— Una buscona. Look at her. It’s sickening. Machista. Did you see that? Did you hear that? Wasn’t it disgusting how she melts with Scorsese? But did you see how brazen she was to the other poet? Name a living female poet that she likes, forget likes, how about acknowledges. Name one.
— Dickinson and Sor Juana.
— Living, I said, writing today, herself excluded.
— Dale cuerda al mono para que baile.
— Tú crees que hay más de tres grandes poetas en una lengua en una centuria. A ver: Vallejo, Neruda, Darío, Lorca, Jiménez, Machado. Very few.
— It depends what you are looking for.
— I’m looking for the creators. If you want to accept los maestros, then you include: Huidobro, Cernuda, Alberti, Alexandre, Salinas, Guillén. Sí, son maestros, pero no creadores.
— Tú eres demasiado rígida.
— No, es que las puertas del Parnaso son muy estrechas. Alexandre puede ser mejor poeta que Lorca, pero no más grande. Lorca es común, pero es un creador. Many masters are better poets than the creators, but they are not greater. La grandeza no es mejor. A veces es peor. There are many singers with a better voice than María Callas. But she sang great. Y la grandeza no se puede definir. Porque está llena. Es como el sol. Algo lleno de luz y redondo. No le hace falta nada. Y te llena. Te deja llena. Te colma. Es algo que instaura. Y afirma su instauración. Se implanta. Se planta. Se queda ahí, como una instalación, en un espacio. Es como la belleza.
— What a pity.
— El total, las partes no suman el total. What do we do with las piernas, las manos, los codos, los labios that are functional in and of themselves — but that don’t contribute to the whole.
— How wonderful.
— Not wonderful at all.
— Yes, because it means that I can be one of those parts that can escape the totality.
— Why wouldn’t you want to contribute to the whole.
— Don’t get me wrong. A thinker thought, maybe it was Ortega y Gasset, that a country is in decadence, when the parts no longer want to be part of the totality. It happened in the Soviet Union, it happened in Spain, it will happen in the States.
— But what I am saying is more profound. I have a puzzle. I assemble the puzzle. Every piece is in its place. But there are extra pieces. Beautiful pieces. They should not be thrown in the incinerator.
— You can start another puzzle with them. Everything has to work. Even the extras. Just let them be. Let them play the role of lo desechable, lo caprichoso y arbitrario.
— It seems to me that’s you.
— No, that’s the world. And chance should not be taken for granted. Chance is the puzzle that finds the parts that do not fit the whole. It is probably a matter of editing. Trimming here and there until everything fits.
— That’s what they always do. They cut people that have a life of their own. People like you are prime candidates. Because you breathe and you march to the rhythm of your own drum.
— I love what you just did, you bore your soul to us. You lifted your skirt and you said:
— Mírame, linda. Mírame a mí.
But what we saw, was not flesh — but we saw the soul, which is to say, all the sorrow we have inside.
— Don’t talk to me about sorrow. I am tired of pain, of blood, I want joy.
— It’s not anybody’s soul we want. Everyday students come to me to bear their souls, manipulating sympathy through narcissistic exorcism. That’s not what a poet does. The poet is discreet — he shows us not his soul, but our souls, from a center we can all relate to — without falling into triviality.
— I declare, I read the worst paper in this city.
— You read it for the same reasons that Dante descended into Hell, to understand the infrastructures and the super-structures.
— Yes, to know what garbage is. To know the commonest. And I think of The New York Times.
— Cold and pedantic — compared to Le Monde. There you see a paper thinking. But the French think that the act of thinking is enough. If they think of a solution, they think they’ve solved the problem.
— How wonderful.
— Not wonderful at all. Blanchot writes a theory of an Infinite Conversation, but he doesn’t create the infinite conversation.
— The same happened to me with Theater and its Double. Artaud said what should be done in theater, but he didn’t do it. When I read it, I thought to myself, what he is saying has to be done I am doing it in Profane Comedy.
— So you are more American than you think.
— Why?
— Because you do what the French think.
— Excuse me. I also think.
— Then you are British. Brittons are the sum of thought and action. That is why they are successful in war.
— Americans are successful in war.
— Not because we strategize, but because we spend billions on technology and weapons. Bombs away!
— I receive so many term papers — without a single thought — neatly packaged bibliographies.
— That’s because we teach them to crank out journalism of the worst kind. But what they say — is democracy — ask everybody’s opinion — and then you end up with the voice of the moral majority. If it’s not about sex, it’s about tallying votes, or it’s about giving the impression to have the facts in hand — even if you don’t have them — invent statistics — and sound objective.
— La cultura, qué sé yo, yo sé que yo nací del culto a la televisión. Yo no veo televisión ahora, pero de niña, I was hooked. Totally hooked. I know that the cartoons influenced the style I have. People will write differently with computers.
— How can we bread our heads con algo that has no soul.
— Maybe the Russians will soulify them.
— I will always write by hand. Shakespeare did not need a keyboard or Spellcheck, and he never spelled the same word twice.
— Eso es lo que quiero decir, cómo hacer funcionar el espíritu poético — coordinarlo — con la computadora, sintonizarlo, que puedan tocar la misma música: la época de la poesía y las computadoras.
— What do you think of our president?
— We want action, not words, said our president, courting an invasion. It bothered me, the degradation of words. As if words were not action. They want action not words. But words are action, when they work. Words are bullets, dynamite. But to say, we don’t want words, we want action, tanks are action, bombs, but not words. Not true, Mr. President. Words are action, when they work.
— You’re full of shit. Why do words have to be bullets and bombs. That’s making it action. And it implies that you do believe that action is more powerful than words. You are uninformed.
— If you cannot formulate your thinking — what good is it to be informed. Information without knowing how to think is a luxury that should be taxed.
— Poetry is not a luxury.
— It is a luxury. Ask Cervantes en La Gitanilla. Ask Rubén Darío: Aren’t sus princesas y marquesas — a luxury. Ask Plato who threw the poets out of the Republic. Ask me who was thrown out of Rutgers for being a poet. What is a luxury? Is an air conditioner a luxury? I would love to be as luxurious in my poetry as an air conditioner in August — to have the capacity to blow so much wind, such a capacity to air us. And it’s a luxury. A gym is a luxury. I would like to exercise all my muscles in poetry. Okay. Money is a luxury. A useless necessity.