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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/bo...l?8bu&emc=bua2 --- Constantine Cavafy ---
COLLECTED POEMS
By C. P. Cavafy
Translated by Daniel Mendelsohn
547 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $35
THE UNFINISHED POEMS
By C. P. Cavafy
Translated by Daniel Mendelsohn
121 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $30
A review... "A Poet's Progress" by James Langenbach, April 17, 2009
BIRDWATCHERS OF AMERICA -- I suffer now continually from vertigo, and today, 23rd of January, 1862, I received a singular warning: I felt the wind of the wing of madness pass over me.
BAUDELAIRE, Journals
It’s all very well to dream of a dove that saves,
Picasso’s or the Pope’s,
The one that annually coos in Our Lady’s ear
Half the world’s hopes,
And the other one that shall cunningly engineer
The retirement of all businessmen to their graves,
And when this is brought about
Make us the loving brothers of every lout—
But in our part of the country a false dusk
Lingers for hours; it steams
From the soaked hay, wades in the cloudy woods,
Engendering other dreams.
Formless and soft beyond the fence it broods
Or rises as a faint and rotten musk
Out of a broken stalk.
There are some things of which we seldom talk; ... {excerpt}
Look at that rhyme scheme on the above one, it's almost effortless, but the skeleton is so dominant - how does he do it!
NABOKOV'S BLUES
The wallful of quoted passages from his work,
with the requisite specimens pinned next
to their literary cameo appearances, was too good
a temptation to resist, and if the curator couldn’t,
why should we? The prose dipped and shimmered
and the “flies,” as I heard a buff call them, stood
at lurid attention on their pins. If you love to read
and look, you could be happy a month in that small
room. One of the Nabokov photos I’d never seen:
he’s writing (left-handed! why did I never trouble
to find out?) at his stand-up desk in the hotel
apartment in Montreux. The picture’s mostly
of his back and the small wedge of face that shows
brims with indifference to anything not on the page.
The window’s shut. A tiny lamp trails a veil of light
over the page, too far away for us to read.
We also liked the chest of specimen drawers
labeled, as if for apprentice Freudians,
“Genitalia,” wherein languished in phials
the thousands he examined for his monograph
on the Lycaenidae, the silver-studded Blues.
And there in the center of the room a carillon
of Blues rang mutely out. There must have been
three hundred of them. Amanda’s Blue was there,
and the Chalk Hill Blue, the Karner Blue
(Lycaeides melissa samuelis Nabokov),
a Violet-Tinged Copper, the Mourning Cloak,
an Echo Azure, the White-Lined Green Hairstreak,
the Cretan Argus (known only from Mt. Ida:
in the series Nabokov did on this beauty
he noted for each specimen the altitude at which
it had been taken), and as the ads and lovers say,
“and much, much more.” The stilled belle of the tower
was a Lycaeides melissa melissa. No doubt
it’s an accident Melissa rhymes, sort of, with Lolita,
The scant hour we could lavish on the Blues
flew by, and we improvised a path through cars
and slush and boot-high berms of mud-blurred snow
to wherever we went next. ..... {excerpt}
Review of her new book, "Darwin: A Life in Poems" --- http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/18/books/18pade.html?em --- Darwin’s Descendant, on Origin of Poetry
By CHARLES McGRATH
Published: April 17, 2009
"The British poet Ruth Padel, a favorite to be named the Oxford Professor of Poetry this spring, is Charles Darwin’s great-great-granddaughter, though for much of her life she has preferred not to dwell on the connection.
“A feature of Darwins is that they’re quite reticent,” she said last week during a visit to New York that included a stop at the American Museum of Natural History."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/ny..._r=1&ref=books --- A Celebrated Princeton
Poet Organizes a Festival of His Peers
By MARY JO PATTERSON
Published: April 17, 2009
"POETRY is not everyone’s daily bread, but even those who would be hard pressed to name three great living poets
understand its power, says Paul Muldoon, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and professor of creative writing at
Princeton University. ..."
from The Colossus and Other Poems
WATERCOLOR OF GRANTCHESTER MEADOWS
There, spring lambs jam the sheepfold. In air
Stilled, silvered as water in a glass
Nothing is big or fat.
The small shrew chitters from its wilderness
Of grassheads and is heard.
Flits nimble-winged in thickets, and of good color.
Cloudrack and owl-hollowed willows slanting over
The bland Granta double their white and green
World under the sheer water
And ride that flux at anchor, upside down.
The punter sinks his pole.
In Byron's pool
Cattails part where the tame cygnets steer.
It is a country on a nursery plate. ... {excerpt}
{from Nigeria, 1932-1967}
ELEGY FOR ALTO
{with Drum Accompaniment}
AND THE HORN may now paw the air howling goodbye. . . .
For the Eagles are now in sight:
Shadows in the horizon--
THE ROBBERS are here in black sudden steps of showers, of
caterpillars--
THE EAGLES have come again,
The eagles rain down on us--
POLITICIANS are back in giant hidden steps of howitzers, of
detonators--
THE EAGLES descend on us,
Bayonets and cannons--
THE ROBBERS descend on us to strip us of our laughter, of our
thunder--
THE EAGLES have chosen their game,
Taken our concubines--
POLITICIANS are here in this iron dance of mortars, of generators--
THE EAGLES are suddenly there,
New stars of iron dawn;
So let the horn paw the air howling goodbye. . . .
O mother mother Earth, unbind me; let this be my last testament;
let this be
The ram's hidden wish to the sword the sword's secret prayer to
the scabbard--
THE ROBBERS are back in black hidden steps of detonators--
FOR BEYOND the blare of sirened afternoons, beyond the
motorcades;
Beyond the voices and days, the echoing highways; beyond the
latescence
Of our dissonant airs; through our curtained eyeballs, through our
shuttered sleep,
Onto our forgotten selves, onto our broken images; beyond the
barricades
Commandments and edicts, beyond the iron tables, beyond the
elephant's
Legendary patience, beyond his inviolable bronze bust; beyond
our crumbling towers--
BEYOND the iron path careering along the same beaten track--
THE GLIMPSE of a dream lies smouldering in a cave, together with
the mortally wounded birds.
Earth, unbind me; ... {excerpt}
{in 1967, Christopher Okigbo was killed as a combatant in a Nigerian civil war}
{Austria, 1926-1973}
INVOCATION OF THE GREAT BEAR
Great Bear, come down, shaggy night,
Cloud-coated beast with the old eyes,
star eyes.
Through the thickets your paws break
star claws.
We guard our herds with a watchful eye,
though caught in your spell, and mistrust
your tired flanks and sharp,
half--bared fangs,
old bear
. . . . . . . . . . . .
Be afraid or don't be afraid!
Just drop your coins in the collection basket and give
the blind man a good word,
let him hold the bear on its leash.
And spice the lambs well.
Perhaps this bear
will break loose, stop threatening
and chase all the cones that have fallen
from the pines, from the great, winged ones
hurled down from Paradise.
{translated from the German by Mark Anderson, excerpt}
{Brazil, 1902-1987}
SEVEN-SIDED POEM
When I was born, one of the crooked
angels who live in shadow, said:
Carlos, go on! Be gauche in life.
The houses watch the men,
men who run after women.
If the afternoon had been blue,
there might have been less desire.
The trolley goes by full of legs:
white legs, black legs, yellow legs.
My God, why all the legs?
My heart asks. But my eyes
Ask nothing at all.
The man behind the mustache
is serious, simple, and strong
He hardly ever speaks.
. . . . . . . .
Universe, vast universe,
if I had been named Eugene
that would not be what I mean
but it would go into verse
faster.
Universe, vast universe,
my heart is vaster.
I oughtn't to tell you,
but this moon
and this brandy
play the devil with one's emotions.
{translated from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Bishop, excerpt}
{Italy, b. 1921}
HOW LONG
How long between the grain and the wind
of those garrets
higher, more spun out than the sky,
how long I have left you
my writings, my withered risks.
With angel and chimera
with ancient instrument,
with the diary and the drama
the nights play by turns with the sun.
I left you up there to save
from the cauterizing light
my uncertain roof
the disoriented gables,
terraces where the crazed hail walks:
you, only shadow in winter,
shadow among the ice-demons.
Moths and noxious butterflies
rats and moles descending to hibernate
taught and refined you,
Sagittarius and Capricorn
slanted cold lances at you
and Aquarius tempered in its silences
in its transparencies
a year dripping with blood, an inexplicable
loss of mine.
{excerpt, not from link posted below}
{translated from the Italian by Ruth Feldman and Brian Swann} ...................
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/presss...bookkey=190728 --- Andrea Zanzotto is widely
considered Italy’s most influential living poet. The first comprehensive collection in thirty years to translate this
master European poet for an English-speaking audience, The Selected Poetry and Prose of Andrea Zanzotto includes the
very best poems from fourteen of his major books of verse and a selection of thirteen essays that helps illuminate
themes in his poetry as well as elucidate key theoretical underpinnings of his thought. Assembled with the
collaboration of Zanzotto himself and featuring a critical introduction, thorough annotations, and a generous
selection of photographs and art, this volume brings an Italian master to vivid life for American readers. ...
WHAT GOES ON
Selected and New Poems, 1995-2009.
By Stephen Dunn.
Norton, $24.95. --- ---
MERCURY DRESSING
Poems.
By J. D. McClatchy.
Knopf, $25. --- ---
ONE SECRET THING
By Sharon Olds.
Knopf, $26.95. --- ---
SESTETS
By Charles Wright.
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $23. --- --- {reviews of these new collections...
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/bo...1&8bu&emc=bua2 }
{Portugal, 1919-2004}
MUSE
Muse teach me the song
Revered and primordial...
.....................
Or changed into the wall
Of the first house
Or become he murmur
Of sea all around
(I remember the floor
Of well-scrubbed planks
Its soapy smell
Keeps coming back)
Muse teach me the song
Of the sea's breath
Heaving with brilliants
Muse teach me the song
Of the white room
And the square window
.................
Because time pierces
Time divides
And time thwarts
Tears me alive
From the walls and floor
Of the first house
Muse teach me the song
Revered and primordial
To fix the brilliance
Of the polished morning
That rested its fingers
Gently on the dunes
And whitewashed the walls
Of those simple rooms
Muse teach me the song
That chokes my throat
{translated from the Portuguese by Ruth Fainlight, excerpt}
{Serbia, 1922-1991}
THE SHADOW MAKER
You walk forever and ever
Over your own individual infinity
From head to heel and back
You're your own source of light
The zenith is in your head
In your heel its setting
Before it dies you let your shadows out
To lengthen to estrange themselves
To work miracles and shame
And bow down only to themselves
{excerpt}
from Poetry, May 2009
WINTER
..........
Winter is out for a lot this year
the hand already is stiff
the crying of children is heard in the house
one will we be one life
I hear my house slip with the world
and scream all that has been screamed
the heart rams its boat into ice
shells rustling in the hull
winter is out for as much.
If I freeze fast in the ice
if you freeze fast my child
my great fear as I come
if you freeze fast my life:
then I am a vulture of wings and ice
tearing my liver, my living life
awake in eternity.
This winter is in for a lot.
{excerpt}
BESIDE A CHRYSANTHEMUM
To bring one chrysanthemum
to flower, the cuckoo has cried
since spring.
To bring one chrysanthemum to bloom,
thunder has rolled
through the black clouds
Flower, like my sister returning
from distant, youthful byways
of throat-tight longing
to stand by the mirror:
{excerpt}
So Chong-ju
The SNAKE
A lovely snake
lies on the footpath
thick with mint and musk.
What sorrow has shaped your form,
so repulsive?
Beautiful as a colored ankle-band
of my boy's.
Your forked tongue that darts, speechbound,
in and out of a red cave
was once glib enough
for your ancester to tempt Eve.
Bite spitefully into the blue sky.
Be gone with your repulsive head.
Breathless as if kerosene would burn my vitals
I chase it, hurling stones as it
as it slithers along the path
thick with musk and flowers,
but not to avenge Eve, Adam's spouse.
I wish to wear around my body
your skin-color lovelier than colored ankle-band.
With your beautiful lips redder than Cleopatra's,
sink into my soul, Snake.
You have lovely lips like a cat's,
like the lips of my daughter Sunhi
turning twenty.
-1936
Yi Hyong-gi
FALLEN PETALS
It's beautiful to see one
sensible enough to go
when it is time to go
Passing through the inferno
of springtime passion
my love is fading now
Petals thickly falling
we must go now
loaded with parting bliss
Toward the deep green shade
toward autumn about to bear fruit
my youth fades like a flower
Let us part
our pale hands waving
when petals start to drift to the ground
My love, farewell,
you're my soul's sad eyes that mature
like water filling up a well
-1963
So Chong-Ju
A SNEEZE
......
I stepped out
into the blue autumn day's
winds that touched the ricepaper door.
I sniffed at the weather,
and sneezed.
Somewhere
is someone
saying my words?
Somewhere
as someone says my words,
Has a flower overheard and passed them along?
The clouds split as I look up--
a shining brassy spot of sun
on the mountain's back.
Traces that stir
the waves of an old love.
Is someone
somewhere
saying my words?
..... {excerpt}
{translated from the Korean by David R. McCann}
Do you have the collection, or just one poem? I'm curious as to how the translation is, as I hear he was one of the most revered of modern Korean poets.Quote:
Originally Posted by quasimodo1
"Traces that stir
the waves of an old love." of Korean poems for me!
I do not have it in Korean unfortunately and I am not sure how it is translated.
It seems to me that the poet is missing someone or something without being depressed but with a tingy of humor.
Thank you for kindling my interests in poetry!
{Italy, b. 1947}
from The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry
( edited by J.D. McClatchy )
TO SIMULATE THE BURNING OF THE HEART
To simulate the burning of the heart, the humiliation
of the viscera, to flee cursed
and cursing, to horde chastity
and to cry for it, to keep my mouth
from the dangerous taste of other mouths
and push it unfulfilled to fulfill itself with the poisons of food,
in the apotheosis of dinners when the already
swollen belly continues to swell;
to touch unreachable solitude and there
at the foot of a bed, a chair
or the stairs to recite a goodbye,
so that I can expel you from my fantasy
and cover you with ordinary clouds
so that your light will not fade my path,
....... {excerpt}
{translated from the Italian by Judith Baumel}
I appreciate your choice of poems. I read this one 10 times, concentrating more on some lines than others.
I wondered for a while why the poet would call “the burning of the heart” “ the humiliation of the viscera”, but guessed the answer by reading “to touch unreachable solitude” “so that your light will not fade my path.” Some passionate people would rather plunge into the emotional abyss. This poem seems to indicate the person’s effort to seek detachment from “the burning of heart” and to seek peace rather than heart-breaking. Is it simply self-preservation?
When we read a poem, we all get different perception and appreciation. I hope I am not spoiling it by giving my interpretation.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/06/bo..._r=1&ref=books --- MY HAPPINESS BEARS NO RELATION TO
HAPPINESS
A Poet’s Life in the Palestinian Century
By Adina Hoffman
Illustrated. 454 pages. Yale University Press. $27.50. --- Biography of Taha Muhummad
THIS TIME I WON'T PERMIT THE BLUE
This time I won't permit the blue, glimpsed
and seen from behind the window, from the edge of one roof
to another, in the sole grand explanation
of repetition, carrying the glance beyond
every limit, beyond the vision of the distances,
Temptation and blackmail of lightness and movement, this time
I won't permit it to bribe me in the promise of light.
I won't permit the flight of odors, the air
beaten by sounds and by wings, the fast flashes
Of a pigeon mirrored in the shadow
Of the eaves, that, walking, embroiders the edge,
that throws itself in the vacuum only to later
rise up, I won't permit them to drag me through the streets
to beat my body, defaced of all geography,
oblivious to all tendency, in order to beat
in me the sleeping wound of stupor.
{translated from the Italian by Judith Baumel}
I really like this one! It makes me want to learn Italian, just to know how it would sound in that language :) Thank you very much for posting.
What was her past experience such that she resists that much "the light" and that she wants to stay as "the sleeping wound of stupor?" It certainly rouses one's curiosity and imagination.Quote:
I won't permit it to bribe me in the promise of light.
...
I won't permit them to drag me through the streets
to beat my body, defaced of all geography,
oblivious to all tendency, in order to beat
in me the sleeping wound of stupor.
But, I would rather "throw" myself "in the vacuum" and suffer if I must. It feels so restrained and feel almost claustrophobic, otherwise.
Great poem!
By BRAD STONE
Published: May 17, 2009
SAN FRANCISCO — "Turning itself into a kind of electronic vanity publisher, Scribd, an Internet start-up here, will
introduce on Monday a way for anyone to upload a document to the Web and charge for it.
The Scribd Web site is the most popular of several document-sharing sites that take a YouTube-like approach to text,
letting people upload sample chapters of books, research reports, homework, recipes and the like. Users can read
documents on the site, embed them in other sites and share links over social networks and e-mail.
In the new Scribd store, authors or publishers will be able to set their own price for their work and keep 80 percent
of the revenue. They can also decide whether to encode their documents with security software that will prevent their
texts from being downloaded or freely copied.
Authors can choose to publish their documents in unprotected PDFs, which would make them readable on the Amazon
Kindle and most other mobile devices. Scribd also says it is readying an application for the iPhone from Apple and
will introduce it next month. ..... " --- http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/18/technology/start-
ups/18download.html?_r=1&ref=books
"Ruth Padel, right, has been elected the new Oxford professor of poetry and will be the first woman to hold the post
since it was established in 1708, the Guardian reported." ---- http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/18/bo...html?ref=books
{Japan b. 1931}
A POETRY CALENDAR
I who wait for myself
I who don't appear
again today I turn a page of the sea
throw away a tight-lipped dead clam
the day not white dawn the beach white
a mother's barren womb a broken oar
.........................................
the day not white dawn a useless parasol
a suspicious laugh cold fried food
I who wait for myself
I who don't appear
again today I turn a page of the sky
sweep together and throw away all the sooty stardust
the day not quite dawn the grass full of hanging tears
I leaf and leaf through a calendar
Yes I don't appear
I who wait for myself
world of imaginary numbers love without arms
{translated from the Japanese by Naoshi Koriyama and Edward Lueders}
{excerpt}
{Israel, b. 1936}
SURELY YOU REMEMBER
After they all leave,
I remain alone with the poems,
some poems of mine, some of others.
I prefer poems that others have written.
I remain quiet, and slowly
the not in my throat dissolves.
I remain.
Sometimes I wish everyone would go away.
Maybe it's nice, after all, to write poems.
You sit in your room and the walls grow taller.
Colors deepen.
A blue kerchief becomes a deep well.
You wish everyone would go away.
You don't now what's the matter with you.
Perhaps you'll think of something.
Then it all passes, and you are pure crystal.
After that, love.
Narcissus was so much in love with himself.
Only a fool doesn't understand
he loved the river, too.
You sit alone.
Your heart aches, but
it won't break.
The faded images wash away one by one.
Then the defects.
A sun sets at midnight. You remember
the dark flowers too.
..............................
Only a fool lets the sun set when it likes.
It always drifts off too early
westward to the islands.
Sun and moon, winter and summer
will come to you,
infinite treasures.
{translated from the Hebrew by Chana Block and Ariel Blockk}
{excerpt}
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/bo...Brouwer-t.html --- Poetry Chronicle
Reviews by JOEL BROUWER
Published: April 24, 2009
WHAT GOES ON
Selected and New Poems, 1995-2009.
By Stephen Dunn.
Norton, $24.95.
TUOLOMNE
(Tu•ol'•omn•e. 1. a river in
California, north of the
Yosemite. 2. a meadowland on
the river, above Hetch-Hetchy.
3. a tribe, now vanished.)
for Meg Nye
Lord, look at the grass.
Globs, glebes, gallopings, a whole ocean
and blade after blade after blade
of promiscuous
grass.
It could make a man feel called.
Called on the carpet.
Yes, Lord, yes,
I let my seed fall on the rocky ground.
I never laid my talents out to found
The many-mansioned condominium.
I stop off to camp out on the way home
From a trip west to see my married daughter,
And look at me.
Big woodsman.
I’m so dumb
I build my space-age puptent on the sand.
You read me well enough.
Mornings, chilled to the marrow, when I stand
And squint out over the pebble-brightening water,
Something there is that shakes me by the scruff.
I forage off. I climb a little bluff
And kick my morning cat-hole in the dirt.
My knees are cold. They hurt.
I get down close to what my heel turned over.
All made of leaves! Oh look:
So many profligacies brought to book.
Look at the way the crumbs and fragments glisten.
Tell me again thy teachings, Lord, I’ll listen.
Happy the man who hunkers down and mulls
A second reading of the parables.
I brought your book along to do just that.
Let’s see now; have I got the message pat?
Where there is soil, plant seed. Where there is boulder,
Cover the same with buildings. Neither build
Nor scatter seed along the highway shoulder,
But if you are an ethnic, scavenge there
For someone newly robbed, or damn near killed,
Or both, whom it behooves you to befriend.
If you are merely indigent, perpend:
The hedges and the ditches are the place
To stand forth and be feculent in case
Some parvenu who planned a banquet gets
A mailboxfull of monogrammed regrets
And throws himself a little social tantrum.
If someone slips you money, don’t succumb
To modesty or misplaced moral scruple.
Throw it around! Invest! It might quadruple.
Weeds, you weed out. Collect the weed seed, though.
Your enemy may sink his pot of gold
In millet-fields and leave them unpatrolled.
Salt, you are meant to savor, not to sow,
Unless there be a grievance to avenge.
On sand, thou shalt not build nor plant nor scavenge,
But meditate. The sand shall be a standard
Of competition and comparison
In counting up the offspring of the dutiful.
The lily too shall function. It is beautiful.
Lastly, at unpredicted interval,
A sparrow shall conveniently fall
To test the quickness of the Cosmic Eyeball.
I have committed whimsy. There. So be it.
I have not followed wisdom as I see it.
You avalanche me sermons and I make
Rhymes for the sake of rhymes.
Break
This sinner, Lord, of his lamented crimes.
It’s not as if you hadn’t, lots of times,
Shown me the moon.
The kingdom brought to birth.
Convulsion in the ferns. The very earth
Rising above itself in ecstasies.
Haven’t I gone glass-eyed onto my knees
To pry into the busyness of these
Green legions, every microscopic blob
A roller-palace with a milling mob
Of chloroplasts careening around in it
A dozen or two dozen times a minute?
How furious they are as they compete
At drawing water up a hundred feet
To let a picturebook blue spruce complete
Its simulacrum of a waterfall.
A man’d have to think exceeding small
To get no hustle from that plasmic jazz.
Quadrillions! Every cell as frenzied as
A Circus Maximus beside a Tiber.
Whole generations toughen into fiber
And turn into the body of the mother
While I scratch out one verbal razzmatazz
And heavy up my notebook with another.
They have their conquests to consolidate.
And I? I guess I’m here to celebrate
Myself, your works, man’s passions, or the State,
Depending on which school I emulate.
And do I mock? I mock. And grieve? I grieve.
There’s nothing I would gladlier achieve
Than Poetry. I mean the serious thing.
Not this Pop-Popean ringa-dingdinging.
{excerpt}
{Czech Republic, b. 1923}
MAN CURSING THE SEA
Someone
just climbed to the top of the cliffs
and began to curse the sea.
Dumb water, stupid pregnant water,
slow, slimy copy of the sky,
you peddler between sun and moon,
pettifogging pawnbroker of shells,
soluble, loud-mouthed bull,
fertilizing the rocks with your blood,
suicidal sword
dashed to bits on the headland,
hydra, hydrolizing the night,
breathing salty clouds of silence,
spreading jelly wings
in vain, in vain,
gorgon, devouring its own body,
water, you absurd flat skull of water---
...............................
And then he came down
and patted
the tiny immense stormy mirror of the sea.
There you go, water, he said,
and went his way.
{translated from the Czech by Stuart Friebert and Dana Habova}
{excerpt}
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/17/ny...html?ref=books --- Infinite Poetry, From a Finite Number
By KEVIN COYNE
Published: May 15, 2009
Union City
Kevin Coyne
POET’S CORNER A street sign in Union City honors a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner.
New Jersey
Complete Coverage »
In the Region
Connecticut »
Westchester »
Long Island »IT’S not much of a yard by the standards of most of America — just a postage stamp of grass behind the house at the corner of Fourth Street and New York Avenue, fenced by chain link and shaded by an unruly maple, here in this densest of cities in this densest of states. But like many things in New Jersey, it turns out to be larger than it looks at first glance.
The eminent poet W. S. Merwin lived at this corner until he was 9, a block away from the Presbyterian church his father pastored. Several years ago, long after he had won his first Pulitzer, his boyhood city honored him with a street sign here: “W. S. Merwin Way,” it reads. Last month, Mr. Merwin won a second Pulitzer prize for poetry — the fourth New Jersey poet to win in the last 10 years, a streak that is unmatched of late by any other state, and one that raises the question of whether it is more than just a happy coincidence.
{Belgium, b. 1942}
THE CITY
The city is covered with places you
took from me. Full of joint
footsteps, full of joint laughs.
They were sheltered by dreams and if need be
love grabbed the gun to protect them.
Tell my legs how to evade
what belonged to them.
Tell them. They refuse to believe
that the theaters have burnt, restaurants
were hit by plagues, terraces vanished
into thin air, hotels closed,
the courtyard was demolished.
I bow my head and think
the rain will not hit me. ............. {excerpt}
{translated from the Flemish by John van Tiel}
THOUSANDS OF BROADWAYS
Dreams and Nightmares of the American Small Town.
By Robert Pinsky.
University of Chicago, $16.
Pinsky, a former poet laureate, first delivered the thoughts contained in this slim volume in a series of lectures at Rice University. Much of the book reads like the transcript of a class one might guiltlessly sleep through. “The American small town, by now a setting at least half-mythical,” he argues, “provides a mimetic arena where contradictions between slavery and freedom, or between abundance and emptiness, hark back to even more fundamental contradictions.”
{quote from review...NYTimes}
@the City
At first I did not read carefully and I thought the poem was written in 1942. I thought it was about WWII. Now I see I was wrong and the writer was born in that year.
I did not know this poet. I will check him out - thank you for introducing him. I have to say I like the Dutch version a bit better though. It says rather "the plague" than "plagues", "the terraces" than terraces etc. I wonder why the translator changed it. And the last verse is a bit different in translation too - putting a "." where a "," is. I kind of like that though... I guess translation is just as much about making choices as writing the poetry itself is :)
I like the idea - how a city looses all its charm when you loose the one you explored that city with. The one you lived with in that city.
To Sapphire: It's great that you know Flemish and can re-translate with effect. Let me post another by the same author and you can give me your opinion of the translator/translation. q1
{Belgium, b. 1942)
PARTY
After years the reunion. Brushed the dogs,
the feuds forgotten, the sons the image
of the father. Comparing weight:
belly, money, and ethics.
The late-comers are not expected earlier.
She who once was the queen, casts around
pictures of her daughters, and nobody
is surprised when the poet asks for the name
of the lady who was his big childhood love.
The laughers are talking condoms again, smoking almost
completely forbidden and anyone who does not embrace
United Europe now is lost. The cinders in the barbecue
Are glowing red. No lack of cancer causes here.
The munchies are going round, the whisky works its miracles
and from the wounds of the bacon the fat is dripping.
The names of the dead are exchanged like addresses
on the last holiday. {excerpt}
{translated from the Flemish by John Van Tiel}