Someone called him ''Poet of Cuban people''.
Jesús Orta Ruiz is talking about his life, poetry, journalist job and union work.

I arrived on time to the interview to his house in Vedado, where, paradoxically ''come in'' and ''excuse me'' phrases so common in homes at countryside can be noticed.

Nice as always, the indispensable Eloina opened the door, whose mision as guide has been sang by poet: Ay, quién me diría que/ los ojos que ayer canté/ hoy fueran mis propios ojos! -Naborí is coming in a minute- she apologized the temporal ausence of her Jesús in the living room, while I was sitting in an armchair.... the fact is last night he did`nt sleep well, due to his habitual pains.

However, in less than ten minutes, Indio was entering with a smile in his face helped by Eloina and making in rimes an unusual greeting: Primera vez en la vida/ que tú me encuentras dormido/ como un arcángel caído/ y dormido en la caída. To add inmediately in the middle of a collective laugh: Then you say I`m not improvising.

Of course everything was a joke, because he was not sleeping, he doesn`t consider himself as archangel and he knows for sure I never said he doesn`t improvise. Although since many years ago he can`t officially practice repentismo, that is a gift poets never loose with scene absences.

His birthday date states that on September 30, 1922 a boy named Sabio Jesús Orta Ruiz came to the world. But he was unaware of his first amazing name until he tried to obtain a certificate for a formal process.

I thought my full name was Jerónimo Jesús because September 30 is day of Saint Jeronimo. I signed many times with this name. When I noticed my name sabio it was rare for me, because Sabio is not a name, there`s no saints with this name.

Then, at the university, there were a lot of jokes about this. Raúl Roa who aws our professor, sometimes asked me and said ''Try Sabio''. Sometimes I didn`t answer correctly and he said: ''Today you did not render tribute to your name!''.

An Interactive Oposition

Since his early years, poetry and communication entwined in him as an interactive oposition. It is well known that he started to improvise since he was a child. Being a teenager, he published his first poems in a local newspaper in San Miguel del Padrón named Cooperación, where he made his bow as journalist. In 1948, his program Décimas Informativas, by CMQ Radio was a news program in verse he prepared each day. In 1957, he was already known as famous repentista and author of verses book and started to write journalist text for Bohemis Magazine.

After the triumph in January, 1959, at Newspaper Hoy, his sign can be noticeable not only heading a reportage but also at the end of those poems from section Al son de la historia, chronics in verse about Cuban reality in the early years after the victory. He also played a leading role at Gramma Newspaper. As a whole, his journalist work approaches more than 700 texts.

Journalism helped his poetry?

Of course it did it. Journalism helps poetry due to constant exercising of words. Journalism and poetry require synthesis but in a different way. They are different arts, but first one, due to its permanent dynamic trying to say as much as possible in less space, is preparing a review capacity coming from who is writing.

His vocation of social service reminds me another stage of his trajectory, maybe not so well known: that one in which he worked as Responsable Nacional de cultura de la CTC.. -Those were years of extraordinary experiences, deeper knowledge of people and its organization.

I believe that in that time, thanks to, above all, Lázaro Peña`s strength, a qualitative improvement in workers movement culture was noticeable, their aesthetic preferences was refined and for this we counted with support of many personalities of national culture. They made first steps in processes that today are already customs such as literary contests in each union of workers going finally to Rubén Martínez Villena Contest, who was a poet that also was in charge of National Confederation of Workers in Cuba, antecedent of CTC.

Décima... and Punto?

Considered as the most significative decimista of contemporary Cuban culture, Naborí participated in a protagonistic way in renovation of verses ocurred around years 40 to 50. In his case, aesthetic success ran from metaphoric enrichment of oral décima from farmer origin to lyric shines of written poetry of the epoch. In other words, the entwining of the popular and cult, both very necessary to décima to the same creator.

His first notebooks of poems, Guardarraya Sonora (1946) and Bandurria y Violin (1948), were published at a poor printing house in San Miguel del Padrón, they were décimas of fine popular root but they were not lacking of high lexical and anthropological level. About the second title, Neruda, who visited Havana in 1961, said to Naborí: ''I read your book, Hey, it is so much violin to be bandurria!''.

This poet qualified Cuban décima as Peninsular Traveller. What is your opinion about the remarkable evolution of verses in this two last decades, especially around 90`s, regarding to oral and written form?.

In Cuba there were always good decimistas, in all aspects, from the large list of improvisers to writers highlighting Eugenio Florit, those coming from Los Orígenes and Nicolás Guillén. Is risky to say names, because they are many. It is a rich and huge flow of contributions to décima, along our entire history, not only poular poets but also writing poets so called poets of what is cult.

''What is been happening at recent decades, that evolution you were talking about having a massive participation of decimistas, the lexical enrichment, the anxious searching of poetry as direct outcome of Revolution Triumph in 1959, opened to people all possibilities of access to education and culture, set free unsuspected potencialities of populace and progressively erased fronteers between city and country and built a wider cultural policy achieving monumental events running from Alphabetization Campaing in 1961 until University for everyone nowadays''.

But poet Naborí -being as prolific as Naborí journalist, researcher and essayist- is not only a poet of décima. With Martí, vital presence in him, he thginks that each emotion is measuring his verses... or none. Here they are poems of naborí in versos libres, his romances (who is not moved yet with Elegía de los zapaticos blancos?), his sonets. About these ones, those under the name of Una parte conciente del crepúsculo are considered one of the best among those written in Castilian language.

Also, the idea-thematic roads of his work in verses has been very different similar to life. From its germinal decimarios, having smell of wet ground and recent-moist love to social poetry taking the pulse of time, present in books such as Al son de la historia and Esto tiene un nombre. From his painful poetry for a missing child in Elegias a Noel, to evocations to childhood and family in Entre, y perdone usted. From the anthological searching of Entre el reloj y los espejos to the perspective from old ages and visual losing and those who have been on death edge, conquered by a grotesque tint of Spanish Gold Century in Con tus ojos míos.

It is fascinating the ample pitch in a poet creation -I commented.

Then he smiled and just answered: -Boy, I`ve been living eighty years!

Text courtesy of Trabajadores Newspaper

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