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HOJA EN BLANCO

Of course this voice is blank. I’ve paid it out
syllable by syllable to the ancient children
and now they climb on my knees offering chicles
in exchange for a map of Norteamérica.
Who’ll trace the flow of the river of money
that disappears mysteriously from los Altos de Chiapas
to swell the mutual funds in my hidden pocket?
What do I have to do to get these waters to sing?

Chiapas
10/19-20/95

Comentario: hoja en blanco, literally the white leaf, the blank page. Blank verse. Hydrology of cash flow. By the waters of Babylon. Chicles are chewing gum, and even the street kids know that Norteamérica is where the money is.

Like the traveler of its title, Caminante goes out into the world. Written during Simon's nine-month sojourn through Latin America in the mid-nineties, each of its 131 octaves is a jewel in its own right, a moment that resonates with distinctive tones. Each octave is accompanied by a prose comentario, deepening the context so that the whole constitutes a saga, travel journal, geography lesson, and finally, a panorama of Latin America. Though Simon writes primarily in English, his language embraces the unusual nuances and rhythms of a bilingual mind.

"This is a major poem, gritty and elegant, hard-earned, oriented by stars and late night conversations on the long road. John O., like an old time Chinese poet, weaves through history, politics, poverty, geography, poetry, spirit, friendship, love, learning, style, and deep mind; while travelling a continent. Terse drifting lyric poems of eight lines each, and each one in a compelling contra dance with its own 'comentario.' The commentaries are also poems of sly lyric turns—the realism of magic—the illusions of information. I was held almost breathless by this sequence from start to end. 'Playing ball in the underworld, circling the fire according to the rhythms of the stars."
—Gary Snyder, author of Mountains and Rivers Without End

"John Oliver Simon traveled deep into the Southern hemisphere, to the land of Neruda and César Vallejo. He has brought back this collection of poetic octaves written 'mostly in the depth of night.' Caminante comes alive with moonlight and jungle flowers, the intimacy of the journey, the 'blood and dust of the road.'"
—Dorianne Laux, author of Awake

"The poems of John Oliver Simon, like all true poems, trace a map, a psychography, which allows us to enter, not only into another life but into the voyage of that life, and not only into another culture, but into other cultures: into another point of view."
—Alberto Blanco, author of Dawn of the Senses

"This is a ladder of time, Far America and self worn around the ankles: a traveler's amulet shaped like a moebius strip. It is a braid of floating voices and lives once scattered by colonial desires, now reclaimed and re-woven into a prismatic double-voiced sequence. There are miracles in this journey, this walking-poet— ancient elixirs, tender transformations."
—Juan Felipe Herrera, author of Giraffe On Fire

"For years John Oliver Simon has been trravelling the continent's long narrow road south of our border in search of the poets and poetry. These gentle, magical poems walk you through strange, fantastic worlds violent with humanity. No one flows as easily, as naturally, as beautifully 'through the human river' of language as Simon."
—Sharon Doubiago, author of South America Mi Hija