There are numerous poets who, thanks to the musical adaptation of their poems by singers who have popularized them, have reached a wide audience. In Spain, the best known cases are those of Antonio Machado y Miguel HernandezThe poems were interpreted by Serrat, who made it possible for the expressive richness of the word to be absorbed by the listener through his songs. In Uruguay, Circe Maia's poetry has suffered the same fate. Texts such as "Por detrás de mi voz" or "Versos de lluvia", to mention a couple of examples, are part of the collective memory of her country.
In recent months, on the occasion of the award given by the city of Granada (the Federico García Lorca International Prize), the voice of this intellectual, mother of a large family, has become closer and more vibrant for the reader who seeks in her lyrical work a way of recognizing herself through a "...".direct, sober, open language that does not require a change of tone in the conversation".as Maia herself points out in her first collection of poems, In time (1958). To which he adds: "The mission of this language is to discover and not to cover, to reveal the values, the meanings present in existence and not to immerse us in an exclusive and closed poetic world.".
Faithful to these poetic principles, his writing has been gaining followers not only for the varied imagery he presents of everyday life, through objects, people close to him or inspired by the memory of his deceased loved ones, but also for the difficult simplicity of his verses, so full of luminosity.
First activity
Surprisingly, although at 92 years of age she is known and praised for her poetic production, for a long time this has been (and is) her secondary occupation, as she has confessed in some interviews and as she states in the poem "Second Activity": "Already this sitting down / to take a paper, it's a leaving / -where, where?- / Because someone runs or calls and you're still, / or rather, you're not there because you've gone where, where? / It's almost embarrassing. However, what we would least like is to leave. [...] To go round and round sounds, rhythms / while all around tremble, voices, beings and true things germinate"..
Her husband, the upbringing of her children -one of whom died in a traffic accident when she was 18 years old- and her dedication to her ten grandchildren constitute her main source of attention. Neither -in a deliberate way- the great themes of always, nor approaches that go beyond the earthly dimension of man, but ordinary biographical situations of the simplest kind, with which a wife, mother and grandmother at the same time, faces in her daily life, give reason for her lyric.
In fact, he justifies it in "Esta mujer", one of his most celebrated compositions: "This woman is awakened by a cry: / She gets up half asleep. / She prepares a milk in silence / cut by little kitchen noises. / See how she wraps her time and in it this life. / Her hours / tightly woven / are made of tough fibers / like real things: bread, oats, / washed clothes, wool woven. / Each thing germinates other hours and all are stepping stones / that she climbs and resonates. / She goes out and in and moves / and her doing illuminates her.".
The Argentinean professor and writer Lara Segade expresses with intelligent lucidity the quid of the richness of his poetry: "Spending a lot of time indoors, you begin to notice the small variations in everyday things. How light moves over objects, for example. The growth of plants or children. One begins to perceive the continuous transformation of everything, even what seemed still, stable or permanent. Circe Maia displays such a gaze in her poems.".
The essential word in time
In the poetic work of this Uruguayan poet, rather than what is read, the lived experience predominates, an attitude that finds a categorical justification in understanding it as "...".a lively response to the contact of the world".which Circe Maia assimilates from her teacher, Antonio Machado, and which serves her to establish a constant and fruitful dialogue with her environment as a framework for lyrical expression. Thus, life is for her life in time, conversation with and in time, never monologue.
The human being, as he lets us see, is made, like everything apprehensible, of time. In this way he relives the past ("Behind my voice / -listen, listen- / another voice sings. / It comes from behind, from far away; / it comes from buried / mouths and sings. / They say they are not dead / -listen, listen- / while the voice rises / that remembers them and sings".) or brings an inevitable future closer to the present ("...").another Thomas, Englishman, Sir Thomas More, / dreams of his fantastic Utopia / while the executioner's axe is sharpened.").
In "Various Clocks", his key poem on the subject, he elaborates on these considerations and concludes that time is not only all-encompassing, but also takes many forms. It is worth reproducing it in its entirety: "Several invisible clocks measure / the passage of different times. Slow time: the stones / turn sand and riverbed / of the river / Time / of stretching: slow, invisible / the vegetable clock gives the green hour / the red and golden hour, the purple / the ashen / All in rhythm, silent, / or with a dark sound, which we do not hear. / Leaning at once on rock and tree / A being of flickers and beats / A being made of memory dust / Is there stopped / And wants to penetrate slyly / In another rhythm, in another time / Alien.".
As everything is temporary, it is easy to elucidate that Circe Maia's poetry, although based on domestic or family matters, manages by its own poetic force to lead the reader to a search of the ungraspable, of the unknown, of what overflows the mere and ordinary visible reality, to become, as a result of its enormous lyricism, a means of knowledge of existence and its less tangible dimensions.
Qualitative accuracy
I remember hearing her express on a radio program that, while science pursues quantitative precision, poets seek a certain qualitative precision. Precisely, the word "precision" appears in the communiqué for which she was awarded the García Lorca International Prize; a word that drives her poetic work and that is perceived in her outstanding ability to select the appropriate adjectives that reveal the reality of each of her poems.
In contrast to so much current poetry in which the gaze, contemplative or not, is the starting point of the writing, Circe Maia's poetry is generated in an intermittent manner, as a way of flashesfrom sensations, mainly of an acoustic nature ("They call us. They call from everywhere / voices, tasks. / From courtyards, streets, windows / voices rise / agitated, scattered.") or touch ("Sometimes, yes, you can / open closed doors to distant days.").
These are the sensations that move his verses. Neither outbursts, nor passionate verses in the exalted romantic mode, nor the apparent trace of the most fiery emotion. From subtlety, from restraint, even from the envelope of silences, her texts emerge, capable of enclosing powerful, habitable, transitive images, accessible to any reader who looks at them. Experiencing them is undoubtedly worthwhile, because, as she herself pursues with her poetic activity, it facilitates the creation of human bridges, always so necessary: "In a trivial gesture, in a greeting, / In the simple glance, directed / In flight, towards other eyes, / A golden, a fragile bridge is built / Suffice this alone / If only for an instant."Thus, poetry becomes a place of encounter, revelation and enrichment for those who incorporate it into their lives.
