The poems included here are taken from El Contragolpe, the latest book by Juan Carlos Flores, published in Havana in 2010, in Kristin Dykstra’s original translation. Accompanying them are selected tracks from a record issued under the same title and in the same year, a work that combines the poems read by the author with music by Tony Carreras.
I invite you to appreciate the work of Flores as both text and sound. The book, little known outside Cuba, is rarely read alongside the audio. The English translations of these poems are included below, courtesy of Kristin Dykstra, who has prepared a bilingual edition of El Contragolpe, forthcoming from the University of Alabama Press. As a complement, please see the make-of video, which allows us to enjoy the body language of the poet in action.
Although the structure of the poems and their prominent use of repetition could suggest the presence of a minimalist aesthetic, they in fact reveal a connection with hip-hop, once the performance of Juan Carlos Flores is taken into account. The soundtrack makes that connection more apparent, because the author delivers the words like a hip hop artist. This influence of hip-hop may be linked to the fact that Flores has lived most of his adult life in Alamar, a revolutionary housing project built during the 1970s in East Havana. By the early 1990s, this neighborhood had become a space marked by social marginality and cultural creativity at once, in turn both said to be tinted with subversive tendencies. Alamar has hosted alternative festivals such as the Rock Festival (1990-1993), the Hip-Hop Festival (1995-2001), and the Endless Poetry Festival (1999-present). This last event is organized by a multidisciplinary art collective known as OMNI Zona Franca (1998-present), of which Flores was a founding member.
These three poems deal with ordinary people’s lives. They all refer to events that take place in the public sphere, far from the lonely desk of the poet. In contrast to the traditional solipsism associated with poetry, the poetic voice exists in the text only through its relationship with “the other.” In ‘Instruction Manual,’ there is an invisible poetic voice, a narrator-witness. In ‘Moving Target,’ the poetic voice comes from behind a curtain, and can be confused with that of the poem’s protagonist. Finally, in ‘The Messenger,’ the poetic voice exists within a collective. The record enriches this collective experience through the inclusion of sounds that affirm the presence of others: a typewriter and some steps in ‘Instruction Manual,’ the whistle and the shuffling of papers in ‘The Messenger.’ Only ‘Moving Target’ is performed in the absence of sounds that could signal the presence of other humans besides the poet. I have included this poem precisely because it is self-referential, a sort of literary statement revealing the fusion of the poet with one of his popular characters.
–Lizabel Mónica
NOTE: The audio is in Spanish. You may download the original Spanish version of the poems to follow along and thus appreciate his particular take on poetry as sound.
Three Poems, by Juan Carlos Flores (Kristin Dykstra, transl)
Instruction manual
Go horse go, with a horse you apply aerodynamic method and horsey horsificates, go horse go, with a horse you apply aerodynamic method and horsey horsificates, go horse go, but if you take away the horse’s food and rest, the necessaries, horse croaks, before.
Moving target
Old man, gone mad in jail, moves a wheelbarrow full of excrement, (weight causing his legs to buckle), I know, like the flutter of a fly, writing annoys, I know blacksmiths of the mind exist just as objects called flyswatters exist, but liberty is one per, though among militarized camps, old man, gone mad in jail, moves a wheelbarrow full of excrement, (weight causing his legs to buckle), traveler on illusory business, traveling from no place to nowhere.
The Messenger
He ascends the morning’s slope, among minutes that are stones, bringing us news of rice, and other news of culinary interest, and other news of the nation.
Historian, in his way, no one better than him at deciphering the passbook for supplies, ration book, in postwar period, notary papers too.
He descends the morning’s slope, among minutes that are stones, having brought us news of rice, and other news of culinary interest, and other news of the nation.