Between roses and the dead, Inter rosae et mori, is the title of the new book by Ramina Herrera, a poet, writer and businesswoman born in Luya, Amazonas, Peru, who lives in Cajamarca, a city located in the Andes mountains: heart, lung and cistern of the world.
It seems that the literary essence of certain writers and poets is attached to their ancestral roots, to the integral landscape that caressed their infancy, childhood, adolescence, itself: to the environmental, social and cultural context of their first steps in life. In addition to the hodgepodge of experiences of all kinds with which they ran into or crashed throughout adulthood, which, in general, marked their mature and consecration lines… or on purpose recast anonymity to so many others out there .
It marks this indelibly in the soul like the one left to Neruda by his beloved Parral and that sulphurous political breeze that subdued the sensual araucarias of that time. Scenes immortalized by the great vate in asymmetrical verses of festering as rebellious subcontinental social romanticism. It seems that something similar happened to García Márquez with the giant stones, “like eggs”, from the Aracataca River that ran and runs, almost a hundred years later, through some foreign banana plantations. Just to mention two of the golden feathers now hanging forever at the zenith of the immortals, though still uncomfortable for some powerful and ambidextrous mortals here and there.
There are thirty-five narrated poems that are part of this new publication by Ramina Herrera, in double language and with different titles in Latin, with a prologue by the Mexican writer Manuel Chatelain Soto and the seal of Ayame Editorial .
Thirty-five magical-romantic descriptions of places, situations and times (universal human geography) literarily transfigured with the perception turned inspiration that only a sensitive and caring heart, pure as that of this quietly immense Amazon, lets shine through, more than in sobbing letters! , in his autumn sunset look.
This compilation is a notebook of tropical watercolors in which Ramina captured some of her experiences, some of her perception as she passed through the shaggy Andean mountains, of those pristine landscapes, of the sarcophagi of Karajía near Luya, where she is from, of the architecture colonial, baroque and the indelible traces of five centuries of tight history that still transcends in the streets, in the buildings and in some customs of the people of Cajamarca, from where he sends us his voice and poetic breath.
Herrera in his poetic narrative not only describes the perception of its merely territorial scope. Also, it seems to draw us in its exchanged and silent verses, in its short and clipped phrases as if on purpose a universal, suppurating cry, in the face of the alienating climate of social nostalgia that seems to perpetuate itself everywhere, without control, without end, in benefit of a few sponsors masters of evil. This is how he shouts it with mute mustia in his poem Monstrus humanus:
evil human
evil world
end the agony
devour at once…
Inter rosae et mori is more than just a collection of poems. What the sharp eye of the good reader will find in each of its pages is an album of photographs narrated about life in these complex times, of people lost in yesterday, in oblivion, in the hope gone, in the failed illusion. . Between roses and dead is the political history of a country, a continent, a society plunged into its agony; without missing words, phrases and paragraphs that scream with bitten silence following the hope of a better tomorrow… although not easy, as it does in Women in white, Mulieres in albis:
Smart… with the heart of iron,
tulle armor
but strong as titanium,
our pennant waves
made of skin, dews, hair,
picked up on the way
of each of our processes.
From each poem you could write a story and turn it into a novel, because each one embodies enough and interesting material to do so. Above all, when matching it with this or another situation from here, from there, from mengano or perengano. Also, an analysis of the author could be made, from various disciplines, if one wanted, to try to find the threads of their respective essence, message or premonition left there by Ramina.
For example, just by randomly choosing one of these narratives: Cibae caelestae, Celestial Food :
What a treat
walk barefoot
with the hair
playing in my face
jump over puddles
mud splashing on my skirts.
Everything indicates, from this stanza, and could give rise to the beginning of a great novel, a childhood of innocence and joy, especially when one comes across this:
The wind brings fragrance of love
country food
delicious
simple
fury
wonder of mongrel hands,
mestizas like mine…
However, without intending to overshadow the opportunity for the reader to enjoy it and interpret it according to their free will and fantasy, this narration brings an end of impact and contemporary social nostalgia that not only makes the skin crawl… pinches the imagination, even that of the insensitive , more and more out there, worse when they have power:
Kitchen with firewood — clay pots —
hands and heart full of love,
neglected garden,
but all of her
lavishes fresh fruits of the earth
tomatillo
eggplant
figs
oranges
peaches
Walnut.
Nostalgia impregnated in the soul…
Each one will put together his novel or analysis according to his disposition, conception, illusion or interest.
The truth is that, in each verse that constitutes the soul of these poems, it is impossible not to associate the intrinsic message with the physical, geographical, social, economic, cultural and political situation, not only the place of birth and current residence. of Ramina: Luya and Cajamarca, in the Peruvian Amazon. Region with immeasurable potential, promising!, but not easy at present, above all, due to the ballast of a complex past and a shaky present, such as its national geography. The association and the message between the lines invite extrapolation, beyond their national borders. It could be interpreted as the photograph of the past, the present and the future of human society, wherever it meets or comes to meet, victim and victimizer of its own species.
The invitation is to include this book, not only on the shelves of your physical or virtual library, but also to taste, scrutinize and put into practice the message and teachings that this woman of letters draws us with social melancholy in each poem.
