Poetry
Distancia destruida
Not translated into English
Carlos Obregón Borrero · 1957
Synopsis
A lone voice addresses a God it seeks without finding. The movement repeats from one piece to the next: a rise, a fall, the silence after. The body has its place in it, and desire, as with the Spanish mystics the author read. What the title announces is this abolished distance between the one who speaks and what he perceives, which only the poem holds for an instant before it opens again.
Context
The book appeared in Madrid in 1957, at the author's own expense and from an ordinary printer: its author was twenty-eight and already living far from his country. The second and last collection appeared four years later on an island in the Mediterranean. Criticism, long scarce, has classed this poetry under the label of mystical; a recent study disputes the word and proposes instead to see in it the kinship between the one who seeks to be united with God and the poet who aims at a speech uniting song and silence.
Who it is for
A brief collection in Spanish, with no French translation. Abstract, tense poetry, without anecdote or setting; it asks to be read slowly and in a low voice.
Prizes and reception
The first of the only two books published in its author's lifetime, and overlooked. His work was only collected and read in his country in 1985, twenty-two years after his death.