JOSÉ WATANABE (1946-2007) 
One of his books on Romanticism, MH Abrams wrote that sometimes "the poet, facing the world, sees what has not been able to see, or do not see what you saw a time, or see what was before a new way, "and from this see entrenched provision can be read much contemporary poetry as poetry, even romantic , ie a willingness to re-amazed at the world and its radiation by a conscious power of language. And yet, this look which becomes the poem, stems from a renovated surprise: the admiration intimate to the fact that things are . It's simple: at the fact that something minimal and vulgar, however distant or perceived, can lead to an accurate view (or manipulating) a rise of reality a poem. This revelation is in the very existence (invisible passage of time), and from this view at least, from this essential poverty, will be built poetic tissue. Or in the words of RW Emerson: "The flour in the barrel, milk bucket, the ballad of the street, the news of the ship, the look of the eye, form and the gait of the body. Show me the ultimate reason for these things. " The vibration thus comes to us.
It is this last reason the moving patterns of the poetry of Peruvian José Watanabe, whose example, in our culture, so I care about. It is this intimate revelation of things which aims to show the world in books like winged stone. stone image, as a memorial stone, place stone as the stone as text, stone such as privacy, are some of the possible readings of this, no doubt revealing text. And it is revealing for several reasons: its poetic technique, by its desire browser, interrogative dimension, for their constant need for movement, etc. And all this based on the imaginative poverty would seem to indicate, in principle, a simple stone.
The poem that opens the book "Stone River" attests to this idea. So it begins: "Where the river haven for boys / rose a stone. / Do not you see him any other way: it was only rock, big and bland. " In just four lines, in an exemplary poetic density formula, and put us all at once, almost without realizing it, by the side of all possible epic pace animist from a latent sensuality. That on the one hand, but on the other, pointed out in this masterful start, he will rank as mere point observer. That is, observer between two realities: nature as it is "big and bland" and inert nature at the heart meditative and poetic. Part of the minimum to go to the poetic revelation. But in the same poem-gate continues: "When we were leaving the water cloudy / climbed into it like lizards. It happened so / something odd: / dried mud on our skin / our whole body closer to the landscape. " Skin, body and landscape are identified for a moment. We have been trapped since that initial stone reaching the radical strangeness of being-with-the-stone. Through a simple image "lizard" has thrown us at once to another stretch beyond the stone: the land of the living and therefore mutable. It accomplishes this is an activation of the stone as poetic axis (live) by existential movement of the gaze. A few lines below gives us the key, the stone "was the back of a great mother." The stone itself as an element that beyond being "big and bland" the beginning, becomes poetic heart of the action, but especially imaginative action. And there comes into play, cutting out all possibility transcendental root inside the poem, the poet (and lament) that was previously external point of observation: "Oh poet, / again the temptation / a useless metaphor." Repentance? It is not the first time, as we are aware of the tone of that "again." It seems obvious fall conscious in the classic romantic irony comes into play here as a kind of slap on the wrist, in their need to get your feet on the ground, but equally (or perhaps because of it) released tireless in search of imaginative reinventions. It is a temptation he says. Maybe fit remember that romantic irony , mainly in the hands of Schlegel, is a poetic device, in the broad sense of the word, by which the poet keeps his work in a perpetual becoming, becoming inexhaustible in its meanings, thus remaining the author and his art object in a constant improvement of the limitations, in a kind confusion, as we mentioned before. In Watanabe's stone sign of what was initially closed, the only-there , grows in the poetic game reaching this model of continuous improvement, weaving from a willful material shortages network of meanings. The poet seems destined (by almost heroic sense), and from this principle, to stay in the kingdom of their imaginative poverty, to rescue from the space of possibilities that must be born of poetic creation. After that interrupted the poet metaphorically temptation continues its image. "The stone / was stone / and this is enough. There was a mother. And I know now / takes responsibility: we save / the impenetrable privacy. / / My mother, however, is dead / and is neglected by us. " Finally the poem extends its network, surprisingly, from the stone to the facticity of death, through the enigmatic impenetrable privacy where it is stored and the poetic vision of death. There is a strong vibration in their use of words. A death which in turn implies a consciousness of guilt (see the same book "The stone of my brother"). The stone and mother remain in consciousness and matter, as the backbone of a kind of renewed orphans, what echoes the poetic word (flying). But the orphanage is also jugosamente fictitious, while beating constantly imaginative mechanism. The stone and the mother, matter and spirit are the altars (in a strategic sense) where the poetic as a dialectic conflict reaches its mission: to give life to the real thing, shake that exists. And if taking a huge leap we go to the last of the poems in his book winged stone , check, perhaps cheating poetic goal, their play of meanings. Under a title overflowing, probate, "I said," he says, "How rich is ir / of pure thoughts to a pornographic movie / and laugh / del santo flying and the meat sweats. / / How nice to be with you, poetry / light / on the leg of a tired woman. " The rock may winged appears, among other things, ironic gesture (I believe) that lets you laugh as he says, the Holy flying. are evident and the limits of his poetry and also the spaces of romantic irony. It is precisely this poetic comparable to a text of American poet Wallace Stevens, whom we have already referred, where from a unique vision explains his sense of what has to be this romantic. He writes: "The romantic poet today is someone who lives in a tower ivory ", but this tower is" a remarkable view to landfills and neon signs of the Salsas Snider, of Ivory Soap and Chevrolet cars, is a hermit who lives alone, accompanied by the sun and stars, but claims that serve the infectious period. " Identical movement is what remains, I think, in the poetic reasons Watanabe. Imagination and reality are able sedimentary des mere linking of meanings for re reconnect to an efficient reality mixed. The stone stands to other places. The saint who flies and meat sweats. Without doubt it reaches Watanabe, taking Heidegger's words, is that the images are poematic "images in a way explained: not mere fantasies and illusions but imaginations as strange inclusions visible in the face of the trust." Or in the words of Simone Weil "going from the uncreated created."
But there is something still to say. The stone is winged. When you come across this term is perhaps most striking character embedded in the language field of the immobile and stone, and yet therein lies its appeal. Winged it tends to move, life, action, what is the need for lift winged or decrease, sometimes speed, transit and migration, is also a symbol of the highest and sublime, noble. The stone on the other hand, as we mentioned, delineates the immobile, the elemental forces, the amorphous, it stopped, that merely subjected to the vagaries of nature. The stone is inert, yes, and yet from it (perhaps as a drag on the text of the passage of time) is possible, as intended Watanabe, build a border reflection on death and its footprint, memory and identity, their registration word. The fossilized stone and records the fleeting passage of life on earth. In this respect I believe winged stone is the best synonymous with poetic . I dare say that identity is constructed Watanabe to blow this precious stone. And even more tangled skein, we recall that according to Heidegger it all works of art, and therefore, every poem responds to conflict-ground world, and the sharper the conflict, more real work. So with the word "world" Heidegger is referring to what makes man (artist / poet) in the creation, while the word "earth" points to what makes matter same with which the artist works. The stone-winged would suggest a poetic movement (essentialist) of these characteristics. Interestingly Heidegger said "no stone world [...] but as part of blurred rush of an environment that has its place." That is, the stone as such is this land, pure art, devoid of temporal existence, and yet end up being part of that environment of the world the poet, which is being place. The stone will be part of the existential world that the poet based on the word.
winged stone and appear as axes, but beyond that, much more, we find multiple record winged it: from Greek mythology to the new technologies. Instead, I focus on one particular precedent as a paradigm from which to reflect and build the updated view of the poetic: the precedent that I want to stress (related) we find in the Phaedrus platonic. The winged branches, is recreated. Watanabe Will personification of true poetic Platonism? That may be exaggerated. Perhaps it is your investment? Here we begin.
Read Plato: "All that is soul relates to the inanimate and covers the entire sky, sometimes taking a form and sometimes another. If it is perfect and winged crosses the stage, and governs the whole Cosmos. But that has lost its wings drifts until it clings to something solid where it settles and is done with earthly body which appears to move to another mime under the force of it. [...] The power of the wing is lifting the heavy, carrying it upward, where dwells the race of the gods. " And yet, in the same context, Plato questions, how is that sometimes you lose the wings, how is that they tend to fall into the material? The answer is blunt: "because the horse [Platonic symbol of the noble and high] interspersed with evil gravitates and pulled to the ground, forcing the charioteer who has not carefully tamed. There is the soul with his tough and exhausting test. Well what are called immortal, when they reached the top, he went out, stand on the back of heaven, and the rise is the circular movement has in its orbit, and contemplate what the other side of heaven. "
Plato is evident in a concern for the soul, for his existence and his ways. There is a soul that crosses the stage, it was not 'touch' the land, which crosses heights and governs the whole Cosmos . That is the Platonic soul, who lives and re-known. Yet, late in the same text the presence of another sense: it winged its descent. That is, what has lost its wings and drifts. addition, the immortal soul of the great charioteer, who reaches the top, will be the extent to contemplate what is across the sky. The other will be trapped in the purely material, sensitive stone. This approach seems obvious Platonic in its treatment of the two realities, or the words of Rosset: the real and its double. Then, returning to the poetic, what has happened?
This is the question asked just as the aforementioned Wallace Stevens in 1942 in a text like Noble Rider and the sound of the words . There before the Platonic riddle of winged souls, trucks, horses and charioteers said: "It was so unreal to Plato as it is for us, but he could surrender, was free to indulge in this magnificent nonsense. We can not surrender. We do not have freedom for that delivery. [...] Trying to figure out what that stands between the figure of Plato and us, we must accept the idea that, however legendary enough, the idea has had its vicissitudes. " Stevens vicissitudes means a reduced sense of the imagination, for attachment to reality. Plato, in ancient times, the ability to give themselves totally imagistic allowed to avatars of a text. Thus, "the result is that we" continues Stevens - recognize, but we still understand the feelings that the mighty poet perceives clearly and fluently in their mental images and, thanks to his fortitude, conveys to us clarity and fluency much more than the same images. However, we do not deliver at all. We can not. We do not feel that freedom. "
Is this evolutionary idea, or better, this investment Platonism what beats Watanabe? For a glimpse-not resolve this issue, we will in the poem that just gives the book its title "The winged stone," whose last line, I developed a way to take that prevented imagination and attachment to real Stevens alluded to the reinvention of the winged platonic. Watanabe says, "broke do not understand / we can imagine a bird, the most beautiful, / but not make it fly." While in Plato's imagination activated the mechanism founding poetic reality, Watanabe remains on the fence of the purely poetic (Not pure poetry) as meditative and imaginative action. Imagination remains impaired as vital action, but not as poetic action. Imagination, compared to the fantasy that involves a full sense of escape from reality , involves the implementation of the sense of the manner in reality. We could say that the poetic word based a reality precisely because it is a word not only imaginative and fantastic. In this sense, the reality is magnified by the imagination. thus creates a new space, says a new imagination. But better read the complete poem
Pelican, wounded, he left the sea
and came to die
on this short stone desert.
sought,
for a few days, a dignity
to its final position:
ended up as the beautiful frozen movement
of a dance.
His flesh still agonizing
began to be devoured by vermin neat, and
bones
mild white
slid and scattered in the sand.
Strangely
on the back of the stone remained one of its wings,
their gelatinous tendons dried
and adhered
the stone
like a body.
For several days
the sea wind
unnecessarily wing beat, beat without understanding
we can imagine a bird, the most beautiful,
but not make it fly.
winged What is tattooed on the stone, dignity, and to some extent their privacy, their history. Stone and imagination are the places where that life is recorded. Poet and earth (not the charioteer and the sky) are the riddles that hide the secret of the visible, of life. Therein lies the new meaning of the winged, as imaginative mechanism, not as a sign of moral elevation, transcendent, not as an immortal soul search. He seeks Watanabe, in this way opened by the Romantics before pointed out, is where the time (in flight) to attest to their existence. That is the other side of heaven is a concern, but trace their and memory here. In Plato the highest to be found with the highest-soul and immortality. In this case the winged shows the trace of that which will not be recorded beyond the word, imagination and a stone. Poetry offers and fossil record of everything visible. Watanabe is creating a new poetic soul connection where it enters the stone and winged imagination and reality. Are we looking for the poems of the earth?, As Wallace Stevens said.
