Alan Britt
Poeta EE.UU.
Catedrático de inglés y escritura creativa en la Universidad de Towson (Maryland). Entre sus libros más recientes resaltan Parabola Dreams: Poems by Silvia Shchibli & Alan Britt (2013), Alone with the Terrible Universe (2011), así como ensayos publicados en The Cultural Journal, Clay Palm Review y Arson. Sus poemas también han aparecido en publicaciones internacionales como Bolts of Silk (Escocia), Christian Science Monitor, Fire (Reino Unido), Gallerie International (India), Gradiva (Italia), Letras (Chile), Magyar Naplo (Hungría), The Minnesota Review, Pedrada Zurda (Ecuador), Queen’s Quarterly (Canada), Ragazine, Revista Solar (Mexico), entre otras.
MATERIA OSCURA
El poeta
ve materia oscura en el fondo
de su copa de vino.
Próximo al fondo del cristal
ve el talle turbulento de gravedad de María Magdalena
lleno con el humo de la materia oscura.
Y los ojos de Magdalena
de materia oscura.
Es conocedor de todas las vocales de bambú que chasquean
en un viento verde soplando en la voz de Magdalena
una vez formado desde el abundante, fértil suelo de la materia
oscura.
Acaricia el pelo de Magdalena,
fluida materia oscura.
Todos los fagots, oboes y violonchelos
que orbitan las húmedas caderas de Magdalena,
ah, crean el irresistible pulso
de la materia oscura.
El poeta goza las últimas gotas
de la materia oscura
que rulan como sudor
por la cintura de cristal de Magdalena.
Solo con el terrible universo de Alan Britt
Por Martín Camps
Alone With the Terrible Universe (Solo con el terrible universo, Cypress Books, 2011), libro del poeta norteamericano Alan Britt. Britt es autor de más de una docena de libros entre los que se incluye: Greatest Hits (2010), Hurricane (2010), Vegetable Love (2009), Vermillion (2006), así como de ensayos e innumerables poemas en revistas de poesía en Estados Unidos, Europa y América Latina.
Cada poema está planeado como un mapa para salir del envase cerrado de nuestro sistema solar y escapar hacia posibles multiuniversos. El poeta escribe en la primera página que este libro lo empezó a escribir en septiembre 11 del 2001, el poeta huye de todo sentimentalismo y construye un mundo poético lleno de amistades literarias: Yehuda Amichai, Bob Dylan, Paco de Lucía, Baudelaire, Sting, Bonnefoy y García Lorca. Sobre Blake dice: “Blake creía que los pensamientos / eran orgánicos, / tenían sabor, / como ciruelas exprimidas / en la locura / y la desesperación”. En el poema “Return to Teaching”, habla de su profesión como maestro de escritura creativa en Towson University.
Hay cierta paz que se trasmite en el libro de Alan Britt, una tranquilidad de copa de vino (“El poeta ve materia negra al fondo de su copa de vino”), tal vez un estado de reflexión interior que se sobreviene después de un trauma nacional como el ataque a las torres gemelas. Traduzco también el poema que lleva como título la fecha fatídica que marcó el accidentado inicio del nuevo siglo.
Regreso a la enseñanza
¡Hoy tuve la oportunidad
de escribir el nombre
de Federico García Lorca
en un pizarrón verde!
¿Es la prueba de mi locura
el polvo de las alas trémulas
de una polilla de luna
en las yemas de mis dedos?
De todos modos,
¡Hoy tuve la oportunidad
de escribir el nombre
de Federico García Lorca
en un pizarrón verde!
Return to Teaching
Today I got to write
Federico García Lorca’s name
on a green chalkboard!
So, the proof of my madness
is the dust on my fingertips
from a luna moth’s struggling wings?
Anyway, today, I got to write
Federico García Lorca’s name
on a green chalkboard!
11 de septiembre, 2001
(El diámetro de la bomba fue de treinta centímetros)
Yehuda Amichai
La pregunta es,
la bomba fue del tamaño
de un tanque de gas
que cuelga del asador;
entonces, ¿qué tan grande es el duelo
que gradualmente asciende
la oscuridad soñolienta
de una noche inocente?
Ondulaciones de duelo
tubo de escape de lágrimas
de aceite refinado
chocando
con ondas de sangre
de Jerusalén, Algeria, Sudán,
Kosovo, Irlanda del norte, Bogotá,
y, hoy, la isla de Manhattan,
ese paisaje lozano
alguna vez el sueño de esperanza muscular de Whitman,
ahora la pesadilla tóxica de García Lorca.
Entonces, la pregunta permanece,
la bomba fue la mitad del tamaño
de un tanque de gas
que cuelga de tu asador rojo,
así, conlleva a una simple pregunta:
¿qué tan vasto es el duelo
que gradualmente asciende la aletargada
oscuridad de una noche inocente?
September 11, 2001
(The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters)
--Yehuda Amichai
The question is,
the bomb was half the size
of the propane tank
hanging from your barbeque grill;
so, how vast is the mourning
that gradually ascends the sleepy darkness
of an innocent night?
Ripples of grief,
tailpipe tears
of refined oil
colliding
with bloody ripples
from Jerusalem, Algiers, the Sudan,
Kosovo, Northern Ireland, Bogotá
and, today, Manhattan Island, that lusty landscape,
once Walt Whitman’s muscular dream of hope,
now García Lorca’s toxic nightmare.
So, the question remains,
the bomb was half the size
of the propane tank
hanging from your red barbeque grill.
thus, leading to one simple question:
Just how vast is the mourning
that gradually ascends the sleepy darkness
of an innocent night?
In August 2015 Alan Britt was invited by the Ecuadorian House of Culture Benjamín Carrión in Quito, Ecuador as part of a cultural exchange of poets between Ecuador and the United States. During his visit, he participated in the international literary conference sponsored by La hermandad de las palabras 2015 in Babahoyo, Ecuador. He served as judge for the 2013 The Bitter Oleander Press Library of Poetry Book Award. He read poetry and presented the “Modern Trends in U.S. Poetry” at the VII International Writers’ Festival in Val-David, Canada, May 2013. He read poetry for the 6×3 Exhibition at the Jadite Gallery in Hell’s Kitchen/Manhattan in December 2014. Also, sponsored by LaRuche Arts Contemporary Consortium (LRACC) he read poetry at the Union City Museum of Art/William V. Musto Cultural Center in Union City, NJ in May, 2014. His interview at The Library of Congress for The Poet and the Poem aired on Pacifica Radio, January 2013. A new interview for Lake City Lights is available at http://lakecitypoets.com/AlanBritt.html. His latest books include Lost Among the Hours: 2015, Parabola Dreams (with Silvia Scheibli): 2013 and Alone with the Terrible Universe: 2011. He teaches English/Creative Writing at Towson University.
WHO CAME FIRST: MOTHER OR THE EGG?
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http://levurelitteraire.com/alan-britt-211/
I.
Granite pigeon itches outer layer of folliculitis,
itches outer layer of a 1950’s Norfolk, Virginia placenta,
itches the only scratchy, snowy, black & white TV channel
featuring boxing as only a 1950’s scratchy black & white Magnavox
serving it up chased by a 12-ounce plastic accordion cup
of 10% tropical juice heavily spiked with vodka could.
II.
Half a century hence
memes tease my organically shampooed hair,
microscopic aliens
barely alive this side of quantum physics.
III.
She wonders: Is it too high a price
to ask the boys to risk their lives
for another nanometer of mud?
She adds: How does nonsense
advance humanity?
IV.
Turns out nonsense doesn’t budge humanity
one bullshit inch!
Not one indecipherable inch.
Oh, well, like African civets
spending semi-cool Thursday evenings
on acacia branches too thin
for academic leopards
out roaming the underbrush,
hunting for mates in estrous
or conversely on lookout
for an easy meal,
he rides the thermals
of imagination:
vapors of solitude.
21st CENTURY
Glass inflammatory, vegan hospice
high upon the hill,
leather elixir:
leather exhales its 50-or-so years
of primordial hardship;
green verbs sniff dark matter in estrous;
punctuation marks
like mustaches
litter flagpoles
above the nearest World Trade Center.
The harbor relaxes in August MTA fumes,
and tourist buses
line up like perfect Marines
to swarm the darkest depths
of the National Aquarium.
The aberrant groan of a radio antenna
on a powder blue and white ‘56 Chevy,
as if…as if the aberrant groan of guavas,
or something akin to Medieval monks
ringing dinner bells,
waving them emphatically
in hopes that the Lord
would ravage them once in a while,
would implant a quicksilver arrow
deep, deep, deep into their holy sex
as common as vermin
raiding their metaphysical barns,
raiding their faith in the Holy Ghost,
raiding pharmacies stocked with 20 million
opaque plastic tubes
with impossibly opaque plastic snap-on lids
like sacred candles igniting the dust settled
peacefully, democratically,
holistically, indefatigably,
irresistibly, low, impatiently,
closer, inching closer
like a star-nosed mole
blind as a bat,
as in bats held in highest esteem
in the belfry,
harmlessly and pantheistically,
thus preserving the terrestrial fortunes
of dictators in all their guises:
MD’s, senators, CEO’s, presidents
and their kin, popes and tribal misfits
on the verge of holocausts,
drunken asteroids flinging themselves,
hurtling themselves like bloody homemade Roman nails
through the wrists of those
whoever had a peaceful thought
about how the earth should behave
if only the earth could behave,
if only the earth, this singular,
lava-spewing rattlesnake of a planet,
if only bison hooves resembling
the fife and the drum,
if only goldfinches, silver, reptilian oysters,
and aquamarine mantis eyes
could awaken us from our self-imposed nightmare!
A simple poet with a spoon
once approached the aging moon,
gouged the eyes of crocodiles,
slapped the bottoms of baboons…
if only wool, alpaca, Icelandic
or otherwise, sulfur as it dissolves
between the hips of primordial lovers,
if only………………if only,
if only………………if only,
if only.
DANCE BY THE BEACHSIDE
At a dance by the beachside,
Lake Worth, I believe,
thatched roof sheltering
teenaged hormones,
I danced vicariously,
as I recall,
oblivious
to the lethal effects
of my tropical cologne.
I soon learned, though,
that crossing railroad tracks
at suicidal speeds
in my silver ’57 Chevy
wouldn’t carry me
across the galaxy, hopelessly
entangled as I was
in the bare shoulders
of another boring History class.
FRIENDS
You say you want to be friends,
but I’m this huge monster
and I’m scared to death of you.
How can I be friends with you?
You creep me out in ways
I can’t explain;
otherwise,
I shouldn’t panic
at the sight of you.
But I’m terrified
of you,
out the corner of my eye,
tickling my ankle,
driving me to habits
I’m not proud of.
I don’t know if we’ll ever
erase this terror etched
like hieroglyphs
into the sooty tunnels
of our DNA.
And, besides, it just
wouldn’t be the same
without you,
without your melancholic,
omniscient stare
haunting my every move.
OLD CROWS
Above the ringing black telephone
startling two wrinkled bloodhound ears
the lanky farm girl
tossed hay across her Indiana barn.
I fell in love
with bales of hay
that day,
their dirty blond shadows
dripping from the eaves,
thin shoulders
fully empowered,
waiting for the old crows
to return.
ODE TO MISS FRANCIS
I figure I’m about three years old
watching Miss What’s-Her-Face
on Ding-Dong School in Logansport
while hammering yellow dowels
into geometric holes because
I really want Miss What’s-Her-Face
to baptize me while Mother’s busy
negotiating the next 12 years or so
of our hectic lives.
After countless battered dowels
scratchy TV credits begin to roll
just as I secure vapor lock
on my first yellow dowel!
Bless me now, oh, black and white matron!
Jesus, I feel like I’m three, today,
watching Miss prematurely grey
What’s-Her-Face on Ding Dong School.
ODE TO THE NAPA RIVER
The Napa River . . . terrific place
for miners skimming gold.
Gold gushed from this forgotten river.
Freight trains rattled the Napa’s arteries,
and life was dazzling,
such as it was.
No matter now.
Today the Napa coyly unravels her silk serape,
then ripples the backs of her merlot fingernails
across the chardonnay harp of your pubis.
The Napa River,
well, now, that
beats rooster gumbo.
Don’t you think?
WALLS
Slate and gneiss,
slate and granite,
hornblende and quartz,
stacked and wedged,
woven into a gentle chaos
of elephant knuckles
where lichen etches
whitegreen kisses.
Walls spotted like salamanders,
ringed in jaguar smoke,
speckled like freshwater trout,
frozen yet dreaming,
forever dreaming
of winter, spring, summer and fall.
Westchester walls,
of slate and gneiss,
slate and granite,
hornblende and quartz,
stacked and wedged,
woven into a gentle chaos
of elephant knuckles
where lichen etches
whitegreen kisses.
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