«Poemas en bicicleta: Autores grandes para pequeños lectores. Antología de poesía venezolana». Compiladores: Fanuel Hanán Díaz, Jaqueline Goldberg y Alicia Montero. Caracas: Fundación La Poeteca. Colección El Envés del Dado. En Trópico absoluto. Berlín 2025.
Hay números que se voltean en los múltiples márgenes de las páginas de una revista, números que se mueven bordeando el espacio de la poesía y que giran por estar insertos en el doble color de las pequeñas ruedas de una bicicleta. Allí, el naranja y el negro ilustran ese círculo que, como las esferas de Aristófanes, no se detiene nunca en búsqueda de su otra mitad. Escritores indagan sobre lectores infantiles, aunque, curiosamente, los «Poemas en bicicleta: Autores grandes para pequeños lectores» (La Poeteca, 2024) se insertan profundamente en la memoria de los ya adultos, a través de fantasías parlantes que nos permiten reconstruir y dramatizar la antología de la poesía venezolana.
«El dibujo de la isla, de Fedosy Santaella» Tropico Absoluto. Berlín. 2024.
Claudia Cavallin reseña El dibujo de la isla (Monroy Editor, 2023), libro de Fedosy Santaella (Puerto Cabello, 1970). Este libro de Santaella, como titula uno de sus capítulos, está «Cada vez más cerca de lo que fuimos y de las razones por las que muchos hemos cambiado ahora. La dinámica de dibujar sin nunca detenerse, más allá de cualquier giro estético o discursivo, es una necesidad de desahogo que nunca se contiene por completo.»
«CorazoNadas: Ana Clavel» Latin American Literature Today. Oklahoma. 2024.
As in Guillaume Apollinaire's works, Ana Clavel's calligrams use figures that recreate grammatical meaning, just as certain Roman numerals do. When two words become one to create the name of a book with plenty of palpitations, CorazoNadas [Hunches, a word that in Spanish links heart—corazón—and nothing(ness)—nada—], by Ana Clavel (FOEM, 2023), deploys a way of narrating that connects meaning, from both bodily extremities to the unique movement of a hybrid word, passing through the idealization of certain gigantic miniatures of playful demeanor in the human heart. Ana Clavel, a well-known Mexican writer, had already combined sensorial fragility with strength to confront certain instinctive acts, in works such as El amor es hambre (Alfaguara, 2015), A Brief Treatise of the Heart (Alfaguara, 2019), and Por desobedecer a sus padres (Alfaguara, 2022). This new edition of CorazoNadas immediately takes us back to essays such as Territorio Lolita (Alfaguara, 2017), where silenced desires recreate puns to point to the forbidden. Again, erotic and fictional literature creates a word that throbs with high intensity, as if it had enough palpitations to continue going until it reaches a state of ecstasy, a life filled with multiple bodies and shapes.
«Andor: Raquel Abend van Dalen» Revista Carátula. Managua / Madrid. 2024.
Cuando las palabras, la entonación de las voces, los sonidos frágiles de un mundo posible y los acentos navegan más allá de los cuerpos, de la puerta del horno, de la oscuridad, del útero o de un intento de suicidio, todo puede formar parte de un universo creado para que el audiolibro irrumpa ante las certezas que el oído siempre le imprime a lo que escucha. Más aún, otros sentidos, como el olfato del lector que detecta una orina concentrada, o la visión imaginaria de lo que se detiene al frente, hacen que la entonación reconstruya un libro en la mente de quien lee.
«Minerva» by Keila Vall de la Ville. Translated by Arthur Dixon. Latin American Literature Today. Oklahoma. 2023.
Minerva wants to establish, like in ballet, certain currents that reinforce the golden rule of never looking at the floor while you dance. Keila Vall de la Ville, a Venezuelan writer based in the United States, has published a variety of literary works that have been recognized for their value, making their presence felt through numerous worlds. To mention just two, her book of stories Ana no duerme (2007) was a finalist in the Monte Ávila Editores National Unpublished Authors Contest (Venezuela), and her novel Los días animales (2016) earned the International Latino Book Award for Best Novel in 2018 and was translated to English by Robin Myers as The Animal Days in 2021. Now, in Minerva (Pre-Textos, 2023), the symbology of empty spaces as dances prevents a single still footprint from being left behind. With twists and turns that go from memory to the body, the symptoms of foreignness in New York mingle with Venezuelan desperation at violence and kidnappings, making record of the wish not to forget and opening up the recollections of the valuable and mobile triangle of beginnings. Minerva—daughter of Lissa, Di, and Martín—dances and keeps still as the heir to an undefined, alternative, and polyamorous family.
«Ceniza en la boca: Brenda Navarro» Revista Carátula. Managua / Madrid. 2023.
Aproximarnos a la novela Ceniza en la boca (Sexto Piso, 2022) de Brenda Navarro nos lleva a la conexión profunda del viaje, no solo entre dos países geográficamente distantes, sino entre la literatura y el periodismo. Finalista en el premio de novela Mario Vargas Llosa y reconocida, entre otras cosas, por su aporte a la lucha en favor de las mujeres, Navarro es una de las escritoras migrantes que hace eco de su experiencia para retomar y rasgar la idealización de la resolución de los fractales identitarios, luego del abandono de los límites geográficos.
«La mirada horizontal» by Luisa Valenzuela. Translated by Laura Yedra. Latin American Literature Today. Oklahoma, 2023.
An open and historic re-read, like the possible interpretation of those of us who have survived the worst of it. It is a book that continues to resonate. In the prologue to this treasured compilation of Luisa Valenzuela’s journalistic work, Marianella Collete details an extensive amount of material that has long been kept away from readers, like recovered writing on the yellowish patina that only time can give. Judiciously, many of Valenzuela’s writings have reawakened for new readers.
«La visitante: Alberto Chimal». Revista Carátula. Managua / Madrid, 2023.
Cuando realizamos un viaje temporal en la historia mexicana, para volver a 1972 y revivir un momento de represión, dominio y tortura, el contexto histórico de una novela se transforma en un recuerdo que imprime fortaleza a los más jóvenes, ante el horror de la memoria que puede trasladarse a una representación teatral. «La visitante», de Alberto Chimal, parte en su portada con la pregunta que establece un puente entre la realidad y los sueños: «¿Qué es eso que no te deja dormir?»
«Por desobedecer a sus padres: Ana Clavel» Revista Carátula. Managua / Madrid, 2022.
Como viajeros en el tiempo iniciamos esta valiosa obra de Ana Clavel, Por desobedecer a sus padres (2022), con el umbral: aquel escalón que se detiene en la parte final de una historia y que, cíclicamente, retorna a sus inicios. En este libro, la narrativa escrita puede movernos a Google para buscar nuevas fuentes que la recobren a través de las imágenes. Podemos volver al punctum del que hablaba Barthes, para una mirada no necesariamente intencional, sino fuera de control. Como le sucedió a la pequeña Alicia, en su país de las maravillas; como podría pasarnos a nosotros, los lectores, cuando también asumimos la frase terrorífica y misteriosa que se utiliza en algunos circos y ferias, leyendo podemos también desobedecer a los padres. Es un mundo de relatos que se unen, como metáforas en los espejos, similar a las experiencias que ocurren en los universos paralelos de la ficción. Aquí, el testimonio de la carencia cerebral de Da Rio, se transforma en una sentencia. Uno de sus crímenes, en el tesoro de su diversidad sexual.
«Casa de ciudad» by Gisela Kozak Rovero. Latin American Literature Today. Translated by Jack Rockwell. Oklahoma, 2022.
The cover of this book—sporting an image of an open door amongst ruins, and a play on words—has a certain look to it which attracts us immediately. Two words, which appear to belong together as they are joined through the proposition «de» [usually translated as «of» or «from,» depending on the context], differentiate and connect that space which they frame. The house, a symbol of isolation (which we can live inside of), as the most private and isolated space, is united with the city, the zone of the public, where every space is shared and visible. This title is the starting point of this short story collection by Gisela Kozak Rivero—what, then, does it mean? Casa de ciudad (2021) is, unquestionably, a space where the hybridity of existence, in two places, is transferred from one ground to another, departing, in addition, from the material to the corporeal, to become the context of those who live two realities in one and the same body, materialized and urban.
«La sonrisa de los hipopótamos» by Juan Carlos Chirinos. Translated by Fiona Maloney-McCrystle. Latin American Literature Today, Oklahoma, 2021.
«God moves the player and he, the piece / What god behind God originates the scheme / Of dust and time and dream and agony?» In these lines from the poem «The Game of Chess» by Jorge Luis Borges, there exists a hierarchy of words that could immediately transport us to the writing of Juan Carlos Chirinos in his collection La sonrisa de los hipopótamos [The smile of the hippopotamuses] (Madrid, 2020). Writing as a literary game that transcends numerous archives, ranks, diagonals, and edges is present in eleven stories in which the protagonists’ personal experiences are quickly mobilized, attempting to play against an opponent, as in a game of chess. The first of these stories, «Qué Dios está detrás de Dios» [What god is behind God] draws from a Borges quotation, which is not directly mentioned, to recreate the fear a boy from a small town might feel about the game, where tiny pieces move below a paternal gaze that questions this need for child-like distancing in the face of the fear and adversity of the next move.
«La vida alegre de Daniel Centeno Maldonado» par Claudia Cavallin. Traduction L’autre Amérique. L’autre Amérique Numéro 2: la littérature péruvienne à l’honneur, Paris 2021.
When we think of the idea of a pendulum, we immediately imagine that back-and-forth movement that never stops. This sphere attached to a thread that moves between two points allows us to permanently connect to two opposite extremes or two ways of understanding what is happening at different times. The novel La vida alegre by Daniel Centeno Maldonado is a literary pendulum that works similarly as if we were looking for that balance between two existing ways. Our gaze as a reader goes from one place to another tangentially. The trajectory traced allows us to witness the lives of the two main characters: the old man, Dalio Guerra (The Nightingale of the Americas), and the young Policarpo Figueroa (Poli), both singers, both suffering from the lacks caused by absence. Despite their differences, a youth wasted before its time and the routine of a gagged old age, they emerge strengthened thanks to their union in a universal language: music.
http://www.autreamerique.com/2021/04/23/la-vida-alegre-de-daniel-centeno-maldonado-par-claudia-cavallin/? fbclid=IwAR0D2us6BF0N9mLf_tv0obgOhf8jHzHEPIZGDkxTLrq41GRvoDLM8K4Flh8
«Diarios 1988-1989: La insubordinación de los márgenes» by Victoria de Stefano. Translated by Arthur Dixon. Latin American Literature Today. Oklahoma 2018.
The writer Victoria de Stefano, born in Rimini, Italy, began her lived experience in Venezuela when she was a small child. Through thought, each successive experience there transformed her until she arrived at the disturbing activity common to university philosophy professors: the constant questioning of reality and the configuration or de-configuration of its margins. Based on her experience, and through her unyielding passage between worlds—the present and the past, the maternal and the academic, the successful and the disastrous—her writing became the narrative of a personal experience, published for years, months, and days. Diarios 1988-1989: La insubordinación de los márgenes [Diaries 1988-1989: the insubordination of the margins] is a work that includes the dynamic of travel diaries, diaries of writers, painters, and even war diaries, reminding us, for example, of Kierkegaard, Kafka, Klee, the three big K’s of diary-writing.