Pacto De Otro Mar

Abstract

To read the book “Pacto de otro mar” or “Covenant of another sea”, published in H2 2025 by LP5 editors by the Venezuelan poet Mariela Cordero, I try to set aside and/or suspend all those categorizations, abstractions, and biographical keys found in both the prologue and the final interview—which seem to say something about her work as a poet—that is, to suspect that they already propose a unique specific reading and, with it, they close down her lyrical possibilities, replacing them with interpretive attempts.

As the poet Gary Snyder would say in 1974: “Gratitude to water: clouds, lakes holding or releasing toward all our salty marine bodies. May it be so in our minds." First, we begin with gratitude to the sea.

Is Mariela the sea, or does Mariela rather wish to merge with the sea? I cannot assert that pointing to Taoism constitutes the Taoist experience for that fusion, nor that by alluding to this gesture she is following that path. As Thomas Merton (1915–1968) said in his book "The Way of Chuang Tzu": “Words and formulas about reality mean nothing to Chuang Tzu; what matters is the direct existential apprehension of reality itself. Such an apprehension is, by necessity, obscure and does not lend itself to abstract analysis that does not touch the body itself. It can be presented in the form of a parable, a fable, or a humorous story about a conversation between two philosophers.” Hence, perhaps Mariela Cordero’s poetic locus is the desire to flow; rather, within that locus, where she recognizes its depth, and when exploring in it, that movement allows her to seek out that universal harmony. Mariela is going through an exercise of dawning her introspection through elements of Eastern philosophy, blending a unique fusion of poetic thought and glimmers of Taoist philosophy. But what is present in that junction?