"I have lived in zumbido,the buzzing of words"
GONZALO ROJAS,Chilean Poet
b.20 dec 1916,Lebu,Chile
d.25 april 2011,Santiago,Chile
Chilean poets like Pablo Neruda,Nicanor Para and Gonzalo Rojas are trying to put bits and pieces of a ruined country together,to rebuild it.Rojas who died at age 94 did this task through lyrics and eroticism,life and death.He first delineated his poems towards surrealism,then symbolism and people's words,to say it ,for example,in a poem about his coal miner father:
Mother,he is almost here: let us open the door
give me that light,I want to recieve him
before my brothers do,let me take him a good glass of wine
so he will feel better and hug me and kiss me
and stick me with his beards.
There he is ,he is coming home
muddy,raging against his bad luck,furious
from exploration,dead of hunger,there he is
under his Castillian poncho...
Rojas worked as a diplomat in china and cuba in Dr Salvador Allende's era,then went to exile during Pinochet,and returned home in 1990.
Gonzalo Rojas' first book,LA MISERIA DEL HOMBRE/misery of man ,published 1948.He went on with 40 books of poetry in 70 years, to FROM THE WATER,published in 2007.
Rojas once said about his poems:
It is as if I allowed language to speak through me...I am letting the waters speak,and rise,and express themselves."
He let the people of Chile,Latin America and the world too,to speak through him.
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