I never felt better than when I was tearing the stubs off people’s tickets and showing them to their seats. In primary school, I loved to make seating plans for the teacher. Then during the war, a weird thing happened to me. A kind of ticket-taker’s demon lit on my back and right in the middle of the newsreel, when the voice announced that eighty-eight enemy aircrafts had been shot down over Dortmund and only one German plane had gone missing, the perverse little imp whispered something in my ear, and I said in a loud voice: “Aw shucks, it’s bound to turn up again.” My voice sounded like it belonged to somebody else, so I turned up the house lights and ordered the person who’d said it to come forward. The other ushers and I walked through the audience, but no one confessed and so, invoking our official powers—we actually had such powers—I declared that the entire program, including the feature film, was hereby cancelled, the tickets were null and void and, as punishment, everyone had to go home without a refund. READ MORE…
Language: English
Translation Tuesday: “Breaking Through the Drum” by Bohumil Hrabal
"and everything suddenly seemed so bizarre I thought my ticket-taker’s demon must have come back to play with my mind."
Translation Tuesday: “We Are Trouble’s Obedient Children” by Lut Ming
"The army is the dreams we share / Our tent is the sky (we have nothing to hide) / Take a deep breath."
There are no city gates here
No city walls, no army, no tanks
There are the people, there are things they care about, there are tents
There is the night sky with no wind, an empty, empty sky
You can watch the TV, the one and only CCTV,
To learn about the world and
Watch live-edits of people hurting people,
The Tape Recorder looks stuck up
In his suit and tie. He’s getting ready to lie
But his eyes are flickering (tape’s stuck, won’t play)
Translating Indigenous Mexican Writers: An Interview with Translator David Shook
"I suspect many casual bookstore readers might not know how many languages are still spoken in Mexico. The sheer diversity is astounding."
David Shook is a poet, translator, and filmmaker in Los Angeles, where he serves as Editorial Director of Phoneme Media, a non-profit publishing house that exclusively publishes literature in translation. Their newest book is Like a New Sun, a collection of contemporary indigenous Mexican poetry, which Shook co-edited along with Víctor Terán.
Seven translators in total—Shook, Adam W. Coon, Jonathan Harrington, Jerome Rothenberg, Clare Sullivan, Jacob Surpin, and Eliot Weinberger—translated poets from six different languages: Juan Gregorio Regino (from the Mazatec), Mikeas Sánchez (Zoque), Juan Hernández Ramírez (Huasteca Nahuatl), Enriqueta Lunez (Tsotsil), Víctor Terán (Isthmus Zapotec), and Briceida Cuevas Cob (Yucatec Maya). I corresponded with Shook over gchat to speak with him about the project.
Today is Columbus Day, a controversial holiday in the United States. Several cities have recently adopted Indigenous Peoples’ Day over Columbus Day, clearly a victory for recognizing indigenous cultures in the United States. Which leaves me wondering: how are the indigenous Mexican writers recognized today in the Mexican literary landscape?
As someone who regularly visits Mexican literary festivals and also translates from the Spanish, I’ve observed the under-appreciation of indigenous writers firsthand. Mexico’s indigenous communities make up 10 to 14% of its total population, and you certainly don’t find anywhere near that percentage of literature being published in Mexico today. READ MORE…
Translation Tuesday: “Miss Chapati Queens” by Bino A. Realuyo
"Her accent sounds like it comes from the deepest part of a rock."
“Miss Chapati Queens” is part of a fiction manuscript titled The F.L.I.P Show, an interconnected collection of stories about the Filipino American community on the East Coast. The Philippines is an archipelago of 175 languages and/or dialects. Most of us are at least bilingual. In my household alone, five major Filipino languages, including English, are spoken. As a former colony of the United States, the Philippines has been using English as a lingua franca—the language of power, and of the media and the government—for over a hundred years, further complicating its multilingual tradition.
Although set in Queens, “Miss Chapati Queens” explores Filipino multilingualism. The protagonist, Rosario, is half-Indian, half-Filipino but grew up with a Filipino mother, and thus understands and speaks Tagalog. Her voyage into becoming more “Indian” coincides with her decision to join a beauty contest called Miss Chapati Queens. There are almost four million Filipinos in the U.S., some of whom are of mixed heritage, like the character in this story. These households reflect the multilingual backgrounds of the Filipino people. I speak English, Filipino (Tagalog), and Spanish, but understand Bicolano and Chabacano (language of my maternal heritage from Zamboanga City, a former Spanish port). READ MORE…
Translation Tuesday: شیرین و فهرهاد by Agri Ismaïl
"Chilly pastels that hung lower than she was used to seeing in a sky threatened to erupt in a glorious display of technicolor."
شیرین SHIRIN SHIREEN
The trees that stood guard on each side of the road that led to the house where شیرین and Farhad now lived had in recent weeks been stripped of their green girth, pared down to their brown skeleton, their branches stretching up to the sky in a plea for the sun to reappear.
شیرین left the house, immediately feeling her face grabbed by the icy palms of late October, her breath emerging visible in smoke-signal bursts. The few remaining leaves that hadn’t already been reduced to a mushy paste were scattered like the victims of a great battle over the winding bicycle lanes, amputees crushed under her boots, boots more utilitarian than anything she had purchased in a decade. Soon it would snow, the air had that singular electricity to it. Chilly pastels that hung lower than she was used to seeing in a sky threatened to erupt in a glorious display of technicolor.
Select translation:
Bedstefar
Ma petite fille,
Salome, mit barnebarn,
mi nieta
para ti soy “Bedstefar”,
tu única palabra en danés.
Le meilleur père, père
de ta mere,
ton grand-père danois
en danois.
Cubana de padre, francesa
de madre
y yo, tu raiz nórdica.
doce por cien
y medio, lo que hay de danés
en mi poesía
ou d’alcool
dans une cépage de bonne qualité.
De moi t’as déjà herité
Plus que ta mere:
un mot, an
heirloom du nord:
“Bedstefar”
avec tout ce que celà
veut dire
y con todo lo que tu dirás
cuando me llames,
quand tu m’appelles.
When you call my name.
Blodets bånd, siger vi.
Barnebarn, grandchild, petit en–
fant,
blood of my blood
a bond which cannot be severed.
Más que un vincula, plus que un lien,
yet nada
nothing
rien
unless we invest it with meaning.
So, what sense
qué sentido tuvo para mí
tu nacimiento?
Hvad betød din fødsel for mig,
en far
der aldrig er blevet kaldt, har
hørt sig kalde
far
og kun sjældent
rarement
a pu agir, actuar,
como père?
¿Qué tal te sientes como abuelo?,
me preguntaban,
and I was at a loss, no supe contestar
comment je me sentais.
I didn’t feel any different, no notaba
ninguna diferencia
and could not see why I should have changed.
Pasaron cinco años, cinq ans
sans practiquement se voir
y solo ahora me doy cuenta,
only now,
gazing back at a gap of five years,
do I realise how you, ou plutôt
ta presence,
changed the perspective of my life,
gav mit liv
et dybere perspektiv
making both past and future unfold.
Probablement, je n’ai jamais occupé
la place du père,
dans la vie de tu mama.
Like a fool I offered her up
as a sacrifice for my love to her mother
y su abuelo, mi suegro, me la arrancó.
That man, tu bisabuelo, now dead,
rife with heirs and hardly mourned
stole my daughter and supplanted me
leaving me,
dejándome,
a childless, self-deceitful
papa chatré.
Salomé, nieta mía,
para ti soy todavía poco más
que una palabra, but a word which,
ahí dedans,
contains,
esconde,
gemmer et løfte, a
meaning and promise
that we both must explore:
din “Bedstefar”,
la meilleur père
de ta mere.
***
Offering
The pain,
el dolor de esas dulces disonancias.
Le ton aigu, den skærende
intonation
pa nippet til… a breath
from keeling over.
Et smertefuldt, jublende skrig.
Like Coltrane
we must squeeze the reed, estrujar
nuestra alma
hasta que la nota se quiebre, indtil
kernen spaltes, permitiéndonos
seguir fluyendo
indtil
sjælen kælver
og døden os skiller
until we cave in
and death do us part.
***
Django’s Lullaby
Toutes les chansons d’amour,
todas las flores de primavera y los
colores de otoño
que je t’aurais cueilli
se me han marchitado.
The songs that my thoughts of you
stirred in the wind
are now a dry rustle, an autumn lullaby
perhaps.
Fugle som trækker mod syd,
pájaros,
birds of passage.
Que venga la nieve, la
neige, la manta suave y blanda,
the sweet, forgetful snow
that will cover all the wounds
calmará el ardour de las heridas
and the broken stems
with its cool whiteness,
su fría blancura.
La neige de noviembre,
november
sur les petals bleus de mes pensées
de nous.
Bedstefar
My granddaughter,
Salomé – ma petite fille,
mit barnebarn,
mi nieta –
for you I am “Bedstefar”,
the only word you know in Danish.
“The best father”, your mother’s
father,
the Danish for
your Danish grandfather.
Cuban on your father’s side, French
on your mother’s –
and me, your one Nordic root.
12.5%:
like the Danish in my poetry;
or the alcohol content
of a fine wine.
You’ve already inherited
from me
more than your mother ever did:
a word, a Northern heirloom:
“Bedstefar”
and all that word means
and all that you mean
when you call me,
when you call me it.
When you call my name.
Blood ties, we call them.
Barnebarn, grandchild, petit en-
fant,
blood of my blood
a bond which cannot be severed.
More than a bond, more,
yet nothing,
nada,
rien
unless we invest it with meaning.
So,
what did it mean for me,
your birth?
What did your birth mean for me,
a father
who has never been called,
never heard himself called
father,
and has only
rarely
been able to act
as a father?
How do you feel about being a grandfather?
people would ask me,
and I was at a loss, I didn’t know how to answer,
how I felt.
I didn’t feel any different, nothing
tangible,
and could not see why I should have changed.
Five years passed
and we scarcely saw one another,
and only now do I realise,
only now,
gazing back at a gap of five years,
do I realise how you, or rather
your presence,
changed the perspective of my life,
made that perspective deeper,
making both past and future unfold.
I suspect I never really fulfilled
the role of father
in your mother’s life.
Like a fool I offered her up
as a sacrifice for my love to her mother,
and her grandfather, my father-in-law, tore her from me.
That man, your great-grandad, now dead,
rife with heirs and hardly mourned
stole my daughter and supplanted me
leaving me,
dejándome,
a childless, self-deceitful
papa chatré – a castrated father.
Salomé, little one,
for you I am still scarcely more
than a word, but a word which,
deep inside,
contains,
conceals,
holds a
promise and a meaning
that we both must explore:
your “Bedstefar”,
“the best father”
of your mother.
***
Offering
The pain,
the pain of this delicate discord.
The pitch set high, the intonation
cutting,
on the verge of… a breath
from keeling over.
A painful, joyful cry.
Like Coltrane,
we must squeeze the reed, wring out
our souls
until the note cracks, until
its core is cloven, so we can
keep on flowing
until
our souls cave in
and death do us part.
***
Django’s Lullaby
All the love songs,
All the spring flowers and
autumn colours
I gathered for you
have withered in my heart.
The songs that my thoughts of you
stirred in the wind
are now a dry rustle, an autumn lullaby
perhaps.
Birds that fly south for winter;
birds of passage.
Let the snow come,
its soft and tender blanket;
the sweet, forgetful snow
that will cover all the wounds,
soothe the stinging cuts
and broken stems
with its cool whiteness.
November snow,
on the blue petals of my thoughts
of us.
***
Illustration by Dinah Salama.
******
Peter Wessel is a Danish-born poet who has divided his life between his homes in Madrid and the Medieval French pilgrim’s village of Conques-en-Rouergue (which he considers his second birthplace) since 1981. He teaches a university course titled “Rooted in Song—the Role of African Americans and Immigrant Russian Jews in the Creation of the American Dream” and defines himself as a musician who expresses himself through poetry. Peter’s last two books Polyfonías (2008) and Delta (2014) are multilingual poetry collections both of which include recordings of his readings in dialogue with the musicians from Polyfonías Poetry Project. He blogs at www.pewesselblog.com.Resurrection Song: William Tyndale
Fifth in Josh Billings's "Lives of the Translators" series—on God, death, and translation.
One morning in October 1536, in the Flemish town of Vilvorde, William Tyndale was led by his guards from his cell to a cross in the public square, to which he was tied at the ankles and waist with chains, and at the neck with a loose hemp cord.
Contrary to popular legend, he was not burned alive. Thieves and beggars were burned alive, women were burned alive, but Tyndale was a scholar and degraded priest: he was afforded the courtesy of being strangled first. When the procurer-general gave the signal, an executioner standing behind the cross pulled the hemp cord tight around Tyndale’s neck until he was dead. Then he lit the pile of brush and gunpowder that had been built up around the cross, and stood back.
Translation has always had its fair share of occupational hazards, but the execution of William Tyndale is one of rare examples in literary history of a translator killed for his work. It happened in an era when translation was taken extremely seriously, not just because it allowed ordinary people to read the Bible in their own languages, but because it implied those languages were as capable of containing God’s Word as Latin, Greek or Hebrew. Tyndale’s New Testament didn’t just imply this: it proved it, giving readers a Gospel that was both noble and familiar—a book of shepherds, the kitchen, the market, sons. READ MORE…
Translation Tuesday: “Mal Paso” by Hugo López Araiza Bravo
Spanish/French/English—a multilingual Translation Tuesday, translated by criticism editor Ellen Jones
Select translation:
“But why do you want to go to Haiti?” they asked her in Santo Domingo. “You crazy?”
She only smiled like a naïve foreigner, mumbled something about a sociolinguistic interest in the borderlands, and went out of the department with her Lotman under her arm. While she waited for the bus to the coach station she looked over the timetable that her classmates had reluctantly given her. It was going to take the whole day. The first thing she had to do was leave the city by the Carretera Sánchez.
“I’m only going as far as Barahona,” the driver warned her when he heard where she was going. “From there, you’re on your own.”
She didn’t mind. She sat on the left hand side so she could say goodbye to the sea; she fixed her eyes on the waves while the vehicle moved over the concrete. The blue was giving way little by little to green. When nothing but mountains was visible, she fell asleep. She woke up just in time to see the Arco del Triunfo.
She had a hard time finding someone to take her the rest of the way. Finally she ended up with a lorry driver whose job was to supply sugar cane to the city’s sugar factory. He was loading his vehicle with big water bottles.
“There’s not enough water over there,” he explained. “I’m going to make more on this trip than I make in a month going back and forth like crazy.”
They set off when the driver was sure that he’d made use of every cubic metre of his hold. They left the city behind and went into the sugar plantations. The lorry’s cabin shook with a wave of vituperation against the sugar industry. How they were worked from sun up to sun down. How bateyes still existed. How people were dying from machete wounds. How even after everything slavery still persisted, it’s just that now they called it minimum wage. Then the Laguna del Rincón appeared, and the criticism was directed towards uncontrolled fishing and the loss of heritage as a result of greed.
“They extract gypsum from that mountain,” he concluded signaling towards the other side. “Don’t get me started on the mines.”
She didn’t. She wasn’t about to get involved in ethical debates with a man who was trying to sell water at the price of mercury to the victims of an earthquake. Besides, enough people had confided in her their misfortunes for her to know that all of Latin America was singing from the same song sheet: each country had its own versions of the same general ills.
They stopped in Duvergé for something to eat: rice and pigeon peas. As soon as their plates were clean her companion stood up.
“We’ve got to get to Jimaní before nightfall: it’ll be hard to find somewhere to spend the night.”
They could barely make out the city when it became clear that something was out of the ordinairy. It was seething. For the second biggest cité in the municipalité, there were too many people. And people in the streets. They had to réduice their speed to avoid running someone over. They soon understood that they were principalment refugees. They stopped in front of a house d’aspect humble.
“They’re distant relatives” her guide excused himself. “Tomorrow you can go to the border. It’s only two kilometres away.”
She passéd the nuit on a pallet in the cuisine.
She sortied early, with only a piece of manioc in her estomac. She calculated that she’d have to marche for three quarts of an hour. The streets were as full as the précéding nuit. The soldats from the Fortaleza looked suspicieusely at the people going past. She commenced to move between the multitudes, parfaitly aware that she was swimming à countercurrent. Quand she left the last houses behind, the route became more sauvage. Elle décida to walk on one side so it would be more facile to mouve. Those who were coming in the opposée direction looked like they hadn’t eaten in days. They came with almost zéro, with seulely the robes they were wearing quand tout had se passé. On her right était the Étang Saumâtre, et elle imagina that if the dominicain gouvernment had not permetted the réfugiés to entrer, these waters would now be full de illegaux swimming pour their survie.
Elle could déjà see Mal Paso. Le nom was apt: négliged constructions that spat out misérables, infernal portes. She made her way à travers the réfugiés et entréed a totalement chaótique square. There were pleine de gens en the mouve, here et là camions could be seen, still trying to continuer with their commerce. Among them were the improviséd campements for those who still pensaient que they pourraient retourn. Elle parcrossed le perimetre lentement, completely submergéed. Vraiment Mallepasse. Elle vint more proche à la frontière. Un point de contrôle de Casques Bleus garded le passage.
“Eh! La fille!”, lui hurla l’un des soldats. “Tu peux pas passer! Rien que de l’aide internationale y peut traverser! C’est pas du tourisme, une catastrophe pareille!”
Elle resta immobile. De l’autre côté, elle vit l’Ayiti. Tout te sanble diferan de lót bò a.
–¿Pero por qué tú quieres ir a Haití? –le preguntaron en Santo Domingo–. ¿Estarás tú loca?
Ella sólo sonrió cual extranjera ingenua, balbució algo sobre el interés sociolingüístico de la frontera y salió de la facultad con su Lotman bajo el brazo. Mientras esperaba la guagua hacia la central de autobuses repasó el itinerario que a regañadientes le habían dado sus compañeros. Le iba a ocupar todo el día. Lo primero que tenía que hacer era salir de la ciudad por la Carretera Sánchez.
–Yo voy sólo hasta Barahona –le advirtió el conductor cuando se enteró de su destino–. A partir de ahí, se ampara sola.
No le importó. Se sentó del lado izquierdo para poder despedirse del mar; clavó los ojos en las olas mientras la máquina avanzaba por el concreto. El azul fue cediendo poco a poco al verde. Cuando no se distinguía más que monte, cayó dormida. Despertó justo a tiempo para ver el Arco del Triunfo.
Le costó trabajo encontrar quién la llevara el resto del camino. Finalmente dio con un camionero encargado de abastecer de caña al ingenio de la ciudad. Estaba cargando su vehículo con garrafones.
–Allá hace falta el agua –explicó–. Voy a hacer más con este viaje de lo que gano en un mes dando vueltas como loco.
Partieron cuando el conductor estuvo seguro de que cada metro cúbico de su caja estaba aprovechado. Dejaron detrás la ciudad y se adentraron en los cañaverales. La cabina del camión se removió con un vendaval de vituperios al sistema azucarero. Que se trabajaba de sol a sol. Que seguía existiendo la raya. Que la gente moría de una herida de machete. Que después de todo se mantenía la esclavitud, aunque ahora le dijeran salario mínimo. Entonces emergió la Laguna del Rincón, y la queja se dirigió hacia la pesca indiscriminada y la pérdida del patrimonio por culpa de la avaricia.
–De ese monte sacan yeso –concluyó señalando hacia el otro lado–. No me haga comenzar con las minas.
No lo hizo. No estaba para meterse en debates éticos con un hombre que pretendía venderles agua a precio de mercurio a los damnificados de un terremoto. Además, ya había protagonizado suficientes confidencias de desgracias como para saber que toda Latinoamérica cojea del mismo pie: cada país tiene sus propias versiones de los males generales.
Pararon en Duvergé por algo de comida: arroz con guandules. En cuanto limpiaron el plato su compañero se paró.
–Hay que llegar a Jimaní antes que anochezca: nos va a costar trabajo encontrar dónde pasar la noche.
Apenas divisaron la ciudad se dio cuenta de que algo había fuera de lo commún. Bullía. Para ser la segunda ciutat más grande del municipio, le sobraba gent. Y gent en las calles. Tuvieron que diminuir la velocidad para evitar atropellar a alguien. Pronto comprendió que se trataba en su majoría de refugiados. Se detuvieron frente a una casa d’aspecto humilde.
–Son parientes lejanos –se excusó su guía–. Mañana tú podrás ir a la frontera. Está apenas a dos kilómetros.
Passó la noche en un catre en la cuisina.
Sortió temprano, sólo con un trozo de yuca en el ventre. Calculaba que devía marchar tres quartos de hora. Las calles estaban tan plenas como la noche précédente. Los soldats de the Fortaleza miraban méfiantes las gens que pasaban. Commenzó a moverse entre la multitude, parfaitamente consciente de que nadaba à contrecorriente. Quand dejó atrás las últimas casas, el chemino se devenió más agreste. Décidió andar par un lado, de sorte que le fuera más fácile déplazarse. Los que veníaent en sens contrairio paraîcían no aver mangiado en varios días. Veníaent casi sans nada, seul con las robes que portaban quand tout se avía passado. À su derecha étaiba el Étang Saumâtre, et se immaginó que si el gouverno dominicain no hubiera permis la entrée de refugiés, esas aguas serían ahora pleines de illegaux nageando pour la supervivencia.
Elle veía déjà Mal Paso. Lui iba bien el nom: unos bâtiments négligéados qui escupían misérables, unas portes al enfer. Se ouvrió paso à travers de los réfugiés et entró en une plaza totalement chaótique. Étaiba pleine de gens en mouvemiento, aquí et là se apréciaban los camions que avían todavía essayé continuer con el commerce. Entre eux étaiban les campaments improvisés de los que pensaient todavía que pourraient retournar. Parcourrió le pérímétre lentement, duramente impressionée. Vraiment Mallepasse. Elle vint más proche à la frontière. Un point de contrôle de Casques Bleus vigilait le passage.
«Eh! La fille!», lui hurla l’un des soldats. «Tu peux pas passer! Rien que de l’aide internationale y peut traverser! C’est pas du tourisme, une catastrophe pareille!»
Elle resta immobile. De l’autre côté, elle vit l’Ayiti. Tout te sanble diferan de lót bò a.
***
Hugo López Araiza Bravo is a Mexican writer and translator. His first book, Infinitas cosas, won the 4º Virtuality Literario Caza de Letras. His second will be out soon, and he's been shadow-boxing with a novel for over four years. In 2012, he won the Concurso 43 de Punto de Partida in literary translation, with a fragment of a novel by Amélie Nothomb. He's currently studying for a Masters in Translation at El Colegio de México. Ellen Jones edits the criticism section of Asymptote, and contributes the occasional translation. She has a B.A. in English literature and Spanish, and an M.St. in English Language from the University of Oxford. She is now a Ph.D. candidate at Queen Mary University of London, researching English-Spanish code-switching in contemporary fiction, and the particular challenges associated with reading, publishing, and translating this kind of writing.
A Ming Dynasty vase and an ancient Greek urn share beauty but not aesthetics. The artisans of the different styles might have appreciated each other’s work—and yet they might have stuck to their own ways, perhaps because they saw no reason to change or perhaps because they simply lacked the material and equipment to produce anything else.
Languages also have different rules for beautiful prose, based both on cultural inheritance and on the possibilities and limits of each language within its grammar and vocabulary.
I translate Spanish to English, and I often face the delightful task of transforming beautiful Spanish prose into beautiful English prose. To do that, I have had to learn to appreciate the standards of beauty for each language, which share little in common due to different historical trajectories.
Spanish emerged from a local dialect of Latin. King Alfonso X the Wise, who reigned from 1252 to 1284, made Spanish (Castilian, to be precise) the preferred language for scholarship in his realm, replacing Latin. To cement that change, he funded scholars in Toledo and elsewhere to translate literature from other languages into Spanish and to write new books. He himself wrote some important works, knowing that a language must have literature. READ MORE…
Translation Tuesday: Multilingual Poems by Ann Cotten
In honor of our July Issue, a super-special multilingual Translation Tuesday—Ann Cotten translates Ann Cotten, and back again!
Select translation:
nonesuch I (from Fremdwörterbuchsonette)
The ghost entered me like a kind of shirt.
It hung next to the dancefloor and was opposite
to all. That sounds a bit odd, not quite
credible, certainly I cannot say it right.
Something was backward in the whole construction
of what I happened to be working on.
Time seemed to have some purpose further on
with me, wrung me and couldn’t work it out.
And so I leant against the wall and smoked,
and watched the Russendisko on and on and smoked
too much. And I was much too bored to write.
Still not at all ill at ease, squandering my light
I thought of never going home to better-lighted dirt
and suddenly began to see the ghost in the shirt.
“O ghost,” spake I, “please understand my wonder!
I didn’t know that ghosts would deign to wander
casting their eyes perplexingly asunder,
in shirts, our fears and echoings to pander.”
The ghost just stared at me. A girl came over
and asked me for a light. My boyfriend came
and told me he was going home. It was the same
to me. I nodded, quite the midnight rover,
knowing myself to have become rather a dud,
my self’s long-empty shell, and how my words
rustled and shifted, like rice in gourds,
vague and conceited like smoke from a cigarette,
cold and precise like condensation.
And I awoke, as cold as ash, in my own tub.
***
nonesuch II (from Fremdwörterbuchsonette)
In my own tub I lay and dreamt of girls
who come around and ask you for a light.
Their little souls rotate inside their eyes
as my lighter renders them closer than the night
which is the reason why I love these rituals
in which the incomparables and I unite.
And all the while I know my cigarettes are all
exactly the same length, and they seem to invite
their and my own interconfoundability,
white, lightweight, full of discontent,
rattling and wheezing when they’re full of tea
and, taken, all desire just to be spent,
as air races through them, they wake the ghosts
and attract minutes, posted between the lips’ red boasts.
The ash upon the water forms a brittle film.
Mein Liebling, erklärst du dich zu meiner Giraffe,
verspreche ich, dass ich dich immer lachen mache.
The past has risen and is lapping at my chin.
Die Biber haben alle Bäume abgenagt, mein Lieber, sieh,
noch während wir hier stehen, beknabbern sie meine Knie.
The tap presses a lullaby into my nape,
the boiler hums a low and dismal tune,
I watch myself scratch myself like an ape,
and fall asleep into the arms of monster rune:
It isn’t realistic to be lying here.
In all the fog and damp time seems to override itself.
I cannot reach you, not with beer, nor animals, nor jokes;
everything runs out; the ghost of the night lives to side with itself, but chokes.
nonesuch I (from Fremdwörterbuchsonette)
Der Geist betrat mich wie eine Art Hemd.
Es hing am Rand der Tanzfläche und bildete
den Gegenpol zu allem. Das befremdet,
wirkt unerklärlich, wenn ichs schildere.
Es war etwas verkehrt an dem Gebilde,
an dem ich zu der Zeit gerade arbeitete;
die Zeit führte mit mir etwas im Schild,
wrang mein Gebein und kriegte es nicht raus.
Und so lehnte ich rauchend an der Wand,
schaute der Russendisko zu und rauchte
zu viel. Zum Schreiben war mir viel zu fad.
Ich war trotzdem nicht unzufrieden, dachte
entfernt daran, eher nicht heimzugehen,
plötzlich begann ich diesen Geist im Hemd zu sehen.
“O Geist,” sprach ich, “verstehe mein Befremden:
Ich wusste nicht, dass Geister auch in Hemden,
die großen Augen gegenteilig wendend,
Widerhall, Trost und Unbehagen spenden.”
Der Geist indessen starrte mich nur an.
Ein Mädchen kam zu mir und bat um Feuer.
Meine Begleitung kam und sagte, dass er heimgeht.
Ich nickte nur, als ging es mich nichts an:
Ich war schon lange nur mehr eine Panne,
die Schale meiner selbst, und ausgehöhlt
klimperten geistermäßig meine Worte,
vag und geziert wie Zigarettenrauch,
kalt und präzise wie Kondensation.
Ich wachte auf, wie Asche kalt, in meiner Badewanne.
***
nonesuch II (from Fremdwörterbuchsonette)
Ich badete und träumte von den Mädchen,
die herkommen und mich um Feuer bitten.
In ihren Augen rotiern ihre Seelchen
in meinem Feuerschein in kurzen Augenblicken.
Deswegen liebe ich ja diese Sitten,
in denen unvergleichlich sich vereinen
jene und ich. Und meine Zigaretten
sind glatt und alle gleich lang. Bescheinigen
sie ihre und meine Vertauschbarkeit,
weiß, leicht und voller Unzufriedenheit,
klappernd und rauschend, wenn sie altern,
und jung voller Verlangen, wenn der Atem
sie schnell durchzieht, so wecken sie die Geister,
binden künstelnd Minuten, an Lippen gekleistert.
Die Asche auf dem Wasser bildet einen Film.
My darling, if you will be my giraffe,
I’ll promise to do things to make you laugh.
Mir reicht Vergangenheit bis an mein Kinn.
The beavers, dear, have gnawed off all the trees,
and as you look at me they’re working on my knees.
Der Hahn drückt mir ein Schlaflied in den Nacken,
der Boiler summt den Bass betrübt und wüst,
ich schaue mir beim Dösen selbstgesprächig zu,
gleich wird das Brainmap mich mit den Tentakeln packen:
Es ist nicht realistisch, hier zu sitzen
im Dunst, im Nass hebt Zeit sich aus den Angeln.
Erreich dich nicht mit Tieren, nicht mit Witzen, es läuft aus und
der Geist der Nacht sitzt tief im letzten Gurgeln.
July Issue Highlight: “Excerpt” by Cia Rinne
A look at one of our multilingual feature's star poems.
Making Narrative Witness: A Caracas-Sarajevo Collaboration
A revolutionary collaboration spanning countries, languages, and memories
THE SCENE
The scene is an online video meeting. (Does that qualify as a scene?) In it are several Venezuelan writers and photographers gathered in a classroom in Caracas (all men but one, though not everyone is present) and their counterparts in and around Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, gathered mostly in twos and threes at laptops in apartments (all women but two; everyone is present).
A couple of Caracas photographers also tune in from what appear to be their flats. One Bosnian is in the town of Bihać. A Croatian writer from the Sarajevo group joins from Spain.
The Venezuelans in the classroom are having technical difficulties with their audio, and people move close to the room’s single computer to be heard. We make introductions. A few jokes. We lay out our plans. At least one Sarajevan, a redhead perched on a sofa, enjoys a cigarette.
What’s Foreign and Familiar: Part I
Writer Yuen Sin reflects on a childhood and adulthood spent finding herself between languages
“What is the Burmese word for cockroach (kar-chwa)?”
Auntie Moe Moe interrogated in a mixture of Mandarin and Hokkien dialect. My brother glanced at me haplessly as I rummaged through the repository of my memory, biting my lips as my live-in domestic helper, nanny, and aunt tapped her feet impatiently.
There it was. “Po heart.”
The romanization under my childish scrawl appeared in my head, and I triumphantly recited the two syllables hiding beneath my tongue. READ MORE…
Assignment: Translate Your Prose into Verse
Michael Odom on translation, poems, and pedagogy in the classroom.
“…it gave me a devil of a lot of trouble to get into verse the poems that I will read for you tonight, and that is why I will not read them as if they were prose!”
-W.B. Yeats
All reading is translation: translation from the language of one mind to the language of another. The worst possible translation is one that takes a great poem in one language and makes of it a terrible poem in another. For example, the translation in a student’s mind of “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may” into “Memento mori!” is a ‘lost in translation’ reading. This occurred to me as I tried to teach university freshmen the correct terms for genres, prosodies, tropes, and dictions.
My students recited verse as if it were an unusually unmusical type of prose. They could not hear it and they could not conceive of lineation as anything but an odd way to write sentences. They droned as they read, flattening every stress and evening out tones as they raced from the initial capital to the period of the last sentence. Their close reading was the same: racing past language to ‘the meaning’. Verse as weird prose; as if poetry were a gameshow where a writer says something cryptic or enigmatic and readers try to guess what was said. Readers who guess right win a PhD. Poets who stump the audience take home an MFA. My students seemed to think the consolation prize would be an easy A.