Peter Gizzi
Poeta, ensayista, editor y profesor. Asistió a la Universidad de Nueva York, la Universidad de Brown y la Universidad Estatal de Nueva York en Buffalo.
Fecha de nacimiento: 7 de agosto de 1959, Alma, Míchigan, Estados Unidos
Educación: Universidad de Búfalo (1997), Universidad Brown (1991), Universidad de la Ciudad de Nueva York (1986)
Premios: Beca Guggenheim en Artes Creativas, Estados Unidos y Canadá
Nominaciones: Premio Literario Lambda por Poesía para Hombres Gays
Obras
Libros
In Defense of Nothing: Selected Poems 1987 –2011. Middletown: Wesleyan, 2014
Threshold Songs. Middletown: Wesleyan, 2011
The Outernationale. Middletown: Wesleyan, 2007
Periplum and other poems, 1987 – 92. Cambridge, UK: Salt Publishers, 2004
Some Values of Landscape and Weather. Middletown: Wesleyan, 2003
Artificial Heart. Providence: Burning Deck, 1998
Periplum. Penngrove: Avec Books, 1992
Chapbooks y ediciones limitadas
Vincent, Homesick for the Land of Pictures. Rotterdam, NL: Studio 3005, 2015
Marigold & Cable. Saint-Martin, France: Shelter Press, 2014
In the Air. Los Angeles: Manor House, 2013
Ode: Salute to the New York School 1950-1970. Tucson: Letter Machine, 2012
History Is Made at Night. Cincinnati: Students of Decay, 2011
Pinocchio’s Gnosis. Northampton: Song Cave, 2011
In Song & Story. Amsterdam, NL: Tungsten Press, 2010
Homer’s Anger. Paris: Collectif Generation, 2009
A Panic That Can Still Come Upon Me. Brooklyn, Ugly Ducking, 2006
From a Cinematographer’s Letter. London: Tolling Elves. 2004
Revival. New Haven: Phylum Press, 2002
Fin Amor. Oakland: Tougher Disguises, 2002
Chateâu If. Paris: Slacik Editions, 2000
Add This to the House. Cambridge, UK: Equipage, 1999
New Picnic Time. Buffalo: Meow Editions, 1995
Ledger Domain. Providence: Timoleon, 1995
Hours of the Book. Canary Islands, Spain: Zasterle Press, 1994
Music for Films. Providence: Paradigm Press, 1992
Creeley Madrigal. Providence: The Materials Press, 1991
Editing Projects
My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer. Co-edited with Kevin Killian. Middletown: Wesleyan, 2008
The House that Jack Built: The Collected Lectures of Jack Spicer. Middletown: Wesleyan University, 1998
Exact Change Yearbook. Boston: Exact Change Publishers / Manchester, UK: Carcanet, 1995
o•blēk / a journal of language arts. 12 issues. Co-edited with Connell McGrath. 1987 - 93
QUE EMPIEZA CON UNA FRASE DE SIMONE WEIL
No hay mejor tiempo que el presente cuando lo hemos perdido todo.
Esto no quiere decir que la lluvia que cae con una cierta declinación a una velocidad variable carezca de propósito o diseño.
El todo presente está perdido en el tiempo, de acuerdo con las leyes de la física las cosas se desplazan cuando dejamos de percibir un presente, cuando ya no hay más todo.
No hay más presencia en todo lo que se ama.
En el modelo expansivo las cosas fluyen y todo lo que es mejor al presente se pierde en cuestión de nada.
El día se tapa de acuerdo a la gravedad y el bicho de la siembra marcha.
Una vez ido, la bisagra se quiebra, la puerta deja entrar una brisa, una brisa que depende de una gracia que se abre al aire, una velocidad atada a una arcilla que echa alas.
Todo cualquier cosa en su estación peculiar.
El sol se ilumina mientras se destiñe, atenúa el valor espectral en todo lo visto.
Y el caos no es un mejor modelo cuando estamos a la deriva.
Cuando hemos perdido una presencia cuando ya no hay más todo.
No hay presencia en todo lo que se ama que pierda cualquier cosa ante el presente.
Escuché el zumbido de una mosca. Escuché la naturaleza revelada, carros en la calle y la basura, huellas de un mundo, cada mosca una ventana perpetua, vida sin aleación, gling, pináculos de alquitrán.
No hay mejor todo que la pérdida cuando tenemos tiempo.
No hay mejor carencia en el presente que el todo.
En este modelo expasivo la lluvia cae de acuerdo a las leyes de la física, las cosas están a la deriva.
Y todo lo que es mejor al presente se va en cuestión de nada.
Una cierta declinación, una velocidad variable.
¿Es que no hay mejor presencia que la pérdida?
Una gracia que se abre al aire. No hay mejor tiempo que el presente.
Traducido por Gustavo Adolfo Chaves
A Panic That Can Still Come Upon Me
If today and today I am calling aloud
If I break into pieces of glitter on asphalt
bits of sun, the din
if tires whine on wet pavement
everything humming
If we find we are still in motion
and have arrived in Zeno’s thought, like
if sunshine hits marble and the sea lights up
we might know we were loved, are loved
if flames and harvest, the enchanted plain
If our wishes are met with dirt
and thyme, thistle, oil,
heirloom, and basil
or the end result is worry, chaos
and if “I should know better”
If our loves are anointed with missiles
Apache fire, Tomahawks
did we follow the tablets the pilgrims suggested
If we ask that every song touch its origin
just once and the years engulfed
If problems of identity confound sages,
derelict philosophers, administrators
who can say I am found
if this time you, all of it, this time now
If nothing save Saturdays at the metro and
if rain falls sidelong in the platz
doorways, onto mansard roofs
If enumerations of the fall
and if falling, cities rocked
with gas fires at dawn
Can you rescind the ghost’s double nakedness
hungry and waning
if children, soldiers, children
taken down in schools
if burning fuel
Who can’t say they have seen this
and can we sing this
if in the auroras’ reflecting the sea,
gauze touching the breast
Too bad for you, beautiful singer
unadorned by laurel
child of thunder and scapegoat alike
If the crowd in the mind becoming
crowded in street and villages, and trains
run next to the freeway
If exit is merely a sign
Peter Gizzi, “A Panic That Can Still Come Upon Me,” in The Outernationale
Hypostasis & New Year
For why am I afraid to sing
the fundamental shape of awe
should I now begin to sing the silvered back of
the winter willow spear
the sparkling agate blue
would this blade and this sky free me to speak
intransitive lack –
the vowels themselves free
Of what am I afraid
of what lies in back of me of day
these stars scattered as far as the I
what world and wherefore
will it shake free
why now in the mind of an afternoon is a daisy
for a while
flagrant and alive
Then what of night
of hours’ unpredicated bad luck and the rot
it clings to
fathomless on the far side in winter dark
Hey shadow world when a thing comes back
comes back unseen but felt and no longer itself
what then
what silver world mirrors tarnished lenses
what fortune what fate
and the forms not themselves but only itself the sky
by water and wind shaken
I am born in silvered dark
Of what am I to see these things between myself
and nothing
between the curtain and the stain
between the hypostatic scenes of breathing
and becoming the thing I see
are they not the same
Things don’t look good on the street today
beside a tower in a rusting lot
one is a condition the other mystery
even this afternoon light so kind and nourishing
a towering absence vibrating air
Shake and I see pots from old shake
and I see cities anew
I see robes shake I see desert
I see the farthing in us all the ghost of day
the day inside night as tones decay
and border air
it is the old songs and the present wind I sing
and say I love the unknown sound in a word
Mother where from did you leave me on the sleeve
of a dying word
of impish laughter in the midst my joy
I compel and confess open form
my cracked hinged picture doubled
I can’t remember now if I made a pact with the devil
when I was young
when I was high
on a sidewalk I hear “buy a sweatshirt?” and think
buy a shirt from the sweat of children
hell
I’m just taking a walk in the sun in a poem
and this sound
caught in the most recent coup
Peter Gizzi, “Hypostasis & New Year” from Threshold Songs.
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