Posts Tagged ‘songs’
Submarino Amarillo
Thursday, June 24th, 2010
A few weeks ago I promised to investigate whether all poems in Spanish are flowery love poems. And true to my word, I’ve been vox-popping people all over Argentina, from Federal Capital in Buenos Aires to Salta in the far north-west. The latest instalment is on an ancient clapped-out Mercedes-Benz bus from Cachi, seats rattling louder than my teeth as we creep down from a 4000-metre mountain pass on a dirt road whose unprotected edges show a sheer drop down hundreds of metres of hillside. To distract myself from the fear of impending death, I strike up a conversation with an exceptionally beautiful girl named Verónica (this literary journalism gig has its upsides). Behind us and beside us in the crowded bus, teenagers are listening to bad Spanish pop on execrably tinny mobile phone speakers, and mouthing the words that they can apparently extricate from the high-pitched crackling mess of static. Given that song is the easiest way to engage with a popular conception of poetry, I start there. Are there any songs in Argentina, I want to know, that aren’t love songs?
