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Saturday, January 25th, 2014
My translation (current draft -- there are still a couple of constructions that I'm not 100% sure about to call this "final") of Karen Finneyfrock's astonishing What Lot's Wife Would Have Said (If She Wasn’t A Pillar of Salt):
posted morning of January 25th, 2014: Respond
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Monday, January 20th, 2014
I have been translating two stories told in the first person recently -- "Power", by Javier Sáez de Ibarra (from Bulevar), is one that I did a pretty fast rough draft of several months ago and just recently revised -- it is narrated by a factory worker who is trying to project an unwanted level of intimacy with his titular co-worker; and "A few prosaic lines" by Marta Aponte (La casa de la loca) is the story (still not totally sure I have this straight) of the wife of a poet in a village outside of San Juan, An interesting comparison between these two is how strongly I have to twist my sense of identity to say "I" like I mean it -- I find it quite easy to identify with the "I" in Power's "friend"'s story -- less so with the poet's wife on a personal level. With her I have a hard time finding a personal center; and yet the voice of this story is attractive to me as well. The story's climactic moment is a translation of Emily Dickinson being written onto the soles of her husband and son's shoes!
Tonight, when they walk into the club, my two men will be treading, without knowing it, on a few words stolen from the yankee poetess...
posted morning of January 20th, 2014: 2 responses
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Friday, January 10th, 2014
Herewith two magnificent poems about Lot's nameless wife.
Lot's Wife
by Anna Akhmatova, translated by Richard Wilbur
The just man followed then his angel guide
Where he strode on the black highway, hulking and bright;
But a wild grief in his wife’s bosom cried,
Look back, it is not too late for a last sight
Of the red towers of your native Sodom, the square
Where once you sang, the gardens you shall mourn,
And the tall house with empty windows where
You loved your husband and your babes were born.
She turned, and looking on the bitter view
Her eyes were welded shut by mortal pain;
Into transparent salt her body grew,
And her quick feet were rooted in the plain.
Who would waste tears upon her? Is she not
The least of our losses, this unhappy wife?
Yet in my heart she will not be forgot
Who, for a single glance, gave up her life.
from
What Lot’s Wife Would Have Said (If She Wasn’t A Pillar of Salt)
By Karen Finneyfrock
Do you remember when we met
in Gomorrah? When you were still beardless,
and I would oil my hair in the lamp light before seeing
you, when we were young, and blushed with youth
like bruised fruit. Did we care then
what our neighbors did
in the dark?
...
Cover your eyes tight,
husband, until you see stars, convince
yourself you are looking at Heaven.
Because any man weak enough to hide his eyes while his neighbors
are punished for the way they love deserves a vengeful god.
I would say these things to you now, Lot,
but an ocean has dried itself on my tongue.
So instead I will stand here, while my body blows itself
grain by grain back over the Land of Canaan.
I will stand here
and I will watch you
run.
...or of course there's the Gang of Four...
posted evening of January 10th, 2014: 3 responses
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Saturday, December 14th, 2013
I was briefly in touch with Roberto Bolaño's literary agent over the idea of my publishing Teach me to dance... The answer as it turns out is unsurprisingly "No, the estate has other plans for his early poetry" -- oh well, it was fun anyway to have that contact.
posted morning of December 14th, 2013: 1 response
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Monday, December second, 2013
posted evening of December second, 2013: Respond
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Another Infrarealist poem: this is by Guadalupe Ochoa, one of the few female Infrarealists.
The Domestication of Lightning
by Guadalupe Ochoa/ tr. Jeremy Osner
the lightning of touch announces
the downpour engendered in our embrace
fiery water of our bodies
posted morning of December second, 2013: 1 response
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Friday, November 29th, 2013
Here is a poem of Bolaño's from Pájaro de calor. (It is quoted in Hiram Barrios' fabulous essay on the infra poets, Visitando al infrarrealismo.)
Teach me to dance
by Roberto Bolaño/ tr. Jeremy Osner
to draw my fingers through the cottoncandy clouds
to stretch out my legs tangled up in your legs...
(translation redacted, write me if you'd like to see it)
posted evening of November 29th, 2013: 1 response
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Ampersan: this is Orlando Guillén's "ABCD", from Muchachos desnudos.
posted evening of November 29th, 2013: Respond
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Sunday, November 24th, 2013
Once son ellos, once, ferozmente poetas:
Hernán, Roberto y Montané, chilenos;
el ecuatoriano Nieto Cadena;
de la patria de Sandino: Beltrán Morales;
el peruano Enrique Verástegui,
el también peruano Jorge Pimente;
Luis SuardÃaz, del primer teerritorio
libre en América: Cuba, cubanamente;
más tres meshicas que son, qué remedio,
Orlando Guillén, ¡impresente!,
Mario en el camino de Santiago
y Julián Gómez... once son, pues,
y, ¿se fijaron?, ni una sola hembrita,
con tan buenas, guapamente sabrosas que son
y que escriben como Afroditas que surgieran
no de un pantanoso taller literario
sino de un bárbaro océano de pantalones de mezclilla.
--EfraÃn Huerta
It's eleven, eleven, ferociously poets:
Hernán, Roberto and Montané from Chile;
Ecuadorian Nieto Cadena;
from the land of Sandino, Beltrán Morales;
Peruvian Enrique Verástegui,
and Peruvian too, Jorge Pimente;
Luis SuardÃaz, from the first-ever free
territory of the Americas: Cuba, Cubanly;
and there's three Meshicas, what else can I say,
Orlando Guillén, absent!,
Mario on the road to Santiago,
and Julián Gómez... so they're eleven,
and notice? Not a single chick,
for all the lovely, sweet things out there
that write like Aphrodites sprung
not from some fetid literary workshop
but from a savage ocean of blue jeans.
posted afternoon of November 24th, 2013: Respond
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Early poetry from Bolaño and comrade infras. I'm now reading and translating Hiram Barrios' fantastic essay on Infrarealism from Cuadrivio.net, Visitando al infrarrealismo.
posted morning of November 24th, 2013: Respond
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