ROWAN RICARDO PHILLIPS [18.093] Poeta de Estados Unidos

Rowan Ricardo Phillips

Fecha de nacimiento: 1974, Nueva York, Nueva York, Estados Unidos

Educación: Universidad Brown (2003)

Premios: Beca Guggenheim en Artes Creativas, Estados Unidos y Canadá

Nominaciones: NAACP Image Award a la Mejor Obra Literaria – Poesía

Poeta, ensayista y traductor. Su libro The Ground ganó el Premio de Poesía Nuevos Escritores de la GLCA. Entre otros libros de su autoría están When Blackness Rhymes with Blackness y una traducción del catalán de Ariadne in the Grotesque Labyrinth de Salvador Espriu. Phillips ha enseñado en Harvard y Columbia y actualmente es Profesor Asociado de Inglés en la Universidad Stony Brook, donde dirige el Centro de Poesía. Ha ganado el 2013 PEN Joyce Osterweil Award de poesía. 

 traducción de Ezequiel Zaidenwerg

A UN VIEJO AMIGO EN PARÍS

Yo nunca vi al fantasma de tu madre.

Pero vi tus poemas acerca del fantasma

de tu madre, rozándote al pasar

a la vera del Sena, y lo vi en Linda Gregerson,

o en las acciones invisibles que alientan esos poemas

sobre el fantasma de tu madre, aquel escalofrío

al escribir, que se marchita y se transforma en algo

dúctil, y las palabras para hablar del tiempo

se tiñen de repente de lavanda y sal, y los cortes de verso

ásperos se apaciguan, el poema se abre

como una oreja que se apoya sobre

la fría puerta de una caja fuerte, hasta oír el chasquido.

Aun cuando es de día en una cueva oscura, la oscuridad persiste.

Y así, la única forma de encontrar una certeza

es entornar los ojos y tantear.

LUCAS Y MARK

Estoy sentado, apretujado, entre dos obras de Chuck Close:

“Lucas” sin luces, hecho con unos puntos gruesos

que se recortan sobre un fondo de colores oscuros,

su pelo desprolijo, su barba desprolija, su mirada desprolija

que se proyecta más allá del banco que hay entre él y “Mark”.

Nunca se ha visto a nadie en el Met más deseoso

de estar allí que “Mark”. Cada uno de sus poros

y cada raspadura que se hizo al afeitarse cobran vida.

Su sonrisa de dientes de conejo, sus hombros y su cuello

fuera de foco tienen en común

el chiste recurrente de mostrarnos las cosas como son.

Al igual que a Buscemi, es imposible mirarlo y no quererlo.

Sus anteojos de plástico barato reflejan unas luces

que él solo puede ver. En grupitos de dos

o tres, la gente posa con la cabeza colosal

de Mark: las chicas italianas de piel anaranjada

con sus vestidos caros de campesinas

hacen el signo de la paz y luego

le tiran besos. Mientras tanto, Lucas,

solito en su rincón, donde a lo lejos

es real, no el manojo enloquecido

de píxeles que muestra ser de cerca, baja los ojos

hacia mí, como si percibiera que lo estoy mirando,

con la esperanza de que me dé cuenta

de que es un hombre de verdad.

EL PRIMUM MOBILE

Oh tierra de un solo árbol, tierra de un Oh rotundo,

que filtra los afectos fugitivos en el fuego primigenio,

mientras que yo, el poeta Rowan, laureado de cenizas

y nidos de aves fénix, no llego a conocerte.

Little Song

Both guitars run trebly. One noodles

Over a groove. The other slushes chords.

Then they switch. It’s quite an earnest affair.

They close my eyes. I close their eyes. A horn

Blares its inner air to brass. A girl shakes

Her ass. Some dude does the same. The music’s

Gone moot. Who doesn’t love it when the bass

Doesn’t hide? When you can feel the trumpet peel

Old oil and spit from deep down the empty

Pit of a note or none or few? So don’t

Give up on it yet: the scenario.

You know that it’s just as tired of you

As you are of it. Still, there’s much more to it

Than that. It does not not get you quite wrong.

The Beatitudes of Malibu

I

Walking across the PCH, we looked

Up and saw, big as the butt of a pen,

Jupiter, fat with light and unheighted.

I looked back at the waiting traffic stalled

At the seaside road’s salt-rimmed traffic lights

As they swayed to the Pacific’s not-quite-

Anapestic song of sea and air — 

The raw and sudden crick of crickets — 

The cars, suddenly silent as cows — 

And blue Malibu blackening like a bee.

II

A poem is a view of the Pacific

And the Pacific, and the Pacific

Taking in its view of the Pacific,

And the Pacific as the Pacific

(Just like that: as though there’s no Pacific)

Ends. A poem is the palm of the ocean,

Closing. It or she or he is merely,

Which means it or she or he is a mar.

But a mar made up of  temperament and

Tempo — the red weather in the heart.

III

I’m about to get this all wrong, I know:

Santa Monica behind me, the ocean

To my left, Jupiter high above me,

And Malibu somewhere in my mind, flecked

With mist and dusk and Dylan and strange grays

In the sunsets that stripe the seaside hills

Like the tricolor of a country made

Of  beauty, the dream of beauty, and smog.

Sadly, in my mind it’s always snowing;

Which is beautiful but austere, unlike here.

IV

Along the thin pedestrian passage

Beside the PCH, just off Sunset,

Mel Gibson chants of beginnings and ends

And lies and facts — Jews and Blacks being

Both the lies and facts. His face is ruddy

Like bruschetta. He storms at the police

Because fuck them. He’s wearing his T-shirt

Like a toga. He schools them his toga

Wisdom from toga times. He offers them

His toga. They offer him a ride — .

V

Arun’s car carried us like metaphor

In a poem or painting; moving meaning;

Moving the current; being the current;

The terse tug of tides: still the great glamour;

Still, even as we speed on the 110,

The music in my head, the Jupiter

Of the mind’s unstemmed Pacific Ocean

As it unfurls in the vapor trail of

Malibu, fragrant in far-off fluorescents,

Like a nocturnal flower calling you.

VI

Then, Downtown LA and LA Live surged

Up, like marginalia on a newly

Turned page, spangled with bland suggestions,

Fiery accusations of its own

Brilliance that descend into indifference.

We speed nearer and it grows. We veer and

It grows. We park and it grows. Close your eyes.

Now look. And it has grown. Yo la quiero.

But I should know better, if just because

You can smell the injustice in the air.

VII

The Pacific encircles me. Slowly.

As though it doesn’t trust me. Or, better

Said, I only understand it this way:

By feeling like a stranger at its blue

Door. The poet with the sea stuck in his

Enjambments can’t call out to some Cathay

As though some Cathay exists and be glad.

No, the differences we have should be felt

And made, through that feeling, an eclipsed lack;

A power to take in what you can’t take back.

VIII

The old hocus of this ocean’s focus

On pulling its waves over the soft surf

Like a skin pulled down tight over the top

Of a drum was, to her, a new hocus.

We stared out with her, out toward Hokusai’s

Tiny boats and rising lace-fringed sea swells

No chunk of haiku could think to charter.

It was like the eighth day of creation

In the eighth line of a poem — she sang,

She didn’t sing, the sea sang, then stopped.

.