#355 Applesauce (Ted Kooser)

El primer poemario de Ted Kooser que leí me pareció deslumbrante. De ahí llegué a su libro sobre el arte de escribir poemas, en cuyo título está encerrado gran parte de la poética Kooseriana, que es algo más bien de andar por casa: "The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets". Es un libro estupendo tanto para poetas como para amantes de la poesía. 

Hay una sección, la que más recuerdo, en la que cita a Seamus Heaney hablando de la tarea del poeta: "The aim of the poet and the poetry is finally to be of service, to ply the effort of the individual work into the larger work of the community as a whole". Kooser concreta un poco más en qué consiste ese servicio. Los mejores poemas son aquellos que nos ayudan a percibir la realidad de otra manera, quizá de una manera un poco más fresca, un ángulo inesperado, o quizá de una manera completamente nueva. Es lo que hace Kooser constantemente en sus poemas.

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Una vez le pidieron a Kooser que escribiera un poema para acompañar un libro de arte que finalmente nunca salió a la luz. El poema que Kooser envió era el siguiente:

If you can awaken
inside the familiar
and discover it strange,
you need never leave home.

Y una vez comentó: "This four-line poem is a kind of credo for me. In short, we have beauty all about us, if we take the time to pay attention to it. Reinhold Marxhausen knew about paying attention; George Ault knew it. Pablo Neruda wrote dozens of remarkable poems about common things. Thousands of poets and painters have learned to pay attention like this. We honor the ordinary by giving it our attention. We enshrine the ordinary in our art. Is there anything really ordinary, I wonder." (Otros poetas concuerdan).

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Como en esta época Navideña suele haber mucha gente rodeando la cocina, pongo un poema que me hizo ver con una admiración nueva a todos los que hacen con primor sus recetas, envueltos en conversaciones con sus ingredientes, sumidos en otro mundo que ellos mismos van creando. 

APPLESAUCE

I liked how the starry blue lid
of that saucepan lifted and puffed,
then settled back on a thin
hotpad of steam, and the way
her kitchen filled with the warm,
wet breath of apples, as if all
the apples were talking at once,
as if they’d come cold and sour
from chores in the orchard,
and were trying to shoulder in
close to the fire. She was too busy
to put in her two cents’ worth
talking to apples. Squeezing
her dentures with wrinkly lips,
she had to jingle and stack
the bright brass coins of the lids
and thoughtfully count out
the red rubber rings, then hold
each jar, to see if it was clean,
to a window that looked out
through her back yard into Iowa.
And with every third or fourth jar
she wiped steam from her glasses,
using the hem of her apron,
printed with tiny red sailboats
that dipped along with leaf-green
banners snapping, under puffs
or pale applesauce clouds
scented with cinnamon and cloves,
the only boats under sail
for at least two thousand miles.