I, THE WORST

OF ALL

Estela Lamat

Translated by Michael Leong

BlazeVOX [books]
Buffalo, NY
I, THE WORST OF ALL
by Estela Lamat
Translated by Michael Leong

Copyright © 2008

Published by BlazeVOX [books]

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without

the publisher’s written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.

Printed in the United States of America

Book design by Geoffrey Gatza

First Edition

ISBN: 1-934289-82-5
ISBN 13: 978-1-934289-82-2
Library of Congress Number:: incoming

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INTRODUCTION

Nace a los ocho años en el patio de la casa. Ha realizado acuciosos estudios

nocturnos de lo desvelos, los azares y las causalidades estelares. Domadora de
gatos, enóloga olfativa, zurda y epiléptica. Nunca ha estado en ningún taller,
no ha participado en ningún concurso, no ha ganado ningún premio a las
Letras.

[Born at the age of eight in the backyard of the house. She has conducted
meticulous nocturnal studies of sleeplessness, of stellar chances and
causalities. Tamer of cats, enologist by nose, left-handed and epileptic. She
has never been in a workshop; she has never entered any contests; nor has
she won any literary awards.]

So goes the biographical note on the cover flap of Yo, la peor de todas (Contrabando
del bando en contra, 2006), the original Spanish language edition from which this
book was translated. This brief paratextual snippet provides perhaps the most direct
introduction to Estela Lamat’s work as it signals her staunch and sarcastic
repudiation of establishment poetry–what Charles Bernstein calls in a U.S. context
“official verse culture”–while already adumbrating the roguish otherworldliness of
her mental universe. As far as contextual information, this is what is known about
one of the most provocative voices to have recently emerged from Chile’s literary
underground: she is a poet associated with the so-called “Novisima” Generation, a
group of various writers that re-deploys and extends the difficulty of dictatorship-
era writing (here one thinks of the Generation of the ‘70s and Generation NN) in
response to the more diffuse and unofficial “dictatorships” that continue to police
and control the social body. She is also the author of Sangre seca (Contrabando del
bando en contra, 2005) and the forthcoming Colmillo molido, which will complete
this projected trilogy.

I, the Worst of All is a complex and heterogeneous book that combines Lamat’s
intense, almost manic lyricism with her prodigious mythopoeic imagination. The
result is a challenging and ambitious project that invites multiple readings and
rewards extended lingerings within its dense, linguistic thicket. While many
poems–such as “How to make a corner” or “Every poem is a hat”–can surely be
read and enjoyed as stand-alone “anthology pieces,” it is crucial to understand I, the
Worst of All as a book-length project (or “concept album,” if you like), for part of
its brilliance resides in its imbricated, dialogic structure. Numerous voices populate
and haunt this wild, fugue-like work, but there are three major personae (that
preside over the book’s three respective chapters/acts/sections) that may require
some introduction:

Pánico. The major masculine voice of the book. Bestial and lecherous, he derives
from the Greek god Pan. He inspires both panic and creativity–one might say he
represents the panic aroused by linguistic consciousness, the panic caused by the

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 very possibility of linguistic combination. Hence, the series of poems that play with
permutations of his name–“Pá co,” “Pá i o,” “P ni o.” Hence, Pánico’s alphabetic
taunt which he invitingly flings at the poet: “ABCdeFGhijklmNopQRstuVWXyz.”
And hence, the poet’s sardonic comment to her demented muse: “I touch the
undulating surface of a letter / I’m aroused / by the depth / of its silent pleats / a
letter / a letter / what the fuck do I do with just one letter / if I pen another I will
become a poet.”

The worst of all. The book’s (anti)heroine. She is inspired by the Baroque poet/nun
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, who in a divine petition renounced her writing with the
self-abasing formula (supposedly written in blood), “I, the Worst of All.” Lamat
turns this renunciation, this disavowal into a logorrheic flood of poetic intensity–
particularly in the stunning prose poems that open this section. Here, her choice to
justify the right hand margin, to go coast-to-coast staining the blankness of the page
like an oil slick forcefully performs the expansive opening of this historical silence.
Because of the lack of punctuation to help us parse the frenetic rhythm of Lamat’s
poetic prose, it is tempting to say what Eliot said of Milton–that when we read
these poems, we get a “physical sensation of a breathless leap.” But it goes beyond
that: we get a more dire sense of corporeal extremity, a sense of asphyxiation, of a
vertiginous rush of a voice that has been wanting to speak for hundreds of years.

La Llorona. The nomadic spirit from Hispanic folklore who cries in search of her
missing children. One of the most well-known ghost stories from Latin America. As
Gloria Anzaldúa describes her in Borderlands/La Frontera, La Llorona is “Daughter
of Night, traveling the dark terrains of the unknown searching for the lost parts of
herself.” This cycle of monodies is, by far, the most lyric section of the book and
announces a revitalization of poetry: we remember that, in the first section, La
Llorona mourns, “poetry has gone forever / this hole is left in its place.” Now in
place of this vacancy, we experience a dazzling fecundity fertilized by and refracted
through La Llorona’s lubricious tears.

This book quite literally takes your breath away–because of the demanding pace of
Lamat’s language (“language pours from me from every / pore,” she says in the
book’s opening invocation) and because of the hyperbolic ferocity of her tropes:
“my eyes see / my forehead sees / and my fingers see / as if I were a huge uterus
bombing clairvoyant sons.” This is a vatic poetry that bombards the reader with
bizarre visions that are as beautiful as they are terrifying. I am both honored and
excited to introduce it to an English-speaking audience.

Michael Leong
New York City
September 2008

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PANIC
I can’t estrange myself from the nights
language has died
like a moth charred
in the lamp of its own desires
language has died
by crossing the sealed portal of
memory by becoming a letter with stellar
designs
language opens
like a grille in the head
and lets penetrate sacred and bloody eyes
and the sick and distant
gaze of angels
language pours from me from every
pore I can’t
I can’t
stop calling you
even now I want to feel you
I’ve recovered from you but I still desire you
I want to hold you in my skin
I want to call you into me
I want you to be part of my life
I want you to be part of me, life
I want you to return to me and
then we might begin the most beautiful
journey
look for me for I’m still waiting
I’ll make you suffer a few seconds
you deserve it
but I’ll surrender myself fully to loving you
come and find me
that is the truth
not this appearance of deadened desire
call me my door still has
blank pages
10
enraptured on the branch of that tree
wanting to turn inward
to forget the strange and
peaceful flights
hanging from a branch
with skin wounded by the night
sensitive to the astrals falling
on black asphalt a star
lassoed by a gleaming eye
summoned towards the coasts
of celestial lands
beckoned with a gravitational
force
that resounds throughout the silence
of the galaxies
between the stellar lactations
among the peripheral regions of
the stars
always commencing the way
of the one who bridges the worlds
terrified before the gate of death
-without death-
it is about a sweeter death
the smallest of all
with the terrible audacity of
peninsular deaths
with the unruly audacity of
black-starred nights
with astral winds penetrating
the layers of violet dreams
Dear Pánico:

I’ve been wanting to write to you for a long time, to thank you for your letters and
especially for the wine last night, I wonder if I’ll be able to forget you, last night I
drank three bottles of wine but I still had your name in my mouth, I still could
clearly remember you. I went to bed thinking, “Sleeping will annihilate him.” Big
mistake. I woke up at 4:03 screaming your name. It occurs to me now that I’m
writing that I don’t really know why I’m writing to you when I want to ignore you.
Last night, before waking at 4:03 in the morning, between the second and third
bottle of wine, and very gradually, as I stared intently at the bottom of my cup, I
said your name and I’m not sure which one of your hexes had gotten into my
mouth, I started to speak in other tongues. I decided to return the favor, I made
myself vomit, I decided to vomit in that other language, to ask for forgiveness
hugging the white bowl gagging in that other tongue but nothing. At the whitest
bottom of the bowl, in the deepest depths of my throat, I still had your name, dried
between the wine and the saliva, stuck to my lips.

Today, with a mild hangover, the wine was good and my head resilient, I was going
upstairs through the elevator and from the highest peaks of the library, from up
there where the books are in Spanish, I thought that if I hurled myself out the
window I would see you dying flat on your face and, to be honest, I panicked.

Yours in death,

Pánico.

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 The spaces imprint themselves
and there’s not even a hole
in which to fall to pieces
and break without tears.

I can’t decipher this enigma:

the dresses and the shoes and the earth’s blue dominions.

La peor de todas†: it had a blindness in both eyes and it doesn’t utter a word
unless to apologize for feeling too much.

La llorona‡: poetry has gone forever

this hole is left in its place
for you not to fall
hold up a red flag and hoist it firmly
with the palm of your hand.

La peor de todas: its eyes doubly blind

silently irrupt.

La llorona: poetry is dead and with crosses on its back

no longer breathes
I apportion this sacred moment
to the wounded palms of your hands.

La peor de todas: but whom will we deceive

this Saturday at 22:03

†
[Translator’s note: “Yo, la peor de todas”—I, the worst of all—was the famous formula used by
the seventeenth century poet and nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz when she signed a petition
renouncing her worldly life including reading and writing. Born in Mexico, she was called “The
Tenth Muse” and is now widely regarded as the finest writer of the Spanish Baroque. For her
defense of women’s rights to study and pursue intellectual activities, she has been called the first
feminist of the Americas.]
‡
[Translator’s note: La Llorona, which might be translated as “the mourner” or “the weeping
woman,” is a figure from Hispanic folklore that has pre-Columbian origins. The legend has many
variants throughout Hispanic America though there are some core motifs—a mother wanders at
night wailing for her lost children; she is associated with rivers and water; and she has perhaps
drowned her own children, though, in the Chilean version, her children were taken from her by
force. She is often linked to La Malinche, the slave and mistress of Cortés, and La Virgen de
Guadalupe.]

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 whom will we watch from the corner of our eyes
so we don’t discover ourselves.

La llorona: love doesn’t suit me

it’s clothing for other battles
I prefer the nasal nudity of my face
and the insignificant apertures
from which I see you leaving.

La peor de todas: I prefer to sit and smile

tossing stones at the street
as if they were unmentionable
traces of your departure.

La llorona: It’s 22 and a little while more

and a little while less
shit drips from my eyes and saliva from my nose

La peor de todas: What can be done in autumn besides sniffling as if it were

autumn and looking through the windows of a car with the
face of the living dead knowing that you’re out there holding
autumn’s hand with some bitch but in your place there’s the
ultimate battle of all poetry rolling up a bit of nostalgia for
the nights have gone to drown their sorrows in glory.

La llorona: Take out a handkerchief and dry me of this nostalgia.

I write “Must” in red in my red notebook lighting it at midnight when I Must sleep
and forget you when I Must extinguish myself with a puff and trust that I’m
sleeping my fingers pierce into me every letter of your name and I Want and I only
Want if I get up tonight in the middle of the night and contemplate you there red
and awake looking at me naked on the bed with closed eyes prying into my red
notebook with red empty letters and silent ellipses.

I Can’t write
tonight
the words that stand on the tips of my fingers
frighten me
the glances that I cast from the corner of my eye
to the blank page
frighten me
I’m terrified
by the menacing sound of the empty syllables

13
I’m completely possessed by the red color
of the ink
the night’s reflection blinds me
I don’t want to write
but I tremble like a caged letter
I eat the fingernails of the letters and spit them out
on the red page
I touch the undulating surface of a letter
I’m aroused
by the depth
of its silent pleats
a letter
a letter
what the fuck do I do with just one letter
if I pen another I will become a poet
the garbage that I write in red nights like these
terrifies me
when all the letters are falling from me
and they recede
like waves
lapping at my feet
I spit them into the garbage
I look at them dementedly
they seduce me with their hypocritical voices
they seduce me with their rattling and crying
and with that stuttering smile
of a lethal letter
what the fuck do I do
with all these silences
with my fingers pressed against the pen
as if I could save myself
from asphyxiation
as if it were my only mast
my invincible hero
as if the letters were mine
I suck them
like crabs I bite them
I eat them and I grope them
as if they were millions of lascivious
men
in my hands
I touch them
with the tip of my curled tongue
I absolve them.

14
Pánico

Ubique.
Language is everywhere
but language is not a god
not even a god
but if
we are to say that it ecloses
its chrysalis is a mouth that screams
then
for the obstinate ones of cape and sword†
that insist on genealogies
language does have a father
or a mother
we will thus say
language is born from a scream.

Language=screaming.

†
[Translator’s note: The so-called cape-and-sword plays (comedias de capa y espada) were a
popular genre during the Spanish Golden Age. The name derives from the cloaks and swords
worn by the drama’s aristocratic characters.]

15
Pánico

He measures himself
he distributes himself in consecutive spaces
he alternates between becoming light and becoming cloud
or between corrupting himself with the air or becoming emptiness
between the tattered sound of the distances
he strikes like a bolt of lightning
inflamed by celestial vapors
impermeable to the music of the stars
round and stealthy as a boreal wind
he hits his fingers against the doors
he traverses miracles with his eyes blindfolded
he suggests using the down of Platanus orientalis to relieve coughing
he dissipates between the tips of my shoes
he becomes pliable as a cigarette in the night
nothing can ever forget his eyes
his undecipherable scribbling
his silences made into an ocean
that rests after high tide.

He measures himself
he sketches himself between the planes
like a naked and infinite line
he mutates
he shapes himself like a tooth in the mouth
and gobbles the celestial platforms of the ships
he slips away
he turns into a scream and throws himself
from the tongue to the ground
from the window to a howl
and sleeps
imprisoned by a tidal wave of ants
he sits and listens with his eyelids to the lessons of the night
he learns the ancient alphabets of the hands and the leaves
he learns by heart the circuit of the spiders in the tree
he strangles himself
with a word of a dialect that has not yet been invented
he begets a new sky
with other stars and other suns
that contemplate other rains
that sow other mysteries
he stands up

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and ascends into the warlocks’ flight
he pollutes himself in the grey fumes of a city
that I no longer remember
he falls back onto the bed
when he has traveled the necessary distances to exhaust his life
he vanishes between that firefly and this door.

17
Pánico

I will punish you with the power of memory.

Here is your language.

18
Every poem is a hat

From my hat I pull out a cat and a bouquet of yellow flowers

from my hat I pull out an acute letter and fold it gravely
until I focus solely on its image
in my hat
I keep colorful handkerchiefs united by invisible connections
that only you know
because only you accept this page when nothing can conceal the night.

Full of hats
my room seems like a book
full of hats
the street speaks from every rabbit
and disappears like a top hat behind a mysterious
corner
or
it swallows my head like a hat with sad and eternal wings
as if my head were another less complete hat
a totally useless one
my hat goes out to fly in the mornings
to return to its bed with the smell of leaves
my hat sprawls on the desk full of black letters
and covers with its orbits the deformed curvature of my ideas
my hat
which is also the hat of that man and that star
clusters my thoughts against the edge of an ashtray
it rests like a decapitated body on the table
and retires to take a nap like a casualty of war
my hat dons itself
it talks to itself
it turns into a top hat and makes enemies with my head
it turns into a wide-brimmed hat and extends towards the interminable seas
of my ears
my hat perceives that it’s a white thing with black letters
and then hops like a rabbit between a word and a body
and by an act of magic against thing
and of thing against image
everything mixes in the hat and that is why the hats dance.

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Pánico

“AbcDEFghIjklMnoPQrSTUvwxyZ”

Pánico

This poem is neither yours,

nor is it mine.

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