I, THE WORST OF ALL

Estela Lamat

Translated by Michael Leong

BlazeVOX [books] Buffalo, NY

I, THE WORST OF ALL by Estela Lamat Translated by Michael Leong Copyright 2008 Published by BlazeVOX [books] All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without the publishers written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews. Printed in the United States of America Book design by Geoffrey Gatza First Edition ISBN: 1-934289-82-5 ISBN 13: 978-1-934289-82-2 Library of Congress Number:: incoming

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INTRODUCTION
Nace a los ocho aos en el patio de la casa. Ha realizado acuciosos estudios nocturnos de lo desvelos, los azares y las causalidades estelares. Domadora de gatos, enloga olfativa, zurda y epilptica. Nunca ha estado en ningn taller, no ha participado en ningn concurso, no ha ganado ningn premio a las Letras. [Born at the age of eight in the backyard of the house. She has conducted meticulous nocturnal studies of sleeplessness, of stellar chances and causalities. Tamer of cats, enologist by nose, left-handed and epileptic. She has never been in a workshop; she has never entered any contests; nor has she won any literary awards.]

So goes the biographical note on the cover flap of Yo, la peor de todas (Contrabando del bando en contra, 2006), the original Spanish language edition from which this book was translated. This brief paratextual snippet provides perhaps the most direct introduction to Estela Lamats work as it signals her staunch and sarcastic repudiation of establishment poetrywhat Charles Bernstein calls in a U.S. context official verse culturewhile already adumbrating the roguish otherworldliness of her mental universe. As far as contextual information, this is what is known about one of the most provocative voices to have recently emerged from Chiles literary underground: she is a poet associated with the so-called Novisima Generation, a group of various writers that re-deploys and extends the difficulty of dictatorshipera writing (here one thinks of the Generation of the 70s and Generation NN) in response to the more diffuse and unofficial dictatorships that continue to police and control the social body. She is also the author of Sangre seca (Contrabando del bando en contra, 2005) and the forthcoming Colmillo molido, which will complete this projected trilogy. I, the Worst of All is a complex and heterogeneous book that combines Lamats intense, almost manic lyricism with her prodigious mythopoeic imagination. The result is a challenging and ambitious project that invites multiple readings and rewards extended lingerings within its dense, linguistic thicket. While many poemssuch as How to make a corner or Every poem is a hatcan surely be read and enjoyed as stand-alone anthology pieces, it is crucial to understand I, the Worst of All as a book-length project (or concept album, if you like), for part of its brilliance resides in its imbricated, dialogic structure. Numerous voices populate and haunt this wild, fugue-like work, but there are three major personae (that preside over the books three respective chapters/acts/sections) that may require some introduction:
Pnico. The major masculine voice of the book. Bestial and lecherous, he derives from the Greek god Pan. He inspires both panic and creativityone might say he represents the panic aroused by linguistic consciousness, the panic caused by the 7

very possibility of linguistic combination. Hence, the series of poems that play with permutations of his nameP co, P i o, P ni o. Hence, Pnicos alphabetic taunt which he invitingly flings at the poet: ABCdeFGhijklmNopQRstuVWXyz. And hence, the poets sardonic comment to her demented muse: I touch the undulating surface of a letter / Im aroused / by the depth / of its silent pleats / a letter / a letter / what the fuck do I do with just one letter / if I pen another I will become a poet. The worst of all. The books (anti)heroine. She is inspired by the Baroque poet/nun Sor Juana Ins de la Cruz, who in a divine petition renounced her writing with the self-abasing formula (supposedly written in blood), I, the Worst of All. Lamat turns this renunciation, this disavowal into a logorrheic flood of poetic intensity particularly in the stunning prose poems that open this section. Here, her choice to justify the right hand margin, to go coast-to-coast staining the blankness of the page like an oil slick forcefully performs the expansive opening of this historical silence. Because of the lack of punctuation to help us parse the frenetic rhythm of Lamats poetic prose, it is tempting to say what Eliot said of Miltonthat when we read these poems, we get a physical sensation of a breathless leap. But it goes beyond that: we get a more dire sense of corporeal extremity, a sense of asphyxiation, of a vertiginous rush of a voice that has been wanting to speak for hundreds of years. La Llorona. The nomadic spirit from Hispanic folklore who cries in search of her missing children. One of the most well-known ghost stories from Latin America. As Gloria Anzalda describes her in Borderlands/La Frontera, La Llorona is Daughter of Night, traveling the dark terrains of the unknown searching for the lost parts of herself. This cycle of monodies is, by far, the most lyric section of the book and announces a revitalization of poetry: we remember that, in the first section, La Llorona mourns, poetry has gone forever / this hole is left in its place. Now in place of this vacancy, we experience a dazzling fecundity fertilized by and refracted through La Lloronas lubricious tears.

This book quite literally takes your breath awaybecause of the demanding pace of Lamats language (language pours from me from every / pore, she says in the books opening invocation) and because of the hyperbolic ferocity of her tropes: my eyes see / my forehead sees / and my fingers see / as if I were a huge uterus bombing clairvoyant sons. This is a vatic poetry that bombards the reader with bizarre visions that are as beautiful as they are terrifying. I am both honored and excited to introduce it to an English-speaking audience. Michael Leong New York City September 2008

PANIC

I cant estrange myself from the nights language has died like a moth charred in the lamp of its own desires language has died by crossing the sealed portal of memory by becoming a letter with stellar designs language opens like a grille in the head and lets penetrate sacred and bloody eyes and the sick and distant gaze of angels language pours from me from every pore I cant I cant stop calling you even now I want to feel you Ive recovered from you but I still desire you I want to hold you in my skin I want to call you into me I want you to be part of my life I want you to be part of me, life I want you to return to me and then we might begin the most beautiful journey look for me for Im still waiting Ill make you suffer a few seconds you deserve it but Ill surrender myself fully to loving you come and find me that is the truth not this appearance of deadened desire call me my door still has blank pages

enraptured on the branch of that tree wanting to turn inward to forget the strange and peaceful flights hanging from a branch with skin wounded by the night sensitive to the astrals falling on black asphalt a star lassoed by a gleaming eye summoned towards the coasts of celestial lands beckoned with a gravitational force that resounds throughout the silence of the galaxies between the stellar lactations among the peripheral regions of the stars always commencing the way of the one who bridges the worlds terrified before the gate of death -without deathit is about a sweeter death the smallest of all with the terrible audacity of peninsular deaths with the unruly audacity of black-starred nights with astral winds penetrating the layers of violet dreams

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Dear Pnico: Ive been wanting to write to you for a long time, to thank you for your letters and especially for the wine last night, I wonder if Ill be able to forget you, last night I drank three bottles of wine but I still had your name in my mouth, I still could clearly remember you. I went to bed thinking, Sleeping will annihilate him. Big mistake. I woke up at 4:03 screaming your name. It occurs to me now that Im writing that I dont really know why Im writing to you when I want to ignore you. Last night, before waking at 4:03 in the morning, between the second and third bottle of wine, and very gradually, as I stared intently at the bottom of my cup, I said your name and Im not sure which one of your hexes had gotten into my mouth, I started to speak in other tongues. I decided to return the favor, I made myself vomit, I decided to vomit in that other language, to ask for forgiveness hugging the white bowl gagging in that other tongue but nothing. At the whitest bottom of the bowl, in the deepest depths of my throat, I still had your name, dried between the wine and the saliva, stuck to my lips. Today, with a mild hangover, the wine was good and my head resilient, I was going upstairs through the elevator and from the highest peaks of the library, from up there where the books are in Spanish, I thought that if I hurled myself out the window I would see you dying flat on your face and, to be honest, I panicked.

Yours in death, Pnico.

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The spaces imprint themselves and theres not even a hole in which to fall to pieces and break without tears. I cant decipher this enigma: the dresses and the shoes and the earths blue dominions. La peor de todas: La llorona: it had a blindness in both eyes and it doesnt utter a word unless to apologize for feeling too much. poetry has gone forever this hole is left in its place for you not to fall hold up a red flag and hoist it firmly with the palm of your hand. its eyes doubly blind silently irrupt. poetry is dead and with crosses on its back no longer breathes I apportion this sacred moment to the wounded palms of your hands. but whom will we deceive this Saturday at 22:03

La peor de todas: La llorona:

La peor de todas:

[Translators note: Yo, la peor de todasI, the worst of allwas the famous formula used by the seventeenth century poet and nun Sor Juana Ins de la Cruz when she signed a petition renouncing her worldly life including reading and writing. Born in Mexico, she was called The Tenth Muse and is now widely regarded as the finest writer of the Spanish Baroque. For her defense of womens rights to study and pursue intellectual activities, she has been called the first feminist of the Americas.]

[Translators note: La Llorona, which might be translated as the mourner or the weeping woman, is a figure from Hispanic folklore that has pre-Columbian origins. The legend has many variants throughout Hispanic America though there are some core motifsa mother wanders at night wailing for her lost children; she is associated with rivers and water; and she has perhaps drowned her own children, though, in the Chilean version, her children were taken from her by force. She is often linked to La Malinche, the slave and mistress of Corts, and La Virgen de Guadalupe.]

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whom will we watch from the corner of our eyes so we dont discover ourselves. La llorona: love doesnt suit me its clothing for other battles I prefer the nasal nudity of my face and the insignificant apertures from which I see you leaving. I prefer to sit and smile tossing stones at the street as if they were unmentionable traces of your departure. Its 22 and a little while more and a little while less shit drips from my eyes and saliva from my nose What can be done in autumn besides sniffling as if it were autumn and looking through the windows of a car with the face of the living dead knowing that youre out there holding autumns hand with some bitch but in your place theres the ultimate battle of all poetry rolling up a bit of nostalgia for the nights have gone to drown their sorrows in glory. Take out a handkerchief and dry me of this nostalgia.

La peor de todas:

La llorona:

La peor de todas:

La llorona:

I write Must in red in my red notebook lighting it at midnight when I Must sleep and forget you when I Must extinguish myself with a puff and trust that Im sleeping my fingers pierce into me every letter of your name and I Want and I only Want if I get up tonight in the middle of the night and contemplate you there red and awake looking at me naked on the bed with closed eyes prying into my red notebook with red empty letters and silent ellipses. I Cant write tonight the words that stand on the tips of my fingers frighten me the glances that I cast from the corner of my eye to the blank page frighten me Im terrified by the menacing sound of the empty syllables
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Im completely possessed by the red color of the ink the nights reflection blinds me I dont want to write but I tremble like a caged letter I eat the fingernails of the letters and spit them out on the red page I touch the undulating surface of a letter Im aroused by the depth of its silent pleats a letter a letter what the fuck do I do with just one letter if I pen another I will become a poet the garbage that I write in red nights like these terrifies me when all the letters are falling from me and they recede like waves lapping at my feet I spit them into the garbage I look at them dementedly they seduce me with their hypocritical voices they seduce me with their rattling and crying and with that stuttering smile of a lethal letter what the fuck do I do with all these silences with my fingers pressed against the pen as if I could save myself from asphyxiation as if it were my only mast my invincible hero as if the letters were mine I suck them like crabs I bite them I eat them and I grope them as if they were millions of lascivious men in my hands I touch them with the tip of my curled tongue I absolve them.
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Pnico Ubique. Language is everywhere but language is not a god not even a god but if we are to say that it ecloses its chrysalis is a mouth that screams then for the obstinate ones of cape and sword that insist on genealogies language does have a father or a mother we will thus say language is born from a scream. Language=screaming.

[Translators note: The so-called cape-and-sword plays (comedias de capa y espada) were a popular genre during the Spanish Golden Age. The name derives from the cloaks and swords worn by the dramas aristocratic characters.] 15

Pnico He measures himself he distributes himself in consecutive spaces he alternates between becoming light and becoming cloud or between corrupting himself with the air or becoming emptiness between the tattered sound of the distances he strikes like a bolt of lightning inflamed by celestial vapors impermeable to the music of the stars round and stealthy as a boreal wind he hits his fingers against the doors he traverses miracles with his eyes blindfolded he suggests using the down of Platanus orientalis to relieve coughing he dissipates between the tips of my shoes he becomes pliable as a cigarette in the night nothing can ever forget his eyes his undecipherable scribbling his silences made into an ocean that rests after high tide. He measures himself he sketches himself between the planes like a naked and infinite line he mutates he shapes himself like a tooth in the mouth and gobbles the celestial platforms of the ships he slips away he turns into a scream and throws himself from the tongue to the ground from the window to a howl and sleeps imprisoned by a tidal wave of ants he sits and listens with his eyelids to the lessons of the night he learns the ancient alphabets of the hands and the leaves he learns by heart the circuit of the spiders in the tree he strangles himself with a word of a dialect that has not yet been invented he begets a new sky with other stars and other suns that contemplate other rains that sow other mysteries he stands up
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and ascends into the warlocks flight he pollutes himself in the grey fumes of a city that I no longer remember he falls back onto the bed when he has traveled the necessary distances to exhaust his life he vanishes between that firefly and this door.

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Pnico I will punish you with the power of memory. Here is your language.

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Every poem is a hat From my hat I pull out a cat and a bouquet of yellow flowers from my hat I pull out an acute letter and fold it gravely until I focus solely on its image in my hat I keep colorful handkerchiefs united by invisible connections that only you know because only you accept this page when nothing can conceal the night. Full of hats my room seems like a book full of hats the street speaks from every rabbit and disappears like a top hat behind a mysterious corner or it swallows my head like a hat with sad and eternal wings as if my head were another less complete hat a totally useless one my hat goes out to fly in the mornings to return to its bed with the smell of leaves my hat sprawls on the desk full of black letters and covers with its orbits the deformed curvature of my ideas my hat which is also the hat of that man and that star clusters my thoughts against the edge of an ashtray it rests like a decapitated body on the table and retires to take a nap like a casualty of war my hat dons itself it talks to itself it turns into a top hat and makes enemies with my head it turns into a wide-brimmed hat and extends towards the interminable seas of my ears my hat perceives that its a white thing with black letters and then hops like a rabbit between a word and a body and by an act of magic against thing and of thing against image everything mixes in the hat and that is why the hats dance.

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Pnico AbcDEFghIjklMnoPQrSTUvwxyZ Pnico This poem is neither yours, nor is it mine.

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