Itsas Bizia (2019) is an exquisite poem book written by a navigator and can be seen in the editorial Balea zuria. It takes the normal man to distant horizons and shows us that the normal man is part of an epic. When I have talked to Pello Otxoteko (Irun, 1970) or I have taken his previous books – the distant one looking for looks beyond (Berbirmingham, 1999), or in the light of Goizalba (Erein, 2007), or Anphora (Alberdania, 2010) – or when I have read the criticisms, Egan or somewhere else, it has always seemed like me. I was delighted to find Otxoteko’s letter again for every word. I felt like the shelves had turned.

The book begins with an anthological song to death, in which the feast slides like an ever-heavy material, in which even iron becomes light under the force of the waves. Everything is settled: “And immersing ourselves in a door without locks I will make you a gesture / before the anchor’s direction comes with us…”.

Following the line of Anphora, which is the last reference, Maritime Life also starts from the questions oneself asks oneself, to an ever-non-slip terrain of uncertainties, and the grace and salt of the book itself are doubts and the lack of grip: “Pure eyes of life’s water/ the smile of authenticity rarely/ reject,/ as incompatible self and truth./ And we don't have handles yet."

Taking the abstract and shaping it is the useless work that Pello Otxoteko has assumed. And yet, seeing how that work progresses is exciting. “It’s me/ my blight/ my gangrene/ my cancer/ and the life of my being.” The poetry of Pello Otxoteko is a decantation of all recitals. Mark of each day lived. Spiritual, pholosophic, lyric is your thought. And his thinking wrapped in poems takes on a new form. On this occasion he created a portrait of the suffering and laughing man. Here we are all. It's not a vanguard poetry, it's not a poetry that comes to the heart by pure emotion. It’s an almost forgotten form of poetry that gradually gains you, which leaves you a sweet taste of mouth when you return to daily universal occupations.