Acclaim for A Stab in the Dark
Bernal wants to purify, he wants to whip with his “palo ciego,” his rough-cut blindness, his piercing pen-point that refuses the cultural slippage of a new kind of Mexican. In desperation, it seems, on a mission, Bernal documents his journeys through a morphing early 20th-century intra-nation: “Angelópolis,” Mexicali, and points in between. The “authentic” dissolves in “Yankee-landia,” yet it is also fused in a revolution poetry of his own — multi-voiced, odd-angled, born at the intersections of borderland lingo, personas, and formats. A profound forerunner and city street-news poet of a Latinx word howl to come. Ground-breaker, research-maker, prize igniter for a time of brave new chaos.
— Juan Felipe Herrera, U.S. Poet Laureate Emeritus
A wildly energetic journalist-writer with satirical wit, a side-order of machismo, and a lifelong distrust of politicians, Facundo Bernal might be compared to Ambrose Bierce, author of The Devil’s Dictionary, who disappeared into Mexico during the very revolution that forced the younger Bernal north across the border. Bernal may not be a great poetic innovator, but he is a brilliant documentary versifier whose small body of work takes on a whole new life in Seidman’s fabulously resuscitative translations. Bernal delivers the sounds and images of a critical epoch when a large number of Mexicans were making new lives (and a new idiom and culture) in California. His poems are caricatures, dramatic monologues, provocations. And they are also a glorious record of theater reviews, bank foreclosures, headlines, the advent of radio, immigrant labor, and overheard talk at carnivals and in dance halls. Bernal has a keen ear for the very alive, vernacular voice of that moment, when the City of Angels was begrudgingly adjusting to its immigrant-ushered reinvention.
— Forrest Gander, poet and translator, author of
Core Samples from the World
¡Újule! Míster Blind still sweeps the world with his “palo de ciego,” his blindman’s cane. Facundo Bernal’s verbal theatrics, his biting insights, his astringent and truthful voice, his irreverent humor, and his great love of who he is — a Mexicano in a time when being one is both a challenge and a joy — cover as much ground today as they did in the 1920s. Then is Now: immigration, displacement, racism, the hatred of the refugee, the power of the rich, the voiceless poor, “los bichis del gud taim.” ¡Cheeses Cries¡ Yankee-landia will never be the same. We needed Facundo Bernal more than ever.
— Denise Chávez, Fronteriza writer, author of
The King and Queen of Comezón
Contributors
Facundo Bernal was a poet and journalist. He was born in 1883 in Hermosillo, Mexico. He and his brother Francisco were members of the vibrant bohemian Mexican literary community of the first decades of the 20th century. He died in 1962, in Mexicali.
Anthony Seidman is the author of three collections of poetry, including Where Thirsts Intersect (The Bitter Oleander, 2006) and, most recently, A Sleepless Man Sits Up in Bed (Eyewear, 2016). He lives in Los Angeles.
Yxta Maya Murray is a novelist, art critic, and Professor of Law at Loyola Law School, Los Angeles. She writes widely on gender justice, performance art, and the intersections of law and literature.
Josh Kun is an American author, academic, music critic, and a 2016 MacArthur Fellow. He is an Associate Professor of Communication in the Annenberg School at USC and holds a joint appointment at the Department of American Studies and Ethnicity.
Gabriel Trujillo Muñoz is a poet, narrator, essayist, and professor at the Autonomous University of Baja California, Mexicali. He is widely considered one of the most important voices in contemporary Mexican science fiction.
Boris Dralyuk is the Executive Editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books and a literary translator.
A STAB IN THE DARK
PALOS DE CIEGO
Facundo Bernal
Translated by Anthony Seidman
Foreword by Yxta Maya Murray
Introductions by Josh Kun and Gabriel Trujillo Muñoz
Edited by Boris Dralyuk
LARB
Classics
This is a LARB Classics publication
Published by The Los Angeles Review of Books
6671 Sunset Blvd., Suite 1521, Los Angeles, CA 90028
www.larbbooks.org
Translated poems copyright © 2018 by Anthony Seidman
Foreword copyright © 2018 by Yxta Maya Murray
Introduction copyright © 2018 by Josh Kun
Introduction copyright © 2018 by Gabriel Trujillo Muñoz
All rights reserved.
ISBN 978-1-940660-39-4
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
has been applied for.
Contents
“For the Raza, for the Homeland, and for Art”: A Foreword by Yxta Maya Murray
Facundo Bernal López (1883-1962): An Introduction by Gabriel Trujillo Muñoz
Translator’s Foreword
In Palos de ciego Facundo Bernal employed a variety of rhyme schemes and meters typical of popular verse and of Latin American Modernismo. At the time, this prosody was rapidly becoming passé, yet Bernal used it with great dexterity. The macaronic rhymes and the insertion of popular dichos (sayings) make for a rich impasto, but the main aesthetic shock comes from Bernal’s use of Mexican slang. The result is a thrilling clash of popular and lofty literary registers, English, and words that would eventually become part of the border’s argot, Caló.
Several difficult decisions had to be made in order to provide an English version of Palos de ciego that would best guide the reader through Bernal’s rollicking depiction of the borderlands. If I were to recreate the prosody exactly, the poems would sound like doggerel. Employing the meter of the English ballad would produce an anachronistic cultural mishmash. I flirted with the idea of using Blues-like structures for some of the poems. Out of despair, I even contemplated resorting to prose-block paragraphs for absolute fidelity to the text…