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READIN
READIN started out as a place for me
to keep track of what I am reading, and to learn (slowly, slowly)
how to design a web site.
There has been some mission drift
here and there, but in general that's still what it is. Some of
the main things I write about here are
reading books,
listening to (and playing) music, and
watching the movies. Also I write about the
work I do with my hands and with my head; and of course about bringing up Sylvia.
The site is a bit of a work in progress. New features will come on-line now and then; and you will occasionally get error messages in place of the blog, for the forseeable future. Cut me some slack, I'm just doing it for fun! And if you see an error message you think I should know about, please drop me a line. READIN source code is PHP and CSS, and available on request, in case you want to see how it works.
See my reading list for what I'm interested in this year.
READIN has been visited approximately 236,737 times since October, 2007.
Today I am submitting my translation of Marta Aponte's story "1955: Lavender Mist" (edited by Scott Esposito) to the Close Approximations contest. I want to thank Marta for the story, which is magnificent, and for her readings and corrections of my translation; also to thank Scott for his invaluable suggestions which (IMO of course) have turned a good translation into a great one -- I am billing the piece as translated by me in collaboration with Scott. Very excited -- I could imagine this story being selected; and if that does not happen, as of course it may well not, I believe it will be relatively easy to find another publisher. Beautiful images abound in this story; here is one of my favorites. Señor Suárez is in the vestibule of the unfamiliar Museum of Modern Art, making his way to the exhibit whose opening he has been invited to:
Outside, the chestnut smoke was thickening, the space seeming to gain in scope what it lost in sharpness. It gave the impression of a canvas that you've covered with a layer of gray paint, in hopes that from the stillness of this interior, from the depths of this lake will burst forth some new, some unexpected creation. Something fashioned from the shards of memory, which darken and fade but are never lost; which will take you by surprise as they now took him by surprise, looking down at his orphan hands, blue and knotty. He might have fallen useless at the feet of these barbaric columns, had he not suddenly overheard someone saying the name — it was like a change of scenery coming in from the wings — of Pollock; had he not seen the two women walking, with the assurance of sturdy windmills, toward the elevator.
divídeme por favor
exactamente por el medio
despégame con tus manos la piel
y arranca los huesos
con tus dedos
es mi carne, cómela, digo,
pero déjame por favor la sangre.
sepárame por supuesto
de todo conocido
llevaré en cubos la sangre
mi sangre olorosa mientras busco
corazón
(y ¿cómo vas llevarlos sin huesos? preguntas y te pido permiso)
y hacemos viajes y aventuras sobre continentes
obscenos y ridículos
posted morning of June 29th, 2013: 3 responses ➳ More posts about Poetry
En un momento determinado y
una fecha memorable que rebosa
de cosas actuales prolongadas
como una mosca que aterriza en una fruta
o un joven mientras besa la primera:
un perro que busca a un hueso seco
o un gato aullante
que da zarpazos a una rata aterrada.
O tal vez se esculpe el poema
simplemente del aire enrarecido
y se halle simplemente a ninguna parte.
Tenga siempre en cuenta que
El lector medio tiene miedo
de explorar a un pueblo fantasma
y prefiere siempre oler
la aroma de alguna flor salvaje,
el sabor jugoso de una naranja,
o la lluvia de la primavera que se moje
y sus hojas verdes que hagan rumores
y bailen en las brisas.
I served the pork chops tonight with apple gravy -- something which had never occurred to me before but now seems so completely obvious it is difficult to imagine pork chops served any other way. Here is how:
Sylvia and I had a nice dinner; then she ran off to study, and I am digesting the chop and listening to the New Iberia Stompers (nice find! from my recent trip to New Orleans) live sessions. Here's Shim-me-sha-wabble:
posted evening of June 18th, 2013: 1 response ➳ More posts about Recipes
A few lines from Marta Aponte Alsina's "Glen Island (1900)" . A prayer to Expeditus, the patron saint of urgent causes:
The days do not have 24 hours -- what you do today you will atone tomorrow, what today you seek will be bestowed on you tomorrow -- sometimes it will not even be your turn. The only speedy saint is San Expedito. ....
Do not envy the lion his mane, nor the untamed colt
his skull; nor yet the brawny
hippopotamus his enormous loin
Who prunes the bushy branches of the Baobab,
Roars at the wind.
Heaven is what I cannot reach!
The apple on the tree,
Provided it do hopeless hang,
That "heaven" is, to me.
The color on the cruising cloud,
The interdicted ground
Behind the hill, the house behind, --
There Paradise is found!
Kind of an interesting problem -- when an English work is quoted in translation in a Spanish text I'm translating, I normally would quote from the original in my translation, if it's available -- doing anything else seems a bit perverse.
But the situation in "Versos pedestres (1915)" ("A Few Prosaic Lines (1915)"), from La casa de la loca, is a bit unusual. At the end of the story, the narrator writes out her translation of the 8 lines above ("which my handwriting, as erratic as my writing, transforms into 9") on a piece of cardboard. To quote from the original would be not to acknowledge the story. The original would be out of place here.
Lo que no alcanzo es el Cielo.
La fruta que el árbol
ofrece sin esperanza
el Cielo es para mÃ.
El color que en la nube vagabunda pasa
el suelo a mis plantas prohibido
detrás de los montes,
más alla de la casa,
¡Me espera el ParaÃso!
Cannot ignore the original either of course; it has an important role in the story. But the back-translation should sound like the translation, not like the original. (And is it a "good translation"? I'm not sure -- I don't think I get the same sense from reading it as I get from the original; but I have never been very good at understanding Emily Dickinson's poetry. So am probably not the best judge.)
divídeme por favor
