We live surrounded by the popular. The so-called pop culture is the fruit of our time. Although we can attest that writers, painters, musicians or artists have been drinking from the popular all the time or all the time when they have to live. Obviously, what was popular at other times was not what is known now, for example, because medieval residents had access to the arts only for the upper classes. The poor were content with access to food, I’m not saying healthy anymore, a miracle has already been produced by eating food every day.
Rafael Camarasa’s El que mira, published by Visor publishing house, awarded the XLVII Ciudad de Burgos Award, is connected with the concept of pop we mentioned earlier. The book opens with an explanatory poem entitled DioptrÃas: “Writing and wearing glasses are actions – as a body resembles a shadow/ or a shadow is like a metaphor. / In both, the will to clear clutter, / embody double digits. / If not to pass the fog, / yes to distinguish». Camarasa uses the theme of seeing or not seeing his surroundings as the prism through which he sees. We can say that the environment, the slums, the polygon… are very common in his poetry. He knows how to find the key to that world in what seems foreign to the world. In the poem titled Lights we find: «In the glow of the store / I try on suits that make me more handsome, / shoes that raise me a few inches, / perfumes that will make you believe if you smell it. / I am a healthy man».
This study, which seems to us partly a history of our time, explores the idea of ​​vision deficiency that worsens with age. But this vision loss is nothing more than a metaphor for the boredom that experiences take us. On the back cover, poet Rafael Soler shows us: «The notary, great and small, always attentive poet, Rafael Camarasa, in El que mira, gives us very clear information that we wander through this vertical and temporary accident we call life. Reflection on love and the passage of time. He knows that “there are twice as many agonizing pains” as Charles Simic’s epigraph, which opens this book without empty boasting, “While everybody was making ships, I was building a lighthouse, and I was building a lighthouse inside my empty bottle”. he says so. meticulous writing to us. The casual, always necessary, is the preoccupation of those who want to see here first and then later. From the lighthouse, the poet gives a complete answer in well-carved language, in which nothing is superfluous».
Divided into three different sections, Myopia, Hyperopia, and Presbyopia, this collection of poems is a hymn to the past, but not bitter. There is a lot of irony in Camarasa’s poems as in his stories. We can describe him as one of the greatest ironists of contemporary literature. The poem titled Señor Miyagi is a clear example of this pop and Camarasa’s irony. We can say that this is her recognizable voice. If they had said it without an author, we would know it was a camaraderie: “If, as Brines says, the springboard is poetry / and poetry, if it is the jumper in the air / the carpenter / has no choice but to appease the carpenter. impulse conditions. / Give me wax, polish. Wax / polish. That’s all. / The rest is not in your hands»
He has published poetry collections Rafael Camarasa (València, 1963) Cromos (2007), El Sitio Justo (2008), Loose Cabos (2018) and No Noticias de Liliput (2019), and storybooks Feos (2009), Lo. normal (2017) and The Day I Was Bill Murray (2021).
The awarding of the XLVII Ciudad de Burgos Prize to El que mira was quite an event, not only because an excellent writer with a recognized voice was awarded, but also because it was awarded a book that is still the epitome of existence. The last four lines of the poem that closes the book AlegrÃa are a clear example of its poetics and tone: «>, you repeat yourself / as if you were breathing out a tired runner. / Something more true if not a lie / the day a bird flew out the window».
Source: Informacion
