Poetry in Translation

A few years ago my Mom gave me a subscription to Poetry magazine and I always have an issue on my bedside table. It’s hard to keep up! My favorite month is usually April’s Translation Issue. Here are two favorite poems, one from the 2007 edition and one from 2009:

This poem New York is by Valzhyna Mort, a young Belarusian poet:

New York

new york, madame,
is a monument to a city

it is

TA-DA

a gigantic pike

whose scales

bristled up stunned

and what used to be just smoke

found a fire that gave it birth

champagne foam

melted into metal

glass rivers

flowing upwards

and things you won’t tell to a priest

you reveal to a cabdriver

even time is sold out

when to the public’s “wow” and “shhh”

out of a black top hat

a tailed magician

is pulling new york out

by the ears of skyscrapers

Translated from the Belarusian by Franz Wright and Elizabeth Oehlkers Wright
Source: Poetry (April 2007)

This poem Backside is by the Japanese modernist Chika Sagawa (1911-1936):

Backside

Night eats color,

Flower bouquets lose their fake ornaments.

Day falls into the leaves like sparkling fish

And struggles, like the lowly mud,

The shapeless dreams and trees

Nurtured outside this shriveled, deridable despair.

And the space that was chopped down

Tickles the weeds there by its feet.

Fingers stained with tar from cigarettes

Caress the writhing darkness.

And then the people move forward.

Translated from the Japanese by Sawako Nakayasu
Source: Poetry (April 2009)

A Diverse Reading List

I looked over to my stack of books and saw that I have a very diverse reading list at the moment. I thought it would be fun to list the books and share a favorite quote.

Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner

This is this first book by Stegner that I’m reading. Actually all the books that I’m reading at the moment are written by the authors who I’m reading for the first time. Crossing to Safety is my book group’s pick from last month which I wasn’t able to finish. (I had a good excuse with the new job. Yes I usually finish the book before we meet!) Here’s a favorite passage from the sections I’ve read already:

“In fact, if you forget mortality, and that used to be easier here than in most places, you could really believe that time is circular, and not linear and progressive as our culture is bent on proving. Seen in geological perspective, we are fossils in the making, to be buried and eventually exposed again for the puzzlement of creatures of later eras. Seen in either geological or biological terms, we don’t warrant attention as individuals. One of us doesn’t differ that much from another, each generation repeats its parents, the works we build to outlast us are not much more enduring than anthills, and much less so than coral reefs. Here everything returns upon itself, repeats and renews itself, and present can hardly be told from past.” pg 4

The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches by Matsuo Basho
Translated and introduced by Nobuyuki Yuasa

I’ve read Basho’s work before, but never this one which is of his most renown works. And when I was in the bookstore browsing, the thorough introduction by Nobuyuki Yuaka caught my eye. He places Basho in historic perspective and explains his significant part in the development of the Haiku.

Here’s one of Basho’s haikus at the beginning of a Travel Sketch entitled “The Records of a Weather-Exposed Skeleton”

In a way
It was fun
Not to see Mount Fuji
In foggy rain

Vertigo by W.G. Sebald (More on Sebald in The Guardian)
Translated by Michael Hulse

I’ve had this book for several years, so I’m not sure where it came from. I’m guessing I read about W.G Sebald and nabbed it somewhere along the way and hadn’t found time to read it yet. He’s one of those authors I’ve been meaning to discover for a while and even though he is German, I’m reading him in English translation.

“  There they stayed for several days, visiting the famed underground galleries of the Hallein salt mines, where one of the miners made Mme Gherardi a present of a twig which was encrusted with thousands of crystals. When they returned to the surface of the earth once again, Beyle writes, the rays of the sun set off in it a manifold glittering such as he had only seen flashing from diamonds as ladies revolved with their partners in a ballroom blazing with light.
The protracted crystallisation process, which had transformed the dead twig into a truly miraculous object, appeared to Beyle, by his own account, as an allegory for the growth of love in the salt mines of the soul. He expounded this idea at length to Mme Gherardi. She for her part, however, was not prepared to sacrifice the childish bliss that filled her that day in order to explore with Beyle the deeper meaning of what was doubtless a very pretty allegory as she sardonically put it.” pgs.25-26

Code 2.0 by Lawrence Lessig

I bought this book last March at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas where Lessig spoke. Lessing now at Harvard, was a Stanford Law professor and the founder of their Center for the Internet and Society, gave a masterful presentation and I wanted to dig deeper into his thinking. This is the next book I’m going to read. The blurb on the back says: “this foundational book as become a classic in its field” and “In this remarkably clear and elegantly written book [Lessig] takes apart many myths about cyberspace and analyzes its underlying architechture.”-Wired.

Working at the Whitney museum

A new era in my working life begins on Monday and I’m thrilled.

I start my new job working on publicity for the Whitney Museum of American Art. It’s an exciting time to be entering the museum. They just launched their new web site last week. And are planning a major building expansion downtown by the High Line. But even without all these major activities, I’d be thrilled to be entering this institution that’s long been one of my go to places in New York. Now I’ll be going to it everyday!

At the Berlin Wall in 1989

At The Wall

The Berlin Wall fell 20 years ago and I’m reflecting on how fate brought me to live in there around eight months prior to that historic moment.

I had taken a shine to a German guy who was visiting my college one summer. Having always wanted to immerse myself in another culture and language, I thought I should see if this relationship could work and discover Berlin. During my prior two visits I loved the city’s textures which reminded me of New York’s East Village and was intrigued by Berlin’s  history that is on every corner, branded into every building  and into each conversation. So two weeks after I graduated, I was on a plane at JFK heading for the Tegel airport to move.

I found out that you couldn’t go a day in Berlin without bumping into the Wall especially as I lived near Kreuzberg, which was on the border to East Berlin. And any time you drove to West Germany you had to go via the East-West German border crossing with a passport; you could never forget the division of the countries.

On November 9, 1989–the start of Die Wende (in English: The Turn? that’s an extact translation, or perhaps The Change)– I was a bit overwhelmed as the city was flooded with people and Trabants, the little cars that have become one of the symbols of East Germany. I don’t remember being on the streets, but in the days to come we all were out and about in a daze. West Germans were speaking the way we now talking about Obama: They never thought the Wall would fall in their lifetimes. They said this with tears in their eyes. It was a thrill to see.

At Checkpoint Charlie

Hidden Things by C. P. Cavafy

My wonderful pal Drew told me the other day that he was reading the Greek poet C.P Cavafy’s work and one of his favorite poems was Hidden Things. Then he promptly read it out loud to me over the phone and I was riveted. I remembered that I had a book of Cavafy’s and went to look for it on the shelf. Finding it, I realized we had different translations and then we read them to each other line by line, liking bits and pieces of each. Below is the 1975 version translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard.

Hidden Things

From all I did and all I said
let no one try to find out who I was.
An obstacle was there that changed the pattern
of my actions and the manner of my life.
An obstacle was often there
to stop me when I’d begin to speak.
From my most unnoticed actions,
my most veiled writing—
from these alone will I be understood.
But maybe it isn’t worth so much concern,
so much effort to discover who I really am.
Later, in a more perfect society,
someone else made just like me
is certain to appear and act freely.

The Wire Sculptures of Ruth Asawa

When we were out in California this August I was finally able to see the incredible wire sculptures of Ruth Asawa (1926-)–by accident. Wandering around the new de Young museum in San Francisco we found them by the elevators.

I first heard of Asawa at Third Avenue Clay, the ceramic studio in Gowanus, Brooklyn where I made small sculptures. I saw her  on the cover of a magazine laying on the table. She was studied at the renown Black Mountain college  with Josef Albers among others. I immediately fell in love with her woven wire pieces with their organic undulations and outer-spacey forms. She was a special find, as besides Nancy Spero (1926-2009, Spero just passed away 0n Oct 18), I knew so few female artists of this generation to be inspire by and who had managed to break through with a language of their own.

Director and Actor Guru Dutt

Film historian Elliott Stein–who holds a monthly cinema chat for BAMcinematek–highly recommended that I see Guru Dutt’s seminal work Pyaasa (1957) within the Dutt retrospective at the NYFF. Craig and I saw the wonderful story of a poet who is struggling with the world around him yesterday. (Elliott wrote on Dutt in The Village Voice here.)

This was one of my favorite scenes and songs/recitations of poems. Our hero Vijay/Guru is serving drinks at the home of his Boss the publisher who he has just found out is also the husband of his college sweetheart Meena! I’m trying to find a translation of the key line that he repeats. It’s something crazy melancholy like joy to those who love and are loved in returned.

Watching Antonioni with Scorsese

After rewatching Antonioni’s  L’eclisse yesterday and wanting to post some film stills as every frame is so stunning, I found this Youtube piece with Scorsese discussing Antonioni’s era the impact of this film. and its infamous final seven minutes.

Snapshots in Los Angeles and San Francisco

These are some of the best photos from my trip with Craig to Los Angeles and San Francisco this August. I love his shots in San Francisco’s Chinatown and this is only a selection. I also had to include one of me in front of the famous LACMA (Los Angeles County Musuem of Art) lampposts especially with the institution in the news so much due to their film program potentially being cut from their budget, and then, now, maybe being saved. I also included my favorite shot of Craig and I, even though it’s out of focus. I also liked the one I took of some branches.

Poems on My Wall at Work

Some poems I’ve placed on my wall at work.

1. Love this one from Emily Dickinson. I read it on the subway!

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant—
Success in Cirrcuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightening to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind—

2. My Dad told me a while back that this was one of his favorite passages from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam:

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on; nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.