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ADFEMPO

2009-09-18T16:27:00.001-07:00

I won't be speaking on translation--instead, I'll be speaking on race and ecopoetics--and there isn't a "translation panel," exactly, but there are lots of inter-language-related events at the upcoming Advancing Feminist Poetics & Activism (ADFEMPO) conference next week. There's a panel centered around Hélène Cixous, 33 years later (has it really been so long?), another on multilingual poetics, yet another on hybridity and Asian American Poetics (including some talk on Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's video poems and traditional Japanese zuihitsu). In fact, the entire conference opens with a discussion between "orature" and "literature," which I'm sure will provocatively address the varied and various translinguations between speech and writing.

Anyway, yrs truly will be spouting off Friday morning from 10 to 11:45, and the coordinates are the English Department Lounge, CUNY Grad Center, which is located on 5th Ave. between 34th and 35th streets in Manhattan (don't be thrown by the Bergen St., Brooklyn, address at the bottom of the page--it's a trick!). Hope to see you there. Bring questions!

Global Conversations

2009-08-10T16:33:00.000-07:00

Series Editor: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

Open Humanities Press is pleased to launch a new multilingual series in philosophy and literature published in conjunction with the University of Michigan Library's Scholarly Publishing Office. Each Global Conversations book will be freely available as an electronic book (open access) and as reasonably priced paperbacks. European languages are often seen as the source of original concepts, blissfully unaware or simply ignoring what is evolving in non-European languages and cultures. This series aims at encouraging dialogue among world cultures and languages, big and small, the dominant and the marginalized, by enabling, through open access publishing, the exchange of intellectual products, literary, philosophical and theoretical, among world languages. To avoid a one-way intellectual traffic, it means publishing works in translation in at least two languages: the source and the target. The series should be open to the possibility of many other translations that arise from the initially published. That way the dialogue becomes a multi-logue or conversation. Thus a work originally published in English and Gujarati in the series may end up being translated into Kiswahili and Maori, and these should become part of the conversation. Most importantly, the series aims at making visible original and outstanding works which may not be otherwise readily and commercially available for reasons of language and market. The series will have literary and theoretical/philosophic streams while being open to other works that may not neatly fall intothe streams.

Froid/Cold

2009-08-04T08:42:00.000-07:00

At the FACE Festival, I discovered that a poet and an acquaintance of mine, Edouard Levé, had committed suicide. But that’s not all. He had written an entire book toward the act, which he then sent to P.O.L. Editeur just before he hanged himself. I asked the person who told me, but did P.O.L. then publish it? They did. And surrounded the publication with clouds of words that I find so difficult to read—words in which Leve questions the selfishness of his suicide (his wife found him) against the calm that it would bring him. The listing contrasts Suicide with his previous book, Self. Self is an autobiographical survey of sorts, unlinked facts, sentences. And many of these are the negative (or the positive) of what’s in Suicide.

I don’t want to read either book. The excerpts are beautiful, moving, questioning. I still don’t want to read them. I’ve bumped up against the limits of my own definition of “art,” which is apparently life-affirming. I love some conceptualism. I loved Levé’s other projects. He stayed on our couch for a night or two several years ago, during a project for which he was documenting journeys to American cities and towns named after European cities and towns (Rome, Athens, Cairo). We had a few beers and watched a video called “Feathers for Felines,” an incredibly badly filmed how-to for cat owners on how to use toys to relieve the boredom of house cats. We all agreed it was one of the funniest movies we had ever seen. I think he even watched it twice—again after we had gone to bed. He was a nice guy—engaging, intelligent, irreverent. He gave me his book Oeuvres, a list of ideas for projects that he had never carried out. I had been intending to translate it for years (speaking of never carried out). Right now I’m thinking of somewhere to go with this mini-eulogy, this remembrance of Levé. Something that would make some sense to Suicide. Something that makes sense beyond actually reading his last book. Like, was it all the unfulfilled projects, or the idea of art as an unfulfilled project, or the idea of life as an unfulfilled project that got to him? Wanting to complete at least one project? Does this essentially negate the innovative, experimental idea of art/poetry as uncontrollable, unfinishable, uncompletable? Is Suicide an ultimate conservative achievement? Like heaven, where nothing will change once you’re “there”? No transformation beyond the act that was the idea for the book. The book was the endpoint, along with the act. No motion. It was described to me as “froid,” cold.

Suicide is a bit like Rodchenko’s paintings—where they were the end of painting (a statement I make that I firmly don’t believe), it is the end of conceptualism. Maybe. Conceptualism is ephemeral, requires explanation, “clouds of words.” Suicide is definite—does it require explanation? I’ll never get one. Conceptualism is also tired. I’m tired of entering art shows where I’ve got to read the text before looking at the work. Where the artist has to explain everything, like that the rubber bands making up the big ball are rubber bands from Enron’s board rooms and therefore they have some sort of weight that maybe the responsibility for finding is tossed to us, the viewer.

Clever dogs speak in tongues to find food

2009-07-07T09:05:00.000-07:00

Apparently, when they smell food on the breath of their fellow dogs, they communicate to each other how to get more. Haven't read the full article--why should I when the headline is so interesting? Clever dogs!

Anyway, my brain has been working furiously at 4:30 a.m. lately (only to quit for the rest of the day) and I had an idea this morning why Oulipo might be more valuable to U.S. poets at the present moment. And that is perhaps because we need to or are interested in identifying the processes/procedures underlying our work, and Oulipo points toward that sort of analysis/recognition. I was very interested in this article on the math underlying city populations, and I wondered if the same sort of analysis could apply to, say, my own poem Traffic & Weather, which I did not consciously write in a mathematical form. I remember Allen Ginsberg identifying close to a 9-syllable count per line in my long poem "Mystery of Public Places III," which I hadn't consciously planned. That identification helped me shape the remainder of the poem, which had been a big mess up to that point.

Michèle Métail certainly made me think a lot about form (although she no longer identifies herself as a member of Oulipo), particularly when she said, "First I find the form, which crystallizes the sense." Each of her poems has a unique form, bound to and arising from the subject of the poem (and thus one fracture in her relationship to Oulipo--in that her forms are not duplicable beyond the specific poem). But back to math and Traffic & Weather--I like the idea of being controlled beyond my own conscious search for form, that instead I'm closer to "nature" or reality (and my idea of nature is very different from most definitions of it) when I write conscious of being close to it, but not conscious of actual equations or numeric counts. It must be inevitably be there, as none of us can really avoid math or physics or nature (although I tried my very best in high school to cut as many math classes as humanely possible).

Here's a wonderful quote on translation I received from Stephanie Gray this morning:

from Wonders of the West by Kate Braverman, a novel from early 90s: "I realize it is possible to be ambushed by revelation. It would be a brutal night of too many stars. Heaven would be filled with tiny metal pins. You would recognize the constellations and where they were going. Their faces would be familiar as photographs on the table next to your bed. You would remember everything. You would know what they were saying. Nothing would require translation."

Persistence of remembering FACE

2009-07-01T17:54:00.000-07:00

I’m still thinking, parsing, mediating on and about the FACE festival. It was an extraordinary chance to meet French poets who were, in a way, so purely “French.” It reminded me on many levels how difficult it is on this giant island of the U.S.A. to get the “news” from abroad. Despite all the Internet and e-mail and telephone and texting and whatever, geography remains geography. Anyway, a few gleanings thru the haze of cross-languages:

Oulipo has a second wind in France, not necessarily a good thing. Apparently, it’s turned into a sort of public game, with the constraints taking on a sort of emptiness, and Oulipean readings/writings overwhelmed by “blagues,” or jokes. I’ve found this in the U.S., too,—in that a jokey reading can take control of the evening. Once one poet makes a funny, the rest of the poets sometimes visibly wilt, as the atmosphere then alters in favor of the continuous laughfest. But since Oulipo is still viewed here as a certain ultimate of deliberately arcane writing, it was initially hard to imagine as a popular radio show program, or taking over the talk channels the way flarf or other group-poetry movements have. But I could see how it has functioned as a sort of access point, perhaps, with only the appearance of inaccessibility, just enough to make it appear different from the American penchant for so-called democratization of the arts (i.e., the more people attending, participating, understanding, the merrier—and the more grants money), which feeds into a penchant for being part of whatever perceived zeitgeist.
French poets are exploring multimedia readings, using computers, sound, visuals. A persistent point of concern with the FACE festival was that the venue (Eugene O’Neill’s cottage) wasn’t able to support audiovisual. As one result, Michèle wasn’t able to do the full FIVE FEET reading, which involves playing sound samples taken from various locations in Tibet and China, and showing slides of groups of five people shot in random situations. She showed me the slides on my computer and I could see how their absence truncated the experience. However, the poets filled in, unplugged, so to speak. Sabine Macher and Jean-Jacques Poucel did a sort of dance performance as part of their simultaneous reading in French and English, keeping one part of their bodies in continuous contact throughout. I could see how practiced the French poets were in this sort of thing, in that the performance truly followed the content of the poem, which illuminated the points of contact between both words and people (funnily enough it was a flarfish poem, in that Sabine drew from her own work in searching for the words “fish” and “drum,” and then “mischmashing” the results together). Note: Flarf hasn’t crossed the Atlantic yet, judging by the blank looks I received when I compared it to the Oulipo phenomenon. But I’m sure it will soon, given its present rate of exposure.
Chapbooks are alive and well and flourishing in France. About 10 years ago, someone told me that chapbooks and the letterpress did not exist in France. I’m happy to report this someone was VERY wrong. Somehow I didn’t get to fully interrogate the poets about other chapbook publishers (maybe one of the many instances my language skills failed, or we were distracted by something else), but I look forward to learning more eventually. Also, Pascal Poyet has written me that he didn’t bring 30, but 60 chapbooks. Happy mistake!
Other things the French noticed: race relations, politeness, fake smiles, race relations, race relations. New London offered up a complexly segregated society, with white poets hanging out at a bar one block from a black club, one minute encouraging us to go read poetry there as a kind of "thrill" (to them I guess) and the next minute warning us away that it would be scary and dangerous. Also, upperclass white society (one whom lectured one of the poets on differences between the North and the South U.S.). I cringed and cringed. Yet there was also a Kente cultural club, a mixed-race art gallery/sneaker/skateboard shop, and a fair-trade store run by a biracial woman. As well as a “north Indian” restaurant run by Tibetans with really terrific food.
An innocuous wine and cheese shop (don’t remember the street) contained a basement that was an entire house, windows, doors, the lot. The owner’s response to my “Why? How?” was a bit garbled—something like either the street level had sunk or risen. Either way, the basement was an entire house, dating from the revolutionary war.
Goodies gotten:
Michèle Métail: Mandibule, Mâchoire; Le route de cinq pieds (so now I can begin to work on the entire piece); and Toponyme: Berlin (with an excerpt of the translation by Holly Dye).
From Pascal Poyet: Réducton de la revolution la nuit, Opération Lindbergh, Spirit II and Oh un lieu d’épuisement by David Lespiau; LA VILLE, DE LA VILLE by Michèle Métail; and freshly arrived in the mail just today, L’espace Domino and Méthodes pour échapper à l’analogie by Emmanuel Fourneir, Je voudrais entrer dans la légende by Sébastian Smirou, and a translation by Poyet of Rosmarie Waldrop, Dans n’importe quelle langue.

2009-06-22T17:53:00.000-07:00

OK, I'm still exhausted, but determined to get the rest of these photos up while waiting for Ismael to fall asleep. It just seems impossible to present photos in blogger! Anyway, if the captions don't seem to immediately match the photo, well. excuuuuuse me!

At left, from left, Jean-Jacques Poucel, Money (never quite got the correct name), Preston Something-White, Elisabeth Hayes, Michèle Métail, Anne Portugal, Sébastien Smirou and Jose.

At left, below, David Lespiau and Sabine Macher admire our host's collection of boats (never did figure out who owned the dingy dinghy, though). At right, Pascal Poyet and Sabine, I think admiring one of the many spiffy digital cameras that I'm sure will be producing much better photos for a different blog.

Macgregor Card and his library and his coat of arms--not! At right, Macgregor, Jean-Jacques and Anne either watch rehearsal or the actual reading. The staircase belongs to the Eugene O'Neill cottage, where the reading took place.

Sébastien sees Eugene O'Neill's ghost. Below, a carload of poets head out for yet more food (I think we singlehandedly saved the restaurant economy of New London).

Après dinner, Sébastien, Macgregor and Pascal exchange poetry notes. Below on left, samples of Pascal Poyet's imprint, contrat maint. I got four books by David Lespiau--Opération Lindbergh, Oh un lieu d'épuisement, Réduction de la révolution la nuit, and Spirit II--and one by Métail, LA VILLE, DE LA VILLE, which is an extract of her larger piece, TOPONYME: BERLIN, a copy of which she gave me. Alas, Holly Dye is already translating it; otherwise, I'd be all over it as it looks absolutely fantastic. Poyet's entire line of approx. 30 books (that's a wild guess though) fit quite nicely into a small bubble sac and won't be pushing him over any weight limits for the flight home. Ah, the many advantages of chapbooks!

Anne Portugal and the proprieter, or manager, or just really nice guy of the Elks Club branch we ended up at. He took us on a tour of the building, which used to be a brothel. Interesting trap doors. The French were impressed by the sign over the bar that said "No drugs or weapons allowed onto the premises." Just one of those things you don't give a second thought until it's pointed out to you. I prefer the "No ID/No Party" sign visible over Anne's head. Anyway, now I've got the photos up, and am heading to bed, but will at some point blog more about specifics of the event, and about my translation plotting for Métail's work, now that she's given me so many books and so much more information about herself and her art.

Firsts at the FACE festival

2009-06-21T17:32:00.000-07:00

I'm back from the POEM/FACE festival, an intense and unsettling experience that, like my suitcase, I am still unpacking. It was a festival of firsts: It was the first time many of the French poets had met each other, and the first time any of them had met their translators. It was also the first time for many of them to the United States (luckily, they were able to change their train tickets so as to permit a stopover in NYC, so that their only experience of the U.S. would not be New London (unexpectedly interesting as it was)), or for others, their last visit was so long ago, or so short a visit, as to be null.

It was the first time in a while I've spoken so much French for so many days, but not the first time I've been embarassed by how limited my speaking ability is. And oy, how rusty like an ancient iron door.

It was the first time that Michèle Métail and I met, and read together.

It was the first time I heard Michele Metail read, and don't think I'm hyperbolic when I say it's an incredible experience. The second night of the reading, as she read from the scroll of "The Route of Five Feet," letting it drop to the floor, she began whispering the verses until her lips were moving with no sound at all. I don't think I've ever felt an audience lean more raptly forward in their seats.

It was also the first time I ate dinner in a house that contained a painting by J.M.W. Turner:

The first time I've been to a house with ocean on three sides and with three poets to admire it: from left, Anne Portugal, Jean-Jacques Poucel and Michèle Métail.

The first time, I believe, that David Lespiau, Sébastien Smirou and Anne Portugal have sat together on a couch in a house containing a Turner painting.

The first time Sabine Macher and Jean-Jacques Poucel have 1) done yoga together and 2) danced the "Mischmaschfishdrum" together.

I've got lots more photos and lots more stories to tell, but right now I'm exhausted from going to New London nightclubs last night with the indefatigable Anne Portugal, a long drive today back to NYC, an emotional reunion with Ismael and Rich (and today is simultaneously our wedding anniversary, father's day, and the solstice), and I'm finding it insanely irritating to post photos to Blogger (why does it post all photos automatically to the top?). So, alors, à demain. (But if you're hungry for details now, please visit Smirou's blog).

Poets on (an) exchange mission

2009-06-15T13:35:00.000-07:00

The festival being touted as 12 poets, 7 translators, 4 events, 2 countries, 1 publication.

Basically, this coming Friday and Saturday is the convening of several French poets and some American poet-translators at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center (in England that would be "Theatre Centre") in New London, CT. For some of the poets, or maybe just Michèle Métail, it will be their very first visit to U.S. shores.

A week or so later, several American poets will be heading to Cassis for the French leg of the festival. I think all of them have been to France before. But it's funny that both sides of the festival take place in somewhat off-center locales. The French poets coming "here" are due to travel pretty much directly from the airport to New London, and then back, so their main experience of the U.S. will be New London. I stopped in New London a few weeks back, just out of curiosity, and am now quite interested to see what the French poets will make of this somewhat quintessential, industrial, seaside, rather isolated New England town/small city. Not to mention the fried clam bellies and lobster rolls. An interesting "exchange" indeed.

Anyway, I'm very much looking forward to meeting Michèle Métail for the first time, and of course, as soon as I let my subscription to the Centre International de Poésie Marseille's journal lapse, then they go ahead and do a special issue on her. Graah. I'm also looking forward to a little bit of alone time in a hotel room, overlooking the radioactive Groton submarine works across the harbor, perhaps.

A Byzantine Day

2009-04-06T08:34:00.000-07:00

I interviewed Jacques Roubaud on Saturday for BOMB magazine—a haunting experience, on many levels, but starting with the venue itself, the French Embassy on 5th Ave. and 79th St. I had been there before, but oh, joy! This time I had the place mostly to myself. Once the people at the door let me in, I clambered up the looping velvet-covered stairs to the 4th floor (actually, I had to resort to the tiny coffin elevator on the 3rd floor), with nary a soul to be seen. Echo, echo! And I never knew that there is a little in-between floor (2nd floor and a half) with half windows, ugly grey carpeting and lots of file cabinets. I adored the contrast of faded magnificence, office clutter, and emptiness.

Anyway, Roubaud, who was waiting patiently in a sort of conference room (I was a few minutes late, as usual). I had received the English translation of his memoir/novel/history, THE LOOP, about three weeks ago (although, as Roubaud indicates, linking internal memory of time to actual time/events is a treacherous endeavor), and have been reading it frantically in order to finish it by the interview. (I made it to within 50 pages.)

Frankly, I drifted in and out of liking the work. (And I enclose all sorts of verbs within “liking,” i.e., finding it thought-provoking, beautiful, and yes, haunting.) I found it astonishing the way he established, in the face of Proust, a new mode of “remembering” within language/writing. I don’t want to give the interview away completely, but he told me he wrote/remembered in order to destroy his memories, while Proust wrote to create them. And one question, that he didn’t quite answer to my satisfaction, was what is left of the creator/author after memories are destroyed—where does Roubaud move now?

He tells the reader straight out that what he writes becomes true in that it is written as he writes it—that the chronology of “events” occurs as they are written. He tells the reader this in way of an invitation, an invitation that one can either accept, or decline. I could have put the book down right there, if I wanted. I think American memoirists tend, almost involuntarily, toward “selling” their book, trying to get the reader to “buy” the narrative—they wouldn’t invite, with such casual insouciance. To Roubaud, I don’t think it’s so important that his book is read, as that it is written.

Where I most drifted out of “liking” was in Roubaud’s images. Often, I find that he chooses an image that’s not up to carrying the weight he gives it in terms of its place in the occurring memory—and the image ends up becoming too precious, too diminutive, as does the language used around the image. Yes, we all know the strawberries tasted better when we were young (see John Steinbeck, East of Eden), but I’m not sure the strawberry (or fig) is always up to carrying the emotional/linguistic weight of a memory.

But the translation is stupendous—I only had one or two moments where the English drifted into a slight awkwardness. And, as ever, anyone who translates any Oulipean work deserves a special round of applause.

Anyway, you can read the interview in Bomb “soon.” Is that vague enough?

As for the subsequent brunch and reading, it was quite a spread, with lots of recipients of, as Trevor Winkfield calls it, that Legion of Honor “thing,” showing up, either for the food, the wine, the company, or the event (in that order?). Plenty lubricated by 3 pm on a Saturday (Charles Bernstein said, “not before 5 pm!”), the crowd became more and more festive (although Monica de la Torre said she found it quite restrained compared to events at the Mexican Consulate).

The readers—Roubaud, Hervé Le Tellier, Marcel Bénabou, Ian Monk, and Anne Garréta—gave a loose and rather goofy reading. There was just about no introduction, so any audience member (such as myself) who had missed the previous events, was left to figure out who was what from the books the authors carried up to the podium. Ian Monk read in both French and English—the French going over much better with the audience (understandably, since it was peppered with naughty language!). He seemed much happier reading in French, too, although he’s British.

I could hardly stop laughing during Anne Garréta’s reading because she looked exactly like her book cover photo. It was sort of like that scene where Groucho asks Harpo who he is, and Harpo shows him his tattoo of his own face. She wore dark aviator glasses (this is inside on a cloudy day) with a distinctive haircut, which were all reproduced to a “T” on the cover. Andrew Hultkrans at Artforum has more to say about Garréta. Anyway, Roubaud raved about her novel, the English translation of which I’m looking forward to (apparently, according to a secret source at Dalkey Archive, the wheels are in motion to get a translation done).

Afterward, I headed over to the Met, where I took a right where I usually take a left, and ended up wandering through period rooms, each of which seemed stranger than the last (I’m quite sure I never saw that totally bizarre blue poster bed before), and ended up in the new Byzantine “room” (actually the space underneath the Grand Hall Stairway). I was soon snared, as the Byzantines intended, by the 200-400 AD textiles, with intricate labyrinths woven into them, to tangle the eye and prevent it from casting evil with its glance.

Vertical Fishing Rods

2009-03-29T09:28:00.000-07:00

I've been known to complain about the lucidity and denotative nature of French. However, this morning I've run into a word that's competitive with any connotative English word in its range of possible meanings.

It doesn't help that I was already having some trouble translating the verses prior to the line: "lancer, relancer." The preceding verses had something to do with a copper drum, which doesn't seem to be a particularly Tibetan musical instrument--I'm thinking Metail is describing some mechanical device the identity of which is not clear to me. Then the most popular (or common) translation for lancer is "thrown," which doesn't make much sense with a drum. So I google both "lancer" and "tambour" (drum), to receive back a bunch of pages that have to do with fishing. The tambour is the reel part of the fishing rod (I guess--I'm not up on fishing paraphenelia lingo), while lancer is to cast the line. So I try "cast," but that doesn't seem to make sense in the context of the line, either.

I decide to let it go and forge onto the next couple of lines: "bruit de mécanique/moulins verticaux." This translates roughly into "mechanical noise/vertical mills." OK, mechanical noise is 5 syllables, great. But "vertical mills" is only 4, plus I'm not sure what exactly vertical mills are. I look in the dictionary, to see that a few lines down, temptingly, is "moulinet," which means, fishing rod. But if Metail meant fishing rod, she would have used "moulinet," right? Is this a coincidence of the dictionary?

This reminds me of my idea, expressed in some essay I wrote on how to read ecological poetry, that dictionaries should be arranged so that words with companionable meanings follow one another, rather than alphabetical. This is along the same lines I used to arrange books, thinking how the books (or the authors) might like or appreciate one another. I appreciate dis-organization. I wish there were more of it.

We will URL you.com

2009-03-19T10:57:00.000-07:00

For the first time, I saw a URL used as part of a sentence, in—what else?—an advertisement on I-95 betwixt Philadelphia and New York City. I don’t know what this signifies socially, exactly, but it seems that rather than adding a single word, such as Google, to our vocabulary as a verb or noun or whatever, it’s adding an entire class of words. Now, URLs can enter our lexicon as whatever they wish or we.com wish.com them.com to.com be.com.

URLs as part of syntax will unspeakably complicate translation from American English into other languages, particularly the closely guarded environs of French.

Worlds within Words

2009-02-23T14:56:00.000-08:00

I have been struggling with the very first line of LA ROUTE DE CINQ PIEDS: vallée-peupliers. I first translated it as “valley poplars.” However, “valley poplars” is only four syllables; it needed to be five. So I began researching “valley poplar” to see if there was a way to render it into five syllables without simply resorting to adding “the” (cop-out!). Was it a particular species of poplar? Or was Métail referring to poplars that happened to be in a valley? This particular verse is drawn from a trip to Tibet, so I thought perhaps valley poplar might be a tree species unique to that region with a five-syllable name that I could use. Google: poplar Tibet. And this came up. Apparently the poplars were planted by Jamyang Losong Kyanco the 13th incarnation of Dama Rergin as the Living Buddha of the Rabu Monastery, inspired by the poplars of Beijing. The poplars were, and are, lovingly tended. According to this site, at night the caravan carrying the poplar saplings would plant them in ditches to preserve moisture. Each one was named after a sage, and Jamyang Losong Kyanco told townspeople to protect them with clay walls. Jiegu Town, home of the poplars, is a subject of study by urban planners for its “perfect” zoning and, yes, the trees.

So, how’d the line turn out?

“Valley of poplars.”

Five syllables!

taken away again

2009-02-21T12:39:00.000-08:00

So I was still puzzling over any hidden constraints in Michèle Métail's text, when I noticed a legal pad sitting on the window sill in the bedroom. I've used these legal pads over the years for everything from phone numbers to grocery lists to whatever. I didn't know why this particular one was sitting on the window sill: in our household, either my husband, or the kid, or the cat likes to drag things out 'n' about, so there's always an element of surprise in how things are arranged at any particular moment.

Well, this particular notebook happened to contain notes on Métail's text. I think I must have jotted them down during a conversation with Harry Mathews, who knows Métail and her work, although there's nothing else at all about that conversation. Anyway, I rushed the notebook to my desk, to later transcribe my handwriting, and wrote my dad (really my co-translator) about this serendipidous discovery.

Now I look at it this morning, ready to delve into the mysteries of Le Cinq Pieds, and what do I see? Half of that one particular page has been torn off. A dim memory from a few days ago comes back: my husband saying "Ismael, leave mommy's notebook alone." Scream.

Anyway, here's what I have left:

endless succession of genetives
'70s already begun work
every day inspired by an

UPDATE: I found the other half crumpled up behind my computer!

Of Guinea Pigs and Furniture Stores

2009-02-18T20:03:00.000-08:00

A few interesting events/links:

The Festival of New French Writing is taking place February 26-28. Always on the lookout for French-Senegalese writers, I was interested to discover Marie N’Diaye on the list. Unfortunately, only one of her books, Among Family, seems to be extant in English translation, and it may be out of print. Abdourahman Waberi also looks interesting, particularly his book Aux Etats-Unis d’Afrique.

A hot discussion of translation topics at Harriet, specifically, Martin Earl’s discussion of what “literary merit” means when it comes to translations. How do we judge poems in translation versus those written in “our” native language? He seems to feel we have to/should judge, while I think we have to shift our paradigm (to use his terminology) when reading translation, because we are losing the original language—its sound, its culture-specific nuances, its connotations, its multiple words for different kinds of snow—even as we gain in trying to understand the poetry’s larger history/origin/context. With translation, I often value process over product, particularly in that even the effort of translating alters the receiving language.

Plus I just hate judging anything “good.” It seems totally fallacious and a pretense that the ongoing sea-change in writing, reading, perception into wider, more experimental, communal activities is simply not happening. "Good" narrows your possibilities; "good" throws up barriers; "good" is an expired passport and you're stuck at the airport.

On another topic, I just returned from the AWP conference in Chicago. I shamefacedly admit that I only attended 1 panel and 2 readings, but it’s not often I get time alone in a hotel room to write, so I seized the day. BUT, one of the two readings I went to was a reading of translations. It was an interesting mix—from Rimbaud to Swedish poet Aase Berg. I enjoyed it all, but I particularly enjoyed Johannes Göransson’s translations of Berg. He prefaced his reading by saying that as a “southern hick” (from Sweden) he wasn’t fully able to capture Berg’s rough urban accent, an interesting reminder of the range of variation that exists within languages. He also dissed Cal Bedient’s notion, expressed at the American Hybrid panel (which I, duh, missed), that poetry should be about “compromise and moderation”—ha, ha! Right on. Anyway, I really, really loved the guinea pig poem, particularly as I just bought Ismael a stuffed guinea pig from Ikea. A coincidence, or is there something about guinea pigs and Sweden that I don't know about? Check out Göransson’s blog describing his book sales.

I was way too restrained with book buying—I was trying to be financially cautious, and make a circuit of the book fair to triage what I was going to buy, only to later realize that one does not complete a full tour at the AWP, due to the incredible amount of stopping and talking (i.e., schmoozing) one does. You got to grab the books while you can. Therefore, I missed the anthology of Western African women’s writings. Bah! However, I did get the long-coveted Sleep’s Powers, Jacqueline Risset translated by Jennifer Moxley.

Five steps of translation

2009-02-12T08:09:00.000-08:00

I've been handed another translating assignment--an excerpt from Michèle Métail's LA ROUTE DE CINQ PIEDS (The Road of Five Steps), which I'm to complete by June for a translation festival that will take place either in a) Connecticut or b) France.

On the surface, the Oulipian constraint is relatively straightforward, five "steps" per line, and Métail has made it even easier for me with a note to the translator calling my attention to the form and that the "silent e" of French may throw off the syllable count in English.

However, one does not write a 16,000-verse and counting poem without some other constraint pulling it along. She says in her introduction that the poem was "conceived as a continuous chain of pictures," but I just know there's something else lurking in here. So far there doesn't seem to be a repetition of words between verses (in fact, I think it's just the opposite--that no repetition is allowed), nor a repetition of sound. Perhaps a clue can be found in her introduction, when she says that the poem is based on 8 trips to Asia (with a 6:1:1 ratio of China, Taiwan, Japan). Perhaps this is the additional constraint? Eight characters perhaps with five syllables? 16,000 divided by 8 is 2,000...

On another subject, Pierre Joris included Jean Sénac’s Oeuvres poétiques (Actes Sud 1999) on his 10 best reads of 2008. I’m very happy to see Joris draw some public attention to Jean Sénac. He was one of my major finds during research for the anthology, and it does pain my heart a bit that we probably won't be the ones to bring his poetry into English, after all.

But Joris has reminded me I should reread Sénac. With Ismael now in my life and reading Senegalese writers such as Ousmane Sembene, I'm even more interested in the struggle shared by so many Francophone writers, such as Sénac, between an interest in and passion for French culture and language, and a hatred for French colonialism. Here’s a quote from Justin Vicari’s article at APR, which also includes some translations of Sénac’s poetry.

Sénac entered the French language as a deliberate outsider, from the beginning
mixing in polyglot words pell-mell from Spanish, Arabic, and English, while
inventing many bold neologisms of his own. Later, Sénac actively joined the
resistance against French colonialism in Algeria, fighting as a soldier for that
cause: yet, one feels that Sénac was fighting only against the France who
conquered with armies, not the same nation who conquered with images.

France was where his books were published and what he wrote in. And if I translated his work into English, would I compound the colonialism? How can one reconcile culture with colonialism?

Padding out English; making it flower(y)

2008-11-23T19:26:00.001-08:00

A familiar problem: I'm currently at 15 lines when the original is 17 lines. Metail's Oulipian form is 48 characters per line; 24 lines per page. English is so much more concise than French, and I also think American writers are culturally inclined to say more in less. Laconic is a complimentary adjective here in the U.S. Think Gary Cooper. Clint Eastwood. (Don't think Vince Vaughn.) But to equal 24 to 24 lines, I've got to go against my culture and pad, pad, pad. To circle. To circumbobulate. To say, "The brush of my teeth," rather than "Toothbrush." (Or, after reading Dr. Seuss to Ismael every day, "Nooth Grush.") So much depends on the barrow of my (translation) wheel that is red.

Exuberant Waters Fray

2008-11-20T17:24:00.000-08:00

I signed up for Harrap's month-long free trial, as I liked the pirated copy that M. Oliver gave me so much, but which is, alas, not transferable from my vieux computer to my nouvel computer. (I think it pretty funny that computer is ordinateur in French, but also "computer." Actually, the definitions associated with "ordinateur" are rather fertile: you've got "macro-ordinateur" and "micro-ordinateur" that mean, respectively, mainframe and microcomputer. Now, I don't think the Academicians are doing a very good job when they allow "laptop" to be translated as "micro-ordinateur portable"--you're practically begging for the English (or would that be American?) to be used.)

Anyway, before I digressed there, I signed up so that I would work on my translation of Earth's Horizons. Like, as in, that I must do work before the month elapses, because otherwise Harrap's is very expensive. So, a few days ago, I achieved this:

EVEN IF THE MASS PERSISTS IN RECOILING FROM
PRIMITIVE EXTENSIONS THAT CULMINATE ON DUPLICATE SIDES
WHERE FLESHY SUMMIT RIDGES OUTLINED IN THEIR
ROUNDNESS TILT TOWARD THE NORTH DEPRESSING PLACES
OF ERRATIC CONVERGENCES THAT THE DESERTED SLOPES
TO THE BENEFIT OF CRESTS MORE ACCIDENTAL IN THEIR
DOING WHEN THEY SHARE EXUBERANT WATERS FRAYING
OVER THE STEPPED SPURS OF WHERE THE UNDULATING HEIGHTS
DRAW AWKWARDLY THEIR CLIMBS DISAPPEARING ON THE FLANK

I had a short consultation with my father about translating "AU PROFIT DES CRETES" to "TO THE BENEFIT OF CRESTS" instead of "TO THE PROFIT OF CRESTS." I'm also not happy with "DEPRESSING" as that's got another connotation in English that overpowers the meaning of the French. I'll have to resort to the dictionary of geological terms to find some alternatives. But ultimately, all of the above lines, after this first rough translation, must be put into a line of 48 characters, per Metail's original Oulipian form. So enjoy what you see above as it will be changed, as summits tilt and waters fray, to perhaps unrecognizable form.

On the griot trail

2008-11-19T14:25:00.000-08:00

Bob Holman and Papa Susso's blog on filming endangered languages in West Africa. Be prepared to be riveted. I look even more forward to one day taking Ismael (my wee griot) to Senegal.

The Savage Anthologists, biting off more salsa and chips than they can chew

2008-09-29T14:00:00.000-07:00

While I was dipping into French and Francophone poetry at the NYPL, change was afoot at my day job. One day our editorial team was told that Cats magazine was shut down and that we were being assigned DogWorld magazine instead. (OK, I’ll admit that I found this mostly hilarious, although my poor boss was beside herself.) But being the efficient professionals that we were, in a matter of months we turned what had been a fuddy-duddy publication partial to 5-part dry-as-a-bone articles on canine genetics into a snappier (as you can see, in the pet writing world, the puns are endless) read.

But alas, all that didn’t prevent DogWorld from quickly being sold to a company way out in California. And we wanted to stay in NYC. Thus, come spring 2002, I was out of a job. Joy! This meant I could spend entire days in the Wertheim Room at the NYPL, reading French poetry, courtesy of the wonder (alas, all too evanescent) that is unemployment.

And the Wertheim room, it was like how one romanticizes what monks’ cells must have been like—the long wood tables, the silence, the flirting. People often slept in their chair, sometimes tilted back, or with their head on their book or computer. In the absence of words, human interaction had a sort of heightened power, like how silent movie stars have an extra puissance. Olivier, Kristin and I all felt like we were falling in love with someone in the Wertheim. But outside the heavy wooden door, if we happened actually to talk to object of our affection, the illusion would instantly dissipate. As I write this, I can’t even remember the person I was interested in the least, or even if he or she was a man or woman. It was like being in love with a soap bubble.

Cosi was our library mess hall across 42nd St.—we would help ourselves to their free bits of bread in a bowl, and then race back to the library, chancing traffic. One time Olivier and Kristin ran across to meet me—it was a drizzly day and their long raincoats flew back and suddenly I had a vision of a great “author photo” for our anthology, obviously some sort of desire to pin the moment in time. Our other hangout was Festival, a Mexican restaurant as unromantic as running across 42nd St. on a rainy day in a long coat is romantic. The margaritas were made of cleaning fluid and gasoline, but were cheap ($3.25 if I remember correctly), and the waitress was stunningly unfriendly. We always left her giant tips, and went there regularly for years, yet she never so much as twitched a lip in an upward direction when we came in ready for another round of watery salsa and stale chips. Olivier was at the time living around the corner and I think it became a kind of United States citizen’s test to get that waitress to say hello to him.

At our meetings, we’d hash out lists, lists, lists—crossing off dozens of poets when, as I understand now, we should have been honing our vision for the anthology. From the start, we were biting off way, way, way more than we could chew—we had chosen May 1968 to the present as our time frame (foolish, foolish! 40 years to be foolish within!) and basically the entire Earth as our geographic arena. This left aesthetics as any kind of narrowing criterion, and while we all liked each other enormously, we inevitably discovered that we had slightly different aesthetics, which we somehow avoided being able to articulate.

Translating soil (not ours)

2008-09-27T10:31:00.001-07:00

A postcard from Will Alexander:

"The moons of Saturn as translatable soil."

Too true!

translating outrage

2008-09-24T12:17:00.000-07:00

Today I’m thinking that translation also spans English to English, and intralanguage translation could play an extremely important role in current events. For instance, we desperately need translators to interpret what’s going on at Wall Street to the rest of us. Or do we? I mean, for all the clouds of words surrounding the economic “crisis” (let’s look at the multiple meanings of that word), all I seem to hear is bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, and, oh yeah, a blank check signed by me and all my children and grandchildren and seven generations to come. Don’t parasites know it’s in their own best interests to keep their hosts alive?

The Savage Anthologists, deterred

2008-09-16T11:20:00.000-07:00

I was distracted from my chronological narrative (also called a "blow-by-blow") on the putting together of our anthology (or actually the not putting together of) by an e-mail forwarded from Latasha N. Diggs on the possible closure and moving of the collection of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. Apparently, there are whispers afoot that the collection may be moved to the research branch of the NYPL in midtown.

I read the email with some mixed feelings, because I remembered how difficult the split between the research branch of the NYPL and the Schomburg/NYPL (the former now called the Humanities and Social Sciences Library) had made much of our research for the French anthology. Basically, we entered the anthology with the determination that French writers of color and Francophone writers be fully represented and then some. However, we discovered that most of the books (I’d say all, but I remember one stray book being available at the NYPL) by black French writers were housed at the Schomburg and not at the NYPL’s research library in midtown (yes, the one with the white marble lions guarding the stairs). What this meant and means that the research library’s collection of contemporary French writers is primarily white.

Kristin, Olivier and I discussed the issue and the best we could come up with at the time was that the NYPL should buy duplicate copies. It was obviously important that the Schomburg maintained its important collection in Harlem, but it also seemed essential that black writers would be represented at the Research Library in midtown. But of course, this would cost money. But while discussing the issue with Latasha, I thought of another possible solution, which is that people should be able to request interlibrary loans. Like, we should have been able to request interlibrary loans of the black French authors we wanted to read. Instead, Kristin spent the day at the Schomburg to discover another unfairness, that copies at the Schomburg cost 25 cents per page, as opposed to 10 cents a page at the Research Library.

Anyway, I don't know if the rumors about the Schomburg are true, as I haven't been able to find much else about it online, but if I do hear more, I'll post it here.

The Savage Anthology, Beginning

2008-08-29T16:42:00.000-07:00

Our anthology process began with a list of approximately 500 French poets—I’m still vague on the exact origins of this list, but most of the poets seemed to have been published by Gallimard.

At the time (1999) I was working for Cats magazine as associate editor. One part of my job was to write funny captions for photos of cats that people sent in. For instance, somebody sent in a photo of their cat sitting in a pair of pants and polished black wingtips left in front of a toilet. So my caption was “Now, that was an awkward time to turn into Supercat!”

Much as I enjoyed my job, like most poets, I would have preferred to be—yes, spending my days in the New York Public Library, reading French poetry!

Luckily, the NYPL was only a block from my workplace, so at lunchtime I went over to chip away at the mountain of names on my list. However, my French was rusty—very, very, very rusty, and it probably wasn’t all that shiny to begin with. I did horribly in French in high school and college. However, in my early 20s I made up for it somewhat by living in Champigny (a communist suburb east of Paris) for several months, studying French at the Sorbonne, and dating a French jazz musician. I was actually rather amazed at how much easier it was to grasp grammar and vocabulary with a more mature mind (grammatical rules at age 14 seemed as impenetrable as where we go after we die), and positively hungered for the pronunciation component of the class. My lessons were supplemented by the incredibly foul vocabulary of the family with whom I was living, who taught me valuable phrases such as “je m’en fou” (my grandmother almost slapped me when I accidently answered one of her questions suchly), “je vais bouffer,” and “une fraise en pantoufles” (a strawberry in slippers, i.e., silent but deadly). However, what all this lent to speed-reading experimental French poetry was a little dubious. And then there was the time issue: by the time I got to the library, got the book, opened it, read a few pages, my lunch hour was just about over.

However, circumstances were to change…

Updating things

2008-08-26T07:03:00.001-07:00

The anthology of French and Francophone I've been working on for the last 9 years (almost a decade--scary!) is stirring back to life, along with the U.S. side of the Double Change Collective, my translation of Michele Metail's The Earth's Horizons, and hopefully this blog!

The shape of the anthology is going to be vastly different from our original vision (which, as far as I can tell, was a multivolume, densely printed set encompassing every innovative poet working in the French language from May 1968 to the present day--ha, ha, ha!). Co-editor Kristin Prevallet (the other editor is Olivier Brossard) has come up with the wonderful idea of us writing a collaborative introduction/histoire of not getting the anthology together, based somewhat on Roberto Bolaño's The Savage Detectives, as we certainly had an interesting, and extremely poetic (in the sense of the word portraying poets as unstructured individuals unlikely to take the direct route to point A from point B) experience (not the least involving the New York Public Library's Wertheim Room). Anyway, I thought I'd begin my own contribution on this blog, so stay posted. I'll also add updates on what's happening with "DC," as we call it in-house.

Forrest Gander's essay on translation

2008-02-14T08:13:00.001-08:00

Read Forrest Gander's presentation on translation at the AWP here. It's a fascinating, wide-ranging, and knowledgeable essay that conveys how sparse translations in our culture really are--and also makes a case for mistranslations as still being valuable in opening our semi-closed tongue (or would that be mouth?). The need for translating, even given our history of linguistic colonization. Translation contaminates us--a necessary contamination (and contamination can be an excellent thing--just look at yogurt).

One caveat though: Forrest lists Haiti as part of the "Spanish-speaking Latin America" for which he could find nothing in print in English. That would be French or Creole, and I'm not sure Haiti should be defined as part of "Latin America" either. There are some Haitian poets and poetry translated--on a quick Internet search, I found interesting material, both in and out of print (including some Haitian poetry in an anthology of "Latin American poetry"--oh well!). I also found someone selling his collection of Haitian literature, if anyone's interested.

The Haitian poet I'm most familiar with is Rene Depestre. But here, we see the problem with paucity of translation again. His most famous poem, Un arc-en-ciel pour l'Occident Chrétien (Rainbow for the Christian West), has been translated, but is now out of print, which it should not be, as it's an amazingly powerful poem that should be read by anyone interested in a) poetry, b) issues of colonialism and c) world history, or d) life. Anyway, if we ever finish our French anthology, an excerpt from this poem will be included. Anyway, a recent and possibly unpublished translation does exist, as evidenced by this slightly out-of-date presentation announcement.

A more recent Haitian poet is Denize Lauture, whose children's books are more readily available than his books of poetry. He's read a few times at the Poetry Project, as well as at the Project's New Year's Day Marathon (although I don't recall seeing him this year...)

Infinite Library essay now up

2008-01-12T20:12:00.000-08:00

My essay on the Infinite Library is now up at NYFA Current. Enjoy!

untranslated

2008-01-09T14:04:00.000-08:00

I visited the Librairie de France in the New Year en route to the Seurat show at MoMA. While browsing through their selection downstairs (which apparently will be slowly gleaned as the bookstore begins its year-long process of closing. Actually, the woman there told me they probably will be shutting down in August.), I was struck by how much French literature has not been translated into English. I guess this always surprises me because I think of French as one of the more translated languages. So if French books and letters, say, by major French literary figures such as Proust (the letters of André Gide and Marcel Proust was one Librairie find), and Apollinaire (Le Flâneur des deux rives was another) remain untranslated, then what troves of riches remain untranslated in more obscure (to English audiences) languages such as Polish, Japanese, Wolof?

It's shocking. I'm shocked. Where are all the translators? I don't even want to ask about the audiences. A publisher once told me that while poetry is close to the bottom of what publishers want to publish, translations are le pire (and no, that's not French for pinnacle).

I'll be going back, as there were many other books by Apollinaire unfamiliar to me (and most not mentioned on the Academy of American Poet's page on Apollinaire, which features an extremely truncated bibliography) that I think I'm going to have to have. Interesting, a brief Google of "Proust," "Gide," and "letters," reveals that Gide advised Gallimard to reject Swann's Way. The letters between them must really testify to a certain endurance of literary friendship, in that case.

I feel rather helpless in the situation--if only I were a polyglot! But alas, French is my only other language (and my accent is terrible), which is why I'm pondering reorienting this blog toward primarily French-language topics.

Call for Translations (and Happy New Year!)

2008-01-01T16:03:00.001-08:00

From Vincent Katz, publisher of Vanitas:

Translators and (translation) lovers —
A call for work for VANITAS 4 : TRANSLATION
the word is "translation" : send your actual translations of POETRY from and to languages with which you are conversant: and further translate the idea of translation to far and near cultural, geographical, political and daily moves of interest : texts on translation (again, possibly, in extended senses)

as always : poetry (not necessarily but actually always anyway) on point
please extend this invitation to any you feel have their hand in correct stew (feel free to post)
good luck with all transitions now and in the future

Vincent Katz, Publisher & Editor, Vanitas, 211 West 19 Street, #5, New York, NY 10011 USA
vanitasmagazine@mac.com

Not Just One Less Bookstore

2007-12-22T09:29:00.000-08:00

I knew la Librairie de France was possibly one of the last remaining French-language bookstores in New York City, but I didn't know it was the last French-language bookstore in the entire United States.

And it's going to close in 2009.

Here's the notice they gave to me a few days ago:

IMPORTANT MESSAGE TO OUR CUSTOMERS

After 74 years at this same location, as the oldest and only remaining
retail tenant of Rockefeller Center from 1935, our lease will expire in 2009. Because of overwhelming New York City rents, especially those on Fifth Avenue--approximately $1,000 a square foot, and projected even higher in 2009--it will be financially impossible for us to continue at that time.

Although many of our customers assume that we are a subsidized French government entity, ours is an independently operated third-generation family-owned bookstore with no financial support whatsoever.

It has been a great experience. In 1935, we were invited to be the first
tenants in La Maison Francaise. During the Second World War, we published more than 200 works of French authors exiled from 1940-1945 in the United States. Our bookstore was a vibrant center of French cultural production and is the only French bookstore in the country.

You may wish to take advantage of our extensive selection of books on sale, as well as rare books on our lower level. [MD: You certainly do! I bought Marcel Proust's letters to Andre Gide--who knew?--there a couple days ago.]

To you across the United States and abroad who have supported us throughout almost a century, we extend our heartfelt appreciation and gratitude. You make every workday a pleasure. We are going to miss you when it is over.

Vachement sucky news. Go as much as you can in 2008 to stock up on books other than in English. The woman in the fabulous basement told me all of the other foreign-language bookstores have gone under, as well, so get ready for a dull desert of mono-language in NYC/US.

Desperately Seeking Utopia

2007-12-18T19:16:00.001-08:00

In the course of continuing my research for this essay on the infinite library, I remembered that I had momentarily entertained the idea of translating Claude-Nicolas Ledoux's manuscript on the Royal saltworks, after seeing the original at the fantabulous Utopia show at the NYPL a few years back.

What I hadn't remembered was that Ledoux's plans for an ideal city, named "Chaux," sprang from his construction of the saltworks. The city was never realized, but according to the catalogue for the show, it represented "a decisive breakthrough."

To discover what this breakthrough so decisively broke through, it took a bit more flipping through the catalogue, and a quick glance at the index for Ledoux's contemporary (or teacher?), close-to-my-heart Boullée. Here's a bit more information: Boullée and Ledoux are "considered the very embodiment of the transition ... blah, blah ... that privileged the enchainement - the flow of a dominant movement through an urban composition, a building and every component thereof - and used visual ploys to reflect a social hierarchy. Instead, they ushered in the modern era by creating autonomous architecture - freestanding, determined by function, devoid of superfluous ornament, and so forth - the built framework for a new society that promised liberty, equality, and fraternity."

It's fascinating to me that in the process of becoming "modern" and discarding hierarchy, somehow composition was lost along the way. Would it have been possible to discard the existing social hierarchy and yet retain composition, or community (can I conflate composition with community?)? Is this a question that Jane Jacobs answered? How did this proto-modern architecture eventually morph into such disturbing monumentalism of the 20th century? I do see so many branches good and bad from Boullée's/Ledoux's designs - Le Courbusier, I.M. Pei, Mies van der Rohe, skyscrapers, communist block architecture, housing projects, the Mall, fascistic monumentalism...

In a slight digression, I've been thinking a lot about classicism, since Boullée's designs were classicism on a ginormous scale, but also because I've been reading a semi-trashy book on prehistoric cave paintings (The Cave Painters by Gregory Curtis if you must know). Despite the generally drippy writing, and the sentimentalism, and occasional sexism, it's still a fun read at least because he brings up the question of why we continue to respond to these basically untranslatable images and compositions (apparently, it took archaeologists a long time to realize the paintings were compositions). That sounds like a dumb question, and I guess it is, but Curtis links it back to the impressive durability of paleolithic culture. Cave painting persisted for basically 20,000 years: Lascaux is thousands of years younger (18,000 years ago) than Chauvet (32,000). Compare that to today: try sitting Frank O'Hara in front of a computer and see what happens (although who knows--he'd probably be texting like a pro in no time, and have an entry on Facebook or whatever). Anyhoo, Curtis feels the length of time paleolithic culture endured qualifies it as a "conservative" and therefore "classical" culture that expressed a society's shared beliefs. This took me a bit by surprise and made me ponder what a conservative--in the way he uses the term--poet would be. If I try to express the culture I'm in, am I conservative? How far out from my culture's shared beliefs do I move before I'm not a conservative poet? If I'm in it, am I of it?

I should just make this blog the blog of questions, since that's all I have tonight.

infinite research

2007-12-12T11:12:00.000-08:00

I've been assigned an essay on the "infinite library," based on an answer to an interview question I was given at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. So I'm rereading Borges's story, "The Library of Babel," and lo and behold, last night very serendipitously found a book on Étienne-Louis Boullée, the pre- and during French Revolution architect, who almost designed the Bibliothèque Nationale, or national library for France. Here's his design for the library, which like many of his designs, is classicism on an impossible scale.

Anyway, the book. I found it last night in the rare book room of the Strand, which itself is almost an infinite library--this quality of infiniteness granted by the complete hodge-podgery of its selection. Ashbery leans against an 1880s tome on quiltmaking (well, not quite--the A Nest of Ninnies was leaning against something completely discordant, but it I don't remember what it was. Something like quiltmaking.); Walter Mosley printer proofs against the Japanese Country House, and so on and so on. And then there are long, long shelves with books that "have not been priced yet" and probably never will. I sat with my son Ismael in a huge old leather chair and let my eyes run over the shelves as I fed him: shiny spines next to leather, beat-up paperbacks next to boxed oversized art books, and perched on piles of "not priced yet" goodies, some tiny book, I recall on typesetting (should've taken it...). Oh, but I'm digressing--back to the book on Boullée! It's by one Helen Rosenau and the text is impressively uninspired, dull almost to the same degree that Boullée's designs were gasp-inspiring. I had been hoping for some sort of context, in how his designs, severe and classical and above all, gargantuan, fit into the time of the Revolution, mais non, rien, nothing, except translations of his own writings (and yes, gorgeous reproductions of his designs, of which I'm still not sure how many made it into actuality).

Here's a couple of excerpts:

Inside the city
The interior walls of the city are decorated differently and lead one to suppose the presence of a double wall. I consider that such multiple defenses not only make the city appear unassailable, but also give variety to my subject.

Gates of fortified cities
My various city gates consist of walls flanked by Towers. The basement of one of them is made of supplies of Cannon Balls under Trophies made of the arms of Giant warriors. The arch, or rather the archivolts, are made of gun barrels.

And here I was wondering how his work fit into his times. Seems like his work would fit well into our times as well. Or all urban times, perhaps.

In the meantime, on discussing the infinite library essay with Andres Clerici, Andres sent me some intriguing links on Borges-related authors, such as Oliverio Girondo and the aforementioned Xul Solar. Andres also mentions Cortazar's story, "La Casa Tomada," and his book "bestiario," "a great book from 1951." Andres also says Borges was good friends with Adolfo Bioy Casares, whose novel Morel's Invention was recently (relatively at least, for translations--2003) translated and published by New York Review of Books Classics.

What do these authors have to do, actually, with an infinite library? Well, that's the point. In order to research an essay on an infinite library, one has to cast out in all directions, almost randomly, in order to approximate that sense of infinity. How can one humanly support such infinite research? A: With either great enjoyment or great stress, especially since the essay is due in about two weeks.

translation is tricky work

2007-12-10T07:50:00.000-08:00

Translation is such a tricky business, particularly instantaneous translations done on the fly early in the morning pre-café. Once again I am reminded that I can take nothing for granted when I translate: so many times I've "gone on my nerve," to quote Frank O'Hara, only to find I've missed an idiomatic expression or my brain has not-so-helpfully filled in a gap, reading one word as another.

Anyway, I apologize for mistranslating Captain Haddock's juron "Flibustier" as "filibuster." While using filibuster as an insult is certainly interesting, Flibustier is something else altogether. Having not learned my lesson, a rough translation sans dictionary reveals that the Flibustiers were actually a bunch of "aventuriers" (may I infer pirates?) who in the 16th and 17th centuries messed (incredibly bad translation here) with Spanish holdings in America. I'm leaving it at that until I get my hands on a dictionary because their history looks fascinating (and apparently the etymology of "Flibustier" is related to "free booter). I wonder what Peter Lamborn Wilson (aka Hakim Bey) has to say on these folks!

More soon. In the meantime, Saturday we went to a book party for two new translation releases. John Ashbery's translation of Pierre Reverdy's Maison Hantée, or Haunted House, has finally been published by John Yau's Black Square Editions, alongside an edition of Ron Padgett's translation of Reverdy's prose poems. I was disappointed that the poets didn't read at the party (the party was held at Cue Gallery in Chelsea and it's true that art galleries do make abominable venues for poetry readings--the echo! The echo!); however, you can hear readings and interview here.

Reverdy is woefully undertranslated, with only "some poems" in English, including "some" from his Quelques poèmes, originally published in 1916, translated by Ron Padgett in Some Translations, Some Bombs in 1963 (a translation followed quickly by Some Things in 1964 by Padgett, Ted Berrigan, and Joe Brainard--the French influence upon the New York School is a perennial interest to me).

Also saw Lydia Cort és and Andres Clerici at the FACE OUT book party, where we discussed Borges, Marquez, and the declining interest of magical realism. Lydia is reading Monday--today!!!--at the Poetry Project, with Mendi + Keith Obadike, so be sure to go. Andres has promised to email me materials on writers like Xul Solar, a teacher to Borges, so stay tuned.

Espèce de bayadère de carnaval!

2007-12-05T04:10:00.000-08:00

My dear friend Olivier in Paris sent me for my birthday a compilation of Captain Haddock's "jurons," or insults, with accompanying explicatory texts. For those of you unfamiliar with Captain Haddock, he is the salty foul-mouthed foul-tempered alcoholic sea captain who accompanies junior reporter Tintin on various adventures. My father faithfully read this serial when he was a child and made sure to acquaint me with this essential part of French culture in turn (I can't imagine having to wait for each installment like he did--some parts were so unbearably thrilling). Such a pairing would never happen nowadays--Captain Haddock would be a most unsuitable companion for a young lad today (despite all the money he inherited from his ancestor, Francois de Hadoque).

Anyway, so this morning first thing upon waking I'm flipping through the list of Haddock's infamous insults (one example, roughly translated: "Brutes! Filibusters! Mussels with fries! Autodidacts!) when I stumble upon a word I was trying to research for an essay on John Ashbery's And the Stars Were Shining, recently published in Conjunctions as part of their homage to M. Ashbery (or Jonas Berry, the pseudonym he used to translate French murder mysteries because it was how the French pronounced his name). That word was bayadère.

Here's the original excerpt from my essay:

…the razor, lying at an angle
to the erect toothbrush, like an alligator stalking
a bayadère; the singular effect of all things
being themselves, that is, stark mad

(from “Ghost Riders of the Moon”)

Who hasn’t found their razor lying at an angle to their toothbrush (and beware,
teeth!), but what is a bayadère and why is it/she/he being stalked by an
alligator? Bayadère is missing from my more contemporary French-English
dictionaries, but according to an older one, it is defined as an “Indian dancing
girl.” The Internet reveals that La Bayadère was a ballet choreographed by
Marius Petipa that premiered at the Maryinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg in 1877.
(Actually, it’s not clear whether Petipa choreographed or produced the ballet.)
In any case, the music was composed by Ludwig Minkus. However, none of the plot
synopses mention the chasing of a bayadère by an alligator. Even more
problematic, there are no alligators in India (in which the ballet is set), only
crocodiles. But Ashbery nimbly excuses himself from the situation he’s gotten
himself into: After all, things—crocodiles, alligators, bayadères, toothbrushes,
razors—being themselves, are stark mad, and “alligator” sounds nicer paired with
“stalking” anyhow.

Obviously, I was having some trouble tracking down a satisfactory definition of bayadère, and here it is in all its glory in L'Intègrale des jurons du Capitaine Haddock. Not only do I discover that bayadères ordained Hindu temples and sang in processions, but that it was one of the very rare Haddockian insults addressed to a woman (the others can be counted on the fingers of one hand: péronnelle, perruche bavarde, tigresse, diablesse).

I don't know why I didn't start my research with Tintin in the first place. Lesson learned!

italicization as translation

2007-12-03T13:17:00.000-08:00

I just began reading Jennifer Moxley's The Middle Room, and while I am thus far struck by many things, the one particularly pertinent to this blog is her use of italics. The italics are many, liberally scattered through the text, and more often than not perch on the edge of awkwardness, giving English words a foreign feel, an emphasis that's a little off in our idiom. While I know comparing prose to soup is problematic (but why, I don't know--I just sense it is so), it's easiest for me to say that the italics "flavor" The Middle Room. They give it the taste of someone and something a little foreign, slightly out of phase with English or American, which is all the more delicious juxtaposed with the book's primary locale of San Diego. I've never been to San Diego, but have had it described to me as more South Californian than South California, by which I envision highways, malls, ranch houses, uber-American-ness, since as goes CA, so goes the nation. Like me, Moxley's revelatory poet is Rimbaud and French writing acts as the door into a different kind of writing, perhaps. I'm continually interested in tracing the currents of innovative poetry back to non-English roots. As I read the book further, I may return to her use of these italics, which seem somehow important to the book, some sort of tiny translations of her own language.

An immediate, instantaneous grab bag

2007-11-28T09:03:00.000-08:00

A friend has often commented to me that she finds the New Yorker conservative and rightwing (this may sound redundant, but I think a case can be made that there are differences between the two). I listened slightly disbelievingly, seeing sort of what she meant in some articles, but hey, Seymour Hersch! Anyway, a belated reading of "The Interpreter," an article on the Pirahã language, spoken by the tribe of the same name in northwestern Brazil, confirmed my friend's opinion.

Actually, saying it was an article on the Pirahã language is erroneous, since the article focuses primarily on American linguistics professor Dan Everett and his efforts to research the language, along the way, possibly disproving Chomsky's theory of a "universal grammar" (the latter which, OK, is interesting). The tribal members themselves and their language remain opaque and "othered" to an extreme extent.

In the very first paragraph, writer John Colapinto establishes that "It is a language so confounding to non-natives that until Everett and his wife, Keren, arrived among the Pirahã, as Christian missionaries, in the nineteen-seventies, no outsider had succeeded in mastering it." With that, he seems to abandon all effort to depict the Pirahã and their language outside of the suffocating prism of Everett, whose entire CV apparently has been encapsulated in the article (we know exactly when he graduated from school and in what, when he got married, how long the hikes he endured through the rainforest were, on and on, ugh). The piece is full of cringe-inducing moments, from the various arrivals of scholar-characters who believe "they knew how to establish an instant rapport with indigenous peoples," by making popping sounds (and eventually presenting contracts to sign that give away all rights to land and oil no doubt) to the last-minute entrance of Everett's ex-wife (that she's an ex is tactfully buried several pages into the article--why? To induce "suspense"?). She's still faithfully plugging away at converting the Pirahã to Christianity (but yet she's the only other character who seems to have insight into their language. By the end, one's desperately thirsty for any opinion other than Everett's, yet she's a total sidenote. And shouldn't, at this point, missionary work among remote holdouts be outlawed, please? Isn't there enough work to be done among the heathens of NYC's East Village?).

I wanted more on this intriguingly present language, more quotes, more "translations" (Heck, I'd even take Everett's). There's only a handful of samples provided in phonetic transcription, or even English "translation." And there's certainly no direct interaction with tribal members, or even much indirect, other than some "evolutionary biologist" (gawd help us) who makes them sit at a computer and watch a monkey head float up and down, a task that's described as something even "undergraduates and monkeys" could do (I pity the eb's students). I truly appreciated the one Pirahã who fell asleep mid-experiment. Anyway, if you want to know what drugs Everett took when he was a teenager, read this article. But if you want an insightful and in-depth and non-patronizing look at the Pirahã and their language, go elsewhere (but don't go visit--it sounds like the Pirahã already have more visitors than they ever need...)

Jean Frémon

2007-11-21T08:23:00.000-08:00

A nice review in the new issue of Eileen Tabios's Galatea Resurrects of Jean Frémon's Gloire des formes précédé de Le double corps des images (P.O.L., 2005) by Barry Schwabsky (note to self: Barry Schwabsky reads French; another note: I'm not sure the title is correct; it appears as simply Gloire des formes at P.O.L.). What I also liked: that a review of a non-translated book appears so nonchalantly amid reviews of English-language books, even though the accents (on say, Frémon) come and go.

Perhaps I imagine too much, but this review also seems to enclose themes of translations within translations: Fremon's double-identity as art director (perhaps that would be a triple-identity?) and writer (or another triple as poet and novelist), translating between the two worlds (I was going to say mediums, but the art and literary worlds are truly that). From this selection of Frémon's writings on art, Schwabsky draws only one quote (both in the original French, but also translated into English), but what a quote! It could also be applied to translation:

“On appelle témoin le morceau de bois que les coureurs de relais se passent de main en main. L’histoire de la peinture est peut-être une course relais dans laquelle le témoin est un secret.”

"Témoin is the name of that piece of wood that the runners in a relay race pass from hand to hand. The history of painting is perhaps a relay race in which the témoin is a secret.”

Substitute "translation" for "painting" and see what happens.

Happy thanksgiving!

Marcella

Up Again

2007-11-14T08:29:00.001-08:00

I've decided to restart my blog on translation, originally established as part of the "Translate This!" workshop at the Poetry Project at St. Mark's last fall. Alas, my decision was not influenced by popular demand (ha, ha!), but by that I think it's an interesting (at least to me) topic. I'd love it if my fellow translation travellers, particularly the people in the workshop, chimed in once in a while if they've continued any forays into other languages.

My latest translation news is publishing the first page of "The Earth's Horizons" in The Nation. I've been working on translating this text for at least five years. Les horizons du sol is by Michèle Métail, one of the few (if not the only) female members of Oulipo and was published by the cipM, a fantastic poetry center in France that is actually in danger of losing its space due to bureaucratic machinations. The text is a "history" (a term used extremely loosely) of the geological formation of Marseille, which is where the cipM is based, and written 48 characters to a line, 24 lines to a page, with accompanying illustrations.

To translate this text, I've had to discover equivalent geological terms in English, particularly in that many of the terms she uses are specific to the geology of Marseille. I've often thought I should probably have a geologist review my translation to make sure I've gotten all the terms right! My most reliable source has been an old French-English dictionary for chemists--it actually has contained definitions for many of the scientific terms that Métail uses. I then doublecheck the definitions in an English-only dictionary of geological terms. I've found the Larousse to be extremely stilted, and have found the Harrap's online much more useful.

The other challenge has been to preserve the form, and thereby the length of the original. English is a much more concise and compressed language than French, so I've often had to pad out my translation in order to achieve the 48/24 form. Also, Métail did not use any punctuation--the text is basically one long sentence with continuous geological "action," one thing (such as a mountain eroding into a valley) leading to another so I've had to try to fold in many, many "thats" linking sequences together without making the repetition too obvious.

The first page, the one published in The Nation, is the first completed page (with many more to go). I was only able to complete that page, plus page 2 and half of page 3, thanks to a mini-residency at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Swing Space program, which had no Internet access, so I was literally forced to translate. My dad, Michel Durand, and Olivier Brossard have been my primary native speaker help on the project, letting me know when I've made grievous errors...

Nypoesi.net

2007-02-15T15:06:00.000-08:00

Nypoesi, an online poetry journal out of Norway, has just posted part 1 of two issues on translation at Nypoesi.net. According to their "leder," which apparently means "editorial," (take me to your "leder"?) they are interested in translation that is a way of writing--I like, I liiiiike! (to quote Danny Kaye in The Inspector General). Ooooh, and they've even got extensive comments by the translators (who include folks like Rodrigo Toscano, Vincent Broqua and Kristofer Flensmarck), giving us all sorts of inside information on how the translations were accomplished (although I must admit in being disappointed in one contributor's explanation of how he used Babelfish--like nobody's ever done that before!). Next issue is forthcoming in March.

See you all at John's in a few weeks!

--Marcella

call for translations

2007-01-31T11:46:00.000-08:00

Ren Powell in Norway asked me to post this on the blog:

The International Cities of Refuge Network has launched its new quarterly webzine at Icorn.
ICORN's work focuses on the importance of freedom of expression and our website has two functions
1) to encourage the establishment of new cities of refuge
2) to promote free speech through education and literary dialogue across cultures

Our first webzine issue features the work of award-winning novelist Chenjerai Hove, and the renowned philosopher Etienné Balibar.

We are inviting writers to submit essays on the subjects of
1) nationalism, identity, "the exile experience", patriotism and/or citizenship
2) cross-cultural literatures, translation, critical analysis of fiction and poetry with an eye on history or current events

We are also accepting submissions for our Babel Voices section: poetry, short stories or short creative non-fiction related to the focus of our zine. We are especially interested in work we can publish in two languages.

Please note that we have an international focus.

We are a not-for-profit organization and regret that we do not have funds to pay our contributors at this time. We hope that you will consider the electronic rights to your work as a donation for an important cause.

Please see our masthead for our submission guidelines. www.icorn.org/sections.php?var=12
If you would like more information about ICORN, our history, our Advisory Board etc. Please don't hesitate to contact Ren Powell, Co-editor: ren@icorn.org
Ren PowellICORN Editor and Information CoordinatorSølvberget KF, PB 310, 4002 Stavanger, Norwaytel. (47) 51 50 79 17 / mob. (47) 45 27 57 62ren@icorn.org / www.icorn.org

Noitalsnart is here!

2007-01-15T08:41:00.000-08:00

Announcing the publication of:

Noitalsnart, a handsome and handmade production featuring translations of Jorges Luis Borges, Anna Akhmatova, George Seferis, Paul Celan, and Con Ed street markings, along with poems, notes, poet-to-poet translations, reading responses, "english as a second third fourth or...more language" works, ammonia, and phonetic diagrams by Phyllis Wat, Nina Karacosta, Lydia Cortes, Andres Clerici, Tony Hoffman, Stephanie Gray, Susana Maio, and Marcella Durand. (Special appearance by John Wayne.)

To get your copy, come to the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church (2nd Ave. and 10th St.) on February 2nd at 9:30 pm, where participants in the Translate This! workshop will read.

30 copies

2007-01-10T15:27:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone,

Don't forget to bring 30 copies of your poem or poems tomorrow night for Noitalsnart. And if anyone has a heavy-duty stapler, please bring it in too, as apparently the poproj office is lacking in one.

Andres asked for some names of journals that publish translations and bilingual poetries, so I thought I'd post my response here. While this is certainly not an encyclopedic list (and let's see if I can get blogger $#@! links to work), it may be a helpful starting point.

Circumference is a newish journal devoted to work in translation that I like. They print both the original language and the translation. Two Lines is another journal I've seen around. If you're interesting in publishing a book, Archipelago is a new book publisher devoted to works in translation. XCP used to publish works from languages other than English, but I'm not sure if they're still around. Mandorla is devoted to Spanish-language poetries, but I'm not sure if it's restricted to the Americas or not.

OK, Lydia sent another Borges translation, which I'm posting in both languages, intertwined, as she sent it to me:

El puñal

The Dagger

En un cajón hay un puñal.

In a drawer there is a dagger.

Fue forjado en Toledo, a fines del siglo pasado; Luis Melián Lafinur se lo dio a mi

It was forged in Toledo, toward the end of the last century; Luis Melián Lafinur told

padre, que lo trajo del Uruguay; Evaristo Carriego lo tuvo alguna vez en la mano.

my father, who brought if from Uruguay; Evaristo Carriego once held it in his hand.

Quienes lo ven tienen que jugar un rato con él; se advierte que hace mucho que lo

Those who see it must play for a while with it; be warned that for a long time it was

buscaban; la mano se apresura a apretar la empuñadura que la espera;

sought; the hand hurries to grasp the handle that awaits it;

la hoja obediente y poderosa juega con precisión en la vaina.

the obedient and powerful leaf plays in its pod with precision.

Otra cosa quiere el puñal.

The dagger wants something else.

Es más que una estructura hecha de metales; los hombres lo pensaron y lo formaron

It is more than a structure made of metals; men thought it up and fashioned it

para un fin muy preciso; es, de algún modo eterno, el puñal que anoche mató un

for a very precise end; it is, in a certain way eternal, the dagger that last night killed

hombre en Tacuarembó y los puñales que mataron a César. Quiere matar, quiere

a man in Tacuarembo and the daggers that killed Caesar. It wants to kill, wants

derramar brusca sangre.

to spill sudden blood.

En un cajón del escritorio, entre borradores y cartas, interminablemente sueña el

In a desk drawer, amongst erasers and letters, the dagger interminably dreams

puñal con su sencillo sueño de tigre, y la mano se anima cuando lo rige porque el

its simple tiger dream, and the hand cheers up when it grips it because the

metal se anima, el metal que presiente en cada contacto al homicida para quien lo

metal cheers up, the metal that presides in each contact with the murderer for whom

crearon los hombres.

men created it.

A veces me da lástima. Tanta dureza, tanta fe, tan apacible o inocente soberbia, y

Sometimes I feel pity. Such harshness, so much faith, such gentle or innocent arrogance, and

los años pasan, inútiles.

the years pass, useless.

--Lydia Cortes

Fastest Borges Ever

2007-01-06T09:27:00.000-08:00

So this translation of Jorge Luis Borges's "Shinto" clocked in at six minutes, from 8:56 pm to 9:03 pm on January 4, 2007.

Shinto

When unhappiness hits us,
in a second we are saved
by the infamous adventures
of attention or memory:
the flavor of fruit,
the flavor of water,
that face that the dream returns to us,
the first jasmine of November,
the infinite yearning of the compass,
a book we believed lost,
the pulse of the hexameter,
the tiny key that opens a house,
the odor of a library or sandlewood,
the ancient name of a street,
the color of a map,
unexpected etymology,
the tip of a fingernail on a filing board,
the date we were looking for,
count the twelve dark bells,
abrupt physical pain.

Eight million are the divinities of Shinto
that travel to earth, secretly.
These modest entities touch us
and then leave us.

--Translated by Andres Clerici, Phyllis Wat, Nina Karacosta, Tony Hoffman, Stephanie Gray, and Marcella Durand.

Remember the Heads that Filled You

2007-01-05T11:26:00.000-08:00

Remember the Heads that Filled You
(Akhmatova Joins Seferis)

I wake up with a marble head that loves three things
but I'm tired and don't know where to put this head
so I sing a song and drown out the peacocks
stick my elbows on his maps of America
fall into dream, like him. Fall out of dream, like me.
Marble head falls into the dream. Love/hate relations.
Tears well from the babies' eyes. Eyes open? Or closed?
His mouth loads up on rasberry jam. Speech gels.
Air equals hysteria. Cheeks jump out of skin.
My hands separate from their wrists, flap, flap.
This takes care of my good-byes. Leaves him.

--Phyllis Wat

American Cheek

2006-12-27T13:30:00.000-08:00

He mapped three things inside the skin:
Severed evensong, old peacock eyes
bathed in raspberries, marble lives
joined by tears. She dreamed
the falling tea, a hysterical mouth,
the strength of women’s hands
and I, half-opened, approached me.

--Tony Hoffman

fuseferakhmat 1

2006-12-19T08:57:00.000-08:00

I loved three shining things
The marble head in my hands white
Peacocks and white women silent
I look in their eyes neither open nor
Closed coming out of the dream
I hear hysterical women and
Children crying I don’t have
Anymore strength.

--Lydia Cortes

Snovum Godum!

2006-12-15T08:01:00.000-08:00

I wanted to remind everyone that we don't have class next week or the week following. Our next (and last) two classes will be January 4th and January 11th.

On January 4th, we'll look at Borges and Rosa, so bring any Spanish or Portuguese dictionaries you happen to find at the library or on your bookshelves.

And on January 11th, we're going to assemble a chapbook of our translations! It's tentatively titled "Noitalsnart," and if you figure out why, you win one of the undersugared gingerbread men cookies I brought in last night.

You should bring 30 copies of whatever poem or translation you would like to include in the chapbook. Bring however many pages/poems you like, as long as you've got 30 copies of each page. I'll be designing the cover, which will incorporate a letter from the alphabet of each language we've dabbled in this fall. And Lydia already designed the frontispiece, with her fabulous phonetic translations of the Russian we did last night.

Now you're probably wondering why you should bring in 30 copies when there's only 10 people in the class. That's because the Workshop Reading is on Friday, February 2nd, at 9:30 pm (in the Parish Hall) and we want to have the chapbook there, plus give a few copies to the Poetry Project staff.

Tony, Phyllis, Lydia and I are going to be posting our Seferis/Akhmatova fusion poems here sometime soon, so keep checking in. Also, you'll see below that Nina posted our Seferis translation, along with the original translation.

We learned a new form last night, courtesy of Tony, which you may want to try your hand at during the next two weeks.

SEVENLINGS

A seven-line form that Akhmatova inspired with her poem "He loved..."
The first three lines introduces three concepts.
The next three lines introduce three different concepts.
The last line is the "kicker."

Lydia just sent this link:

Comparison of our two translations

2006-12-12T21:24:00.002-08:00

OUR TRANSLATION
C
Remember the baths that killed you

I woke up with this marble head in my hands
that exhausts my elbows and I don't know where to
put it.

It was falling into the dream as I was coming out of the dream
that's how our lives united and it will be hard to
separate again.

I look at the eyes; neither open nor closed
I speak to the mouth that is constantly attempting to speak
I hold the cheeks that project from the skin.
I don't have any more strength;

my hands disappear and return
severed.

TRANSLATED BY EDMUND KEELEY AND PHILIP SHERRARD
3.
Remember the baths where you were murdered

I woke up with this marble head in my hands;
it exhausts my elbows and I don't know where to
put it down.

It was falling into the dream as I was coming out of the dream
so our life became one and it will be very difficult
for it to separate again.

I look at the eyes : neither open nor closed
I speak to the mouth which keep trying to speak
I hold the cheeks which have broken through the skin.
That’s all I’m able to do.

My hands disappear and come towards me
mutilated.

the holidays

2006-12-11T07:08:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone,
Our schedule is a little wonky because of the holidays, so I wanted to post when our next few meetings are (and aren't) going to be.

OK, we agreed that we're not meeting 12/21 or 12/28, so after our class this Thursday (the 14th), our next class will be January 4th. Since I missed a class in October, this means our last class will be pushed two more weeks, with the workshop ending January 18th. I'm not sure the Poetry Project will be able to accommodate us (since the class is supposed to end Jan. 4th), but we'll work out something if not.

This Thursday, we're going to work on Russian translations brought in by Tony, and also look at some non-linguistic (or at least nonhuman) translations of flowers by Paula Claire. Then after our long holiday, we'll be looking at Borges brought in by Andres (if you weren't in class last week to get the handout, let me know and I'll bring in extra copies this Thursday).

See you all soon!
Marcella

Bad French!

2006-12-04T08:43:00.000-08:00

Hi all,

That was another fun class on Thursday. Just to catch up Phyllis, Gail and Susana, we looked at an essay by U Sam Oeur's translator about what it was like to translate Oeur's Cambodian into English ("French bad" became "the French colonialists" or something like that) and tried to rewrite a few of the lines ourselves. Then Rachel Levitsky visited for the second half of the class and talked about translating Zhang Er's poetry. Since Rachel doesn't speak Chinese, Zhang first did the rough, literal translation and then Rachel translated it into the finished poetry, which naturally led to questions about what poetry is or what makes poetry. Shanxing read some of the original in Chinese so we could compare sounds, and then we also talked about how "god" is translated between the two languages, which was absolutely fascinating.

Anyway, for next week, we decided that we really need to finish that Seferis poem, so we're going to focus on that. Rachel may visit again, as we left the "god" question somewhat hanging and didn't get to Zhang's prose poems. Andres is also going to bring in Borges (I think?), so we can also begin those if we have time.

OK, see you all in a few days!
Marcella

festival of contemporary japanese women poets

2006-11-16T12:40:00.000-08:00

Despite my protests to the contrary, I ended up going to the Festival of Contemporary Japanese Women Poets last night. I'm very glad I did. The poets from Japan--Ryoko Sekiguchi, Takako Arai, Kiriu Minashita, and Kyong-Mi Park, along with organizers Sawako Nakayasu (who did an incredible job of simultaneous interpretation) and Rachel Levitsky--brought up some intense issues about gender, language, Japanese linguistic history and culture and, of course, translation. Anyway, there's an excellent report on the event at the American Literary Translators Association blog if you're interested in reading more. I'd recommend going to the panel discussion tomorrow (Friday) at 7pm at Poets House. Master translators Rosa Alcala and Cole Swensen will also be part of the event.

lydia's poem using words from other than english languages

2006-11-13T15:28:00.000-08:00

panache croissant brioche café au lait latte bustelo medaglia d’oro bodega empanada croquette pirogies a la hurricane rouge attaché hammock canoe crochet blasé florida california baja california nevada montana arizona las vegas a priori agenda agendum ad hoc alumna alumnae alumnus alumni et cetera aficionado ad nauseum ad-lib ad libitum au naturel euphemism chic cachet angst apiary aviary au contraire ambiance bloc brochure coterie burlesque cache (v. & n.) candid (l. to glow) catsup (ch. ke-t siap - fish pickled brine) celebrant chauvinism patron clique vulgar consensus sang froid roman a clef consul habeas corpus tornado cycle dais podium honorarium data datum debut cotillion etiquette decorum detente diagnosis prognosis dialogue dialect monologue thesis thesaurus dilemma holocaust (gr. to burn) disaster (gr. and l. from the stars) drama tragedy trauma dominate donate ego sympathy empathy pathos focus nexus flotsam jetsam vacillate blatant indict indite ingénue insigne intrigue humor hypocrite portmanteau hypothecate hypothetical inculcate indoctrinate succubus incubus materiel matinee matricide patricide maven colorado amarillo memorandum metaphor mortgage mortgagee nausea nee nom de plume pseudonym translucid lucid sanguine parameter apocalyptic chaos precedent precedent precipitous precipitate premiere resume review revue strata stratum triage whiskey xerox x-ray zero homophobic pandemic homosapien conundrum

upcoming

2006-11-13T09:36:00.000-08:00

Remember that our workshop will be in the Parish Hall this Thursday (Nov. 16th). We'll have Eugene Ostashevsky visiting to talk about how he translated the OBERIU poets for his new anthology of Russian Absurdism. I just e-mailed the jpegs for the missing pages from selections of the OBERIU poets, so let me know if you had any trouble receiving them. I added one more poem that Eugene requested we look at: "Rug/Hydrangea" by Alexander Vvedensky. Tony will also be bringing in some Russian translations (or Russian to translate) for us.

But that's all after we finish Seferis!! (Thank you, Nina.)

I wanted to let you know about a couple of translation events this weekend. First is the Festival of Contemporary Japanese Women Poets from Nov. 15 to 17. Participants are Ryoko Sekiguchi, Takako Arai, Kiriu Minashita, Kyong-Mi Park, and Sawako Nakayasu, along with Cole Swensen and Rosa Alcalá (who are both incredible translators--Cole of French poets and Rosa of Cecilia Vicuna). For the schedule and more information, visit or .

And then, there's the New York Literary Translation Festival, which runs from November 16 (but you can't miss class for it!) to November 18. This appears to be primarily focused on Romanian poetry. For more information and the full schedule, go to . One intriguingly titled event is on Saturday from 1:00–2:45 on "How to translate, how to get translations published, and how to get paid for what you do – an open discussion and symposium" with Edward Foster as moderator and the following talks:
• John High, poet and noted translator, “Multiple Ways in which the Translation of Literary Works Can Be Accomplished”
• Murat Nemet-Nejat, theorist and distinguished translator, “Translating the Ambience of a Culture within a Literary Work”
• Andrey Gritsman, poet, essayist, editor of Interpoezia, “Stranger at Home”
• Adam Sorkin, Distinguished Professor of English, Penn State University, “Translating Romanian Poetry”

OK, our translation cups overfloweth. See you Thursday.
Marcella

upcoming

2006-11-06T07:21:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone,

That was a really interesting talk by Nathalie Stephens on Thursday. She spoke a lot about the "failure" of translation, and how it impacts the body/gender. She left a lot of space, I felt, for productive interpretation/discussion.

After Nathalie's reading, Lydia brought up the issue of non-fluent poets translating, which I'd definitely like to discuss more, so I asked Rachel Levitsky, who has worked on poems by Zhang Er, to visit on November 30th, to visit and talk about how/why she translates from a language she doesn't speak.

Now, this week we're scheduled to translate GREEK! So if you can get your hands on some Greek dictionaries (modern, right Nina?), please do, as that would be very helpful. Remember also to bring in your english-to-english translations of your fellow poets' poems (and the Mallarme/Baudelaire translations of Poe, too, if you remember).

OK, see you Thursday!
Marcella

poets house

2006-11-01T08:23:00.000-08:00

Hi Stephanie (and everyone),

Yes, I am back and we are going to the Poets House event this Thursday with Quebecois poet and translator Nathalie Stephens. (http://www.poetshouse.org/progcoming.htm#november) this Thursday. We'll just meet there at 7 pm. It's located at 72 Spring St., between Lafayette and Broadway (or Crosby, to be precise), and practically next to the Spring Street stop of the 6 train. Bring probing questions about translation!

I'm still negotiating some sort of a group rate, but they say they can do "something," so when you get there, say you're part of my translation workshop and hopefully we'll get a bit of a discount. They're very excited we're coming.

In the meantime, I found a fun resource to use in your translation exercises. Check it out:

http://forum.wordreference.com/index.php

Also, PEN is a great resource for seeing what's going on with international writers (especially political issues) and they seem to have some translation-related events coming up.

http://www.pen.org/

OK, looking forward to seeing you all Thursday at Poets House!

Marcella

Nov 2 event? anyone else?

2006-10-29T12:17:00.000-08:00

i'm interested.... in nathalie stephen's talk at poet's house... marcella's earlier post said about 2 were interested & she was looking into group rate... anyone else? -- stephanie gray.. i hope i posted right. if i deleted a post by accident, marcella or someone could you reinstate it?

last-minute news flash

2006-10-22T10:03:00.000-07:00

Eugene Ostashevsky has said that he can indeed visit our class on November 16th, so that will be "Russian Day." I'll be handing out some reading excerpts from Ostashevsky's new collection of translations of OBERIU poets, http://nupress.northwestern.edu/title.cfm?ISBN=0-8101-2293-6 the week prior, but Tony will also bring in his own Russian selections that day. Again, if you can find a Russian-English dictionary somewhere, please do bring it in that day.

OK, now I'm really leaving!
Marcella

various

2006-10-22T09:30:00.000-07:00

Hello all,

That was a great class Thursday. I look forward to doing translations of: Greek, Russian, Spanish (especially the Borges), Schwitters and other sound poets, mathematical equations, and more to come!

Remember there is no class this week, and then the week after we'll be attending this: http://www.poetshouse.org/progcoming.htm#november. It costs $7, but I'll call when I get back to see if we can get a better group rate. Also, if you change your minds as a group and would rather workshop instead, let me know--I'm flexible.

The assignment for Nov. 9th is to write a poem using only words of non-English derivation. Remember, julep is derived from Persian, gul, a rose and ab, water. The verdict on the is that it is derived from that which is of Teutonic origin. Whew! For those of you who swapped poems for translation, you're translating English to English, but otherwise, do whatever you want! Nina will also be bringing in Greek poetry to translate, so if you can pick up a Greek dictionary from a library or something, that would be very helpful.

The Waldrop and Cole essays, along with a slew of other pieces on translation, including my own on translating Symbolist French poetry, is available at http://www.durationpress.com/poetics/translation.htm.

I'm still searching for the Cecilia Vicuna links, but haven't quite hit on them yet (I'm certainly being taken some interesting places though! I never knew there was an Orange County Leather Association). Will post when I complete the quest.

OK, I'm off to Madison now! Have a wonderful week and see you in two.

Marcella

more translation-related events!

2006-10-19T09:47:00.000-07:00

Moving Archipelago: A Century Of Writing Filipino America at the historic Woolworth Building Date: Friday and Saturday, November 10-11, 2006 .

Location: Reception and conference at New York University, SCPS Conference Center, 2nd Floor, Woolworth Building, 15 Barclay Street, New York, NY 10038.

Readings and discussion by Luis H. Francia, Sabina Murray, Eugene Gloria, Bino A. Realuyo, Eileen Tabios, Brian Ascalon Roley, Nerissa S. Balce, Nick Carbo, Luisa A. Igloria, Lara Stapleton, Sarah Gambito, Rick Barot and others!

Join A/P/A Institute at New York University in collaboration with Kundiman and the Centennial Planning Committee, on Friday night for an evening of readings and celebration of 100 years of Filipino immigration to the U.S.

Kick-off Reception Friday, Nov. 10th, 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM

Panel Discussions Saturday, Nov. 11th, 10:00 AM - 5:00 PM, reception follows with readings (for the complete list of panels, visit the link below).

The kick-off reception on Friday and series of panels on Saturday will feature readings from some of the major Filipino writers across the U.S. and from New York City to exchange stories, discuss ideas, and explore the varied meanings of literary texts. Just as importantly, the distinguished gathering will celebrate what has preceded us and the rich but ambivalent promise of what lies ahead.

RSVP by Tuesday, November 7 for the reception and conference separately to apa.rsvp@nyu.edu or by phone 212-992-9653. For more information, visit www.apa.nyu.edu

2006-10-17T07:36:00.000-07:00

From Nina Karacosta: I have a reading this Saturday. Here's the info:
The Greek-American Writers’ Association presents readings & book signings by Nina Karacosta, Douglas Light & Robert Zaller
Saturday, October 21st, 2006 @ 6 PM
The Cornelia Street Café
29 Cornelia Street
(Between West 4th and Bleecker Streets)
(212) 989-9319

A $6.00 entry fee includes one complimentary drink.

it works!

2006-10-16T13:29:00.000-07:00

funziona...funciona...foncionne... lc

welcome

2006-10-16T12:59:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone,

I've started a blog so we can post announcements, responses, questions, experiments, random thoughts and insights, etc.

Cecilia Vicuna is reading and talking about translation this Tuesday (the 17th) at 6:30 pm at CUNY, located at 365 Fifth Ave, which I believe is the on the corner of 34th Street. So far, Lydia and I are planning to meet in the lobby at 6:25 p.m.

Lydia is presenting Sharon Mesmer and Sheila Maldonado next Friday, October 20 at 6:30 pm at the Center for Book Arts. This would be a great chance to see Lydia (and Sharon and Sheila of course!) and peruse the "Found in Translation" show (http://www.centerforbookarts.org/newsite/exhibits/), which features "multi-lingual artists books, prints, and digital and video documentation of innovative projects." The CBA is located at 28 West 27th Street, 3rd Floor.

I want to remind you that there's no class Oct. 26th, and that we'll be meeting in the Parish Hall November 16th and December 21st.

There's a translation event on Nov. 2nd that could be a field trip. "Ruination: Loss in desire. Une poetique." and is a talk by Nathalie Stephens, a Canadian poet who is described as writing "at the border between languages." It takes place at Poets House downtown at 7 pm (www.poetshouse.org). So far, we've got two votes "yes" for going. Any other takers?

I also see that there's a Festival of Contemporary Japanese Women Poets Nov. 15-17 that looks very interesting--participants include Rosa Alcala, who's a wonderful Spanish translator (not sure why she's involved with Japanese...), Ryoko Sekiguchi, who translates herself from Japanese into French into English, and Sawako Nakayasu. That could also be a potential field trip if we decide against the Nathalie Stephens. On the 17th in particular (I won't be able to go to this one, alas) is a "Conversation on the Art of Translation" with Alcala, Sekiguchi, and Cole Swensen.

OK, the assignment for next week, Oct. 19th is to do translations of the scribbles on the sidewalk that Con Ed makes (I think this is going to be sociologically very valuable! If you want to take photos, too, we could try posting them to this blog), cleaning up our Celan translation into *your* Celan translation, and bringing in your own one-page poem for retranslation by a fellow workshopper.

See you soon!
Marcella