{"id":58367,"date":"2023-10-01T17:09:33","date_gmt":"2023-10-01T21:09:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/?p=58367"},"modified":"2023-10-09T09:55:17","modified_gmt":"2023-10-09T13:55:17","slug":"patagonia-as-metaphor-expressing-the-off-beat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2023\/10\/patagonia-as-metaphor-expressing-the-off-beat.html","title":{"rendered":"Patagonia as Metaphor: Expressing the Off-Beat"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The arrival of Almost Patagonia: A Chapbook<\/a><\/em> is a happy occasion.
A. Robert Lee’s poetry speaks directly, intimately, humorously, probingly. Read an excerpt. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Click to enlarge.<\/a> Available from Bournbrook Press <\/a><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

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Patagonia on My Mind<\/strong>\nby A. Robert Lee<\/a>\n\nIt is not on any map: true places never are.<\/em>\n\u2014 Herman Melville, Moby-Dick<\/em> (1851)\n\nThe universe loves devoted travelers.<\/em>\n \u2014 Janine Pommy Vega, Tracking the Serpent: Journeys to Four Continents <\/em>(1997)\n\nUp-front confession.\nI have yet to set foot in Patagonia.\nBut for years I've kind of been thinking I have.\nOr at least surmised I was en route.\nPlaces, encounters, that have seemed, well, Patagonian.\n\nPresiding writers, for their part, bequeath journeys.\nHomer to Ithaca. Basho to Deep North Honshu.\nColeridge to Xanadu. Yeats to Byzantium.\nJourneys full of imagining.\nSo why not yours, far lesser, to Patagonia? \n\nOf course Patagonia is geographically there \nPhysical, encompassing.\nAmerica del Sur.<\/em>\nDiscussable with travelers who know it.\nTo be GPS'd, googled, even phoned.\n\nYou can look up any number of features.\nChile and Argentina custodianship.\nAtlantic and Pacific ocean confluence.\nTopographies of coast, desert, Andean mountain. \nVastness of sand, ice-sheet, tide-pool, steppes.\n<\/strong>\nNames, too, to position you.\nCape Horn. Tierra del Fuego. Los Glaciares.\nAnimalia to stir and enrapture.\nGuanaco, Condor, Mara, Puma, Penguin, Whale.\nHoof, wing, fur, claw, beak, fin.<\/strong>\n\nYou have still to meet a Patagonian Spanish-speaker.\nOr encounter any Mapudunguns and residual Welsh.\nBut you hold Patagonia in mind, another world.\nWholly real but somehow off-planet.\nThermal. Antarctic. Whirled.\n\nSo it's as though you were getting ready.\nPatagonia before Patagonia.\nYou might call it alter<\/em>-Patagonia.\nSights, sounds, for which you have borrowed the name.\nA corral of metaphors, a thesaurus of sorts.\n\nIn these respects have you not put Patagonia to selfish purpose?\nA means to express the offbeat, the off-centre.\nA resort to express the un-meant, the untoward.\nThe very name hints of invention.\nThis, or that, is Patagonian, you might get known to say.\n\nPatagonia I'm in your debt.\nThere as real time and space.\nYet there, too, as figure, silhouette.\nPerfect twosome.\nDouble thanks. Dos mil gracias.<\/em><\/strong>\n\n\u2022\u2022\u2022\n\n\"Patagonia on My Mind\" \u00a9 2023 by A. Robert Lee. \nPosted with permission of the author.\n\n<\/strong>\n\n\n\n\n<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Presiding writers, for their part, bequeath journeys.
\nHomer to Ithaca. Basho to Deep North Honshu.
\nColeridge to Xanadu. Yeats to Byzantium.
\nJourneys full of imagining.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":58453,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26,18,4,23,17,1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-58367","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"category-literature","9":"category-main","10":"category-news","11":"category-political-culture","12":"category-uncategorized","13":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/almost-patagonia-cover.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-fbp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58367"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58462,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58367\/revisions\/58462"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}