A book, ‘The decadent aroma of the ellipsis…’, has brought together the poet José Ángel Castillo Vicente and the draftsman and painter Álvaro Peña. Published by the publishing house La Rosa de Papel, by Francisco Serrano (MurciaLibro), Victorino Polo says of these verses that they have the “beautiful coverage” that the Marqués de Santillana spoke of, that is, “rhythm, mathematics, sound and measure. “Multiple book, almost protean one could say, due to the volume and diversity of the topics and issues addressed,” insists the emeritus professor at the University of Murcia.
It is the third collection of poems published by José Ángel Castillo after ‘He who wanted to dance and could never’ (La Fea Burguesía, 2021) and ‘Grandparents and grandchildren’ (Ibernón, 2016), and this retired commercial director of dealerships does not write to earn money, but for pure pleasure. With “so much to learn” from eminent lyrical voices such as Dionisia García and José Luis Martínez Valero, he feels Soren Peñalver and María Teresa Cervantes are his godparents, and says he has half a dozen unpublished books. Time to time, without precipitation, he wants to give them an outlet.
‘THE DECADENT AROMA OF THE STOPS
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Gender.
Poetry. -
Editorial.
The Paper Rose. -
Author.
Jose Angel Castillo. -
Illustrations.
Alvaro Pena.
“Without order or tactics, what I have published is for pure fun,” admits Castillo, who in ‘The decadent aroma of the ellipsis…’ brings together some 60 poems. Like ‘The meeting’: «In brutal helplessness and solitude, / we navigate in the most absolute / and gray weightlessness. / And feelings fly autonomously / to a different beat than our bodies, / in another dimension. / Floating self-absorbed / and weary of hope, / we dream the call of the celestial speaker / that shouts our names very close one fine day… / And we will be one forever, / in the growing chaos».
“The ellipses are the zipper of the box of thinking and they half-open the subtle groove that gives way to lucubrations,” he says.
Precisely that, united forever, are Castillo’s poems about these “strange times” of “mediocre flagships at the helm” with the watercolors by Álvaro Peña from Murcia, who had already made forays into the publishing world -for example illustrating the book ‘El dream of hiding’ by Emilio Soler from Blanca, in La Fea Burguesía–. It took Peña more than a year to get down to work – “how are you going to rush an artist!”, Castillo excuses him. «But in the summer of 2022, finally, in Punta Prima, I gave him the joy of having this illustrated book. Although he never asked me for so many, I liked his elegant writing, it got to me ».
At 76 years old, in Castillo’s voice and gaze there is an adolescent spirit, as if a year were detached from each verse. «How many steps of a thousand lovers, / counted by their chess slabs; / how tenuous a whisper / could be heard by the dead leaves / on the branches of the trees / of that long walk of youth / that we walked joyfully. / Just like that wind carries and brings / the repeated notes of the same song, / hands of a clock that always turn sweeping the memories of a love / through exact corners of the sphere… / I walk the same paths again / since you left.” Love, present in this poem, ‘The continuous return’, is the motor of life in the sensitive gentleman who does not let go of the sweater knotted on his shoulder even in this auriferous April. «If poetry does not open a path, it is worthless. It has to touch you, and, although there is no perpetual masterpiece, there are flashes, miracles or whatever you want to call it in art and also in poetry, “says the writer. “If a blind reader can distinguish you, that is very important, but it is not always achieved”, he has well assumed.
Captive in a professional life conditioned by the achievement of objectives, the resource of the ellipsis (“they are the zipper of the box of thinking and they open the subtle groove that gives way to lucubrations”) is a manifestation of freedom. “They are a protest against intransigence in general,” he surprises, “and in literature in particular. There is too much Dalai Lama who wants to impose his style and his principles. If I sense that someone is taking away an iota of that long-awaited freedom, I rebel.
If every individual can have a masked sensibility that emerges at any moment, Peña gives José Ángel Castillo as an example of a “thinking being”, “who came out into this literary arena when it was his turn, after a life dedicated to something else, to offer us a work that for me is full of color and life». That’s how it is.
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