This is a review of Heather Cleary's selection and translation of Girondo's work, 'Poems to Read on a Streetcar,' not the volume 'Veinte poemas para ser leídos en el tranvía.'

Now that's out of the way, know that this is a wonderful little book, and Clearly has done me a great service by putting it together. Girondo's early poems start out like standard description-of-a-place modernism, but tend to end with what Borges called a slap in the face: a description of a street scene ends with "As I reach the corner, my shadow breaks free and promptly throws itself under the wheels of a streetcar," for instance.

There are also little squibs, 'Headings,' like "the remarkable thing is not that van Gogh cut off an ear but rather than he cut one."

I could go on, I more or less want to quote the whole book. Girondo's poetry and prose is gloriously weird, actually disturbing. He doesn't write about, like, f**ked up sh*t--he writes about things that knock you off balance despite their lack of fuckedupedness, writes curses and crises, of the boredom of being human when we want wings or tails, writes invitations to vomit, and towards the end of his career, writes incantatory horror stories of the Pure No. It reminds me a little of Herbert (Z-Big, not George), in that it's easy to read but difficult to live with. Glorious stuff. ( )

Esta edición de Visor contiene una (no tan) generosa selección de una de las más influyentes obras poéticas de la lengua española: la del genio loco Oliverio Girondo. Digo no tan generosa, porque la editora decidió (por alguna razón que no logro comprender) publicar enteros sus dos primeros libros de poesía (sus dos más flojos) y dejar fuera algunos de los mejores poemas de varias de sus mejores obras (como es el caso de Membretes, Espantapájaros y En la masmédula).
A decir verdad, entré con muy altas expectativas de Girondo. Había leído previamente algunos de sus poemas sueltos y me encontraba ansioso por conseguir un libro físico. Pero algunas de sus primeras obras no me convencieron del todo. Aún así, los textos antologados bajo el nombre de Membretes, Espantapájaros y En la masmédula me parecieron una total genialidad. En fin, si encontrara yo una edición con esas tres obras íntegras, sería en definitiva uno de mis libros favoritos. ( )

La obra poética de Girondo es una de las más profundas y originales que ha dado América Latina en el siglo XX. Y es el propio Borges quien afirma "me he sentido provinciano junto a él" .
Oliverio Girondo (1891 - 1967) ocupa por su propia densidad, por su originalidad y personalidad, un lugar privilegiado en la historia de la literatura hispanoamericana. Suyo fue el manifisto del grupo Martín Fierro. ( )

I picked this book back up after reading La casa inundada y otros cuentos, by Felisberto Hernández, because Hernández´s short stories reminded me of Girondo´s poetry. Both authors use a style of personification in which objects think, move and act as if they were people. This book of poetry is described on the back cover as: “a spectacle where things act as protagonists. They advance toward the reader with an overflowing impetuosity, in the midst of a vast stage where everything gesticulates, becomes human, and performs.” I think that this description fits as well for Hernández´s book of stories as for Girondo´s book of poetry, and I really enjoyed reading the two authors consecutively. There is, though, one very large difference between the two men: Hernández focuses his techniques of personification inward on a very specific, personal world, the Uruguay and Argentina that the author inhabits; Girondo, on the other hand, is a traveler and an observer of foreign cities and people. The poems that make up this book were written as the author traveled to Brazil, Spain, Tunisia; up and down Argentina, France, Italy, and other exotic locales. He is describing the world seen by a traveler, a world filled with a mix of the familiar and the unfamiliar. I thought that his travels were an excellent vehicle to impose his style and to employ objects in the way that he does, to give them life, and explain them in a way that is at once relatable and fascinating to anyone who dreams of visiting foreign lands. As he travels, he sees:

“Caravans of mountains camping out in the outskirts” (Rio de Janeiro)
“Taverns that sing with the voice of an orangutan” (Douarnenez, France)
“In the depth of the street, a building inhales the stench of the city” (Buenos Aires)
“Clinging to the lonely street, as if it were a moor, the houses balance themselves so as not to fall into the sea” (Gibraltar)

As these images pile one on top of another over the course of a poem, they combine to give a fascinating image of the place that is being described. I enjoyed reading the book sitting at home, but I would also like to take it along if I have the opportunity to travel in the future. I think I would have enjoyed it greatly while riding the bus, dreaming about foreign places as I watched the city pass by; I also would have liked to have it along during past travels to foreign countries, so that I could look at the new and foreign things that passed by and use Girondo´s thoughts and images as a way to build my own perceptions of the worlds that I was passing through. Some of his poems made me think of places that I had been, and others made me think of places that I´d like to go. While this would have been amazing poetry to read while traveling, it was just as amazing to read while sitting in a (somewhat) warm house in the snow-covered midwest, because it helped me remember and imagine the beautiful and fascinating places that are out there.

One other thing that I found interesting about this book: I find it fascinating to read chronicles of Argentines traveling in Spain during the 1920´s and 1930´s (I´m also a big fan of Roberto Arlt´s newspaper columns written in Spain). I think it´s hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact that Argentina was a very wealthy nation at the turn of the 20th century, and to imagine that wealthy Argentines such as Girondo went to Spain and saw it as rustic and undeveloped. I can remember meeting a lot of Spaniards in Buenos Aires who had come to Argentina to shop and take advantage of the power of the Euro in post-crash Argentina. It was interesting to read about a time when the tables were, in a way, turned.

I don´t own a lot of poetry, but I am glad that I own this particular book. At this point in my life, I appreciate having a small handful of books of poetry that I am slowly becoming more and more familiar with. I also think this is a great collection of poems from a fascinating and inspiring moment in 20th century literature. Buenos Aires in the 1920´s, to me, was the place where some of the greatest writing of the past century took place: there was so much inspiration coming from both Europe and Latin America, and so many distinct and inspiring ways that authors interpreted events in the past (Güiraldes´s depiction of the gaucho and the pampas in Don Segundo Sombra), the present (the poetry of Girondo and Borges), and the future (the maniacal plans of the Astrologist in Roberto Arlt´s Los Siete Locos). ( )