A Gift from Mexico

A few weeks ago, I received an envelope from Mexico City: inside was a wonderful gift – the recent chapbook of poems, “The Body Aches”, by Ernesto Priego. I didn’t want to write about these poems until I had had time to really spend with them, but now that I have, I want not only to thank Ernesto for his gift but tell everyone who doesn’t already know his work what a sensitive and gifted poet and writer he is.

The chapbook contains some poems already posted on Ernesto’s blog, Never Neutral. It also contains his fascinating explorations of the hay(na)ku form, inspired by Richard Brautigan and Jack Kerouac and given contemporary expression by Eileen Tabios on her Hay(na)ku Blog:

…the hay(na)ku is a tercet where the first line consists of one word, the second line of two words, and the third line of three words:

Dogs
tongues loll.
Emphatic earth sponges.
--Oliver de la Paz

One of the best of Ernesto’s hay(na)kus is written for Eileen, and in it he pares language down to its bare bones with a repeated “I/thought I…” Here's an excerpt:

…

I

thought I:

subject becomes object

phrases

become sentences

poetry becomes destiny

…

There are also more conventional poems in free verse; my favorite is titled “Morning” and contains the kind of mournful, evocative images Ernesto’s readers have come to expect from his pen, as the poet, waking, imagines a former presence and time, and resists the moment of awareness when the reality of the day breaks into the suspension of reality that has been sleep. There is deep sadness, but also determination, and a loneliness that is so explored and examined that it becomes shared.

The last poem continues:

You will remember my face, though:

A blurry memory as deep as your own wounds,

Those dusty scars abandoned by the years,

A remembrance as forgotten as typewriters

And old journals on a wooden drawer.

Thank you, Ernesto.

Comments

[ernesto Priego]

Thank you, Beth.

[Marja-Leena]

Thanks Beth, for introducing Ernesto's lovely work to us.