A book-length poem of infrarrealismo

Publisher's page (via (via))

The First Infrarealist Manifesto

“It’s four light hours to the confines of the solar system; to the closest star, four light years. An excessive ocean of emptiness. But are we really sure there’s only emptiness? We only know that there are no stars shining in that space. If they exist, would they be visible? And if there are bodies that are neither luminous nor dark? Couldn’t it be that on the celestial maps, the same as on those of Earth, the star-cities are indicated and the star-villages are omitted?”
— Soviet science fiction writers scratching their faces at midnight.
— The infrasuns (Drummond would say the happy proletarian fellows).
— Peguero and Boris alone in a lumpen room having premonitions of the wonder behind the door.
— Free money.

In 1976, when Roberto Bolaño was 23, 24 years old and living in Mexico, he drafted the first* manifesto of Movimiento Infrarrealista de Poesia, a poetry movement that inspired the visceral realism (or vicerealism) movement in The Savage Detectives. Along with other poets, Bolaño and Mario Santiago banded together to form and lead the infrarrealistas; their acknowledged stand-ins in the novel were Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima.

The manifesto was titled “Déjenlo Todo, Nuevamente” and could be found in original Spanish here.

Excerpts of the manifesto in English were quoted in many reviews of Bolaño’s books. The only complete English translations that I found online were in two sites:

Abandon Everything, Again
Give It All Up Again

The activities of the infrarrealistas in their heyday were described in the following links:

“Bolaño in Mexico” by Carmen Boullosa
Interview with Mario Santiago
“The Great Bolaño” (pdf) by Francisco Goldman
“Interviewees” (Spanish links) by Jeremy
Review of Bolaño Infra in Caravana de recuerdos

* There’s another manifesto (“Por un arte de vitalidad sin límites”) written earlier in 1975 by José Vicente Anaya.

What happened in Philoctetes Center, December 2009?

The poetry reading was called "Madmen, Exiles, and Savage Detectives: Latin American Poetry from Arenas to Bolaño". The readers were Jaime Manrique and Laura Healy.

Healy will read from her translations of work by Mario Santiago Papasquiaro and Roberto Bolaño, cofounders of the poetic movement Infrarealism, which was immortalized in Bolaño's Savage Detectives. Like the fictional characters Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima, Bolaño and Papasquiaro tried to infuse their poetry with life as much as they infused their lives with poetry. The evening will serve as an introduction to the work of Latin American poets who spent their lives in the margins, whether by choice or as a matter of circumstance.

Words Without Borders had a review of the event here.

The entire reading was posted in YouTube.

P.S. This is Bifurcaria bifurcata's 101st post!