❧ DIAMONDS & RUST☙
Nota por la autora (Catalina Vergara)
“Diamonds & Rust” es una canción que expresa, con esa perspectiva que da el tiempo sin saber del ser amado, cómo una llamada, un intercambio de palabras puede ser una descarga eléctrica en los nervios que nos obliga a tensarnos y a darnos cuenta de que la herida que pensábamos seca de vez en cuando supura. Y eso que sale de la herida es la canción de Baez. Que tiene tanto elementos cotidianos e imágenes contemplativas (sus memorias con Dylan) como recursos crípticos (la mención a los años luz, los diamantes y el óxido). Ambas obras lloran y tratan de poner en palabras lo que no se puede sanar. Son expectoraciones, como dijo Armando Uribe (en el video meme que anda circulando del documental sobre la obra de Juan Luis Martinez jjj) sobre un amor complejo. El poemario es una sutura entre mi dolor, el de Baez y el silencio de aquellos que sufren por un amor imposible, una relación corrosiva.
Translator’s Note
Catalina Vergara’s diamonds & rust is inspired by themes of love and memory in Joan Baez’s eponymous song. This love is queer, which means foreign, drawing from the complex legacies of American imperialism and the overthrow of the Chilean democracy under Allende. Unlike the authoritarian state under Pinochet, which establishes the rigid role of the mother as a nurturing agent of the state, the feminist speaker in Catalina’s poetry collection often defies such state-prescribed expectations. The speaker speaks of love as bursting forth in emanations, feverish in the bitter taste it leaves. It is no coincidence that these poems were written in a workshop taught by Raul Zurita, a leading Chilean author and a member of Colectivo Acciones de Arte, a Chilean activist group of artists who incorporated the “what could not be said” (lo que no dice) into performance and protest against the Pinochet regime. Catalina’s feminine Venus as juxtaposed with the masculine Mars takes on renewed significance. The speaker, rooted in Mars’ blue introspection, peers into a whirl of gross coffee, at a loss of meaning making. Catalina’s diamond & rust is situated after the beacon of the Chilean democracy. But considering how outer space and the intergalactic can teach us about our humanity and inhumanity, it feels very much of the now. Rather than being didactic, Catalina’s narrator paints scenes with color and sound. A reader who looks and listens closely enough will be able to make out the embroidering of bloody letters and hear what the esses are telling you.