Esther Osses brings us back together

Some poets are definitely eternal. The gods gave them the gift of immortality. It is enough to open a good book and delve into the verses, to feel his presence, maybe a glance over his shoulder, with irony or smugness, intelligent eyes who seek our soul.

Almost always in the past through the eyes or, now with audio-books, his presence revived other forms of contact that took us, old LPs with the voices of declaimers or reading in Vates’s own voice, to other times and the dead.

Perhaps it will revive, from cEvery now and then, in cinema, when we resurrect Shakespeare or Cervantes and now increasingly through social networks and websites such as YouTube or Vimeo. Either way, just a click or instead, and as I prefer at my age, I open books, smelling the old smell of an old edition or that special aroma that we lustful bibliophiles love from brand new editions.

And these poets are from all nations of the world and from all times. Parnassus and the Muses accompany Homer, but also Li-Po, Tagore, Pushkin and Goetheand everyone understands each other, and I don’t know if lyrical sentimentalists and generous epics will quarrel or meet there, or because of the endless schools that academic books usually establish philias and phobias, inheritances and influences of all kinds.

And of course they are of men and women, Catullus and Lesbians, and those of gender, homo, bi and trans, such as Cavafy and the ambivalent Shakespeare, or the versatile Pessoa with a thousand faces. Enchanting Höldelrin and pastoral Juan Ramón, earthy Neruda and gentle Garcilazo, the intellectual offspring of Francesco Petrarca’s lover; nocturnal Baudelaire and enlightened John of the Cross, therefore twice a saint.

There, along the shadowy paths, by the unknown sea, walks several of our bards, the evocative Miró must have carved his name on the old aged trunk; irreverent and priapic Sinan bathing his rich appearance; as well as luminary poets like a wasp-waisted Elsie Alvarado, and the other one that lures and subjugates us today with its insurgent Chirikan eyes.

I’m talking about Esther María Osses, the author of clear texts such as “Crece y Camin” and other condemnations in prose when reviewing anti-imperialist literature in the Central American isthmus. Aww!, I say to myself, how beautiful you are Esther, what eyes! He laughs at me – or at you, or at everyone, because his genius is as changeable as the Pacific Ocean, that South Sea that bears the very name of Pacifica.

I approached her about a work whose name is more than a declaration of intent “Za borbu i nadu” (1981), and then she dragged me to read “The Girl and the Sea” (1964) and “Crece i Camina” (1971). ) among others his taj weak memory saves what it can.

I felt like she was Chiricana, I knew she was a Teacher at heart, and his trips to Argentina, Guatemala and Venezuela, from where he never returned, became obvious to me. Now we who go to her and like the ghost in the lamp, just open her books to ask about the wonders of beauty.

Now she is calling us. Noble institution – Specialized University of the Americas– he decided to invite several Panamanian creators, under his own name, to create new texts for children and young people.

In this way, she organized and secured a National competition in literature which bears his name; award which, since 2015, every two years has led to at least twenty authors submitting their works to the competition. And since poets are generally short of money, the house founded by Doña Berta Torrijos de Arosemena, and today run by Juan Bosco Bernal, secured a substantial prize of five thousand balbos for a single prize.

This year, the competition was decided in Poetry genre, and the basics are available on the UDELAS website (www.udelas.ac.pa) and until April 4 this year at two in the afternoon, the UDELAS Publishing House (building 808, Albrook) will receive generous productions from those who want to pay tribute to the country’s literature and unite their names for Esther María.

Poet, teacher and flutist from so many newspapers and magazines from Our America, emphasizes to me that I invite, convene and celebrate this literary fair in his name. And I do it with the delight of one who knows that Poetry is a sweet eternity that is visited.