Life is love or love is life, the order of factors does not change the product. Poetry lives from human experiences throughout history. There are many examples of this, so many that we could make a study of how life affects the work of artists. Clearly this is a statement belonging to the vox populi; Each work is a reflection of the time in which its author lived; but it is also true that sometimes fantasy or fiction takes over what originally began as a purely literary exercise. But there is no literature without life, which is the driving force of all arts. The experiences of the creators guide their works; if there were no happiness or torment, there would be no result, no work.
This is what Michel Gaztambide’s Zombie Autopsy, published by the Madrid publishing house Los Libros del Mississippi, with a foreword by Itziar Mínguez Arnaiz, speaks about this. An introspective exercise by the poet to tell us about his life as if it were an autopsy. The first poem that opens the book takes us to the essence of the work: “The air between your fingers / is heavier. // One look from you, / much more warmth. // But this impatience / is all that remains. // Water burned by the sun.
There is a weight of love in Gaztambide’s poetry. This is already clearly seen in his work as a screenwriter. Love is the power of everything, the engine of everything, without love the world is a ruined, barren place, as if Nothing had taken over the entire universe in the Neverending Story. The poem titled “Basque Cinema and Pollution” is a clear example of this: “It is the story of two people who will love each other / and the story begins at a moment when they do not yet know it. / One day they leave home safely, / with their lives overflowing / like fish in a basket. / They smile when they return; It’s a sign that they’ve lost everything.
Love is not just happiness. Happiness is not a goal, it is the path we take. If we think that we will reach a totem called happiness throughout our lives, we will never find joy. But as in the poem titled “Lofmidú,” poetry is born from failure or its substitutes, and hence the spark that will eventually become poetry: “Many people think that if they knew, they wouldn’t waste / at dinners or at dances / And they are hurt when they remember / the ridiculous gifts they gave. / Blue underpants, / special books, / especially those books / already marked forever. / And music. / Every time they forget / in different loves / that we repeat the same gestures // (forgive me, my love / that Brazilian song is not yours anymore)».
The seed of Zombie Autopsy is the memory of what was in the past. The bittersweet memory invades everything, and Gaztambide’s poetry drinks from it. His poetry is built from ruins, longing is like a ruined Greek temple, the shadow of what was and will never be again. We’ve all had loves like in the movies at some point, every relationship starts suddenly. We blind ourselves to the other person, until, when our sight is regained, we notice that the shadows begin to take their place, but even so, love, kisses remain as evidence of this. He shows us this with his penultimate poem titled “Poso”, which partially serves as the close of this work: “…Hope remains / and terrible death. Pain remains. / And nausea. / The police sirens continue. / The howl of the ambulances. // Kisses remain, because hope is the last thing we lose, the first thing we hold on to.