The poet never stops. It’s probably the most slave trade that exists, but it’s also the most soul-satisfying. The poet who says he will no longer write may not be telling the whole truth. There is no more certainty than knowing that the poem holds the creator and submits. Robert Graves has already said: Being a poet is more of a condition than a profession. We can define the poet as a person who tries to understand the world, and everything becomes more abstract as he researches it. So poetry is in everything, as Gonzalo Escarpa said, everything is poetry except poetry.
The animal I live by José Luis Ferris, published in the Innana poetry collection by Elenvés publishers, is not a comeback because José Luis never left. This book of poetry is a door left open after that firm Fog in 1989. Ferris opens this book with a tribute poem to Neruda entitled Niebla: “If I pronounce the sea, oblivion, incarnation, / if you answer, it’s like a bird passing through our soul / fleeing from the collapse of deaf astrolabes, steel plates. // Monument or barcarolle, even if I say twilight,/ you present to me the rose that sets without changing the sky./ The night stubbornly seeks you / sets off to the islands of silence that you hide».
It was the epidemic and all its consequences that flooded the poem with Ferris. Before saying that a poet never ceases to be like a smoker, Ferris’ work is full of poetry, but those strange creatures called verse appeared during the incarceration and shipwreck. In this book you can see how desires combine with melancholy and some beacons of hope. The poem titled Detrás de los colores is a good example of this: «For me / it is not necessary for you to paint your eyes lilac, / bewildered with mascara, / red lips and laughter. / I discovered the other in you, / the lover behind the colors». There is a deep accusation in the lines, a song to simplicity, to everyday life, like stamps in an old tin can. For Ferris, memory is important, and that’s why he claims in his poem Why Memory: “I know you remember. / And in everything you live, / you seek excuses in the mouths of ships that run aground on your forehead, / soften everything. / Like a soap bubble, / memories burst / with the touch of oblivion. They are the lights of a ship / then and distance, / fog or storm / swallows with pleasure. / And only you remain».
José Luis Ferris (Alicante, 1960) is a doctor of Spanish Literature, who has published the poems Piélago (Hiperión, 1985), Cetro de cal (second prize in the Adonáis Prize, 1984, Rialp, 1985) and Firm Niebla (Hiperión, 1989). , You will descend into the kingdom of the earth (Azorin Prize, Planeta, 1999), Love and Nothingness (Planeta, 2000), as well as the novels Whitman’s Dream (Málaga Novel Award, José Manuel Lara Foundation, 2009). He is the author of over a dozen children’s books and has published four reference works as essayist, researcher and biographer: Miguel Hernández. The passions, prison and death of a poet (Today’s Topics, 2002), Maruja Mallo. The great sinner of the 27th (Temas de Hoy, 2004), Carmen Conde. The life, passion and verse of a forgotten author (Temas de Hoy, 2007) and Words Against Forgetting. The life and work of María Teresa León. 1903-1988 (Antonio Domínguez Ortiz Biography Award, José Manuel Lara Foundation, 2017). It received the Valencia Community Critics Award in three categories: poetry, essay and narrative. He currently resides in Alicante, where Miguel Hernández is dedicated to teaching literary creation and research at the University of Elche. Since 2018, he has been the director of the Miguel Hernández Corporate Chair.
The animal I live in is a journey to the center of the animal that gives the book its name. Divided into four parts, this work may have had other titles, such as Los amores rotos or Balada para mil noches ti, but the presence we all carried prevailed. Maybe if we had to give it another name it would be El amor como motor or De una y mil pasiones. Those who have followed the work of José Luis for years have welcomed this work with joy. We all knew that the poet was resting, his inner child was crouching, observing what was going on around him, shaping him and catching him. As he tells us in the last lines of his poem entitled Coda: “Come closer and listen: / time is a party on the days you write to me, / to believe that you return in the most beautiful / to sample the pleasant rivers”. The poet never left, but he came back.