Manuel Forcano

Indebted to poets like Kavafis and Yehuda Amichai, the latter of whom he has translated, he frequently presents historical or cultural motifs from Antiquity, which contrast with the vulgarity of the present. A further contrast is between the pervasive erudition of his poems and his simplicity of tone and forms. Love and nostalgia for a glorious past are the two great themes in Forcano's poetry. He has received many prizes for his poetic work.

Manuel Forcano, who was born in 1968, is a lecturer in Hebrew Literature at the University of Barcelona and an experienced translator from Hebrew, Arabic and English. A powerful presence of the culturalist element may be detected in his writings, while the essential features of his poetic work may be traced back to his first published volume, Les mans descalces (Barefoot Hands) (1993). In Forcano's writing, references to ancient works -above all the Old Testament and Latin and Greek poetry- have always been present but, in the course of his literary production, they have undergone a process of phagocytosis until becoming consciously amalgamated into the most recent poems. Hence, the exordium work is marked by quotes that accompany an itinerary of reading that is measured in sessions, but it is only in the poetic epilogue that, after explicit allusion to the Book of Daniel, one of Rilke's poems is incorporated to function as a final gloss. Les mans descalces is Forcano's hitherto most descriptive collection, in which the lyrical "I" seems to dally in the pages of a paradoxically atemporal diary. Poems like "A l'habitació ... (In the Room)", "Els calaixos són plens...(The Drawers are Full)"and -although for ideological reasons- "Dies irae" seem to have flowed directly from the pen of the Federigo Tozzi of the brief pieces in Bestie, and also the prose miniatures of Cose and Bestie.

In De nit (By Night) (1999), Forcano works to perfection the architectural idea of the book with a tripartite thematic organisation, "Cels" (Skies), "Aurores" (Auroras), and "Platges" (Beaches), within which he distributes his texts. This is, in fact, something of a mirage since the interflow of internal interchanges and echoes subverts the apparently schematic division, while one glimpses in filigree his predilection for crepuscular or auroral images, an attraction for chiaroscuro, and a non-adjectivised sense of panic by way of Orphic stimuli, although the whole is not necessarily flawed by Apollonian contamination. And the cultural references that are at times manifested, even in titles, are integrated into each poem to open up or resolve an all-embracing similitude. The image that flows into the commonplace generates a curious form of objective correlate, in which the citation is treated as an object and is compared -in a kind of communion or comparison, frequently with an epiphanic function- with some biographical vicissitude of the poetic "I", specifying it or in opposition to it.

[...] Corint has a more molecular organisation: a set of macro-structures weave extremely compact relations between the different components, imposing a reading without any solution of continuity. Like centrifugal waves after the fall of a solid mass, Forcano's poetic quest continues in circular expansions and fixes the reason for the journey as memory's point of departure, while the collection as a whole is structured as the mental geography of a longed-for body.

Francesco Ardolino, "Manuel Forcano. Le mani scalze", Poesia, Nº. 174 (July/August 2003). Translation by Laia Noguera.

Every time I open the slim volume of Corint I start to hear the different kinds of music of the rain, while the dance of the light, incisive words of these brand-new verses assails the steadiness of my gaze. It is like watching the growth of an alphabet that comes to kiss the lenses of the glasses I wear for eyestrain. I contemplate the world through the intensities of an epiphanic gaze that reveals to me anew -prodigy of the newly-aged- the seasons of desire, the deep pools of broken loves, the warmth of a touch, the always-running wound of being alone and out on a limb. Continue reading...