INRI — Raul Zurita [Review]

INRI
Raul Zurita
Trans­lated by William Rowe
Mar­ick Press 2009
ISBN 978–1-934851–04-3

I would never had picked this book.  Had I seen this book on the shelf, I would have put it back after read­ing the blurb on the back.  Shows what I know.

The theme of this book is The Dis­ap­peared from the days of the regime of Pinochet in Chile from 1973–1990.  He was moved to write this, to try to express that which did not exist until it was announced in 2001 by the Pres­i­dent of Chile, Sr. Ricardo Lagos.  There was one detail that really stuck out.  Before the Dis­ap­peared were killed, they had their eyes gouged out with hooks.  In the text, nobody hears and this is why.  The vic­tims were blinded, killed, then thrown out of air­planes in the Pacific Ocean, lakes, the Andes and into vol­ca­noes.  They were disappeared.

Zurita described the feel­ing of hear­ing what had been sus­pected all along as a noise, a screech that had no name.  That the solem­ness of the announce­ment put up against such bru­tal­ity brought forth a shame, that it had no name.   Thus, the screech.….

The book is divided into three sec­tions.  The poems are long, bro­ken down into smaller pieces on the page and filled with rich, descrip­tive lan­guage about the bro­ken bod­ies, the lands and seas that took them when they fell.

The first lines hit me like a right cross;

Think on those first three words for a moment.  “Strange baits rain”  These are not sup­posed to be where they are.  Some­thing is hor­ri­bly wrong.  And so he writes.  Com­ing back the this through­out the first poem (The Sea), white daisies, an injured rab­bit with blood on its fang, and more in the sec­ond (Bruno Bends, Falls), pink snow in the next, (The Snow) and the hull of a ship where no ship should be in the final poem of Sec­tion One (The Desert).  He weaves images together, slowly build­ing through­out each poem, each sec­tion, each line towards the last two sec­tions.  He brings it all together but it is still a sor­row­ful tale.

The writ­ing flows, dou­bles back on itself through won­der­ful use of rep­e­ti­tion.  He lit­er­ally paints what hasn’t been seen for those who can’t see.  Only through hear­ing can you see what he is try­ing to show you.  It makes for involved, deep read­ing.  Not some­thing to toss in your bag for a day at the beach.

This is har­row­ing, won­der­ful, flow­ing, lovely, tear induc­ing, and spir­i­tual all at the same time.  I never would have cho­sen this book.  I shall never for­get this book and I can­not rec­om­mend this book highly enough.  This is a work of true art.

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A copy of this book was pro­vided by the pub­lisher for this review