Like awaiting a body promised by the waters: The poetry of Waldo Rojas

Abstract

If poetry ― as Gaston Bachelard says ― is “an instant metaphysics”, that is to say, a flashing “vision of the universe (…), a revelation of the secret of a soul, of being and objects at the same time” without principles or preambles, without method or proofs, we can affirm that the poetry of Waldo Rojas is a writing of the myth of man. Instantaneous and enduring, like the river or the sea, elements to which constant reference is made, this poetry speaks to us of a man inserted in the landscape and in culture simultaneously. This “myth”, thus, is the constant dialogue of man with the elements that constitute the universe: earth, air, water, fire. There is therefore, in this work, no opposition between “the barbaric” and “the civilized”, but rather an incursion into some fundamental archetypal matters…