Broken Lens #11 and "The Palace of Light"

 

I’m pleased to have some work featured in Broken Lens Journal Issue #11, which has returned after a hiatus with its first issue in 18 months under slightly new editorial management, with Adam Stutz as Editor-in-Chief and Isabel Yi Jimenez as Poetry Editor.

I’ve been enjoying reading the writing by the other contributors, especially because this is a rare situation for me: my work is appearing in a magazine in which the names of every other writer in the issue are not names I've heard before (or if I have, I’ve forgotten).

Context in the social world of poetry always changes, of course. Processes of contextualization and decontextualization always go on together, although my sense is that social media has changed things, maybe making new contexts come together and go away more rapidly than they used to. My own decontextualization might be more rapid too living in a place like San Diego, which has some local communities of poets but mostly not ones with much connection to contexts outside themselves.

Of course, one has to work to make connection, while being decontextualized doesn’t always require taking any action at all.

Is it fun or disconcerting to be “out of context" (which is always, of course, being in a new context again)? A bit of both, I think.

My work in the magazine is the opening pages of my prose poem “The Palace of Light,” which is from Book 21 of The End of America poems. Book 21’s title is Palace of Light, Pit of Virus. “The Palace of Light” was originally composed between September 2019 and March 2020. It was in the process of winding itself down in February and March 2020 when, for the obvious reason, it was over. The multi-part conglomeration "Pit of Virus" began to be written some months later.

And here’s a link directly to my work, which also contains a brief audio recording of me reading some of the material in the poem.

The Romantic Dogs by Roberto Bolaño

 

A lot of people find Roberto Bolaño’s poetry less interesting than his fiction. I can see why, in some ways. The poems lack the same scope, and they feel more youthful and more romantic, even as their political concerns seem in line with what he would do later in his fiction. On the other hand, the youthfulness and smaller scope is significantly the result of the poems being the work of a young writer on his way to greater heights. I found the poems in The Romantic Dogs enjoyable and insightful on their own terms, but they also seem like short blueprints for the later, more in-depth writing that he would do (at many thousands of pages of length overall, as his readers know). In some ways, The Romantic Dogs shows a more personal, approachable writer than Bolaño’s novels do, with more of his own personality and desires on display. In the poems I could see more of what was at stake for him personally, what concerns he was wrestling with, than I sometimes can in the novels. The poems show his struggles to break out of the restrained and limiting environments in which he finds himself. The novels are going to be that breakout, an expansive portrayal of many social dynamics that take him far beyond any one individual’s concerns. In the poems though, I could see him working his way towards what would happen next. They feel like they provide a very intimate look at what it might take to find one’s way towards literary greatness.

Liliana's Invincible Summer by Cristina Rivera Garza

 

Liliana’s Invincible Summer: A Sister's Search for Justice is a powerful and unforgettable book, emotionally difficult to handle at times although nothing in it is done for shock value. It’s the true crime story of the murder at age 20 of novelist Cristina Rivera Garca’s younger sister Liliana. The murderer was identified relatively quickly, yet also never caught.

But the book is much more than a horrifying crime story. Garza is one of the most narratively sophisticated novelists working right now. The point of view shifts, the non-linear timeline, the interviews conducted with others, the use of real diary entries, and maybe most of all the impressive eye for detail, make the work read like an experimental novel that, line by line, never stops being gripping. I wanted to look away but couldn’t look away. The story is horrible, but the writer’s approach shows why that story matters, rather than cheapening it.

The book is also deeply feminist, discussing the crucial need for women to gain more control over the narratives forced onto them in an anti-feminist social and cultural environment.  Things may have changed for women in Mexico since Liliana’s death in 1990, somewhat, but not as much as they need to, and the book never shies away from showing the problems both that women faced then and still do now.

It’s maybe not quite fair to either writer, but I kept thinking of Liliana’s Invincible Summer as an antidote to Roberto Bolaño’s novel 2666, or at least to the infamous long list of brutal murders that forms one of the sections of that novel. In Garza’s book, the focus is on just one murder, just one promising life destroyed by a young man’s murderous obsession.

Liliana Rivera Garza never reached her 21st year, but she lives in these pages in all her complexity, both in the ways she was just like many teenagers and young adults, and in all the ways she was unique. The pain, confusion, and anger created by her death survives in the many people who knew her who are interviewed in the book, and so does her remarkable particularity and the love that many felt and still feel for her. Liliana’s Invincible Summer features a life portrayed by a grieving sister who also happens to be one of the most daring and insightful narrative writers working today.