With the first word fear is born and, with fear the leaf litter of knowledge and oblivion burns. (
The Slowness of Oxen).
Some days that trouble is the first gulp of breath before the 21st century''s devastating mornings, taking the first step with Julio Llamazares'' verses plants your roots in the fertile ground of our common memory.
Reading poetry makes us more optimistic, seeing that other worlds are possible, from the hand of those who catch with words the real slime of the importance of living them.
This book brings together Llamazares'' poetry, its vital essence, with which the rest of his literary work is fertilized.
"We were born in storks afternoons and had smiles to
première every Sunday (in peace time, a child
is something like a proof of a not lost time)
We were born in storks afternoons with two long silences
in the eyes."
…
(…the beginnings)
"Useless is to return to the lost and forgotten places, to landscapes and
symbols without an owner.
There are not ancient liturgies there now. Or fermented oil in clay
amphoras.
The elderly have died. Animals wander under the black rain.
There is nothing there but the slow ellipsis of the deads'' river,
the icy meekness of the chopped mistletoe, of the landscapes
burnt by time."
(…memory of the snow)
"Your childhood is waiting under the trees you planted
to remember it some day.
It opens like a flower in the morning."
(…the nettles)
Verses and texts which easy off the speed of our storms. Julio Llamazares was born in Vegamián (León) in 1955. His work virtually covers all literary genres, from poetry
La Lentitud de los Bueyes (1979) and
Memoria de la Nieve (1982) to travel literature
El río del Olvido(1990),
Trás-os-Montes (1998) and
Cuaderno del Duero (1999), passing through the novel
Luna de lobos (1985),
La lluvia amarilla(1988),
Escenas de cine Mudo (1994) and
El cielo de Madrid (2005), the chronicle
El Entierro de Genarín (1981), the short story
En mitad de ninguna parte (1995) and screenplay. His journalistic articles, reflecting an extraordinary narrator''s own obsessions in all their terms, have been collected in two books,
En Babia (1991) and
Nadie escucha (1995) and
Entre perro y lobo (Alfaguara, 2008). Julio Llamazares returns to literature