Carmen Boullosa and love through the centuries
Among her poems, “The embrace of the earth”: Embrace of the earth, certainty of what the mountain says, secret made voice, silence is your cuneiform breath, the calligraphy of the gods is your smell and your body thirsty for love. Alma Guillermoprieto, Roberto Bolaño and Elena Poniatowska are among the writers who appreciated the way of writing of the Mexican writer, poet and playwright Carmen Boullosa, born in 1954 in Mexico City. Her academic career includes teaching at Georgetown, Columbia, and New York University, as well as the City College of New York. Within a Latin American context her work focuses on issues of feminism and gender roles.
This writer has published eighteen novels, including, in 1991, Son vacas, somos puercos https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1936358, praised for its originality and ability to evoke the atmosphere of 17th century pirate life, tells the story of a young Flemish slave who is taken to Tortuga, the pirate island, where he is initiated into the magic of medicine by an African healer. After the death of a French surgeon who buys him out of slavery, the Flemish joins the brethren of the coast as their official doctor. Over the course of the novel, the former slave transforms into a pirate, becoming both doctor and plunderer, servant and mercenary, a native and a stranger, suspended between two worlds – those of the pigs who roam freely and plunder, and those of dutiful cows of the law and linked to tradition.
She loves telling stories, but not the way anyone else tells them. For her there are people who die, but also others who simply run out of fuel. Reflect on this phrase from the writer, you will discover everything you need to know about love: “I was an angel of the desert. In your arms I broke my wings”. Carmen Boullosa is also known for a collection of parodies in theatrical format, Teatro herético https://www.amazon.co.uk/Teatro-heretico-Coleccion-Difusion-cultural/dp/9688630683 where she tells the story of a man called by God to deflower eleven thousand virgins in his lifetime, so that the problem of the overpopulation of heaven could be addressed, since women will have to wait for a certain period in purgatory. The man then uses his sexual encounters as material for his television commercials and becomes a successful advertising agent. Within the three parodies, you also find the story of two young girls who overnight become adult witches and fly across the earth, tempting but not satisfying men. Finally, the third work satirically recounts the conversation between Joseph and Mary.
We want to offer you, “The empty memory”, a second poem by Carmen Boullosa: I try to darken the land of exile, my land, with my shadow, hide from the empty memory. I have no origin. I form an unapproachable wall with my sisters. We blind ourselves to the earth that lengthens the day of bright joy, to its bright eyes where the juicy and sweet plums sprout, the warm and fleeting animals; to the days of translucent walls, fences and open fields possessed by the secret that the seeds whispered when they opened. I have reached the end of my shadow: the day has opened its thighs and surrenders to the insatiable joy of men. In the midst of this roar, at the beating of the crazy wings of the wind on the plain, of the dazzling whistle with which the river woos the placid clouds, men stretch their loving bodies on the torso of the day, they make the morning to the rhythm of their bodies. And the United States, made of a material that resists the courtship of time, tempered in a steadfast silence, we seek to remain even if we have no home, even if we are deprived of other people’s waters. Let us intertwine our lips with our lips: this is the word of the three of us: our word. I hear a crackling in the fire: the women’s breasts fall from desire like ripe fruit. Woman’s breasts: freshly baked bread.
The best writer in Mexico, Roberto Bolaño wrote about her. Prolific author Carmen Boullosa https://www.escritores.org/biografias/8393-boullosa-carmen, who has written dozens of books, essays and dissertations on her work, has been praised by critics on several continents. Elena Poniatowska says about her that Carmen is playful and mischievous. For Alma Guillermoprieto, however, Boullosa has an extraordinary command of language. Between the end of the Seventies and the beginning of the Eighties, he published poems, collaborated with artists and wrote for the theatre. In the first phase of his narrative work he decided to address the theme of childhood. Later he dealt with historical themes such as the conquest of America and Mexico in particular. His latest lyrics, however, abandon violent scenes and have a greater inclination towards international themes.
Since 2001, to bring to the present the memory of the writers who wrote in Spanish in New York, in this city you have participated in readings and teachings connected to the cultures of Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula. In the exhibition produced by the New York Historical Society, she offered her contribution to exploring the relationship between this city and the Spanish-speaking universe. You have also published books that study some aspects of the United States-Mexico relationship. Among Carmen Boullosa‘s most recent publications, the book of poems Todos los amores https://openlibrary.org/books/OL18202400M/Todos_los_amores, an anthology that takes the reader from ancient Egypt to modern times. This book collects love poems from all over the world, from Shakespeare to Quevedo, from Dario to Cummings. By reading it, you too will appreciate the variety of content, eras and geographical settings of the poems.
To greet Carmen Boulloso, we cannot fail to remind you of this third poem of hers, Be the slave who has lost his body: The fire, more fire, the fire next to the fire, on the ground, climbing on the chairs, crossing the windows, and behind him the fire, only the fire. Fire again. Do not you see it? They don’t see it! It’s fire. To them I look like a sitting woman. I want to get dressed. The underwear I was wearing opened his fabrics, the heat defeated them, the blouse opened his fabrics, defeated him too, the skirt gave way to his threads, burning, he let them fall. I want to get dressed. Fire. I have nothing but fire: I am the naked one, the one who has no charm. I want to get dressed. I burn my clothes. Even a thousand hairs are defeated by the heat, my eyelashes, my eyes; even my saliva, one day intact, awaits you surrendered, defeated, humiliated, bent, kneeling, wounded like vapor, like isolated vapor, drowned in your waiting. I want to get dressed. There is no animal I can compare myself to. Naked I am like the goose or the lily. There is no plant I can compare myself to. I am burned, burned, impatient, infinitely. Let the donkeys help me! May pigs or herons, nightingales or sugarcanes come to my aid! Nothing can help me! I am defeated because of you, because of you I have been abandoned by myself!
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