In Ita ha’eñoso / Ya no está sola la piedra Formerly and Again Known as Pyambu / Dream Pattering Soles a voice mournfully asserts “I appear” and the world begins. Miguelángel Meza’s words are signifiers without hierarchy within the lyric structure that reference the cosmological Mbyá Guaraní narratives. Thus, the origin of earth is traced to the utterance of the first ñe’ë, or word-soul. Meza’s authorial style and references to a millenary Amerindian culture jointly point to another way of conceiving the world. The counterintuitive way that he renders the individual out of the communal is reminiscent of the Paraguayan embroidery technique, ñandutí, which means spider’s web. Threads extracted from, rather than woven into, a fabric trace a geometric pattern. He imitates this practice by claiming authorship through his lyric synthesis of a communal narrative. The poet seems to say through those that came before him: identity lies in erasure, not mark-making.

This is #17 in UDP's Señal series for contemporary Latin American poetry.