Ricardo Yáñez: Isochronies

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I am one of those who have an opinion that when speaking of poetry the best thing is to speak (speak it in) poetry, which entails more than one difficulty, the most evident of which refers to what we will call the poetic state , from which one starts to access the poem or to which through this, the poem, during its writing (turned convocation) is reached. The poem, if it is truly a poem –this is another personal opinion– either is made from that state or causes that state to arise in the person writing it –and the writer then intuits or recognizes himself as a poet, probably nameless, being without history but yes, if one may say so, with destiny, a destiny (it will sound exaggerated, but experience is at least an approximation to what is indicated here) universal. The universal destiny of each man, of each person, rather, is accounted for in poems. And not only, let it be clear, are we speaking of authors, but of readers. Thanks to the author's experience captured in the poem, the reader is able to experience, we propose essentially although vicariously, the motor event that triggers the poem in question. We have said poem ; we could say work of art . We said reader ; we could just as well have said receiver .

There are those who see in the poetic state, in a way a state of inspiration (a somewhat problematic word that nonetheless undoubtedly names something ), an altered state of consciousness. I like to think of it as just the opposite, a (non-altered) state of clear awareness. God knows, but exposed as we are daily to so many distractions, I prefer to see in what others would call an inspired state a phenomenon of lucid attention to the pertinent aspects of our existence. I venture to identify here, and I hope not too rashly, the terms pertinence and transcendence .

To experience, if it were possible, the universal destiny of man, of every person, is not necessarily the task of artists. I want to believe that there is no one who has not experienced at least once the Rimbaud sensation of "I am another ," not who they tell me, not who I say I am. I go beyond myself to reach myself. I am with what is . Every poem speaks of this, whether bluntly or deeply.

Every poem is nothing more than a poetic state transformed into a word, or discovered through it; word into image, word into images. Every poem, then, is an image of a poetic state. And something more: an experience transmitted to paper, to the reader, to the audience.