Paperweight: the new collection of poems by Mario Montalbetti and a book of stories with TV as a background

Author: Mario Montalbetti

Pages : 96

Publisher: Bakterial Universe Album

Montalbetti returns to one of his best collections of poems, “Language is a revolver for two” (2008), and strengthens and expands it with what he calls “restored fragments” which in reality are much more: two long poems, which occupy more than half of this book that he has seen fit to retitle as “Language is a [re]return for one”.

As his work usually works, it is an exploration of language itself, of its meaning and its possibilities. There are no eloquent images or gratuitous metaphors, but his experimentation with words throws those images and metaphors by default. In the first poem added in this edition, “Gorgias explains his love for Helena”, the author fractures words and ideas, and directs them towards other horizons of meaning. It almost seems like a response to what he wrote in “La dorado”, a 2008 poem: “To the question, how much have you loved? / responds as if the language, better still, / as if the wine had run out. / Say you have to go for more.”

The other poem, “Room 302″, is apparently more direct and transparent. But written from the point of view of a man admitted to a hospital, also explores the idea of ​​confinement, madness and the absurd: “The visits have been cancelled. / Visits have been replaced by medical language”.

Author: Marlon Aquino Ramirez

Pages : 316

Publisher: independent

The author says that this book is born from two of his main hobbies: literature and television. And of course, flipping through his stories is a bit like ‘zapping’. Because they are quite diverse and short stories, some installed in genres such as suspense, melodrama or terror (or at least testing them), and which are also preceded by brief presentation texts that simulate the voice of a TV host . Which is not a minor detail, because those small introductions set the tone with which the stories will be read: a certain histrionics in the dialogues between characters, and some overacting in the situations raised, as if it were a ‘sitcom’.

For the rest, Aquinas brings together usually downed characters or lost in adverse contexts: painters, detectives, screenwriters, soccer goalkeepers and writers, many writers. In some cases, they are stories of marked self-referentiality (as in “Respuesta urgent”), others stand out for their good handling of intrigue (“Pingüinos en Central Park”) and there are even historical re-enactments (turning to José Santos Chocano in “Iras santas ”). Some of the stories fail in their abrupt and little curdled resolutions. But in general it is an entertaining book like the best ‘prime time’.