My New Year's Eve visitor this year was a hard cold, so I've been welcoming January 2016 from the couch. I haven't been sick for quite a while, so the enforced slowdown has been an adjustment and - now that I'm feeling somewhat better - a not unwelcome one. I've been drawing and painting a little bit, and last night I read through a couple of Bach preludes and fugues, but mostly I'm drinking hot tea with some local miel urbain, a Christmas gift that was gathered from hives on the roofs of UQAM, and reading Roberto Bolaño's The Savage Detectives: set in Mexico City, and utterly brilliant.
I don't know how it's taken me this long to get to Bolaño... but there it is. J. read this novel first and loved it very much (this from someone who rarely reads novels at all) and I impatiently waited for him to hand over the library copy. Meanwhile I've been reading a bit of Bolaño's poetry, which I like enough to want the large collection, The Unknown University. This unpublished poem was found in one of his notebooks containing some of the poems for the book, published posthumously:
My Literary Career
Rejections from Anagrama, Grijalbo, Planeta, certainly also from Alfaguara,
Mondadori. A no from Muchnik, Seix Barral, Destino...All the publishers...All the readers
All the sales managers...
Under the bridge, while it rains, a golden opportunity
to take a look at myself:
like a snake in the North Pole, but writing
Writing poetry in the land of idiots.
Writing with my son on my knee.
Writing until night falls
with the thunder of a thousand demons.
The demons who will carry me to hell,
but writing.
(October 1990)
"... but writing."
This is quite a brilliant one. Thanks, Beth!
Happy New Year and get well soon!
MK xo
Posted by: Magda Kapa | January 04, 2016 at 03:43 PM
I read a good portion of The Savage Detectives, I might have even read all of it, but I'm worried that I can't remember how it ended. I thought "How strange. This describes with eerie fidelity, and better than anything I've read my experience coming of age in the midwest in the late 70s."
Posted by: bill | January 04, 2016 at 09:44 PM
Have never read Bolano. Will have to try him after that poem. Crummy about your cold, but the colors in your painting are a tonic on a very gray day here.
Posted by: mary | January 04, 2016 at 10:41 PM
If you've never been rejected,you are not trying hard enough.
Glad you are feeling better.
Posted by: Hattie | January 05, 2016 at 12:58 AM
Oh, what a wonderful blog post - Happy New Year, Beth, and feel better soon! I love the painting. And I love Bolano, but haven't read The Savage Detectives - and didn't even know he published poetry - wow!
Posted by: Jean | January 05, 2016 at 04:43 AM
that's a lovely painting!
Posted by: Sharyn | January 05, 2016 at 08:04 AM
Enjoy your tea and Bolaño, and be well soon. Nice loose brushwork--like it!
Posted by: Marly Youmans | January 05, 2016 at 10:35 AM
Okay then. Another one on the list.. .
love the energy of that painting. I hope you're feeling better soon.
Posted by: Frances/Materfamilias | January 06, 2016 at 07:53 PM
I like your painting and the Bolaño poem, both full of life, energy and truth. Eat/drink lemons, oranges, grapefruit, sunny citrus cold cure!
Posted by: Natalie | January 08, 2016 at 02:10 PM