“Poetry saved my life,” the American writer explained yesterday Bruce Weihl (Ohio, 1949) on the fifth day of the Cosmopoética festival, which has been held in Cordoba since last Friday. The author, candidate twice pulitzer and winner of poetry prizes such as the Peter Creeley and the Paterson, reflected on the impact his enlistment in the U.S. Army had on his life during the Vietnam War, in which he fought in aged 18 and in one of the bloodiest moments of the conflict and the Cold War, 1967.
The testimony of the North American writer, who read his verses in Orive with the Murcian poet Raul Quintoshared the festival agenda with other programming proposals such as Cosmosocial, which broadcasts the concerts that the singer-songwriter Chico Herrera to different health centers in the city, or Cosmojoven, coordinated by the poet Alexandra Vanessa and it transfers the spirit of the festival to secondary schools.
The day ended with a performance by the duo The dangerwho represented his particular proposal on the stage of the Sala Orive in which poetry, theater, humor and current affairs merge.
The danger
Weihl’s vital and literary testimony extended both in his morning meeting with the press and in his public recital. The writer, whose famous book was published by Córdoba Cántico Editions “Napalm Songs”grew up in a working family with few resources, so by enlisting he found a way to get into college for free, as he explained.
“The war changed my life like nothing else could have changed it and produced a great paradox because it brought me 50 years of nightmares and pain but also poetry; “It was a gift and a cross,” he said. Weihl also analyzed what it meant to return to horror through his poems, although he stated that in literature this can be controlled while in wars “the horror is uncontrollable”.
He also spoke about beauty and said that “it can be channeled through many things.” According to him, “the beauty “It’s about clarity, saying things as they are without being afraid of the consequences.”
“Beauty is in clarity, in saying things as they are without fearing the consequences”
The writer also recounted the experience of his return to Vietnam, where for years he maintained an intense activity of pairing and disseminating poets from this Asian country through their translations. “The first time I came back, I felt fearbut that disappeared when I saw that the country had undergone radical changes and that the Vietnamese had turned the page,” he explained.
Weihl regretted that the United States had not respected its commitment to help repair Vietnam which were signed at the Paris Conference at the end of the war. The writer also revealed that the return there was beneficial for many ex-combatants traumatized by what they experienced and that they felt better seeing that Vietnam “is today a safe country and where children play in the street.
He also criticized the US government’s position in Palestine and its economic support for the Israeli government. “I’m ashamed”said.
The writer finally spoke of “the honor of being translated into Spanish”, the language of one of his favorite poets, Juan Ramon Jimenez. He also expressed his surprise at the attention paid to the poetic genre in Spain with festivals like Cosmopoética and which reminds him of Vietnam, because there, as he explained, poets also enjoy great prestige social.
Raúl Quinto and Los Peligro
In the autumn night of Orive we could also hear the poems of the writer Raul Quintoin particular five extracts from his book “The Broken Tongue” dedicated to activists murdered for their beliefs at different times or to the massacre that occurred on the Málaga-Almería highway in February 1937 and which caused the death of thousands of civilians. The Murcian poet explained that when he writes he does not focus on the emotions he feels about the subject he addresses but on what the text should produce in the reader. The Mexican writer and actress Ole Oseguera was responsible for leading this activity.
The day continued at 8:00 p.m. with a recital by the duo Los Peligro, who compose Liliana Peligro and Sergio C. Fanjul. Both starred in a series in which the word was the main protagonist but linked to humor and current events.
