Thinking, Disentangling, Resisting:
The Task At Hand Is Not To Stop*

by Jen Hofer

Sentences, in Spanish, are both prayers and phrases: the word “oración” has two ready meanings, and, as ever, context aids us in determining which takes precedence. Sentences, in English, are both phrases and punishments: context aids us in determining which takes precedence. A diVerence in “policy,” perhaps, though Mexican Spanish – as elastic, in many ways, as gringo English – can be put to atrocious military-industrial use as readily as English, if with different global ramifications. Or a difference in resonance.

It is all too easy these uneasy days to feel that the tasks at hand do not matter, do not weigh, to feel tiny, insignificant, unable in the context of a constant and corrosive state of war and its attendant doublespeaks, machinations, brutalities in language and brutalities in action. In such a context, it seems self-evident, though bears repeating and rethinking, that the task at hand is not to stop.

To imagine the unimaginable, to see what we have not yet seen or what we see daily through different eyes, to welcome what we do not already know, must somehow counter the inhuman, the dehumanizing, the deadening contexts that dull us. We have something to learn, concretely and ephemerally, from hearing other sentences, other prayers, and from considering their different resonances. What we say – and how we say – reverberates in the air around us as a music, the sound waves, I’d like to think, shimmering out from our languages to create an altered space.

In poetry, context is both aid and foil; more so, perhaps, in poetry in translation. Any anthology or selection of writings provides a window – first and foremost, though not exclusively, a window onto the consciousness, concerns, and moment of the person presenting the work at hand: the person who for this (created) context is an originary reader. I hope that those readers who are especially interested in contemporary Mexican poetry will take this section as a starting point, and will be inspired to explore further – through other publications, and, for those whose whim or wit takes them to Mexico, through your own adventures in Mexico’s literary worlds. Toward that end, I include at the end of this section, in addition to a short bibliography, a by no means exhaustive list of literary resources in Mexico City.

Note:

Title lifted from the Editor’s Note to Aufgabe #2.

© Jen Hofer. All rights reserved.