Ramon Boixeda and the complicated celebration of existence

The new book by Ramon Boixeda (Sant Julià de Vilatorta, 1981) is not religious or mystical poetry, but it moves within the coordinates established by the GenesisBetween the apple of original sin and the dust – "Dust you were and to dust you shall return" – of the expulsion from Paradise. In this sense, Boixeda writes about birth, death, and life – strenuous, precious, perplexing, incomprehensible – that lies in between. PulseThe Sant Cugat poetry prize in memory of Gabriel Ferrater brings to mind a phrase by Saul Bellow that says: "Existence is work."

Boixeda will be one of the most conceptually dense poets in contemporary Catalan literature. I mean that behind his compact verses, meticulously crafted according to diverse metrical patterns—decasyllables, alexandrines, heptasyllables, pentasyllables—there are always interpretations of life and the world, tangible things, recognizable experiences. His poems are never more or less striking or strident walls of words and images, but rather they give form to intelligible reflections and express moods that are sometimes elusive but always definable. If Boixeda's poetry were visual art, it would be like those paintings that at first glance seem abstract and then you see that they are densely figurative yet well-defined.

More philosophical and symbolic than realistic

Thematically, Pulse It has two clear anchors: the birth of a daughter and the death of the father, which lead the poet to reflect, to rethink himself, existentially. We are far, in any case, from the poetry of experience, from the simple verbal illustration—literal and univocal—of events or emotions. More philosophical and symbolic than realistic, Boixeda's book has an undercurrent of intricate vitalism, a touch tortured and a touch of the effeminate. This vitalism, more programmatic and self-aware than felt and enjoyed, results in a celebration more of being than of existence: "We already live in paradise in every instant, / if we can bear it, and at the same time in every instant / paradise moves aside, making room for us. / Perhaps it is as it says, paradise, / that every instant." The celebration is more meditative than euphoric, more a tentative exploration or an inquisitive endeavor than an explosive and expansive celebration. The poet celebrates his fullness while acknowledging his insufficiency and incompleteness.

In PulseBoixeda refers to many other poets, or borrows verses, styles, motifs, and diction: Andreu Vidal, Paul CelanOmar Khayyam, Sandro Penna, Leopoldo María Panero, Riba, Dante, Pavese... However, he always avoids gratuitous or ostentatious culturalism. An example of this is the poem's ending. Daughter, year zerowhich ends with a "well, we'll find it" that comes directly from a poem by Philip Larkin, with the (brilliant) peculiarity that Larkin's poem is titled The old idiots and speaks of the horror of decrepitude and imminent death, while Boixeda's speaks of a baby and of love and of life beginning.

Boixeda's poetry is the antithesis of that poetry built on arbitrary rhetorical flourishes, that seeks sensationalism because substance eludes it, too gratuitous to be meaningful, too imprecise to be expressive. Everything is meticulously calculated, everything has depth, and everything is sedimented here. It is significant, for example, that the book's semantic galaxy is almost conventional—I mean that words like light, silence, twilight, heart, rain, wound abound—and that Boixeda is able to deconstruct it all, reactivate it expressively, and create poems that are both good and personal.