Literary review of Luis Pulido Ritter phd. about
Toccata and Fugue (and other poems) 
Originally published in La Estrella de Panamá (12/22/24)

The work establishes a connection with baroque music, specifically with the famous 'Toccata and Fugue' in D minor by Johann Sebastian Bach. Although inspired by the composer's freedom of improvisation, the collection of poems has a defined structure, organized into three sections.

Perhaps it is not a coincidence that the first collection of poems by Kafda Vergara, Faculty in linguistics at the French Department, University of Panama, has the title Toccata and Fugue, thus referring to master Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 -1750), who composed his famous Toccata and Fugue in D minor in his youth, thus recreating a musical universe belonging of the Baroque.

It is also possible that the collection of free poems, has chosen this title since, in effect, the composer's ability to improvise is a sign of the mastery of his art. But like Bach, whose works had a structure, Vergara's poems has very little improvisation. That is, we see that her Toccata and Fugue is structured in three sections, Toccata with eight poems, Fugue with ten, and Other Poems with three.

Despite this structure, the verses are free, contrapuntal, and are related to philosophy and science (Stephen Hawking), religion (Santeria and voodoo), immigration, the sea, identity, without forgetting nature, family and memory.

Furthermore, the book is accompanied by a prologue by academic and literature specialist, Eleuterio Santiago-Díaz, where he writes, after analyzing analogy and irony, the Renaissance and the Baroque, the following: “From the first poems and throughout the entire collection, Vergara Esturaín writes with a clear understanding that the eros of poetry lies in the toccata and the fugue, and not in the stable sign. His writing, of course, always seeks to affirm identity. She does it through games, eroticism, cultural codes and miscellaneous knowledge.”

Every poetry collection presents a universe. A first reading, and especially if it is referring to a first book, implies a certain perplexity and challenge. If we read, for example, the first poem of the book, Dark Room, we find ourselves within a network of the universe, a big bang, which poetically we have it, like this: And then the mirror, always the mirror/ may shudders and shatters / may scream denying its own form / may break into a thousand pieces / and our doubts outburst / once and for all. Certainly, the universe in “a thousand pieces”, pieces that extend throughout the book, each collection contains the poetic universe of the author.

There is a certain sequence of this original idea that we see while reading the poems. Just in Big Bang, where we read “Mass grave the Universe is/ and us, only imprints.” Elements, traces, pieces, dreams, everything is born and dies in that Dark Room on the “Wheel of the word.” And there is no piece that does not carry the whole, the universe, at the same time, as when we read “In you am all women/ and all men/ and their times.” Following this sequence we find, for example, in Barraza the verse “Ramiro is born from all balconies.”

Kafda Vergara's poems take us through her universe, which is the universe of all of us and illuminates, with its burst of light, that Dark Room that challenges us at every moment. Each poem carries within a piece of that original explosion and does not attempt to convince us with a stuffy and ideological reading of the world. That is why her voice, full of sincerity, critically expresses the presence of “the people below”, the excluded and the forgotten. It is a verb freed from any agenda, other than the recognition of the complexity of this world, and, as a reader, already well-trained in recognizing the common points of emptiness and contemporary ideological cynicism, where double standards and tiresome repetition prevail. of trite nationalism, I receive with interest the very suggestive verse “I bite the echoes of national prophecies” in the Barraza poem.

It is refreshing to read this poem, because it takes us through the sinuous corridors of memory, destruction and invasion (December 20, 1989), without piercing it with the dead and pre-established verb: “I open my eyes and the wind caresses me / Taking away the smell of my oreja / Now the involuntary memory howls/ before the rubble and the dead/ silenced under the Shoreway Belt.”

The first question which one encounters after reading the poems is whether we like what we have read, a question that connects us with the most naive reader inner all of us. We don't like what we don't understand, but we end up liking, even for life, what we think we understand.

Now, it does not matter what answer we give to this question about taste. What is true is that this question opens a dialogue with the poetic work and allows us to ask if we have understood the poet’s world.

It is a world, in fact, crossed by interpretations, as very well shown in the epilogue of the poet and playwright Jhavier Romero, when he writes on the back cover that “With Tocatta and Fuga Kafda Vergara once again reveals one of the ancient tasks of the poet: connecting the Microcosm with the Macrocosm.”

Certainly, Panamanian literature, even more, literature, has gained with Kafda Vergara a voice, a Universe, which was born in our small and beloved land, the Dark Room, produces and connects worlds, because, besides, the book is Illustrated with images of one of the most representative artists of the Guna people: Ologwagdi Aggwanusadub.