioms,colloquialisms, voices, etc.), which is an element present also in Lihn and Lira(although each one with their own element of violence).

(MG) In my case, I can’t say that Parra was a direct influence. Althoughafterwards, reading back through the material, you realise that he is there at thebeginning of everything. But there was no direct connection with Parra. And actuallyalthough to begin with this might seem like a weakness, it ends in being an advantagebecause Parra can be too strong an influence when he is evoked from the very start.I don’t know if that makes sense, but it becomes clear to me that while I didn’t readhim in any depth to begin with, Parra is ingrained at the very centre of what I wastrying to achieve. Equally, on a more historic level, an interview with Parra waspublished in one of the two editions of the Buenos Aires journal 18 Whiskys (in the early’90s). And an anecdote for you: in 1998 (or thereabouts) I went to give a series ofreadings in Chile, and after one of the readings the organiser asked me to go with himto Parra’s house so that he could meet all those of us who had been at the convention.That really struck me, and the conclusion which I drew from it was that the only waythe organiser was able to understand the poetry I had been reading was to make theconnection with Parra. And so we went to meet him.

(CC) I’d like to talk a little about the contemporary poetry scene in Argentina.What are the dialogues, tendencies, or reinventions which you see as having arisen?What do think of trash culture, as it has come to be called?

(MG) I don’t really know what trash culture is. Or rather what I mean to say is thatit seems quite reasonable to say that there was already a great deal of trash culture inthe ’90s: in the Eloısa Cartonera project, in Belleza y Felicidad, and in publishing houseslike VOX. I think that what we call poetry of the ’90s actually continues intocontemporary Argentine poetry. I like the word ‘trash’, especially when thinking aboutreinventing something. There is another theory which argues that creative energy inArgentina has now returned to narrative forms, in the work of new authors like MatıasCapelli or Felix Bruzzone. I don’t really agree with that, although there is certainlysomething attractive in Capelli’s project of incorporating something of the essence ofthe ’90s into a more centred, less confrontational narrative. I haven’t read anything atall by Bruzzone. But it seems that there is a new energy there – yet at the same timeit’s less ‘trash’ than work from the ’90s because the authors are publishing in large, orat least relatively large, publishing houses, and are giving interviews to the literarysupplements, all things which sit uneasily with claims of belonging to a ‘contra’ oralternative scene. So for now, at least in Argentina, this seems to be a moment which is

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less ‘trash’ than the ’90s – but no less interesting for that reason. Particularly in poetrythere are some very interesting things happening– a return to a ’90s aesthetic, forexample, in the work of very young poets like Mariano Blatt who has incorporated thelanguage of the social network into his poetry. But I am especially interested in morehidden, less spectacular developments in poetry, like those found in the work of LucıaBlanco, a poet from Bahıa Blanca, who is perfecting the work with language, to put it inthose terms, which was underlying in the poetry from the ’90s.

(CC) I wonder how a more experimental poetry, either at a visual or verbal level,as is found for example in the Foro de Escritores project in Chile, is able to fit into thecurrent scene of Argentine poetry. And what is your opinion of this kind of practice?How do you relate your own work with this search through creative processes? Whatpotential do you see in it?

(MG) That’s a great question. I think experimentation has very little space, and atthe same time it does have a space – at least as regards the poetry of the ’90s. There arevisual and verbal experimental elements there, in the very best sense. I’m thinking forexample of some of the texts of Ezequiel Alemian, one of the ’90s poets, and ofsomeone even younger: Pablo Katchadjian and his book El Martın Fierro ordenadoalfabeticamente. It occurs to me now that the answer is that these elements are alreadypresent: you just have to look very carefully for them. Perhaps they are not clearlylabelled as they are elsewhere, and to begin with that might seem to be a deficiency ofthose texts, but in the end I think it is a positive characteristic. There is a kind of textualmestizaje. But equally there are projects which failed. I remember seeing performancesby Fernanda Laguna and Gabriela Bejerman in the ’90s which didn’t seem very good.But they were also efforts at experimentation. I ideally hope that there are elements ofvisual and verbal experimentation in Punctum, Seudo, and Relapso þ Angola. At onepoint I explored the work of the North American Objectivists and I found a great dealof experimentation there. They are an influence on my work. There’s alsoexperimentation in Brazilian concrete poetry, but I haven’t yet brought myself toundertake any serious research into that because it’s a very dense topic.

(CC) In addition to considering them as a poetic trend, what value do you ascribeto these kinds of visual and verbal experimentations, which occur both in performanceand in the writing process? What role do these elements of visual and verbalexperimentation occupy in your own writing process, and what is it that they are ableto condense? What potential do you think they bring to the poem?

(MG) I’m a bit sceptical about performance. I think that writing – or the text – isitself the performance. I’m also a bit sceptical about conventional public poetryreadings. What I mean to say is that I find the idea of becoming a ‘performer’ slightlyterrifying. I’m not interested in that. I’m interested in the text. It seems to me thatthere certainly is a space for visual and verbal experimentation in the text itself,especially, as in the ’90s, when it incorporates a search for something new. Within thisframework, experimentation seems to be an important element, but novelty shouldnot be confined or restricted only to experimentation. I don’t know if that makessense: I mean that it shouldn’t be labelled from the beginning as ‘experimental poetry’or ‘tonal poetry’ or ‘visual poetry’. A serious experimentation should not end in thepoetry being labelled. When I’m chatting with friends I always joke that poetry of the’90s went through three stages: movement, party, and religion. The beginning waschaotic and occurred on a massive scale: the movement. Then came the need to tighten

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up its concepts: the party. Finally came the undesirable development when it hardenedinto gospel: religion. I like Raworth’s texts because they are concise and rigorous, as ifthey were from the party stage where there were no excesses or demagoguery.

(CC) I suppose that the approach of linguistic experimentation requires a dynamicmotion back and forth between the ‘movement’ and the ‘party’ stages, in order toavoid falling into established discourse (‘religion’). But it seems to me that the chaoticcharacter of the movement brings with it a certain excess. Perhaps we could call thisexcess desire or pleasure, in other words that which exceeds reality and whichnourishes it. We could say that in Perlongher’s work this desire is mobilised in hisuntiring verbal proliferation. How is this pleasure condensed and expressed in yourown poems?

(MG) To begin with I was greatly influenced by reading a short book by Poundcalled The Art of Poetry. In this text Pound offers various instructions, and at one pointhe talks about throwing out anything he has just said if it interferes with the impulse tocreate something new. It strikes me that this is related to excess, with the ability toovercome technical limitations in order to write a text chaotically. That is theequivalent of Perlongher’s verbal proliferation. Obviously the pleasure lay in followingthe Poundian mandate, the instructions in his book, and in knowing that one wasallowed to break with everything, to follow one’s own instincts, and that it was nolonger necessary to walk on eggshells (figuratively speaking). The best of Perlongher’spoetry is in his earlier books – say from Austria-Hungrıa until the poem ‘Cadaveres’. Sonow I ask myself whether it makes any sense to take flight from this pleasure, and to tryto systematise it in order to turn it into ‘party’. In my case, following those instinctsand producing that pleasure took a lot of my energy. In other words, I now think thatthe movement stage requires that a lot of energy is used chaotically and as a result itcannot be sustained for long. Perhaps that also happened to Perlongher?

(CC) But don’t you think that once poetry moves into the party stage it loses itsimagination and, along with it, its capacity to question social reality? How can one giveform to pleasure using a more concise and measured language as Pound suggests, forexample, without giving up on chaos?

(MG) I think that the ‘party stage’ is the ideal. ‘Party’ also implies somethingcollective. I’m thinking about the example of the North American Objectivists(Oppen, Rakosi, Zukofsky, etc.). At the moment I’m also reading OsvaldoLamborghini’s biography (which I can recommend), which talks a little bit about thehistory of the group who produced the journal Literal. Right now I’m reading a sectionabout the Literal group being invited to participate in a conversation with anotherjournal (Grupo Cero) and trying to make the event into something overtly ‘political’.Perhaps my point only refers to the idea of the literary collective. Or to Pound’sattempt to systematise, as when he founded Imagism. In the end, they are all attemptswhich are open to failure. It seems to me to be a complicated step, but an interestingone, and I refer to it in terms of ‘party’ to try to explain it. But the question is stillthe same: after the initial moment of energy, how can a poetic movement evolve? Howcan it become something new? I like the idea that there might be something morecomplex – reflected in the texts themselves – than the mere fact of belonging to aliterary group. Raworth ruled by Marxist dogma seems like a good example. Perhapssomething similar then? Energy controlled ultimately by a partisan dogma, texts in

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which the presence of a dogma is very strong. But really these are blueprints for writingwhich are still being designed.

(CC) Tell me, what is the current state of your literary search? Are you currentlyworking on any new projects?

(MG) I am waiting for the re-publication of Punctum to see whether that has anyeffect on the texts I’m working on at the moment. I’ve been waiting for the re-print forquite some time, and technically it shouldn’t arrive any later than next year. I don’tenvisage the re-publication as something mechanical, but rather as something thatmight redefine and give renewed impetus to the new projects which I’m thinkingabout. When Seudo is eventually re-printed, I think the same thing will happen.Right now there are a few texts that I’m working on, and I set myself the goalof producing more lengthy things (poems I suppose). I have two working titles:‘Cabeza de playa’1 (to create the idea of arriving somewhere and creating a strongholdthere), and ‘Plan Primavera’ (which is playing with the idea of the economic‘primavera’ policies which have been numerous in Latin America and which havealmost always ended badly). It has only recently been that I felt I could mentally getback on the right track to start planning another book. I think that for me the noveltythis time lies in spending a little longer with each text, and in seeing how it developswhen I give myself three or four days to write it. But I always plan to write long books,and at the moment this one is only about twenty pages.

(Translation by Katy Critchfield)

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Martın Gambarotta (Buenos Aires, 1968)

1

A roomwhere the space of the ceiling is equalto that of the floor that itself is equal tothat of each one of the four wallsthat mark off a place on the street.The mist shifts to his vacantmind, he doesn’t know who he is and the firstthought “a dog who realises he’s a dogstops being one,” again forms partof the dream but there appears, diffusethe flowerpot: a dented kettle with plantsin the middle of the table: two trestlesholding up a wooden board– then he’s awakethe rust stains in the sky –the colour of the light on things, the skythat retracts and is rust scribbledbetween his eyes and he falls asleep again, but an orderappears in the awakened matter.The lucid placementof the place in the day, the noise,the body beatingthe ruin of an idea that runson a network of nerveswords of steelcontained in a breath:an orifice, head of a pinin a chamber of the heart.

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Martın Gambarotta (Buenos Aires, 1968)

1

Una piezadonde el espacio del techo es igualal del piso que a su vez es igualal de cada una de las cuatro paredesque delimitan un lugar sobre la calle.La bruma se traslada a su mentevacıa, no sabe quien es y el primerpensamiento “un perro que se da cuenta que es perrodeja de serlo’’ vuelve a formar partedel sueno pero aparece, difusa,la maceta: una pava abollada con plantasen el centro de la mesa: dos caballetessosteniendo una tabla de madera–entonces esta despierto.Las manchas de oxido en el cielo–el color de la luz sobre las cosas, el cieloque se retrae y es oxido borroneadoentre sus ojos y cae dormido de nuevo, pero apareceun orden en la materia despierta.La ubicacion lucidadel lugar en el dıa, el ruido,el cuerpo latiendo,la ruina de una idea que correpor una red de nervios,palabras de acerocontenidas en un soplo:un orificio cabeza de alfileren una cavidad del corazon.

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ESSAY (Sid Vicious)

Vicious in the sense of sadistic. As a kidI used to batter dogs in Slough park.And Sid ‘cos no fucking toff‘d ever give that name to their son.My real name was John Slivkin.I think that Slivkin meansprisoner in Slav.When I was fifteen I learnt to play basswith three fingers.At nineteen I used two.That year we made a record calledThe Great Rock and Roll Swindleand I spent a few days in the Chelsea Hotel.The next summerall the little pricks in Englandwere going round in those t-shirts with the front pageof The Sun stamped in the middle.Sid Vicious, said the headline, is dead.

I’m not asking youto drink what I pourbut at leasthold the glassstraight

you know I don’t knowwhere I was.I don’t rememberwhere I was butI left it there.

I don’t feel like talking.It’s a problem if I don’t feellike talking. I feel like going backto being brunette.

On Padilla Streetsome Chinese dressed as pachucosdivvy up names: you Zhang Cuoare called Francisco, you Xin Diare called Diego, you Gong Xi: Pacino;and I, Bei dao, am called Pseudo.

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ENSAYO (Sid Vicious)

Vicious en el sentido de sadico. De pibeapaleaba perros en el parque Slough.Y Sid porque ningun caretajamas le pondrıa ese nombre a su hijo.Mi verdadero nombre fue John Slivkin.Creo que Slivkin quiere decirpreso en eslavo.Cuando tenıa 15 aprendı a tocar el bajocon tres dedos.A los 19 usaba dos.Ese ano grabamos un disco llamadoLa Gran Estafa del Rock and Rolly pase unos dıas en el Chelsea Hotel.Al otro veranotoda la pendejada de Inglaterraandaba usando esas remeras con la primera planade The Sun estampada en el medio.Sid Vicious, decıa el titular, is dead.

No te pido quetomes lo que te sirvopero por lo menossostene bienel vaso

es que no sedonde estaba.No me acuerdodonde estaba perolo deje donde estaba.

No tengo ganas de hablar.Esta mal si no tengo ganasde hablar. Tengo ganas de volverA ser morocha.

En calle Padillaunos chinos vestidos de pachucosse reparten nombres: vos Zhang Cuote llamas Francisco, vos Xin Dite llamas Diego, vos Gong Xi: Pacino;y yo, Bei Dao me llamo Pseudo.

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On the balconiesthe old dears worriedby the titbitslisten to Seru Giran’s hits.

After, they arguebecause they all want to be called Diegoand they say to Bei Daothat Pseudo is not a name.

No one was listening to no one.

Don’t knowwhat you’re sayingbut it must bethe sameold bollocks as ever.

Outside the school gates they’re callingA Catholic boy mongoloid.Mongoloid, mongoloid, that’s‘cos you’re a Catholic Boy.

It’s not what I wantto say it’s almost whatI want to say it’swhat’s nextto what I want to say.

The time it takes for a stainon the sheet to dry.That time.

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En los balconeslas viejas preocupadasdel que diranescuchan exitos de Seru Giran

Despues discutenporque todos quieren llamarse Diegoy le dicen a Bei Daoque Pseudo no es un nombre.

Nadie escuchaba a nadie.

No selo que estas diciendopero deben serlas mismaspelotudeces de siempre.

A la salida de una escuela le dicenmogolico a un pibe catolicoMogolico, mogolico, Mogo-lico. Ası que sos catolico.

No es lo que quierodecir es casi lo quequiero decir eslo que esta al costadode lo que quiero decir.

El tiempo que tarda en secarseuna mancha en la sabana.Ese tiempo.

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Note

1 In English, ‘Beachhead’, which is a military term used to describe a line of defenceassumed after an armed unit arrives at a beach, as in the D-Day landings on 6 June1944.

Constanza Ceresa works on contemporary Latin American literature, with particular

emphasis on Chile and Argentina poetry and poetics. She graduated in Hispanic

Language and Literature at Universidad de Chile and earned an M.A. in Gender Studies

and Culture from the same institution. Currently she is completing her doctoral thesis

entitled Poetic Cartography as emancipation: the study of Contemporary Chilean and

Argentinean poets at Birkbeck College, University of London, where she explores the

relation between poetics and politics in a constellation of works of the 80s and 90s in Chile

and Argentina. Currently, Constanza is a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Politics,

Languages and International Studies at the University of Bath.

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