The rain hit Madrid with rage and the retirement trembled under the weight of a leading sky. Inside, in the Ibero -American Forum of the 84th Book Fair, another kind of cataclysm took place: the celebration of the 50 years of infrarealism, the poetic movement that was born in Mexico to fly the branch of the brains to the official culture, of which just 50 years old and of which its first official celebration was organized yesterday.
One Roberto Bolaño created the group, always with Mario Santiago next. There were few. They were young, poor, radical, crazy poets, which rejected the forms of the canon (which in that Mexico took the form of Octavio Paz, by Carlos Fuentes) and turned into a visceral, street writing, deeply free. “We did not arise from universities, but from the streets, from the bars, of the walks, from the tremor of a living city,” he recalled, just arrived from Paris, Jorge Hernández or, as Bolaño immortalized him in Wild detectivesDivine skin. “We wanted to give another word to poetry. A word of the throbbing, of the people who sell newspapers, who have no place in academic poetry. We wanted to give the antipalabra,” he whispered, with his cadence as a bolero.
“Los infras They did not aspire to form school or canon, each searched for their side. There was no guideline: the Pope was not Bolaño. We never wanted to integrate the cultural institution, ”said divine skin, flanked by another detective, the Chilean Bruno Montané.“ It was a unique way of living poetry. In the glorious seventies Mario lived almost as a vagabond, totally dedicated to the function of language: he read even in the shower. And Bolaño complained because the books were his, of course. You could not separate our lives from poetry, ”said Montané. Some of those rabid poets came to Barcelona (Bolaño, Montané himself), others went to the United States, to Paris. His wake was lost, disintegrating, although the ax they left in literature was great. Montané, overseas editor, just published in Spain Dogs inhabited by desert voicesa compilation of the infrarealists who should not go unnoticed. Montané – high, with sharp memory – also recalled the clandestine start of the movement, which was born in his house, a dark room without windows.
The tribute at the Book Fair, entitled The party we owe themIt was more than a commemorative act. It was a reunion of voices, memories and absences. Capited by Iván Vergara, Mexican poet based in Spain and creator already 20 years ago (platform of Chilango Andaluces artists) and by the researcher Sofía Sánchez, author of a thesis on the movement, remembered the handful of poets that were part of the movement: in addition to Bolaño, Santiago and the Hernández and Montané them Ramón Méndez Estrada, José Rosas Ribeyro, Claudia Kerik, few more. The infrarealists never imagined that the movement would leave a mark. “We helped each other, we corrected, we lived a poetic immersion. We stole verses … but it only worth if we improved them,” Montané recalled with a smile. The group never worked as a structured collective: there were no hierarchies, just hunger for poetry, life and real.
The afternoon derived at night and the night in Tequilas, how could it be otherwise. Before, under the torrential rain that Madrid covered, the tribute ended with the reading of a poem by Mario Santiago: September 19, 1985. He says: “I crossed the debris. We are supposed to talk about it but, although he does not pretend, he could speak perfectly about infrarealism: the true earthquake was them.