He writes and reads
Horacio Maez
Presentation of “En Obra. Diario del oficio” (Under construction. A diary of the trade) at Argentina’s Biblioteca Nacional, with Silvia Jurovietzky and Valeria De Vito, July 14, 2017.
“The poet chooses, elects in the mass of the world what he must preserve, sing, save, what fits his song.
”
BOOKS
2015 - Salix, Ediciones Modi
Possibly beauty, more than an ontological fact, is a vertiginous instant and a certain displacement in stable or habitual circumstances, a kind of geological fault that provokes an unexpected clash or tension between distant elements with no apparent link: an event of physical and intellectual perception (...).
(...) At the same time, this poetry enunciates its own singularity. Where to find it? In the syntax. The grammatical construction of Maez's verses derives from a kind of slightly twitchy breathing, which makes movement and sudden interruption not only its constructive principle, but a kind of semantic organisation, a universe of meaning (...) As if in this minimal and powerful gesture of naming the most decisive fact of language were to occur: to leave a trace in the world after having been affected by it".
Fragment of the prologue written by Carlos Battilana.
“Encuentro tu cuerpo
en este azar y es
la memoria del mío
que demanda intuyendo el placer
la otra piel, la tibieza.
Son mis brazos
que se preparan
para que sea tu voz,
la que franquea y se pierde
no la que pide
sinoa que exige
y violenta este orden,
la que sin olvidar
relaja y recuerda con sus manos
que la proximidad
abisma ””
2017 - En obra, diario del oficio, Sello editorial El Ojo del Mármol
"The book "En obra, diario del oficio" by Horacio Maez shows us a Doing. To be at work is to be doing, and so the poems approach the material detail of building a house. This construction process is not metaphorical, there are the tools - shovel, wood, hammer, nails, buckets, spoon, plumb line, wheelbarrow - and the bodies of the men with their own names - Dionisio, Marce, Jaramillo, Mingo - and the gaze and listening of the "I" who is acquiring the trade and donates the scenes to us as part of the working community. A poetic voice exercises a politics of the gaze that consists of not allowing the place of the commonplace, the daily repetition of community life, to languish, not allowing it to be destroyed.
There is movement of work without haste or violence, and also sounds: conversation, music and silence. A delicate counterpoint in which the past and the present mix; since childhood and in the family home, trades are learnt. Life as a scaffolding of learning. The scaffolding is a framework of planks or other resistant material, which is erected in front of a building site and which is used to stand on and work in masonry. This scaffolding is not static (paradoxes of language, the word scaffolding comes from andar and the suffix -amio) it moves forward like the passing of time. A time of nature with its seasons that the book highlights, the work progresses from autumn, followed by winter, September and closes with the heat of summer. The days of the week are also identified, on Sundays there is no work on the site, sometimes the work is done in one's own house. And the hours of the day and the weather mark the rhythm of the work and the rest, if it rains there can be a mate".
Fragment of the text read by Silvia Jurovietzky during the presentation of the book.
“Hoy trajeron una puerta antigua
con delicados trabajos de molduras
y don Harumi vino para ajustarla.
Trabaja lento,
lento como se trabaja
cuando se conoce el tiempo
y todos los días
se lo hace con el cuerpo.
Es cuidadoso en su tarea
con golpes suaves y secos. Nos cuenta
que muchas de esas herramientas
eran de su padre: “los formones
los tuvo desde siempre y me decía:
el secreto es saber afilarlos”,
y eso hace
que cada uno hable de las suyas,
Dionisio de su tenaza, Mingo
de las veces
que le da pena usar su cuchara
y todos coinciden en un
mirá que le dimos.
Harumi lo cuenta sin nostalgia
con la naturaleza
de haberlas usado desde siempre
y con el amor que esa herencia trae,
habla bajo y de alguna manera
impone silencio.
Hoy no se escucha la radio
y no hay azar en eso.
”
2017 - PRESENTATION OF “EL JUEGO DE LA OCA” (THE OCA GAME) BY EDUARDO POCZTARUK, EDITORIAL ALCIÓN
“There is a strong mark of expressiveness in these poems, a need to leave clear traces of thick and irregular strokes that make no attempt at minimalism or rounded edges. Like the marks left by the spatula when paint is applied to canvas, an energetic step, a footprint, a texture that spurns refinement and chastity. As the poem Pájaro guardián (Guardian bird) says: “Now, if what he was seeking / was a refined, chaste soul / he had come to the wrong address .” Because this I takes on at least two capital sins (greed and envy), it does not look out for itself. Instead, it speaks in a voice that verges on rupture because what it has to say is born from a body that touched fire.”
Horacio Maez
2018 - “EL 22” (THE 22) BOOK PROJECT, EDICIONES PRESENTE
At the invitation of the publisher Ediciones Presente, I participated in “El 22,” a book project in which eleven writers were asked to write a text about a drawing done by one of eleven high school students from Lanús (a town in Greater Buenos Aires). The project culminated in a beautifully crafted edition of the twenty-two works on individual sheets inside an envelope.
2021 - Pequeños rastros que se alejan, Kintsugi editora
Excerpt from the foreword by Loreley El Jaber
Pequeños rastros que se alejan de Horacio Maez is a work of art. I would almost dare to say that it has the unparalleled beauty of a miniature, with all the details that his goldsmith's hand can achieve without betraying the nobility of the wood from which it emerges: a miniature, an object that flaunts the small, that fits in a hand, is held in the skin and leaves an imprint.
And while he tells us about each movement, about the variations of each trunk, each grain, each varnish, each rubbing, he tells us in turn that this is a craft, that we must "let each part tell what it has been". I believe that, in this sense, he composes a book of poems as if it were a precision artistic piece, but the objective is not to show the great symphony or the great work, not even the finished product (although each poem has a fine and careful assembly). There is a clear commitment to pause in the process. We read, thus, the slow making and remaking, the noise that will derive in tone, in melody, we witness the silence of the wood, the instrument that squeaks and resists and the one that becomes a boat in which to ride the river.
Adagio, aliso y timbó
la detención del tiempo
en el silencioso trabajo del detalle
cuando filo y precisión siguen,
aquí en el obrador, el ritmo
de la respiración imaginan
un timbre, lo buscan en el tiempo
en la ancilar y rugosa materia
en su inflexión venida del Índico
del Yukón o del colorado de la rubra.
Adagio, aliso y timbó
en el silencioso trabajo del detalle.
Reviews:
En hablar de POESÍA por Eleonora González Capria.
En revistra OTRA PARTE por Leandro Llull.
En revista el diletante por Micaela Kessler
Entrevista realizada por Gerardo Curiá y Lidia Rocha en el programa de radio Moebius.
Lectura:
Para el ciclo UN POEMA, UNA VOZ.
2021 - POEMS, ARROYO EDITIONS
Espadas
En su cocina su luz clara hablamos de las tardes cuando niñas de verano
en el taller de la casa de familia, junto a su tía niñas las dos, fabricaban espadas
en fino metal punzantes como se veían ellas en la luz de la tarde, rústicas,
me dice y su mirada se pierde quizás el África quizás, el delta.
Lectura:
Para el festival ARROYO LEYES 2021 - VERANO
READINGS
In the Moebius program I was invited to choose two poems by a poet and read them. In this opportunity I chose from Arnaldo Calveyra the first poem from Cartas par que la alegría and also the first poem from El libro de las mariposas.
For the cycle UN POEMA, UNA VOZ.
For the cycle TRANSPOLAR
For the ARROYO LEYES 2021 - VERANO festival
For the cycle MIS POETAS CONTEMPORÁNEOS of Gustavo Tisocco.
For the cycle of the Library of San Isidro – Argentina.