In a small book of poems, Maria Mercedes Carranza proposes a sad route through 24 cities that have suffered extreme violence in her martyred country: Colombia. We traverse the cities through short, concise poems, written as a tribute to the inhabitants who experienced the violence — between the army, the insurgent groups, the paramilitary and the drug cartels — and which kept Colombia in a downward spiral for nearly half a century.
The force of the poems rings like bells sounded from the center of the destruction, converting into the echo of an unbearable tranquility.
Written in a form similar to the Japanese haiku, but without respect for their structure as far as the space and number of syllables, the poems resonate in the silence like permanent reclamations against the injustice of the indiscriminate violence. The first poem, “Necoclí,” is a full declaration of those intentions when it suggests:
Maybe
this next instant
late at night or in the morning
in Necoclí
only the song of the flies
will be heard.
This poem, which speaks of the song of the flies, is the one that defines the title of the book, like a vindicating peace felt when one only hears the buzzing movement of the flies in the silent tranquility behind the tragedy.
Poem after poem is like peeling off massacres until the river’s water is stained the color of blood as in “Barrancabermeja,” a metaphor of the massacred who are thrown into the Magdalena River, or as in “Dabeiba,” where the sweet river “carries red roses scattered over its water/they are not roses but blood that follows other courses.”
Metaphors are carefully selected to illustrate horror with an extreme precision. Here lies the force of Maria Mercedes Carranza’s poems, in the sparseness of words, where nothing exceeds and everything contributes towards illustrating the atmosphere of desolation.
The bilingual edition features fist-rate English translations of the 24 poems by Margarita Millar, who has managed to maintain the musical quality of the original Spanish poems. The finished product is a wonderful linguistic jewel.
Maria Mercedes Carranza was born in Bogota in 1945 and became widely respected in Colombia as a cultural journalist, a member of the National Parliament, and founder-director of the Silva Poetry House in Bogota, an organization dedicated to the creation, drive and dissemination of poetry. Carranza always believed in the power of poetry to transform reality and to cure the wounds caused by the endless violence of her country.
In July of 2003, she committed suicide, leaving a painful example of the destructive connection between violence and personal life.
The translator of the book, Margarita Millar, was born in Colombia and has lived in San Francisco since 1983. She received a Masters in Comparative Literature at San Francisco State University. Miller is a professional interpreter and translator. She is currently working on translating more poems of Maria Mercedes Carranza and other contemporary Latin American authors, in addition to North American authors. This book is dedicated to Luis Carlos Galán, a Colombian presidential candidate who was assassinated, a timeless testimony to both the power and the impotence of the poet at the frontline of devastating violence.
—Translation Óscar Ríos
https://eltecolote.org/content/2010/09/maria-mercedes-carranza-book-release-party/
Book Release Party
Friday, September, 17, 2010 • Wine and hors d’oeuvres beginning at 6pm, reading at 6:30pm
Modern Times Bookstore • 888 Valencia Street