Yago S. Cura and Abel Folgar, Odas a Fútbolistas (Hinchas de Poesía Press, 2010). paper, 36 pp., $10.00
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| Odas a Futbolistas by Yago S. Cura and Abel Folgar |
Louse dream of buying themselves a wig, fleas dream of
buying themselves a dog, and I, (to use a term coined by Yago S. Cura) poor
“fútbol cretin” turned poet still dream of playing a World Cup alongside
fútbol’s biggest names.
In Odas a Fútbolistas, Yago S. Cura and Abel Folgar
compose a cycle of humorous odes (with illustrations by Chaz Folgar and Martha Duran-Contreras) that pay tribute both to the sport’s greatest
players and to the Wikipedia-age fan that recreates the dazzling virtuosity of
those players through YouTube videos and yes, also, by writing celebratory
odes. The writing of poetry is, after all, the closest one can get to playing
true fútbol and playing fútbol is the closest one can get to writing true
poetry.
But the beauty of Odas
a Fútbolistas lies not in its humorous celebration of the player’s dizzying
and physic-defiant skills: Where Iranian striker Ali Daei’s goals leave behind
the scent of “sweet turmeric, saffron, reshteh, pepper, sumaq and coriander,”
“the scent that lulls goalkeepers” and makes Daei “deadlier than a Katyushka
rocket;” or where French striker, Michel Platini’s surreal goals turn his
“boots drippy like murderous swords.” Neither is it to be found in the amusing
description of the players’ physical attributes; where Wayne Rooney’s
Shrek-like face is described as a “wallop physicist with poppy-seed eyes,” or
Carlos Tevez, whose lack of visible neck gives him a “quasi-hunchback
appearance.” Like the bow-legged Garrincha, Tevez gets his fame both from his
unbelievable skill and physical appearance: “a result of the malnutrition he
suffered as a shanty rat in Fuerte Apache,” the barrio from which he gets his
nickname: El Apache Tevez.
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| Copyright 2010 Martha Duran-Contreras |
Like Tevez, Riquelme too is celebrated for his ability to
escape Latin American poverty and become “one of the many scions the slums of
Buenos Aires manufactures and puts into circulation.” But alas, the real beauty
of these odes is in their celebration of “Técnico Narciso,” an anonymous
Argentinean coach that informs and drives the speaker of these poems to
celebrate the sport and in celebrating, to collaborate with pass or two in the
success of these giants of world fútbol. In “Ode to Batistuta,” for example,
Técnico Narciso introduces our speaker to Batigol:
“Técnico
Narciso speaks marvels of you killer,
saying
that you don’t pardon lives, Oh, you can watch
the
clips all day. There are depots of clips, terrabytes of best-ofs
and
PowerPoint duty reels set to German Pop ensembles.”
Técnico Narciso is not your classically self-centered
fútbol star who dizzies the “balón, combing it back and forth like diaphanous Kevlar hair.”
Narciso is like the creative midfielder who resembles the humble baton on the
hand of the orchestra Maestro, the hand gets all the glory but the baton keeps
the music flowing on the stage and on the pitch. Like the midfielder Juan Verón
in “Ode to La Brujita Verón,” coach Narciso is:
“[…]
like the F150 Técnico Narciso lends
you
when you winter in Miami. The hood is bald,
and
the chassis rattles like an ingot piñata.
But,
give that truck a throttle of gas pedal
and
the hood releases torque wake cackles.
Therefore like Técnico Narciso, these odes are
“unbeatable horse power
beyond
solid block presicion.”
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