21 posts tagged “poetry”
At the surprise party, we all sat clapping dumbly I fumbled in a cabinet, your voice Three birds with clipped wings Downstairs, a blackbird I didn't know that was you dissembler, aberration, wellspring,
when you came in unsurprised.
in the other room saying
I know we are of the same nature.
try to glide up the dizzy staircase.
Claws rattle the banister.
rips the basement insulation.
rustling in the upstairs window.
You didn't know I was listening—
laughing with me in the luminous room,
where I'll say your name and you'll find me unsurprised.
Matthew Schwartz
One of my summer projects is to work on some poetry and translations, which I have decided to keep here. Hopefully the knowledge that there may be an occasional reader will keep me on task. Thanks!
Hi, all,
Mostly I'm writing with another translation, but I also wanted to do two other things. First, I wanted to post this picture of the cutest thing I've seen in about forever - a little farm scene that my mom is knitting for my sister A.'s baby (she's due March 11th! M. and I are very excited to be uncle & aunt). See Fig. 1 (just practicing my APA style, guys). If this thing doesn't just cheer you right up, I don't know what will.
Second, I want to celebrate my awesome trio of new girlfriends, who are helping me to stay sane (with plenty of girliness), and also making sure that I eat plenty of dessert (not that there is any danger of that not happening). We got to hang out last night and it really is encouraging to have one of those (sorry, for lack of a better phrase) "aha!" moments where you can see that you're not the only one who is a little nuts. :)
Now, to the poem. The photo isn't related unless you think about Marx (mentioned in the poem) and thus think about the estrangement of the laborer from the product of her labor, and thus think about collective and more small-scale human projects, and thus about a TINY KNITTED ORGANIC COMMUNAL FARM!! Sorry, got a little carried away there. Not sure that what Mom had in mind was to knit a Marxist utopia for the baby. Ok. Now really to the poem, by contemporary Venezuelan poet Eugenio Montejo:
GOODBYE TO THE 20TH CENTURY
Eugenio Montejo
to Alvaro Mutis
I cross Marx Street, Freud Street;
I walk through the ring of this century,
slow, sleepless, ruminating,
a pro bono spy from some gothic realm,
collecting fallen voices, small pebbles
tattooed with infinite murmuring.
Before my eyes, Mondrian's line
cuts the night into right-angled shadows
now that no more loneliness will fit
inside the glass walls.
I cross Mao Ave., Stalin Blvd.;
I witness the instant where the millennium dies
and another sprouts into its place.
My vertical, theoretical century...
My century with its wars, its post-war this and that,
its distant drumbeats of Hitler,
between blood and abyss.
I press on, passing old suburban pavements,
through misfortunes, through a little jazz,
thinking about the gods who sleep dissolved
in the sawdust of bars;
I decipher their names in passing,
and continue on my way.
ADIÓS AL SIGLO XX
Eugenio Montejo
a Alvaro Mutis
Cruzo la calle Marx, la calle Freud;
ando por una orilla de este siglo,
despacio, insomne, caviloso,
espía ad honorem de algún reino gótico,
recogiendo vocales caídas, pequeños guijarros
tatuados de rumor infinito.
La línea de Mondrian frente a mis ojos
va cortando la noche en sombras rectas
ahora que ya no cabe más soledad
en las paredes de vidrio.
Cruzo la calle Mao, la calle Stalin;
miro el instante donde muere un milenio
y otro despunta su terrestre dominio.
Mi siglo vertical y lleno de teorías...
Mi siglo con sus guerras, sus posguerras
y su tambor de Hitler allá lejos,
entre sangre y abismo.
Prosigo entre las piedras de los viejos suburbios
por un trago, por un poco de jazz,
contemplando los dioses que duermen disueltos
en el serrín de los bares,
mientras descifro sus nombres al paso
y sigo mi camino.
n.b. this poem is from a Montejo page (link), and here's another, where you can hear Montejo and others read their poems: (link). Also, Alvaro Mutis is a Colombian poet; you can read about him (here) and here's his awesome poem about (tequila).
Tu perfección es...
Daisy Zamora
Tu perfección es inimitable
como el templo de Luxor que contemplé
conmovida en el Museo Metropolitano:
Construido sin argamasa, piedra por piedra.
La guía del museo lo mostraba
majestuoso, bajo la gris y alta bóveda
del cielo de New York.
Pero a tanta excelencia yo prefiero
tu abrazo en las tinieblas al final del día.
Your perfection's...
Your perfection's inimitable
like the temple of Luxor, which I contemplated,
completely beside myself, at the Met:
built without mortar, stone by stone.
The guide showed it to us
so proudly, under the high gray vault
of New York sky.
Despite all that excellence, I prefer
your embrace in the shadows at the day's end.
This is from a book of poems by Nicaraguan poet Daisy Zamora called "A cada quien la vida" (To each, life).
That's the title of the new book I'm reading, a short collection of poems by Uruguayan poet Mario Benedetti, who I got into when I was living in Mexico. He and Eduardo Galeano are two of my very favorite Latin American writers. After reading some more García Lorca, I needed something more accessible and less like a Dalí painting.
Something wonderful has happened - I've become friends with some of the women I go to school with. It's been happening gradually but I finally feel like my classmates and also this neat group of women are friends... it's been a long time since I've felt that I had more than one female friend in any one place, and often far away (the south, the midwest, even the city but just busy...).
I got really sad and anxious yesterday, total victim mentality, like the program has set me up to fail, I can't possibly do anything well this semester, etc. Probably it was helpful to admit that I was feeling that way to M., who was patient (though I'm sure it must be tiring when I feel like I'm being alternately whiny and genuinely upset). Maybe I should put my efforts into preventing this from happening to future second-year cohorts. I don't know. Of course, now I've spent an hour translating this poem and reading things in Spanish, but I think my brain needed it. Or that's my story, anyway.
Nomeolvides
Mario Benedetti
Tuve un largo poema
que aunque se prodigaba en sus malvones
al poco tiempo se quedó sin rojo
tuve otro con jazmines
frágiles hogarenos e insondables
pero se descolgaron como copos de nieve
y tuve alguno más
que era un cerco balsámico de rosas
pero se marchitaron sin grandeza
por fin tuve un harén de nomeolvides
y no puedo olvidarlos porque anaden
azul a mi memoria
Forget-me-nots
I had a long poem
that, though it was profuse with geraniums
went quickly to seed, empty of color
I had another, with jasmine blooms
so delicate, comfortable, unfathomable even,
but they melted away like a water ice
and I had one more
that was a soothing wreath of roses
but it shriveled up unceremoniously
finally, I had a harem of forget-me-nots
and I can't forget them because they add
blue to my memory
Well. What negativity! I'm probably just scared of all the work. I had a great visit with S. in Atlanta, by the way, and got to see her friends from various places, and her family, whom I hadn't seen since graduation, and it was such a wonderful weekend. I'm so glad that we've reconnected after a while of being out of touch. I'm glad she stuck with it and didn't give up on me. And everyone's doing a super job of cheering me up; M., my family, crazy friends who bake and arrange dinners, my friend A.K. who is sticking it to the man, my classmates who joke around, my advisor.
So, my slight slump is being ameliorated with great company, and I'm also trying to do some translating, to keep parts of my brain from rusting. I'm starting with a poem from Lorca's "Poeta en Nueva York." I've never really read him; I know little about his political orientation, love life, appearance - all important! :) So here goes, blind to all those things, a loose translation:
Ciudad sin sueño (Nocturno del Brooklyn Bridge)
Federico García Lorca
No duerme nadie por el cielo. Nadie, nadie.
No duerme nadie.
Las criaturas de la luna huelen y rondan sus cabañas.
Vendrán las iguanas vivas a morder a los hombres que no sueñan
y el'que huye con el corazón roto encontrará por las esquinas
al increíble cocodrilo quieto bajo la tierna protesta de los astros.
No duerme nadie por el mundo. Nadie, nadie.
No duerme nadie.
Hay un muerto en el cementerio más lejano
que se queja tres años
porque tiene un paisaje seco en la rodilla;
y el niño que enterraron esta mañana lloraba tanto
que hubo necesidad de llamar a los perros para que callase.
No es sueño la vida. ¡Alerta! ¡Alerta! ¡Alerta!
Nos caemos por las escaleras para comer la tierra húmeda
o subimos al filo de la nieve con el coro de las dalias muertas.
Pero no hay olvido, ni sueño:
carne viva. Los besos atan las bocas
en una maraña de venas recientes
y al que le duele su dolor le dolerá sin descanso
y al que teme la muerte la llevará sobre sus hombros.
Un día
los caballos vivirán en las tabernas
y las hormigas furiosas
atacarán los cielos amarillos que se refugian en los ojos de las vacas.
Otro día
veremos la resurrección de las mariposas disecadas
y aun andando por un paisaje de esponjas grises y barcos mudos
veremos brillar nuestro anillo y manar rosas de nuestra lengua.
¡Alerta!¡Alerta!¡Alerta!
A los que guardan todavía huellas de zarpa y aguacero,
a aquel muchacho que llora porque no sabe la invención del puente
o a aquel muerto que ya no tiene más que la cabeza y un zapato,
hay que llevarlos al muro donde iguanas y sierpes esperan,
donde espera la dentadura del oso,
donde espera la mana momificada del niño
y la piel del camello se eriza con un violento escalofrío azul.
No duerme nadie por el cielo. Nadie, nadie.
No duerme nadie.
Pero si alguien cierra los ojos,
¡azotadlo, hijos míos, azotadlo!
Haya un panorama de ojos abiertos
y amargas llagas encendidas.
No duerme nadie por el mundo. Nadie, nadie.
Ya lo he dicho.
No duerme nadie.
Pero si alguien tiene por la noche exceso de musgo en las sienes,
abrid los escotillones para que vea bajo la luna
las copas falsas, el veneno y la calavera de los teatros.
Sleepless City (Nocturne for Brooklyn Bridge)
No one sleeps, throughout the heavens. No one, no one.
No one sleeps.
Lunar creatures sniff, and prowl about their territories.
They will sell live iguanas to bite dreamless men
and the one who flees with a broken heart will find, in the corners,
an incredible silent crocodile beneath the tender protest of the stars.
No one sleeps, throughout the world. No one, no one.
No one sleeps.
There is a corpse in the farthest cemetery
that has been there for three years
because of the barren countryside at its knee;
and the child they buried this morning cried so much
they had to call the dogs to silence him.
Life is no dream. Awake! Awake! Awake!
We fall down the stairs only to stuff damp earth in our mouths
or we stand under the blade of a snowfall wearing crowns of dead dahlias.
But there is no forgetting, no dreaming:
flesh lives. Kisses bind our mouths
in thickets of fresh veins;
the one who is hurt will carry his ache restlessly,
and the one who fears death will carry her on his shoulders.
One day
horses will inhabit the taverns
and furious ants
will attack the yellow heavens in cows' eyes.
The next day
we'll see the resurrection of desiccated butterflies
and, in a country of gray sponges and mute boats,
we'll see our rings sparkle, and roses will pour over our tongues.
Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!
Those who look for the tracks of paws and rainstorms,
and the man who cries because he doesn't know how to build a bridge
and that dead man who has nothing more than his head and a shoe,
we have to carry them to the wall where iguanas and serpents wait,
with the bear's teeth,
the mummified hand of a child,
where the skin of a camel stands up in a violent blue shiver.
No one sleeps, throughout the sky. No one, no one.
No one sleeps.
But if anyone closes his eyes,
beat him, my children, beat him!
There is a panorama of open eyes
and bitter burning sores.
No one sleeps, throughout the world. No one, no one.
I've already said it.
No one sleeps.
But if, one night, someone finds extra moss on his temples,
open the hatches so he can see by the moon:
the cup, the poison, the theaters' empty skull.
So, the holidays were lovely this year. As you might guess from the illustrations, and as you probably already know, I was visiting Oregon, where things are gorgeous everywhere you look (even dogs on the beach). M.'s family treated me like one of their own, showering me with love and even a little teasing. It could have been a difficult time, I think, because this year is different than most, and to throw me into the mix is probably a bit much. Everyone was super welcoming, though, and I was very glad to be there. It's always neat to learn about how M. grew up (Of course, I could use a few more embarrassing stories from his youth, but that will probably always be the case!) I got to meet lots of family friends/friends from childhood, all of whom were really cool and, again, treated me with so much kindness. How come every time I go to the Northwest I sort of want to move there?
I had thought it might be strange to be away from my parents and sisters over Christmas and New Year's, but I talked to them a lot, and then I went to visit my sisters. As you can see, there's a baby on the way, and they think it's a girl! (Yes, that is indeed a knitted huarache that my sister's friend made for her baby shower). I don't have the first idea how to be an aunt, but I'm going to try to be good. Our other sister has worked with moms and babies for a few years now, and has been chomping at the bit for there to be a kid around, and she lives only an hour away from soon to be baby niecey, so that's awesome. Mostly I was just humbled to see the future dad, my brother in law, so cute and excited and all full of plans and opinions (e.g. "Once you have it, leave everything to me" - he's planning on wearing the baby all around in one of those bjorn things)! Overall, I think my sisters and their husbands are doing well - they both have good marriages, and seem to be total masters at their jobs, and they're great hosts. I'm very proud of and grateful to them.
My parents seem to have had a good holiday despite a few horrid snafus involving taking a long busride across the Midwest (instead of a plane) and not having their luggage and having to talk to people in South Asia about it instead of airport personnel an hour away. I worry about how stressed they get, but I'm not sure there's a lot I can do. I am seriously considering getting them a book on meditation. And I hope to visit them this month.
There are a lot of other things to ponder (why are there so many books about atheism out right now, and is it really "atheism" that they're about? are we going to have a recession? was the NH primary result a miscount? how come Iron & Wine is so good? will i write anything creative ever again?) but I promised I'd go to bed early tonight. I'm back home, but only for a few more hours, before I rush off to Atlanta. Last night I went to dinner with some friends, and it was awesome to realize that they're my friends too - all people I met through M. Once again, great people welcoming me. I'm thoroughly awed.
It's been a very quiet day, with a few errands, a haircut, an early morning run, but not much other human contact. What do I think when I'm not thinking towards anything? I just found this nice poem, on the sometimes-good poetry website Poetry Daily:
Someone opens an orange in silence, at the entrance
to fabled nights.
He plunges his thumbs down to where the orange
is rapidly thinking, where it grows, annihilates itself, and then
is born again. Someone is peeling a pear, eating
a bunch of grapes, devoting himself
to fruit. And I fashion a sharp-witted song
so as to understand.
I lean over busy hands, mouths,
tongues that devour their way through attention.
I would like to know how the fable of the nights
grows like this. How silence
swells, or is transformed with things. I write
a song in order to be intelligent about fruit
on the tongue, through subtle channels, unto
a dark emotion.
For love also gathers rinds
and the movement of the fingers
and the suspension of the mouth over the confusing
taste. Love also places itself at the gates
of ferocious nights
and tries to understand how they imagine its
alien power.
To annihilate fruit in order to know, against
the passion of taste, that the earth works its
solitude—is to devote oneself,
sucking dry the loved one so as to see how love
works in its madness.
A song of now will say that nights
crush
the heart. It will say that love approaches
eternity, or that taste
reveals unending rhythms, the secrets
of the dark.
For it is with names that someone knows
where a body is
through an idea, that a thought
can take the place of a tongue.
—It is with voices that silence wins.
- Herberto Helder (link to the original Portuguese)
translated from the Portuguese by Alexis Levitin
I've wanted to post for a while now, but every time I try, Vox won't load. It's still acting funny, but seems to be half-working, so I'm going to grab my chance.
If anyone is reading this, s/he is probably asking when I will stop promising to write an informative post and actually do it. Unfortunately that's not this post! I've been pretty busy with school and have been saving my free time for actually interacting instead of documenting. Tonight, though, I took the night off from everything, and in fact M. and S.M. are out, so it's just me and J.S. Bach here at home. So, the few most important things, and a brief "translation":
Matt and I are going to get married! I'm sure you know this already, lone reader, but if you don't, I am very sorry to have somehow not told you already. We don't know when, or where, but we ARE, and we'll always BE, and, and... it's the most perfect thing that could ever happen. Sometimes I have to write this reality in all caps to make it sink in. Sometimes it appears in the middle of my head and thus in the middle of my emails, like this: "Dear [Advisor], Yes, Friday at 4pm I'M ENGAGED TO THE MOST AMAZING PERSON IN THE WORLD HOW DID THIS EVER HAPPEN TO ME HOW DO I DESERVE THIS I'M SO OVERWHEMLED! ahem, yes, Friday at 4 sounds like a great meeting time. Thanks, S." etc. One of the other amazing things about this whole thing is that, not only do M. and I get to join (together) each other's wonderful families, both of whom have been so accepting and joyful, we're also starting our own new family.
Ok, before I start crying, I have to tell you the rest of the news. My sister A. is having a baby! It's a girl! They've seen the ultrasound and it's got organs, arms, legs, a head... I'm so amazed by this. My sister R. just won a major award at her job, finally giving her the recognition she deserves for all the hard work she does, helping so many women be healthy and make good decisions. My cousin M. is engaged! My other cousin M. is graduating from college in December! My friend A.K. survived a very dangerous car accident, and I'm still processing that - all those times that could have been me... every day we take our lives in our hands...
Ok, before I start crying, I told myself I would do a little writing tonight, so here's a "deaf" translation of the first part of the poem I posted a while ago. I don't really know Portuguese...
Thank you for being exactly for who you are.
--
How you make a poem
Rhetoric won't work if you want to talk
about the poem as an object. Simplification isn't enough,
no formulas. Instead, maybe a flower,
growing for its own sake in the middle of a field.
Not the one for sale along the loggias, though. Here: these syllables,
these alien, bright vowel petals, the joint of this
against the stem.... You could pause at each turn
of the sweet green stalk, wait for another twist
of succulent leaves, but no--you should keep going...
COMO SE FAZ O POEMA
Para falarmos do meio de obter o poema,
a retórica não serve. Trata-se de uma coisa simples, que não
precisa de requintes nem de fórmulas. Apanha-se
uma flor, por exemplo, mas que não seja dessas flores que crescem
no meio do campo, nem das que se vendem nas lojas
ou nos mercados. É uma flor de sílabas, em que as
pétalas são as vogais, e o caule uma consoante. Põe-se
no jarro da estrofe, e deixa-se estar....
if you go here, you can hear Nuno Júdice read his poem "How to make a poem" (or "How a poem is made").
why does portuguese sound so incredible? why can't i make ANY of those sounds?
Now is the time for some happier poetry.
Scherzo
Yesterday, at night,
you and I, fully complicit,
left our windows open
instead of closing them
as usual, just to see
what would happen.
And something did: a wind
swept the streets,
emerging from our windows,
from within our dressers
where, for some time,
we had stored tornadoes
for a special day (which turned out
to be yesterday).
The wind took up pieces of sky
that were obstructing
our meager studio apartments;
enormous uncomfortable clouds
rolled past the window
like lazy pachyderms
and sprawled out, unfettered.
The fresh unexpected air
from our apartments
caused any number
of disruptions on the street:
the poor pedestrians
grew intoxicated
from the excess of oxygen
and reeled, lightheaded,
about the empty walks.
I was the first to start dumping
out the window
bucket after bucket of water
flowing from unknown sources
in unexplored regions
under the bed
and behind the dresser,
but it was you who let loose
up on the eighth floor
the first aquatic plants,
the fish, reptiles, and birds;
I, however, instituted fur
and the glandularity
of our essential mammals.
And as the streets
were already paved,
and the light posts
had already evolved
into colossal trees,
and as it wasn't even three A.M. yet
and the bulk of creation
had already been completed,
we made our way to the street
in search of an open bar.
In the first one we found
our homespun miracles
were the topic du jour;
and we, thirsty and incognito,
asked for some beer,
and studied, with neither awe
nor pride, the minute
and delicate grass
sprouting at our feet.
- Paulo Henriques Britto, tr. Idra Novey.
Scherzo
Ontem à noite, eu e você,
em plena cumplicidade
em vez de fechar as janelas
como todo mundo
faz
deixamos as nossas abertas
só pra ver o que ia dar.
Deu nisso:
varreu as ruas um vento
saído de nossas janelas,
de dentro de nossas gavetas
onde nós há tanto tempo
guardávamos tempestades
pra algum dia especial
(que acabou sendo ontem).
O vento levou pedaços
de céu que atravancavam
nossos sóbrios conjugados;
enormes nuvens incômodas
rolaram janela afora
feito lerdos paquidermes
e se esparramaram a valer.
O ar fresco inesperado
de nossos apartamentos
causou transtornos na rua:
os transuentes, coitados,
tossiam intoxicados
por excesso de oxigênio;
cambaleavam às tontas
pelas calçadas vazias.
Fui eu o primeiro a jogar
em baldes pela janela
a água clara que jorrava
de fontes desconhecidas
em áreas inexploradas
sob a cama e atrás do armário,
mas foi você quem soltou
do alto do oitavo andar
as primeiras plantas aquáticas,
os piexes, répteis e aves;
eu, porém, instituí
o pêlo e o viviparismo
dos mamíferos essenciais.
E como as ruas já estavam
inteiramente povoadas,
e como já os
postes da Light
todos tinham evoluíd
em árvores colossais,
e como ainda
não eram
nem três horas da manhã
e já estava terminado
o grosso da Criação,
descemos até a rua
em busca de um bar aberto.
No primeiro que encontramos
nossos milagres caseiros
eram o assunto geral;
e nós, sentos e incógnitos,
pedimos duas cervejas
e ficamos contemplando
sem espanto nem orgulho
a grama tenra e miúda
que brotava a nossos pés.
