In the Vicinity of Louise Bourgeois
Her child-arms
grow
out of the house
The little hands
hold a dress
They beckon to her
In her
nakedness
she drags
herself
up
the steps
In vain
The entrance
is walled up
and overgrown
with pubic hair
No Fishing Village
Below is the sea
the beautiful sea
cry the vendors
People
glide
down the steps
down
into measureless
depths
I an observer
cling
to the rotting
handrail
Piazza di Spagna Early Morning
Up and down the staircase
the dead Buñuel gesticulates and films
Almost alarming the monstrous
circus rider who takes as her entrance
the sound of shots
Haltingly she reaches
for one of the church spires and
puts it on
Set her on a horse Buñuel shouts
As Death she is not believable
Stop
The few tourists pause
nada nothing da war nichts rien du tout
They go on
from Blind Passage
Gisela Hemau
translated from the German by Sara Edinger
Listen to the poems read in the original German by the poet:
I was introduced to Gisela Hemau’s poetry by a mutual friend. I was immediately struck by the spareness and absolute rightness of her language, and also amazed that I had never heard of her work. I began to translate a few poems and sent her an email asking if she would like to see what I was doing. So began what has become an immensely helpful interchange.
Gisela is an extremely painstaking writer and an equally painstaking reader of my translations. She has led me to reconsider any number of words, phrases, rhythms, line breaks; at the same time, she has accepted my decisions not to make certain changes. Her style is often surrealistic—sometimes in a playful way, sometimes as a means of treating psychological issues from a certain distance. I have tried to preserve the strangeness of her diction and imagery.
Gisela is an extremely painstaking writer and an equally painstaking reader of my translations. She has led me to reconsider any number of words, phrases, rhythms, line breaks; at the same time, she has accepted my decisions not to make certain changes. Her style is often surrealistic—sometimes in a playful way, sometimes as a means of treating psychological issues from a certain distance. I have tried to preserve the strangeness of her diction and imagery.
Gisela Hemau was born in 1938 and lives in Bonn. She studied German and English literature in Mainz, Wurzburg, and Munich, and worked for a time as a reader of radio plays for West German Radio. Blinder Übergang (Blind Passage, 2013) is her sixth volume of poetry. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, and has been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian. A small group of English translations by Esther Elstun appeared in 2008, but Hemau is not well known to English readers. Elstun calls Hemau’s poetry “remarkable for its musicality and the boldness of its imagery.”
Sara Edinger became interested in the German language and German literature as an undergraduate at Stanford. After Stanford, she obtained an M.A. (and A.B.D.) in literature, but for practical reasons she spent most of her working life in information technology. In retirement, she returned to the study of German and began making translations, mostly of poetry. Initially, she saw her translations as a way of understanding the poems more completely; she has since become fascinated by the process of solving translation problems. As a translator, she has published English versions of three poems by the German poet Elke Erb in Asymptote (April 2014) and another by Elke Erb in Passager (this poem was also published on Poetry Daily). Her translations (again from the German) of two poems by Gisela Hemau appeared in the Fall 2016 issue of Field.
