The contextual beast published by Casa Editora Abril won the Poetry Calendar Award 2022. Author: Taken from www.ahs.cu

A reflexive being walks through the pages of paper, leaves his questions, some answers, his worries… He uses poetry, classical forms, in rhymes he leaves us his view, his thoughts. Share with us, the readers, an individual and at the same time a collective map of your country, your immediate life.

called contextual beasta vivid name that perhaps defines each person in his personal battles, with his challenges and fears, with their impulses and obstacles imposed by society and the individual soul, which many times chooses to adapt or fight, which walks there with its slow or hurried steps, who can cultivate beauty even from what seems simple or grandiose.

This is a book by the young Trinidadian poet Darien Peña Prada, winner of the Hermanos Saíz Association Calendar Award in 2022 thanks to the applause of the jury, consisting of the winner of the National Literary Prize Nancy Morejon, Aristides Vega Chapu and José Luis Serrano.

There is an unusual beast here, whose body consists of three main parts: the Retaining Wall, the Silhouette in the Portal, and the Prevention Act. From the very beginning, we delve into the verses with a clear reflective tone that bring to mind personal experiences, with the certainty that “You cannot heal from lamentations / From the shadows that inhabit the memory: / They haunt you (there is no salvation) / Without faces, pedestals, monuments / … Man and humanity are not the same / Who guards you and closes the proposal / that destroys the absurd mechanism?/ Innocence rises like a banner/ Paradise is only a formality/ for those who carry peace in their conscience.

61 pages, 32 poems like cells or the heartbeat of a living being, a society from Lucky Listener to Cartels that in the last two verses tells us “Modernism, expansion, subterfuge, natives / If you don’t understand, start with the name”.

In this general corpus there are other poems: Silence, Mistakes, A state of comfort, From the equanimity of the center, Cycles, Anatomy, Shadow of the vanquished, Oblivion, Sentence, Shame, Office, Fugue, Banishment of the clock, At any time. Cost, Faith, Suicides or passers-by, Fire at will, and Anthropophagy Praise.

The author’s adherence to the tradition of forms, which is preferred to free verse, is striking. Some might ask for a bolder structure, but the heart of this book and all its veins goes further, the real interest seems to be in getting us to think, often through questions and a conversational tone.

In the words on the back cover, Yamil Diaz Gómez assures that “an anxious and sincere, effective and very humane poet takes us from the second person singular to the first plural and vice versa in order to cure us of apathy. , also plucking up courage from a reading exercise… What distinguishes the collection of poems is the constant tension between the ethics of questioning and the hedonism of form.”

There are verses that are written in my memory: “The strange thing about death is that it returns / Sometimes like a temple or a medicine / The tormented cannot be understood with faith. / Even if the vanquished want, they do not rest. / The immortality of the drum is a cliche, does the ringing give confidence? / But the soul must be on feet / We need more hope / “.

Others, such as “Demand, Supply” and “At Any Cost”, look at social phenomena but say that “we should be happy no matter what.”

Published by Casa Editora Abril in 2023, edited by Karin Morejon Nellar, designed by Carlos Javier Solis and revised by A. Lee Cabrera. contextual beast This is the first work of poet and cultural propagandist Darien Peña, AHS member and co-founder of the editorial cultural project Callejas, where he publishes and releases books for giveaway, a good way to respond to the desire to build beauty and change our realities.

There are animals with a different heart that can help others transform for the better. I again delve into the pages, into the verses. I look at the cover. Childbirth is always possible, and hopefully always for the best.

Source: Juventud Rebelde