Notes on his book “Dead Ball”

In light of reading “Pelota muerta” (Editorial Aparte, 2022), the last book written by the poet Erick Pohlhammer (Santiago, February 5, 1955 – May 22, 2023), the first thing that comes to mind is that he was a Dionysian, surrealist, torrential, mystical and mischievous, untamed and sophisticated, detailed and cosmic author.

A man who was passionate about “writing books, giving lectures, teaching at schools and universities, inventing cultural businesses” (p. 59), practicing Zen, as well as participating in television programs such as “Cuánto vale el show” with his appreciations and aesthetics alongside its host Leo Caprile, critics Ítalo Pasalaccua, Marcela Osorio and Enrique Lafurcade, among others. A multidimensional man, no doubt.

With a dozen published books, among which we can mention “Difficult Times” (1979), “It’s my second set of poems” (1985) or “Thanks for the attention given” (1986), in “Dead Ball” (Aparte, 2022) we find a wide range of genres, themes, literary and extra-literary dimensions that are articulated around the field of football.

In this book, Pohlhammer goes from essay to chronicle, from poem to response, from history to dream, he sings praises and philosophizes, happily intertwining with physics, sport, movement, anatomy, mathematics and geometry, to give us an anthropology, a true sociology and a psychoanalysis of football, which runs through the book happily evolving into a humorous and pop poetics. A multifaceted work, full of lessons.

The wealth of references in Pohlhammer’s work and outlook can be found in authors as diverse as Parra, Lihn, Jodorowsky, as well as Pasolini, Freud or Lacan, Ouspensky or Gurdjieff. An author closer to his contemporaries Maquieira, Redolés or Lira; than to Elvira Hernández or Armando Rubio; who was also promisingly criticized by Ignacio Valente, Jaime Quezada and Vicente Undurraga. A poet of grace and self-confidence.

In “Dead Ball” we find texts belonging to the field of ethics and morals such as: “Players who endure maintain their poise in victory as in defeat” (p. 53); or where he raises an entire philosophy of the body and especially the foot, with which he goes through the ABC of football, Homer (Achilles, the light-footed one) and the gestalt theory: “the footballer’s playing field is a blank page for the writer” (p. 13), where the footballer is the “Inventor of surprising plays” (p. 13).

There are also texts where he takes a critical position on mysticism and religiosity, where he asks whether football is a fool’s game: “I don’t agree with my guru Ramacharaka./ He thinks that after junk television/ football is the worst opium of the people/ it seems that I am going to have to change my guru/ one who loves airplanes and scooters/ eats beans with reins and goes to the movies with the family. (…)/ Paradise is in the eyes of the beholder” (p.17). A psychoanalytic, mystical, lucid and critical poem. A humorous poet, in any case.

We can also find interesting, relatively hermetic hermeneutic exercises: “The Chilean football tree has two long branches; the military branch and the Taoist branch” (p. 40) and also an ontology: “and that is the life of man in the world, rich and poor, with goals and own goals, victories and defeats, wasted crosses at point-blank range” (p. 48). An interpretation of the world and its game of correspondences.

A multifaceted and easy-going poet who ventures into the depths of national identity: “It is still nice that Chileans like red wine and playing around and surprising everyone with their words on the tip of their tongue” (p. 41), which is expressed without complexes and resolutely, on par with the best contemporary Chilean poetry.

Datasheet:

“Dead Ball”, Erick Pohlhammer, Aparte, 2022. 71 pages.