Today I sent this for workshopping: (9/2) AFTERWARDS: (10/21) pared off the parentheses and unnecessary trimmings. Re-thought what direction the poem was headed. It makes me realize posting a poem on a blog is just that. A temporary casing for a thought. I mean, how many versions of a draft does anyone REALLY want to see?
Questioning Evidence
What happened to the snail?
(disappearance)
A slip of
a shell
in slim-skinned silence
in a stare of August heat;
(non-interference)
Crabgrass elbows its joints, sleekly
combs its purple-seeded valence,
does not comment on the abandoned ship.
(surveillance?)
Did anyone see the snail disembark?
(perseverance)
Not the milkweed,
closed within seed-podded vigilance,
nor the cow parsley fleetly
seeking a full-hipped, laced-bell chance
to chorus line circumstance
(incoherence)
A snail does not leave its shell –
and yet here is this litter of shells in the garden.
(disappearance)
It reminds me of the fading images of Cambodian faces
printed on leaves, hanging in the museum.
(non-interference)
nameless victims in mass graves
(surveillance)
we are reminded not to forget
(incoherence)
each year, new snails, new shells.
(perseverance)
new snails, shells.
9/2/2010
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Member Night at W&B -- August 11
Leah Ruekberg,(terrific story teller) and I decided we'd have fun performing poetry -- which I envisioned as a way of connecting audience participation and poetry performance.
Leah's selection:
Methodist Church, from New and Selected Works by Stephen Dunn
Two Trains , from What Narcissism Means to Me by Tony Hoagland
Square Dancing With Sister Robert Claire from Halfway Decent Sinners by Michael Cleary
Healing the Mare, and Hotel Nights with My Mother, from Eva Mary by Linda McCarriston
We Are Transmitters, from Collected Works by D.H. Lawrence
You do Not Have to Be Good, and Trilliums, from Dream Work by Mary Oliver
I Thank You God, My sweet old etcetera, and Somewhere i have never traveled, by e.e. cummings
The Lanyard, from The Trouble With Poetry, by Billy Collins
Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes, from Picnic, Lightning by Billy Collins
Some Kiss We Want by Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks
My selection:
Shakespeare, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Donne, Auden, WCW, (ekphrastic), Housman, Ferlinghetti, Dylan Thomas,
I liked this quote :
"I think one of my early motivations for writing was that other people's versions of experience didn't gel with my own. It was a gesture toward sanity to try to get the world right for myself. I've since learned that if you get it right for yourself, it often has resonance for others."
Stephen Dunn
I think that is one of my early motivations for performing.
So, we giggled through Romeo and Juliette "kissing scene" (I'll never forget how Dorianne Laux performed it)
cavorted through Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins
-- skies of couple colour... whatever is fickle, stippled, freckled, plotted, pieced,
all those things alliteratively fresh as firecoal and finches wings
On Fools: more Shakespeare, and Donne's Triple Fool (remembering how Heather McHugh performed it) at which point I felt more fool than three, and not wise enough...
For both Auden and William Carlos Williams -- Bruughel paintings: WCW's fun of "La Kermesse" with "The Round... and Auden's Musee des Beaux Arts (Brussels) ah... those old masters, never wrong about suffering... and that ship, hurrying on to get to where it had to get, while a boy is falling up there in the corner, out of the sky...
Housman: 8 O'clock -- how to tell a story in 8 lines, like a riddle. I love how those quarters the steeple sprinkles down seem as fresh as first snow flakes. How quick the luck of the draw -- how the clock does the work. Makes you re-tell the story differently if you isolate
the second stanza:
Strapped, noosed, nighing his hour,
He stood and counted them and cursed his luck;
And then the clock collected in the tower
Its strength, and struck.
Ferlinghetti : Constantly Risking Absurdity : I did as an acrobat on a tightrope.
Ended with Dylan Thomas, remembering my Welsh grandfather who would cite Fern Hill.
The music always wins.
Leah's selection:
Methodist Church, from New and Selected Works by Stephen Dunn
Two Trains , from What Narcissism Means to Me by Tony Hoagland
Square Dancing With Sister Robert Claire from Halfway Decent Sinners by Michael Cleary
Healing the Mare, and Hotel Nights with My Mother, from Eva Mary by Linda McCarriston
We Are Transmitters, from Collected Works by D.H. Lawrence
You do Not Have to Be Good, and Trilliums, from Dream Work by Mary Oliver
I Thank You God, My sweet old etcetera, and Somewhere i have never traveled, by e.e. cummings
The Lanyard, from The Trouble With Poetry, by Billy Collins
Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes, from Picnic, Lightning by Billy Collins
Some Kiss We Want by Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks
My selection:
Shakespeare, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Donne, Auden, WCW, (ekphrastic), Housman, Ferlinghetti, Dylan Thomas,
I liked this quote :
"I think one of my early motivations for writing was that other people's versions of experience didn't gel with my own. It was a gesture toward sanity to try to get the world right for myself. I've since learned that if you get it right for yourself, it often has resonance for others."
Stephen Dunn
I think that is one of my early motivations for performing.
So, we giggled through Romeo and Juliette "kissing scene" (I'll never forget how Dorianne Laux performed it)
cavorted through Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins
-- skies of couple colour... whatever is fickle, stippled, freckled, plotted, pieced,
all those things alliteratively fresh as firecoal and finches wings
On Fools: more Shakespeare, and Donne's Triple Fool (remembering how Heather McHugh performed it) at which point I felt more fool than three, and not wise enough...
For both Auden and William Carlos Williams -- Bruughel paintings: WCW's fun of "La Kermesse" with "The Round... and Auden's Musee des Beaux Arts (Brussels) ah... those old masters, never wrong about suffering... and that ship, hurrying on to get to where it had to get, while a boy is falling up there in the corner, out of the sky...
Housman: 8 O'clock -- how to tell a story in 8 lines, like a riddle. I love how those quarters the steeple sprinkles down seem as fresh as first snow flakes. How quick the luck of the draw -- how the clock does the work. Makes you re-tell the story differently if you isolate
the second stanza:
Strapped, noosed, nighing his hour,
He stood and counted them and cursed his luck;
And then the clock collected in the tower
Its strength, and struck.
Ferlinghetti : Constantly Risking Absurdity : I did as an acrobat on a tightrope.
Ended with Dylan Thomas, remembering my Welsh grandfather who would cite Fern Hill.
The music always wins.
Aug. 16 -- Toy Bone, Town of Hill
A few sentences can capture a whole world within interactions of two people...
Ted Kooser selection
Toy Bone : triggered by the find of a toy bone in the attic, a stanza (room) filled with memory, a snapshot of a lonely boy, the simplicity of loving a dog, ending on the pause for breath
Town of Hill -- music always wins... Hall's comments on this poem in his book Goatfoot, Milktongue, Twinbird give insight to this thin-column of "dream water" anchored by a real story.
Ronnyy Someck: Algeria -- translated from his book of the same, in 2009. I found this on "phatitude" is a copyrighted by Phatitude. You will see 4 of his poems here:
http://phatitude.org/online/phatitude-online/poets-corner/
ALGERIA
If I had another daughter
I’d call her Algeria,
and you would doff your colonial hats to me
and call me “Abu Algeria.”
In the morning, when she opened her chocolate eyes
I would say: “Now Africa is waking up,”
and she would caress the blonde on her sister’s head
certain that she had rediscovered gold.
The grains on the seashore would be her sandbox
and in the footprints of the French who fled from there
she would hide the dates that dropped from the trees.
“Algeria,” I would clasp the railing of the balcony and call to her:
“Algeria, come home, and see how I’m painting the eastern wall
with the brush of the Sun.”
Ted Kooser picked this poem introducing it this way:
Anton Chekhov, the master of the short story, was able to see whole worlds within the interactions of simple Russian peasants, and in this little poem by Leo Dangel, who grew up in rural South Dakota, something similar happens.
One September Afternoon
Home from town
the two of them sit
looking over what they have bought
spread out on the kitchen table
like gifts to themselves.
She holds a card of buttons
against the new dress material
and asks if they match.
The hay is dry enough to rake,
but he watches her
empty the grocery bag.
He reads the label
on a grape jelly glass
and tries on
the new straw hat again
Ted Kooser selection
Toy Bone : triggered by the find of a toy bone in the attic, a stanza (room) filled with memory, a snapshot of a lonely boy, the simplicity of loving a dog, ending on the pause for breath
Town of Hill -- music always wins... Hall's comments on this poem in his book Goatfoot, Milktongue, Twinbird give insight to this thin-column of "dream water" anchored by a real story.
Ronnyy Someck: Algeria -- translated from his book of the same, in 2009. I found this on "phatitude" is a copyrighted by Phatitude. You will see 4 of his poems here:
http://phatitude.org/online/phatitude-online/poets-corner/
ALGERIA
If I had another daughter
I’d call her Algeria,
and you would doff your colonial hats to me
and call me “Abu Algeria.”
In the morning, when she opened her chocolate eyes
I would say: “Now Africa is waking up,”
and she would caress the blonde on her sister’s head
certain that she had rediscovered gold.
The grains on the seashore would be her sandbox
and in the footprints of the French who fled from there
she would hide the dates that dropped from the trees.
“Algeria,” I would clasp the railing of the balcony and call to her:
“Algeria, come home, and see how I’m painting the eastern wall
with the brush of the Sun.”
Ted Kooser picked this poem introducing it this way:
Anton Chekhov, the master of the short story, was able to see whole worlds within the interactions of simple Russian peasants, and in this little poem by Leo Dangel, who grew up in rural South Dakota, something similar happens.
One September Afternoon
Home from town
the two of them sit
looking over what they have bought
spread out on the kitchen table
like gifts to themselves.
She holds a card of buttons
against the new dress material
and asks if they match.
The hay is dry enough to rake,
but he watches her
empty the grocery bag.
He reads the label
on a grape jelly glass
and tries on
the new straw hat again
August Clean-up --
Goatfoot, Milktongue and Twinbird
Who can resist reading this title outloud, and start hunting for the "dark mouth of the vowel by which the image tells its sensual rhyme" ! We applied Donald Hall's concepts to the August picks for "O Pen". I particularly love his definition of a poem as "one man's insides speaking to another man's insides".
August 2: poems that resonate:
Naomi Shihab Nye: Shoulders
Are we willing to do what this man is doing? Are we willing to see him in the way Naomi does?
Have you listened for the hum of dreams deep inside someone else?
Mary Oliver : When Death Comes
how the name of each flower is a comfortable music in the mouth, tending, as all music does, toward silence, and each body a lion of courage, and something precious to the earth.
Have you felt married to amazement?
Can you imagine measuring amazement???????
"I don't want to end up simply having visited this world."
Li-Young Lee : One Heart
"the work of wings/was always freedom, fastening one heart to every falling thing."
What will be the walker's lasting memory about the Art of the world?
**
Robert Hass: "Mexico" from Counting Thunder.
magical realism?
here and now in tongue-in-cheekish.
What do we know really of the speakers insides?
his posturing in a poem about Mexico, that really, he's being pursued by... hmmm. is it the lovely senorita in his dream, the posse, the wife...or the mirage... or that he is starving and running, and lives by his wits, gets side-tracked by mirages, white adobe with a red-tiled roof, where one will rest, drink some tequila,and dream of that lovely senorita.. but, enough of that.
Somehow, we're right on that faithful, unfaltering horse right with him, riding the poem.
**
See APR and all of Dorianne's poems. Timing is amazing!
cf. with Composed upon Westminster Bridge -- Wordsworth... poetry is not argument (as it was for Pope and George Herbert and Anne Bradstreet -- but mood, a way of feeling that distills experience.
Edna St. Vincent Millay: 1911...
Departure. and electronic poem from Linebreak 6/22/2010, "Naming Goodbye." by Stephanie Rogers.
form... craft. and fragments, negations. Trying to get the words to work. But do they?
Rae Armantrout: Scumble...
HAITE: Here's An Idea. The End.
vs. The Sweet Arab, the Generous Arab, Naomi Shihab Nye.
I go back to Kunitz, as if rolling on leaves.
"Live in the layers, not on the litter.
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.
**
Keeping on, keeping on.
Who can resist reading this title outloud, and start hunting for the "dark mouth of the vowel by which the image tells its sensual rhyme" ! We applied Donald Hall's concepts to the August picks for "O Pen". I particularly love his definition of a poem as "one man's insides speaking to another man's insides".
August 2: poems that resonate:
Naomi Shihab Nye: Shoulders
Are we willing to do what this man is doing? Are we willing to see him in the way Naomi does?
Have you listened for the hum of dreams deep inside someone else?
Mary Oliver : When Death Comes
how the name of each flower is a comfortable music in the mouth, tending, as all music does, toward silence, and each body a lion of courage, and something precious to the earth.
Have you felt married to amazement?
Can you imagine measuring amazement???????
"I don't want to end up simply having visited this world."
Li-Young Lee : One Heart
"the work of wings/was always freedom, fastening one heart to every falling thing."
What will be the walker's lasting memory about the Art of the world?
**
Robert Hass: "Mexico" from Counting Thunder.
magical realism?
here and now in tongue-in-cheekish.
What do we know really of the speakers insides?
his posturing in a poem about Mexico, that really, he's being pursued by... hmmm. is it the lovely senorita in his dream, the posse, the wife...or the mirage... or that he is starving and running, and lives by his wits, gets side-tracked by mirages, white adobe with a red-tiled roof, where one will rest, drink some tequila,and dream of that lovely senorita.. but, enough of that.
Somehow, we're right on that faithful, unfaltering horse right with him, riding the poem.
**
See APR and all of Dorianne's poems. Timing is amazing!
cf. with Composed upon Westminster Bridge -- Wordsworth... poetry is not argument (as it was for Pope and George Herbert and Anne Bradstreet -- but mood, a way of feeling that distills experience.
Edna St. Vincent Millay: 1911...
Departure. and electronic poem from Linebreak 6/22/2010, "Naming Goodbye." by Stephanie Rogers.
form... craft. and fragments, negations. Trying to get the words to work. But do they?
Rae Armantrout: Scumble...
HAITE: Here's An Idea. The End.
vs. The Sweet Arab, the Generous Arab, Naomi Shihab Nye.
I go back to Kunitz, as if rolling on leaves.
"Live in the layers, not on the litter.
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.
**
Keeping on, keeping on.
Exercise: translating Robert Bly's Slim Fir Seed.
THE SLIM FIR-SEEDS [Ramage #23]
The nimble oven bird, the dignity of pears,
The simplicity of oars, the imperishable
Engines inside slim fir-seeds, all of these
Hint how much we long for the impermanent
To be permanent. We want the hermit wren
To keep her eggs even during the storm;
We want eternal oceans. But we are perishable;
Friends, we are salty, impermanent kingdoms.
BABELFISH:
Le FIR-SEEDS MINCE [Ramage #23] L'oiseau agile de four, la dignité des poires, la simplicité des avirons, l'impérissable/ Moteurs à l'intérieur des sapin-graines minces, toute la ces derniers conseil combien nous longtemps pour que l'impermanent soit permanent. Nous voulons le roitelet d'hermite Pour conserver ses oeufs même pendant l'orage ; Nous voulons les océans éternels. Mais nous sommes périssables ; Des amis, nous sommes des royaumes salés et impermanents.
YIKES! a nimble oven! graines de sapin sounding like sapeurs-pompiers, some incomprehensible interior syntax before the wish that impermanent be made permanent No sense of hint. I lik the choice of "roitelet" , but I'm not sure "little king" gives the same sense as "hermit thrush" nor the subjunctive relationship where we wish that the mother thrust keep her eggs,
Mes amis... not just some friends.
** Getting Started.
Listen to the three “s” in the title. How slim slides the short /i/ to the lips;
how seeds starts with a the soft sibilance of /s/ and ends with the buzzing/z/ of the plural.
The whir (of engine) of the R in fir connects by a hyphen to the broad double e which rhymes with heed, deed, reed – all of which pertain to living – take heed, the end is death; be flexible as the reed as you do your work.
call and response : /i/ to ir
from the “ih” of nimble and dignity, simplicity, slim, hint, hermit, perishable
pinned under the “er” of bird, fir, impermanent (twice) , permanent (once) (hermit) eternal
ee: eternal; seeds,
or: oars, storm
If you don’t know oven birds or hermit wrens, you will need to look them up, admire their olive and brown colors which camouflage them, and listen to their songs.
How “nimble” can jump in a lively way, whereas the hermit wren is tied in its sound, perhaps like the egg-like /o/ tied inside the word storm.
You will come to appreciate how in English, the verb “hint” holds the preposition “in”
like a secret, how “hermit” seems to make allusion to hermeunetics as if to make interpretations of the hermit wren protecting her eggs.
Working Title:
Les graines fluettes de pins
I chose “fluettes” although slim is both “pauvre” as in slim pickings, “peu probable” as in slim chance as well as physically “mince” svelte and slender. Fluette accents the shape and grace, with a breath of transitory youth.
Fir, in my mind is a general, green-boughed evergreen, whereas “pin” is a general pine, and I think of “pommes de pin” or pine cones. Seed, in general is “graines”
How cumbersome to say:
les graines de pommes de pins fluettes et transitoires
First line:
Nimble, one can call agile – but we have “associations with Jack and a candlestick, a lightness, a playfulness – not so much deft or that leger-de-main but something about jumping, not grace. what associations would a French person have with “agile”? How would a French person feel about the “m”, the rolling of the lips to make a “b”?
an ovenbird: well… thanks to google, you can hear the call, which doesn’t really sound like teacher, teacher, teacher attributed to it, but rather whistles and chirrups like many of the 70 varieties of warblers in the Eastern United States. A canary is also a warbler,
but translating nimble oven-bird into a canari agile really misses the beauty of the bird, whose olive and brown feathers camouflage it – something seen, but not heard.
Now for the dignity of pears. Since Louis Philippe was often caricatured as a pear (see the 1831 lithograph by Daumier : http://www.sociocritique.com/fr/image/image_0804.htm ) a French person might be hard-pressed to consider a pear digne although one could be deserving if in a dignified state…
Perhaps Bly was referring to prickly pears, studded with seed, short-lived and quite tricky to eat. It is not a common image.. but does force you to think of what makes a fruit “dignified” – and call attention to the pull of both sound and sense: nimble/dignity; what moves: bird with what doesn’t: pear,
“ir” and “air” sounds, one taking off and landing (bird) and one pushed into form, only to drop, ending with a /z/ sound.
So : le canari agile, la reverence des poires
comes to mind. flighty bird, with bright voweled “ee” and the more dignified ponderance of pears. Reverence is also a bow, a sign of obeissance before a King, potentate, or the Lord.
Line 2
Now we have the image of oars, without mention of a boat –
but the homonym is “or” which could mean the plurality of choices, coupled with a paradoxical “simplicity”, and an enjambment, where the adjective “imperishable” is suspended from the noun it qualifies,
“engines” which we find out are the seeds referred to in the title.
La simplicité des rames will puzzle the best of anyone either French, or possessing a French dictionary! Since long adjectives follow nouns, it will be confusing (but certainly suspenseful) to put "les impérissables" first, waiting for moteurs – which doesn’t have the driving force of the sound of "engine". I suppose there is something imperious about “Motors that will never die”, like a kingdom handed down from King to Prince.
Oars also will be what propels the boat from the shore of the living to the shore of the dead across the river Styx. Perhaps the double sibilance of simplicité moving to the single "impérissable" works in this case.
Third Line
Ah. We see the title! But, in the case of the French, do we want to repeat the awkward pommes de pin fluettes. The sense of “all of these” picks up on the wide “e” of seeds, referring to bird, pears, oars, and fir seeds all of which contain an “r” in final position, unlike the “r” inside imperishable.
One can argue that canari, poire, rames, graines also contain “r”
two in final position, two in initial position .
A French ear will also note that the first two lines in English are beautifully symmetric Alexandrins where the hémistiche falls neatly on the 6th syllable of bird and oars.
Not so with this French.
Le canari agile / la révérence des poires (don’t pronounce poir- uh)
la simplicité des rames (7 syllables) les impérissables (6 syllables)
moteurs dans les graines de pins fluettes, tout cela
(this clunky and inept attempt at literalism needs major work)
Fourth Line
another enjambment to “Hint” which rhymes more or less with “impermanent”
Hint, is NOT an easy idea to translate into French.
fait allusion / insinue/ imprègne d’une impression subtile, suggère
There is no one syllable equivalent with the word “in” (dans) inside of
two very whispering, light and suggestive consonants (“h” and “t”).
There is also a problem with translating “long” in the sense of yearning.
Note, long not only has an enduring sound, but means something that lasts, at least for a while.
aspirer ? desirer vivement soupirer auprès de..
as in Combien de fois, en l'entendant soupirer auprès de moi,
suggère combien nous désirons l’impermanent
de devenir permanent.
Fifth Line
Now we need a hermit wren. Maybe Bly meant a hermit thrush.
Another small, inconspicuous bird with a pretty song that chuffs softly.
They get their scientific name from the tendency of some species to forage in dark crevices.
I suppose you could use the scientific name.
Its call is a beautiful fluted whistle.
It can flick its tail.
Why might a hermit wren not keep her eggs in a storm? They often build nests on the ground and lay well-camouflaged eggs, of a soft moss-green color.
Maybe it is this idea of “hermit” or the duty of a bird or mother to protect the young.
But not knowing these things in English, how in heavens’ name can we approximate them in French?
Last line:
Friends: This changes the tone – he is using an envoi:
(address an imagined or actual person or to comment on the preceding body of the poem.)He blends the ocean in the salt, playing on “salt of the earth” perhaps.
Mes Amis… les amis… nous sommes des royaumes salés, impermanent.
**
Now enjoy repeating the poem in English! If you do not speak English, hopefully you have asked some English-speaker to tell you the jist of this post. Ask them to read the poem. Taste a few sounds of it in the mouth. Chacun a son gout. I hope this speaks to yours.
The nimble oven bird, the dignity of pears,
The simplicity of oars, the imperishable
Engines inside slim fir-seeds, all of these
Hint how much we long for the impermanent
To be permanent. We want the hermit wren
To keep her eggs even during the storm;
We want eternal oceans. But we are perishable;
Friends, we are salty, impermanent kingdoms.
BABELFISH:
Le FIR-SEEDS MINCE [Ramage #23] L'oiseau agile de four, la dignité des poires, la simplicité des avirons, l'impérissable/ Moteurs à l'intérieur des sapin-graines minces, toute la ces derniers conseil combien nous longtemps pour que l'impermanent soit permanent. Nous voulons le roitelet d'hermite Pour conserver ses oeufs même pendant l'orage ; Nous voulons les océans éternels. Mais nous sommes périssables ; Des amis, nous sommes des royaumes salés et impermanents.
YIKES! a nimble oven! graines de sapin sounding like sapeurs-pompiers, some incomprehensible interior syntax before the wish that impermanent be made permanent No sense of hint. I lik the choice of "roitelet" , but I'm not sure "little king" gives the same sense as "hermit thrush" nor the subjunctive relationship where we wish that the mother thrust keep her eggs,
Mes amis... not just some friends.
** Getting Started.
Listen to the three “s” in the title. How slim slides the short /i/ to the lips;
how seeds starts with a the soft sibilance of /s/ and ends with the buzzing/z/ of the plural.
The whir (of engine) of the R in fir connects by a hyphen to the broad double e which rhymes with heed, deed, reed – all of which pertain to living – take heed, the end is death; be flexible as the reed as you do your work.
call and response : /i/ to ir
from the “ih” of nimble and dignity, simplicity, slim, hint, hermit, perishable
pinned under the “er” of bird, fir, impermanent (twice) , permanent (once) (hermit) eternal
ee: eternal; seeds,
or: oars, storm
If you don’t know oven birds or hermit wrens, you will need to look them up, admire their olive and brown colors which camouflage them, and listen to their songs.
How “nimble” can jump in a lively way, whereas the hermit wren is tied in its sound, perhaps like the egg-like /o/ tied inside the word storm.
You will come to appreciate how in English, the verb “hint” holds the preposition “in”
like a secret, how “hermit” seems to make allusion to hermeunetics as if to make interpretations of the hermit wren protecting her eggs.
Working Title:
Les graines fluettes de pins
I chose “fluettes” although slim is both “pauvre” as in slim pickings, “peu probable” as in slim chance as well as physically “mince” svelte and slender. Fluette accents the shape and grace, with a breath of transitory youth.
Fir, in my mind is a general, green-boughed evergreen, whereas “pin” is a general pine, and I think of “pommes de pin” or pine cones. Seed, in general is “graines”
How cumbersome to say:
les graines de pommes de pins fluettes et transitoires
First line:
Nimble, one can call agile – but we have “associations with Jack and a candlestick, a lightness, a playfulness – not so much deft or that leger-de-main but something about jumping, not grace. what associations would a French person have with “agile”? How would a French person feel about the “m”, the rolling of the lips to make a “b”?
an ovenbird: well… thanks to google, you can hear the call, which doesn’t really sound like teacher, teacher, teacher attributed to it, but rather whistles and chirrups like many of the 70 varieties of warblers in the Eastern United States. A canary is also a warbler,
but translating nimble oven-bird into a canari agile really misses the beauty of the bird, whose olive and brown feathers camouflage it – something seen, but not heard.
Now for the dignity of pears. Since Louis Philippe was often caricatured as a pear (see the 1831 lithograph by Daumier : http://www.sociocritique.com/fr/image/image_0804.htm ) a French person might be hard-pressed to consider a pear digne although one could be deserving if in a dignified state…
Perhaps Bly was referring to prickly pears, studded with seed, short-lived and quite tricky to eat. It is not a common image.. but does force you to think of what makes a fruit “dignified” – and call attention to the pull of both sound and sense: nimble/dignity; what moves: bird with what doesn’t: pear,
“ir” and “air” sounds, one taking off and landing (bird) and one pushed into form, only to drop, ending with a /z/ sound.
So : le canari agile, la reverence des poires
comes to mind. flighty bird, with bright voweled “ee” and the more dignified ponderance of pears. Reverence is also a bow, a sign of obeissance before a King, potentate, or the Lord.
Line 2
Now we have the image of oars, without mention of a boat –
but the homonym is “or” which could mean the plurality of choices, coupled with a paradoxical “simplicity”, and an enjambment, where the adjective “imperishable” is suspended from the noun it qualifies,
“engines” which we find out are the seeds referred to in the title.
La simplicité des rames will puzzle the best of anyone either French, or possessing a French dictionary! Since long adjectives follow nouns, it will be confusing (but certainly suspenseful) to put "les impérissables" first, waiting for moteurs – which doesn’t have the driving force of the sound of "engine". I suppose there is something imperious about “Motors that will never die”, like a kingdom handed down from King to Prince.
Oars also will be what propels the boat from the shore of the living to the shore of the dead across the river Styx. Perhaps the double sibilance of simplicité moving to the single "impérissable" works in this case.
Third Line
Ah. We see the title! But, in the case of the French, do we want to repeat the awkward pommes de pin fluettes. The sense of “all of these” picks up on the wide “e” of seeds, referring to bird, pears, oars, and fir seeds all of which contain an “r” in final position, unlike the “r” inside imperishable.
One can argue that canari, poire, rames, graines also contain “r”
two in final position, two in initial position .
A French ear will also note that the first two lines in English are beautifully symmetric Alexandrins where the hémistiche falls neatly on the 6th syllable of bird and oars.
Not so with this French.
Le canari agile / la révérence des poires (don’t pronounce poir- uh)
la simplicité des rames (7 syllables) les impérissables (6 syllables)
moteurs dans les graines de pins fluettes, tout cela
(this clunky and inept attempt at literalism needs major work)
Fourth Line
another enjambment to “Hint” which rhymes more or less with “impermanent”
Hint, is NOT an easy idea to translate into French.
fait allusion / insinue/ imprègne d’une impression subtile, suggère
There is no one syllable equivalent with the word “in” (dans) inside of
two very whispering, light and suggestive consonants (“h” and “t”).
There is also a problem with translating “long” in the sense of yearning.
Note, long not only has an enduring sound, but means something that lasts, at least for a while.
aspirer ? desirer vivement soupirer auprès de..
as in Combien de fois, en l'entendant soupirer auprès de moi,
suggère combien nous désirons l’impermanent
de devenir permanent.
Fifth Line
Now we need a hermit wren. Maybe Bly meant a hermit thrush.
Another small, inconspicuous bird with a pretty song that chuffs softly.
They get their scientific name from the tendency of some species to forage in dark crevices.
I suppose you could use the scientific name.
Its call is a beautiful fluted whistle.
It can flick its tail.
Why might a hermit wren not keep her eggs in a storm? They often build nests on the ground and lay well-camouflaged eggs, of a soft moss-green color.
Maybe it is this idea of “hermit” or the duty of a bird or mother to protect the young.
But not knowing these things in English, how in heavens’ name can we approximate them in French?
Last line:
Friends: This changes the tone – he is using an envoi:
(address an imagined or actual person or to comment on the preceding body of the poem.)He blends the ocean in the salt, playing on “salt of the earth” perhaps.
Mes Amis… les amis… nous sommes des royaumes salés, impermanent.
**
Now enjoy repeating the poem in English! If you do not speak English, hopefully you have asked some English-speaker to tell you the jist of this post. Ask them to read the poem. Taste a few sounds of it in the mouth. Chacun a son gout. I hope this speaks to yours.
september 2 at Highlands: What Lies in the Envelope of a Poem: considerations of sound in translation of poetry
selections:
Bly's ramage, "The Slim Fir Seed" (from "Turkish Pears in August)
Wilbur's translation of Eliante (Misanthrope Acte II sc. 4)
Moore's translation of La Fontaine, La Cigale et la Fourmi, The Grasshopper and the Ant
Robert Lowell's translation of Baudelaire, Recueillement, "Meditation"
a composite translation of Rilke's " Archaischer Torso Apollos, (Archaic Torso of Apollo)
and reference to Caldwell's blog entry on Robot Rilke. http://thechagallposition.blogspot.com/2010/03/advance-praise-for-robot-rilke.html
This talk keeps evolving. Maybe it will turn into a course called, "Under the skin of a poem" -- but however you look at it, poetry is both written, eye-guided word and performed with theatrical skills to render the music.
Poem as 2-D blue-print -- how to interpret white space, pauses, punctuation, speed of words, breath... like a recitative on one note.
But that's like reading the address label.
To: Reader
Where you're at now
in your head or space,
located loosely in some state, recognizable by some universal thread
pinned by the boundaries of experience, language, culture
and the reader sees:
From: Poet (with a name one can link to a nationality and research time period, biography)
Title (of poem)
Form (arrangement)
blueprint for reading (line breaks, stanza breaks, calligrammed message)
United assemblage of image, sound, word
OK. So the text just comes in Russian. Say, Eugene Onegin, and you can't decipher the letters and sounds, let alone explain any of the crafting, meaning. So, you turn to Nabokov and ask for help.
And you only know about this because an old friend says this is worth doing.
You already know a poem does constant trade-offs in translation, and the only saving grace is to see how a fellow-wordsmith can bring it to some enjoyable level.
**
Today, I presented a hefty dose of examples, concentrating on English/French, as those are my languages. The translators are respectable. But it was fun to point out where connotation lies beyond the mere word choice.
Background of Robert Bly's Ramage, "The Slim Fir Tree" --
Ramage, being flute-like bird song, (and I think of the fox flattering the crow -- "si votre ramage se rapporte a votre plumage, vous etes le phenix des hotes de ces bois!)
how in 8 lines, he is responding to energy of tiny forceful sounds.
"im": slim, nimble, simplicity, imperishable,impermanent (twice)
"in": reversed in dig ni ty. (dig in!) engine, inside, hint, even, during, kingdoms. (last word of the poem)
"er" is a "sort of being that cries out" : the pleasure of "pears" pushes into "imperishable" and perishable; bird, fir, impermanent,(twice) permanent, hermit, her, eternal,
ee: seeds; these, keep, even, eternal,
how "oven" oars to "storm" through long for.
How all is in salty --
the sibilance of plural: seeds, pears, oars, engines, eggs, oceans
shhh of "ocean"; vast desire in "perishable".
paradox
bird/pear (nimble, still)
oars (engines)/seed
**
See note #2 about putting the poem into French.
Bly's ramage, "The Slim Fir Seed" (from "Turkish Pears in August)
Wilbur's translation of Eliante (Misanthrope Acte II sc. 4)
Moore's translation of La Fontaine, La Cigale et la Fourmi, The Grasshopper and the Ant
Robert Lowell's translation of Baudelaire, Recueillement, "Meditation"
a composite translation of Rilke's " Archaischer Torso Apollos, (Archaic Torso of Apollo)
and reference to Caldwell's blog entry on Robot Rilke. http://thechagallposition.blogspot.com/2010/03/advance-praise-for-robot-rilke.html
This talk keeps evolving. Maybe it will turn into a course called, "Under the skin of a poem" -- but however you look at it, poetry is both written, eye-guided word and performed with theatrical skills to render the music.
Poem as 2-D blue-print -- how to interpret white space, pauses, punctuation, speed of words, breath... like a recitative on one note.
But that's like reading the address label.
To: Reader
Where you're at now
in your head or space,
located loosely in some state, recognizable by some universal thread
pinned by the boundaries of experience, language, culture
and the reader sees:
From: Poet (with a name one can link to a nationality and research time period, biography)
Title (of poem)
Form (arrangement)
blueprint for reading (line breaks, stanza breaks, calligrammed message)
United assemblage of image, sound, word
OK. So the text just comes in Russian. Say, Eugene Onegin, and you can't decipher the letters and sounds, let alone explain any of the crafting, meaning. So, you turn to Nabokov and ask for help.
And you only know about this because an old friend says this is worth doing.
You already know a poem does constant trade-offs in translation, and the only saving grace is to see how a fellow-wordsmith can bring it to some enjoyable level.
**
Today, I presented a hefty dose of examples, concentrating on English/French, as those are my languages. The translators are respectable. But it was fun to point out where connotation lies beyond the mere word choice.
Background of Robert Bly's Ramage, "The Slim Fir Tree" --
Ramage, being flute-like bird song, (and I think of the fox flattering the crow -- "si votre ramage se rapporte a votre plumage, vous etes le phenix des hotes de ces bois!)
how in 8 lines, he is responding to energy of tiny forceful sounds.
"im": slim, nimble, simplicity, imperishable,impermanent (twice)
"in": reversed in dig ni ty. (dig in!) engine, inside, hint, even, during, kingdoms. (last word of the poem)
"er" is a "sort of being that cries out" : the pleasure of "pears" pushes into "imperishable" and perishable; bird, fir, impermanent,(twice) permanent, hermit, her, eternal,
ee: seeds; these, keep, even, eternal,
how "oven" oars to "storm" through long for.
How all is in salty --
the sibilance of plural: seeds, pears, oars, engines, eggs, oceans
shhh of "ocean"; vast desire in "perishable".
paradox
bird/pear (nimble, still)
oars (engines)/seed
**
See note #2 about putting the poem into French.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Summer O Pen... 8/23 and 8/30: WCW, CK Williams, XJ Kennedy, Robert Hass
Working backwards...
August 30 : The Long and Short of it
August 23 : Parody and Irony
I usually don't like poems over a page and was pleasantly surprised to discover "A Swimmer in the Air" by Howard Moss -- having only known his tongue-in-cheek, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day". (O pen -- 8/23). These two poems illustrate the difference between a short, witty poem which gives rise to a chuckle, and a longer poem which probes into mystery, wrapped in melopoeia, phanopoeia, logopoeia. The former falls in the category of "delightful conversation" equivalent to so many scarlet maple leaves, pressed between wax paper for a time, hung in windows, until the next season... The latter delights the ear, the eye, (each stanza can be seen with a left margin, fish-like mouth, and trailing right margin fins. The latter evoked the following:
Gould's "lung fish" and a story of evolution
the creation story with God's Hand, a snake, choices
ancient pre-civilization juxtaposed with the vernacular of modern times;
medieval mystery play and the beginning of the Word
Moss challenges us to see the undersides of being, whether metaphysical ("Man is an animal that needs a warden/to frighten off the Master's face") psychological, ("the idiot... "as spit and image of our wish"...). In the voice of collective humanity, six of the 12 stanzas involve the sea in some way: mirror, burial and breeding ground, site of the beginning Word, home of articulation's fishnet.
He links our "dry translations tidied from the deep," to the closing line, "part man, dry fish, and wingless bird": "abnormal dryness" in stanza 10, drying memorials, What is shed, "fingernails of scale" shed in spring, coil after coil... facsimiles, though not quite dead -- and the salt shed from our tears and blood.
The layers are exquisitely crafted with a b cc b a rhyme and echos of internal rhyme.
A poem to read for the beauty of its magic. A poem which stretches far beyond popular contemporary poetry, content to stack together some thoughts with linebreaks.
**
Length can be considered also as a horizontal stretch -- as in "Greeny Asphodel" where words defy a justified margin. In Robert Creeley's "The Language" he breaks line across expected grammatical pauses. Perhaps we do need Moss' last "condensed reader" who can figure out not only the abridged alphabet, but syntax axed by space.
Locate "I"
(wouldn't that be great -- locate the ego, the "I" that is you)
love you some
(as in somewhat, not somewhere)
eyes, bite
(OUCH! OUCH! with a comma yet -- as if eyes are taking their time to open their jaws)
I
love you
again,
(AH, it's starting to come together!)
Without the line breaks, this poem couldn't work so well.
then what/
is emptiness
(especially if the next line is two prepositions!, followed by a dive into space between a repeated "fill, fill.")
He then takes us through the vowels:
fill, full, holes, aching, speech, mouth
I added CK Williams "Roe vs. Wade" which appeared in Poetry Northwest Fall/Winter 2010.
It gives you chills to read. Miserable mysteries.
His poem "Wait" deals with time -- the chop, hack, slash of it -- how perfect a title, "wait"
how we can't wait, plead the other to wait, or can't wait to forget how we tried to run away from the inevitable last breath where we hope our anguished wish is that our last word not be "Wait."
**
XJ Kennedy's Death of a Window Washer appeared on writer's almanac.
What a metaphor -- what do we wash, when we wash windows. What is suspended, no longer suspended when someone plunges down to his or her death? Kennedy gives food for thought.
How do we regard the man who has no relationship to us? What shakes us to look, think, even if fleetingly, it could have been me.
3 syllable words: obstinate, forgotten, copying, barricards.
they lead up to a 4 syllable word: coincidence
then the 3 syllables again: uttering, tedious, legacy.
The one which has an accept in second place is "forgotten"... associations with Christ and sacrifice.
Donald Hall says that analysis of poetry is only a chance for us to catch our breath, to be able to absorb the intensity of it. Experience the wild sounds.
Finding a corresponding work of art, gives yet more time for breathing. Look at Giacometti, "Figure" -- we would not pay attention to him unless by accident -- in this case, framed and hung in a museum. He is a ghosted outline on a suggestion of boards and there is a scribbled, smudged sense of uselessness in his hands -- perhaps they would have wanted to stop the "mindless copying machine" that "kept making scores of memos no one wanted."
**
Another two great sessions of reading great poems...
August 30 : The Long and Short of it
August 23 : Parody and Irony
I usually don't like poems over a page and was pleasantly surprised to discover "A Swimmer in the Air" by Howard Moss -- having only known his tongue-in-cheek, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day". (O pen -- 8/23). These two poems illustrate the difference between a short, witty poem which gives rise to a chuckle, and a longer poem which probes into mystery, wrapped in melopoeia, phanopoeia, logopoeia. The former falls in the category of "delightful conversation" equivalent to so many scarlet maple leaves, pressed between wax paper for a time, hung in windows, until the next season... The latter delights the ear, the eye, (each stanza can be seen with a left margin, fish-like mouth, and trailing right margin fins. The latter evoked the following:
Gould's "lung fish" and a story of evolution
the creation story with God's Hand, a snake, choices
ancient pre-civilization juxtaposed with the vernacular of modern times;
medieval mystery play and the beginning of the Word
Moss challenges us to see the undersides of being, whether metaphysical ("Man is an animal that needs a warden/to frighten off the Master's face") psychological, ("the idiot... "as spit and image of our wish"...). In the voice of collective humanity, six of the 12 stanzas involve the sea in some way: mirror, burial and breeding ground, site of the beginning Word, home of articulation's fishnet.
He links our "dry translations tidied from the deep," to the closing line, "part man, dry fish, and wingless bird": "abnormal dryness" in stanza 10, drying memorials, What is shed, "fingernails of scale" shed in spring, coil after coil... facsimiles, though not quite dead -- and the salt shed from our tears and blood.
The layers are exquisitely crafted with a b cc b a rhyme and echos of internal rhyme.
A poem to read for the beauty of its magic. A poem which stretches far beyond popular contemporary poetry, content to stack together some thoughts with linebreaks.
**
Length can be considered also as a horizontal stretch -- as in "Greeny Asphodel" where words defy a justified margin. In Robert Creeley's "The Language" he breaks line across expected grammatical pauses. Perhaps we do need Moss' last "condensed reader" who can figure out not only the abridged alphabet, but syntax axed by space.
Locate "I"
(wouldn't that be great -- locate the ego, the "I" that is you)
love you some
(as in somewhat, not somewhere)
eyes, bite
(OUCH! OUCH! with a comma yet -- as if eyes are taking their time to open their jaws)
I
love you
again,
(AH, it's starting to come together!)
Without the line breaks, this poem couldn't work so well.
then what/
is emptiness
(especially if the next line is two prepositions!, followed by a dive into space between a repeated "fill, fill.")
He then takes us through the vowels:
fill, full, holes, aching, speech, mouth
I added CK Williams "Roe vs. Wade" which appeared in Poetry Northwest Fall/Winter 2010.
It gives you chills to read. Miserable mysteries.
His poem "Wait" deals with time -- the chop, hack, slash of it -- how perfect a title, "wait"
how we can't wait, plead the other to wait, or can't wait to forget how we tried to run away from the inevitable last breath where we hope our anguished wish is that our last word not be "Wait."
**
XJ Kennedy's Death of a Window Washer appeared on writer's almanac.
What a metaphor -- what do we wash, when we wash windows. What is suspended, no longer suspended when someone plunges down to his or her death? Kennedy gives food for thought.
How do we regard the man who has no relationship to us? What shakes us to look, think, even if fleetingly, it could have been me.
3 syllable words: obstinate, forgotten, copying, barricards.
they lead up to a 4 syllable word: coincidence
then the 3 syllables again: uttering, tedious, legacy.
The one which has an accept in second place is "forgotten"... associations with Christ and sacrifice.
Donald Hall says that analysis of poetry is only a chance for us to catch our breath, to be able to absorb the intensity of it. Experience the wild sounds.
Finding a corresponding work of art, gives yet more time for breathing. Look at Giacometti, "Figure" -- we would not pay attention to him unless by accident -- in this case, framed and hung in a museum. He is a ghosted outline on a suggestion of boards and there is a scribbled, smudged sense of uselessness in his hands -- perhaps they would have wanted to stop the "mindless copying machine" that "kept making scores of memos no one wanted."
**
Another two great sessions of reading great poems...
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