POEM TONTOLOGY
Some time ago I read in the section Verses and songs of alwaysfrom the newspaper The world, from Medellín, some terrifying verses by a Mexican author that, despite their horror; And even though they were repulsive, I found them extremely funny.
This fact led me to remember that once while reading a Nadaísta poet (recently deceased), the strange idea of making an anthology of the worst poems of Colombian “poetry” occurred to me. This idea was somehow executed years later by the writer and journalist Daniel Samper Pizano under the title crooked verses, a selection of “the best worst poems of the Spanish language”; as the author said, who in turn declared that the book had been inspired by the work Puppets from the kingdom of Spain (1998), by the Spanish writer and journalist Alfonso Ussía, who is also a writer and journalist.
Both books are humorous in nature, and collect poems, both by excellent and renowned poets, and by anonymous and deplorable poetesses; Well, as Chesterton stated, “The worst book in the world could be formed from selected fragments of the best writers on the planet.”
And something like that was what Gerardo Diego did in 1928, when he published Nonsense, an anthology of the worst poems of the Generation of ’27, or as he called it, “a selection of bad poems by good poets.” Well, he thought that “it would have been easy to publish bad verses by bad poets. But that was not funny, at the same time that he considered it a moving edification to collect some of the many slips of poets capable of writing good verses.
In the prologue its author, the tontologist, as Gerardo Diego calls himself, wonders that if in normal anthologies the anthologists complain about their arduous and complex work, «what should the tontologist say? Considering that since nonsense always abounds more than beauty, he doesn’t know where to start.
There they have the suspicious honor of appearing poets of the stature of the Machado brothers, Juan Ramón Jiménez, Federico García Lorca, Jorge Guillén, Manuel Altolaguirre, Dámaso Alonso, Rafael Alberti and the foolologist himself, Gerardo Diego, who included his poem The epithalamium of the lanterns.
Pause: in order not to make this text too extensive, and overwhelm the “patient reader” (—Hypocritical reader, —my fellow man, —my brother! As the great Baudelaire apostrophized), I have refrained from citing at least a small sample of the mentioned anthologies. However, right now I want to make an exception with Silly songby the great Federico García Lorca, since it is ironic that this short “poem” has been set to music by Vicente Monera, and performed by Ana Belén and other singers:
Mother,
I want to be silver.
Son,
you will be very cold.
Mother.
I want to be water.
Son,
you will be very cold.
Mother.
Embroider me on your pillow.
Yes indeed!
Right now!
Impossible to know what the beautiful Federico would have said or thought about the song, how musical it was; but I can imagine that the inclusion of his poem in the Nonsense it would amuse him. Quite the opposite of Juan Ramón Jiménez, who saw in the publication of three of his poems a direct attack on him, ensuring that everything was due to a “campaign by Salinas and his friends.” […] to throw me down.”
Now I allow myself to reproduce the creepy, terrifying verses that motivated the writing of this text:
HALF YOU, HALF ME
(Mario Molina Montes, Mexican)
I want to see you playing
through the rooms and patios,
a meat doll,
half you half me,
that she wears in her hair
the color of your hair,
and in his eyes of heaven
the pious look
that God gave you.
I want to see in my house,
now, always, and for life,
a meat doll
half you half me,
that he carries in his little hands
the silk of your kisses,
and in his mouth the perfume
that your breast gave him.
I want to see that he loves me,
that looks for me, waits for me
I want to feel your hug
when you see me arrive,
I want to tell me things
and tell me lies,
I want you to comfort me
when you see me cry
I want to die later
knowing that you have left,
a meat doll,
half you half me,
that he carries in his little hands
the silk of your kisses
and in his eyes of heaven
the pious look
that God gave you.
To finish, I would like to extrapolate to poetry; That is, to poets, what is said about driving cars: “Whoever has never suffered an accident, it is because he has never driven”; that is: ‘whoever has not committed a bad verse, a bad poem; It’s because he’s never even tried.’ What’s more, I think that anyone who at some point has felt or considered themselves a poet would have plenty of material to contribute to any anthology of bad poems; especially if we take into account that cruel postulate that states that there are only two kinds of poetry (poems): good and bad.
And now, to finish, I want to quote those famous and memorable verses of former president José Manuel Marroquín. It is a poem that in my opinion overshadows his famous “Complete treatise on Spanish spelling” (Bogotá, 1858), and the infamous delivery of Panamanian territory to the United States of America in 1903, in exchange for a plate of lentils, as was well said at the time. A poem that our Nobel Prize winner liked to recite by heart.
Here is the poem:
SERENADE
Now that the thieves bitch,
now that the songs sing,
now that albando touches it,
the high ones ring bells,
and that the braying makes fun
and let the birds chirp,
and that the whistles calm
and that the grunts are filthy,
and that the pink dawn
the extensive golden fields,
pearling liquid pours
which I shed tears,
I, cold with shivering,
although he burns soul,
I come to sigh my spears
window of your underworld.
You, meanwhile, sleep peacefully
in your litter give,
ingrating you like this, mockery,
of the lovers of the one who longs for you.
Oh, look out for yourself!
Oh, open it a little,
and sigh the receipts
that this breast exhales lover!
Come, lay the listeners
in which my exhale becomes soul
and that a militia of music
me flute with his accompaniment.
In the darkness of stockings
of this dark morning,
come and see your shine
in order to distress my calms.
These your coffers are eyebrows
with which you shoot with arrows,
Cupid fights my iron
and before your prostrations I stand;
your stars are two leaves,
your roses are lips,
your pearls are like teeth,
your palm like a carving;
your swan is like a swan,
a throat your alabaster,
your lathes made by hand,
your reign like that of an anda.
And that’s why I love these women
to grate with your songs
and sigh my exhales
window of your underworld.
This is how Calixto sang
to Carmen’s windows,
of Carmen, who, disdainful,
He doesn’t even remember to forget him.
Superfluous note: The author did not include any of his many poems worthy of illustrating this exhibition because, although it may not be said, it has always been considered in bad taste for him to do so as an anthologist. Likewise, he does not include in it any of the poets that he personally knows, and who on their own merit should perfectly appear in it, since it would be inevitable that they would judge him as a rosquero and cronyist. However, you should know that in my mind and in my heart you will always be present, my dearest poet friends, my brothers.
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Other publications by this author in Proclama del Cauca y Valle:
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