Pablo Báez, Championed by Dylan Bosworth
The Champion Series
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This article is part of Literary Salon issue #2.
Pablo Báez, Championed by Dylan Bosworth
Pablo Báez, the Michelin Poet. Where do I begin?
His atted name appeared at the top of my feed—someone I can’t remember, asking somebody else if they’ve heard of this poet, Pablo Báez. It picqued my interest, as I hadn’t seen many people in notes at that time outwardly sharing specific writers (other than themselves), promoting them on others’ feeds.
I clicked, and when I clicked, I clicked again on:
I thought this man was a poet.
The form struck me first, this dead, but urgent setting-up, and even in the black spaces between the simplicity of the words presented as data, there was tension.
When the prose that followed flowed like water—not merely smooth, but musically, rhythmically—I could no longer blink.
Pablo has beat to his prose, something I don’t see discussed enough. It’s intentional.
As Pablo begins telling his story, his sentences follow patterns. Nod your head to the first regular text of the piece and you get a tempo, a count in each sentence:
6, 6, 6
3
12
It goes on, but even more interesting are the word choices. Pablo employs alliteration throughout without sliding over that thin edge that separates talent from self-indulgence. When reading, too—notice that he seems to avoid the more guttural sounds that add hiccups to natural flow. His cultural/language influences bleed into his English writing, creating this lyricism that is distinctly, Pablo Báez.
I subscribed.
A better example of all of the above ran across the feed:
I could write several thousand words about Bitter Almonds. Not only are the qualities from the previous story ever-present, they’re even more refined. Pablo constructed something in Bitter Almonds I’ve never seen.
He suggests you listen to the provided music and follow along. It’s not just a story, it’s a show. An experience. And within each paragraph, you realize there’s more—there’s in-line rhyming, enjambment, meter, assonance—it becomes poetry, but not just poetry; song.
The kid had an interest in serial killers and unsolved crimes. It gave him butterflies. A visceral need to dive into the darkest corners of the web, following crumbs that mimic a yellow brick road with no Oz at the end. While others of his age would jack off, and search mat6tube for their most uber-niche porn clip, he spent time as a sleuth.
I don’t know if I need to say more on that. Count the syllables throughout that piece. Every word has syllabic intention. It’s like hip-hop, like an experiential song.
Pablo told me he thought of it like a lullaby.
This was my introduction to Pablo.
We’ve since spoken daily, kicking ideas back and forth, sharing drafts. What I’ve learned about him is this:
Pablo has an obsession with style and technique, and this push to understand form—not to succumb to its structures and tried rigidity, but a need to understand in order to render it useless.
With each piece, his heart leaks and pools in his fingers where they drive their true desires.
Words.
Not poetry. Not prose. Not story.
Words, specifically the only words that work, because despite the difficulty of some of his pieces, Pablo’s words (whether written in blooming prose, or typeset behind C: prompt malfunction) strike you exactly where they are meant to meet you.
Is Pablo’s work accessible?
No.
Does it try to be?
No.
It is purely artistic expression, a nicked vein that runs counter to the tug of formality.
Enough about the words, though. Life happened to Pablo. I’m sure you’ve seen the initiative to support him through a menu of fine dining recipes and poetry and more, so I won’t rehash the entirety of his situation, but the man needs help.
A job prospect fell apart and bills need to be paid, and this is important.
Pablo isn’t just a writer, creative, etc.—he’s one of the best people I know. He’s gone miles out of his way to support other writers, and, despite his current situation, still pauses to care for the people around him.
In the middle of his world collapsing, Pablo listened to me rant about the medical industry, FMLA, back pain of all things, and his main concern was making sure I was okay. I didn’t know what he was going through at that moment, because he was more focused on caring. On empathy.
The compassion, the kindness—this guy went to bookstores and talked my work up to the owners the first day I spoke to him.
On his own.
A soul of this caliber getting a deal this raw is unacceptable.
Here is the link to the Michelin Poet initiative. Read Pablo’s story, please. Read his work. When one in the community struggles, we all struggle. Let’s lift him out of the hole.
—Dylan T. Bosworth
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“Pablo has an obsession with style and technique, and this push to understand form—not to succumb to its structures and tried rigidity, but a need to understand in order to render it useless.”
Dead-on. And it doesn’t take away from the emotional component of the work, either. Serious fucking business, our Pablo.
I clicked with Pablo immediately for every single reason above stated. He has placed more Substack authored fiction from more authors in actual bookstores than anyone I can think of. He's always trying to up his game, but I expect that from someone who cooks Michelin. And just like that, we'd talked and I saw what was coming, I suspect he did too, but the job was gone. It's not a great time to be in the service industry, front or back of house. But this man deserves more than just working himself to death so someone can yell "yes chef, sorry chef" at him all day.
And I'd argue that his work is incredibly accessible, but there's such layered nuance to it that while it provides a great read to anyone, the close reader gets the best of the rewards. He showed up in my DMs and it was like I'd known him for years. I suggested a craft book to him and he got it THAT DAY and said thank you and it was making him rethink and rework things he had been working on already. This isn't the mark of a dilettante, it's the mark of someone who already knows how hard you have to work to actually be great. He applied to an incredibly selective workshop on my suggestion run by Elle Nash, and he got in. If this sounds like an indulgence when you've just lost your job and you're flat on your ass here's the deal: Elle is my friend, and I emailed her about it to make sure his seat is saved because I NEED to see what he comes out like on the other side. Because he's incredibly intelligent, impossibly generous, and like myself, he's entirely self taught.
Elle is my age, I think Pablo is a little younger than me, maybe by a few years (or my mind is fucking up my memory again) but either way, it will be a transformative experience and he'll come out of it a better writer than he went in. I know I did, and I'd already been around the industry for a decade or more when I workshopped with Elle during Covid.
He's among the terribly underread, and he deserves the help he's getting by dint of what he has and will do for the community already, and moving forward.