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Alejandra Pizarnik – The Desire of the Word

The Smelting Process

THE DESIRE OF THE WORD The night, again the night, the masterful sapience of the dark, the warm touch of death, an instant of ecstasy for me, heiress of all prohibited gardens. Steps & voices on the shaded side of the garden. Laughter coming from inside the walls. Don’t go believing they’re alive. Don’t go [...]

Alejandra Pizarnik – Fragments to Dominate the Silence

The Smelting Process

I The forces of language are the lonely, desolate, ladies, who sing through my voice which I hear in the distance. & distant, in the black sand, a girl lies down, dense with ancestral music. Where the true death? I’ve wanted to illuminate myself in the light of my lack of light. The branches die [...]

Alejandra Pizarnik – Ways of the Mirror

The Smelting Process

I & above all to gaze with innocence. As if nothing were to happen, which is true. II But it’s you I want to gaze at til your face recedes from my fear like a bird on the sharp edge of the night. III Like a girl in the pink chalk on a very old [...]

Jorge Eielson – Dark Night of the Body (bilingual)

The Smelting Process

In 1955, Jorge Eduardo Eielson published Dark Night of the Body (Rome). [1] Chronologically, this comes after Mutatis Mutandis and before De Materia Verbalis. There are noticeable organic connections between these works, which help shed light on Eielson's poetic production as a whole. First, as one critic has noted, Dark Night of the Body picks [...]

Alejandra Pizarnik – Curses

The Smelting Process

& the ladies dressed in red for my pain & with my pain inhaled in my breath, crouching like fetuses of scorpions in the innermost side of my nape, the mothers in red suck from me the only warmth I emit with my heart which I could barely ever beat, from me who always had [...]

Alejandra PIzarnik – The Word of the Desire

The Smelting Process

THE WORD OF THE DESIRE This spectral texture of the darkness, this melody of bones, this breath of diverse silences, this going down feet first, this dark, dark gallery, this sinking without sinking. What am I saying? It’s dark & I want to go in. I don’t know what else to say. (I don’t want [...]

César Vallejo – The Image and Its Syrtes

The Smelting Process

THE IMAGE AND ITS SYRTES In an image of Guyau’s, life is represented by a mad virgin, the delusional bride of a groom who does not exist and for whom she, each aurora, joyfully waits, at each twilight she weeps because she has not seen him arrive. In this image, life, life itself, disappears and [...]

Jorge Eielson #06 – De Materia Verbalis (complete)

The Smelting Process

Composed between 1957 & 1958, De Materia Verbalis comes after Mutatis Mutandis (1954) & dark night of the body (1955). If we think about it in a painter’s terms, it represnts the third leaf of a triptych. As in the previous two leaves, the imagery is ultra-mundane, hence the blond-haired doll narrator’s sister dresses, his [...]

Jorge Eielson - De Materia Verbalis (complete)

The Smelting Process

Composed between 1957 & 1958, De Materia Verbalis comes after Mutatis Mutandis (1954) & dark night of the body (1955). If we think about it in a painter’s terms, it represnts the third leaf of a triptych. As in the previous two leaves, the imagery is ultra-mundane, hence the blond-haired doll narrator’s sister dresses, his brother on a bike & that grandmother asleep in a chair. Therefore, one immediate question the poetry forces us to ask is what we make of this simplicity? What does it say about Eielson’s stance toward poetic technique? & how does this form...

Jorge Eielson #05 – Mutatis Mutandis (complete)

The Smelting Process

Soon after expatriating to Italy, Peruvian poet Jorge Eduardo Eielson produced the short 10-poem collection Mutatis Mutandis (1954)1. There are evident links between the aesthetic of this work & that of dark night of the body. The title is in Latin & can be interpreted "this change, provided all other variables remain constant." What's so [...]

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