The discourse of the viscera

The alchemist Josep Palau i Fabre had the theory that there are winter books and summer books. I admit I'm amused to have read it. Humble winter by Joan Perelló on these hot days that give the impression we might melt at any moment. Judging by the title, Perelló's new collection of poems should be a winter read, but I found it to be an excellent summer read.

Humble winter It is a book with a twilight tone, a staging of the awareness of the devastation of our homeland and the end of an era we are experiencing in this vast laboratory that is the 21st century: the architecture is tarnished with aluminum, the oil lamps burn inexorably out of existence, we are overwhelmed by the journeys we will never take and the horizons we will never contemplate. Faced with such a dramatic situation, bewilderment permeates the pages and is found in each and every latitude. It is also a compilation of posthumous fears: the feral fear of not having time to write the final poem, the one that gives conclusive meaning to the ending, is supreme here. However, Joan Perelló does not fall into despair or cheap sentimentality, extremes he has always managed to avoid. What prevails, however, is the stubborn hope of not wanting to faint, and it is at this final point that the writing is more intuitive and free than ever, because once memory is dead, one can write freely without the overwhelming weight of memories. Leaving aside dictionaries, Joan Perelló speaks clearly about death, and if for Joan Fuster dying means stopping writing, for Joan Perelló it means closing the drawer after having put all the papers in order.

Before we are meat in the capolator of existence, Humble winter It delves into the workings of the cosmic engine of love, found in the vulgar, saliva-filled kisses that help quench thirst, but also in the culmination of the human project in this world as a sense of generosity, reaching conclusions similar to those of Simone Weil and Iris Murdoch. Furthermore, there is such a colossal passion for literary creation and the frenzy for the arts that multiple energies are released. For example, the poem dedicated to Miles Davis that parodies the myth of Plato's cave is brilliant, and it's worth remembering that music is fundamental to Joan Perelló's verses, especially jazz, a powerful and omnipresent rhythm in his organic complete poetry.

A book deafened by being composed with a compass of enumerations, parallelisms, anaphoras and emphatic repetitions, Humble winter Joan Perelló's is a proposal of overwhelming honesty and humility, a melancholic and combative requiem marked by the nobility of humility and the dignity of farewell, a seemingly wintery book that can be enjoyed like a summer orgy.