Review
of Donald Wellman’s Crossing Mexico:
Diario Mexicano, Dos Madres Press, reviewed by Gregory J. Wolos
Donald
Wellman’s new work, Crossing Mexico:
Diario Mexicano has transported me to Mexico, a place I’ve never physically
set foot (except for a brief, five hour sojourn over the border to Tijuana in
1976). As Wellman explains in an introductory note, his work is “an art of
crossings and hybrids as well as an art of traversing a continent.” As such,
the poet’s role constantly shifts and overlaps: he is a guide, an explorer, an
explainer, an analyst, a tourist, and an “experiencer.” These multiple
identities sometimes complement one another and sometimes conflict. As such,
the poet himself is a symbol of the complex culture he describes in a journey
rendered not only through poems, but also through photographs, historical
notes, and personal reflections from diary entries.
Mexico is “profoundly a Christian nation,
more so than I had anticipated,” Wellman writes in “Mexico a travers de los
siglos,” but also “an indio nation, make no mistake.” The hybrid quality is
accepted as a fact of Mexican life, as a truck driver the poet meets on his
travels illustrates: “For him, the bonds between ‘indio’ [referring to
indigenous Mexican inhabitants and culture] and mestizo peoples [referring to
the combined European and indigenous, culturally mainstream Hispanic America]
are facts affecting housing, diet, commerce, and spiritual health. Wellman the
poet-observer becomes the poet-experiencer, seeing, as described in the poem
“Valladlid”: “People of so many shapes and color that my instinct/ is to
protect myself by merging continuously/ with disparate forms.” Pre-Columbian
cultures, such as the Mayan and Aztec, contribute gods such as those listed in
“Ceremonial notes”: “Tlaltlecuhtli: earth monster, death disk./ She has mouths
at her knees and elbows/ Her upper half becomes the earth/ Her nether parts the
sky, from her body come plants that nourish.” But the ancient religions and
deities have become intertwined with the Catholic culture initially imposed by
European invaders, such as the figure of the “Black Christ,” which is “an
amalgam of Christ and Ik’al, a pre-Columbian cave dwelling deity.” In the poem
“Road it Isamal,” Welman notes, “Catholic and Mayan Yucatan meet at Kinich Kak
Mo, sacred/ to the sungod, maker, modeler, bearer, begetter, Itzamana,/avatar
of the Madanna of Izmal/ The Convent of Saint Anthony of Padua, founded
upon/the ruins of one of several pyramids . . .”
But the history of indigenous culture is
imbued with violence, including not only human sacrifice, but also in sports
with deadly rules, such as “[d]ecapitation when the play of the ball went
counter to the direction of the sun,” as Wellman references in the poem
“Rivera’s Murals.” Wellman also depicts the juncture between European culture
as defined by violence in “Retablo: Genocide,” first transcribing in his notes
how Europeans of the 1500’s “came upon resistance in the jungles of Guatemala
and caused all the inhabitants to be slaughtered,” then describing the
circumstances in a poem: “In the hilltop jungle/ a raising of wood and feather
shields against the onslaught of pike/ and armored bodies.”
Wellman observes another form of
hybridization, as cultural traditions merge with the facts of daily economic
life. He notes of the commerce thriving at historical sites: “My desire was
brocade or applique, fine details,” he writes in “Tribute,” “shining threads, I
found these on dolls sold in the streets of Merida and Valladolid, replicas/ or
indigenous costumes/ as in the anthropological museums./ . . . warehouses and
racks of blankets and crockery, with Mayan or Aztec emblems, offerings not to
be despised or possessing consumer value.” In “Kuanon of the Pyramid,” the
merging of ancient culture with a tourist economy are shown to be obvious: “On
the paths between sacred sites/precisely where/flayed virgin remains/filled the
cistern/were displays for pilgrims, abundant/ masks and retablos, solar disks,/
miniature pyramids of brilliant hues/in plastic and hand-carved forms./
Attention to detail/gives magical authority/to the object./The carnival play of
the vendors/who occupy winding paths /among monuments,/as integral to sacred
space.” Catholic shrines also adapt to consumerism, as in “The Convent of San
Bernardino,” which “has become a family center, sacred to a Madonna/ who is herself
a doll in a pretty dress,” or in “Symbols at a crossroad,” where Wellman notes
“[a] Totanaca child, hand in hand with her mom, selling dolls to tourists in
San Miguel de Allende.” A woman selling dolls poses for photograph: “For her,
the taking of photographs/ was an aspect of doing business . . . / Her costume
like that of her dolls,/ a selling point/ . . . Marketing enters the
imagination/ as a fascination/ to those children whose mothers/ bring them to
the Jardin. It’s in the blood.”
The heritage that is “in the blood” is
recorded by Mexico’s most noted artists, such as Diego Rivera, whose works,
seen by tourist-poet Wellman in a museum, “express a brutal history, identifying
hope with a recovery of an indigenous humanity . . . The nation/ and its
cultures, a project, both political and aesthetic in it shaping stratagems,/
unresolved, incomplete.” But as with objects based on sacred shrines, even the
work of an artist like Frida Kalo is subject to consumerism. Wellman writes,
“In Frida’s garden, I considered the purchase of a blue cat/ . . . She is
present in decorative elements, patents for flatware, small bowls/ Café
furniture: sunflower yellow chairs with tangerine and olive finials.”
And Wellman, too, recognizes the
complexity and the interconnectedness of the many roles he plays. Referring to
his journey as, in one sense, “a video of my life,” he records without
commentary images that strike him, such as “[c]hildren on a turquoise and
aquamarine mattress washed ashore by the tsunami,” or a pleasing memory in
which “[w]e shared Turkish coffee on a second story/ balcony overlooking the
ornamental garden.” In the poem “Children,” Wellman, conscious of his role as
observer, records “an impulse to rest against a sunny wall/ and photograph
human forms:/ vendors and their children, close together,/ boarding a bus.
Mapmaker poet swept up, inundated.” Mapmakers observe and record, but Wellman
cannot ignore the economic conditions in the country through which he journeys.
In the poem “Uxmal” he defines “my status:/ consumer without identity in an
impoverished land.” And it is difficult for him to simply record imagery
without commentary: “Does manufacturing cloth or leather/ also fascinate the
cross-legged child/ sitting at a loom with crippled feet/ or endlessly sanding/
mahogany mask, salad bowl, totem.” Wellman encounters “ . . . young soldiers [who] force me to step
from my car./ They are impatient, in newly pressed uniforms,/ black M-16’s
click against their shoulder straps./ The dark smell of gun oil as cars and
trucks speed by.” The imagery is vivid, redolent of his description of the
“pike and armored bodies” that easily defeated the “wood and feather shields”
that failed the indigenous populations centuries earlier. The poet becomes
analyst, but “[m]y fear and personal revulsion/ at tyrannical politics/ does
not carry any weight/ with those who fill the streets/ and bus terminals./
Better to keep silent . . .”
What, ultimately has been the role of the
poet traveler? He has observed and absorbed. His experience shapes his way of
looking at the world, as “New England reflections merge with notes taken in a
hotel.” We join him as his “diary loops between
notes/ from among the high hills and low mountains of Weare, New Hampshire/
(listening to “over the Hills and Far Away” from John Gay’s Beggars’ Opera)/ and solitary wandering
to pilgrimage sites in the Yucatan and Bajio,/ employing baroque methods/ to
approximate a redemptive confusion.” As Wellman creates an experience for
himself, he creates one for us as well, reminding the reader of the
associations forged in the opening poem of Diario
Mexicano, “Tiempos mesclados”: “inexplicably, a photo of an expedition to
Lovewlle Mn./ . . . as if dispassionate fate had chosen to forge a unity
between/Thoreau’s Concord and Merrimack/ and this project, diary of intercut
Mexican spaces.”
In one of the volume’s concluding poems
“On an Evening,” the reflective poet, returned home and to his daily routines,
finds his perspective altered by his journey, which has also become our
journey: “In New Hampshire, I slice citrus. Fresh juice has become a fetish/ .
. . My mornings are too hurried,/ now that I am teaching./ I set the table with
tangerine and lemon yellow china/ made incidentally in Mexico./ The pattern is
pleasing. I find patterns among the elements tossed together, verbal ensaladas,
/ A sketch of a possible score in several parts . . . / The song is an
intimation of an end . . . / Learn now to appreciate a simple transition, a
fortunate interim/ in which to meditate upon dishes and beverages.”
I am thankful for Wellman’s Diario Mexicano: I’ve followed his map;
I’ve examined the photographs; I’ve absorbed the experiences, the historical
information, and bursts of inspiration he’s shared; I’ve ruminated about his
analysis of the cultural and economic interrelationships within the country. And
the experience of losing myself in his volume has blotted out the nearly fifty
year old memories that lingered from my brief trip over the border: of Elvis
paintings on black velvet, of dirty streets, and of handbills inviting me to
bars featuring abominable acts. Wellman has enlarged Mexico for me, physically
and temporally, deepening its significance with his words and images. I
encourage others to partake of his journey. Viva, Diario Mexicano!
