A review

Pedro Poitevin · #1 07-17-2015, 04:57 PM

My book Perplejidades was reviewed in México. If you read Spanish and are curious, here's a link.

Julie Steiner · #2 07-19-2015, 12:32 AM

Pedro's modesty forbids his saying how astonishingly glowing this review is. Just to make him squirm, here's my quick translation of the third and fifth paragraphs:

Quote:

As some already know, and others will discover in the author's introductory note, this has to do with a book that is, among other things, special because its author is a scientist, a logical mathematician who spends much of his working life wrapped up in restrictive lines of abstract reasoning, exploring conjectures, trying to imagine and to mathematically demonstrate theorems, verifying each inference thoroughly in search of errors or open cracks to discover new routes, and he conquers permanent truths in the ineffable ether of the Platonic world. This fact is relevant, in no small part, for recognizing the strategies of his poetic inquiry. And the first thing that I want to say in that regard is that Poitevin, in my opinion, is a gift to poetry. That he is capable of translating effectively, which is to say artistically, his indubitable mathematical talent and mindset to the mundo bizarro (in both senses of the term [brave/weird world]) of poetry, is a gift--for poetry in the Spanish language (and astonishingly also in English) and for the poetry scene linked geographically with this country and this city. That Poitevin should publish his books of palindromes and of poems in Mexico, among us, is a lovely and significant present.

[...]

I record here a few of the many reactions that Perplejidades [Perplexities] provoked in me. The most remarkable facet of this poetic art is, I've already said, its resolute clasp on certain patterns of formal construction which have tight restrictions and conventions. The sonnet, the décima, the sestina, the villanelle. And things even worse in complication, like the hiperdécima and sonnet crowns. But Poitevin does not do this solely to wink at tradition and its many admirers and cultivators, nor solely to show off circus-like abilities of versification, but instead incorporating a sensibility as formal as it is new, with that which reactivates the forms--actualizes and invigorates them; which is what creation is about. He uses his formal capabilities to launch memorable poetic events. And he does this without getting himself in a rut, without letting himself turn tame or, because of the form, dangerously losing control of his bicycle. If he rides it on the rail of a streetcar it is because he wants to, and knows how and when to brake, or break free of inertia. Something that other formalists of our time do not achieve.

Pretty heady stuff, Pedro! Felicitaciones.