|
|
Monday, February third, 2014
 Very exciting: a school of Spanish-language writing and literature is being launched in Brooklyn under the compelling name of Bolaño's book of poetry. Go to their launch party on Saturday! (I can't make it because I'm going to a poetry workshop at Medicine Show Theater, about which more anon.) I am planning to enroll in the poetry workshop led by Isabel Cadenas Cañon, and maybe also the writing workshop led by Lina Meruane. Can't wait!
posted evening of February third, 2014: Respond
➳ More posts about Poetry
|  |
|
Here is a new practice of revision I have been using. I have a couple of notebooks full of rough drafts at this point in a mix of English and Spanish, only a small minority of which I have even read, let alone revised into actual written work. What I've been doing is to scan quickly until I find a passage I like, and then develop it by means of translation: among other things, translating a text forces you to figure out what the core meaning of it is. So in particular, when I'm translating my own rough work with an eye toward revising it, I'm free to modify expression, tone and meaning in the interests of conveying more accurately the underlying sense of the text -- which I may or may not have been well aware of while I was composing the thing. I've had some good luck with this, including the last couple of poems I've posted. Here is a question: Can I (at least for as long as I have untouched raw material) make a daily practice of this? I would like to -- that would not necessarily mean a poem a day posted here, but hopefully a couple of poems a week anyways. Here is today's effort (no translation with this one, just revision in English):
Approaching
by J Osner
It's just dusk now
and the headlights gleam at you
as his front wheels hit that bump
in the road
Purse your lips now,
furrow your brow
as you watch him pulling up
to the curb
the wheels rolling noiselessly
to a stop
posted evening of February third, 2014: Respond
➳ More posts about Writing Projects
|  |
Saturday, February first, 2014
por J Osner
Inmóvil en el sótano escucho
Los pisos chirriantes
Mientras los pisa ella
Y la casa hecha carne gruñe
Pesada
Del fardo acumulado
De todos los años
Y miles de años
De todos los pies
Que sus tablas han pisoteado
De todos los vientos
Que sus maderas han azotado
Que las tejas han desalojado
De sus techos
Hace años
Y caÃda la noche
Suspira
La casa y se
Asienta. En su tanque
Callan
Los peces. Afuera
Escucho
El ruido suave
De hojas.
posted morning of February first, 2014: 2 responses
| |
Sunday, January 26th, 2014
Sullen entropy
by J Osner
It's sullen entropy holds sway
decay is part of every system
sands of time just slip away
now vanished, now too late to listen
wax cylinder records the ticking
clock that measures out our days
you listen now, can't find the second
when your life began to play
so play it backwards, scratch the groove
so lose the time that you've been tracking
irreversible flow now cracking
stationary mass begins to move
now creaking, warming as it slides across
this muddy, fecund, fetid marsh
with nothing left to prove:
now found, now lost
posted morning of January 26th, 2014: Respond
|  |
Saturday, January 25th, 2014
My translation (current draft -- there are still a couple of constructions that I'm not 100% sure about to call this "final") of Karen Finneyfrock's astonishing What Lot's Wife Would Have Said (If She Wasn’t A Pillar of Salt):
posted morning of January 25th, 2014: Respond
➳ More posts about Reading aloud
|  |
Monday, January 20th, 2014
I have been translating two stories told in the first person recently -- "Power", by Javier Sáez de Ibarra (from Bulevar), is one that I did a pretty fast rough draft of several months ago and just recently revised -- it is narrated by a factory worker who is trying to project an unwanted level of intimacy with his titular co-worker; and "A few prosaic lines" by Marta Aponte (La casa de la loca) is the story (still not totally sure I have this straight) of the wife of a poet in a village outside of San Juan, An interesting comparison between these two is how strongly I have to twist my sense of identity to say "I" like I mean it -- I find it quite easy to identify with the "I" in Power's "friend"'s story -- less so with the poet's wife on a personal level. With her I have a hard time finding a personal center; and yet the voice of this story is attractive to me as well. The story's climactic moment is a translation of Emily Dickinson being written onto the soles of her husband and son's shoes!
Tonight, when they walk into the club, my two men will be treading, without knowing it, on a few words stolen from the yankee poetess...
posted morning of January 20th, 2014: 2 responses
➳ More posts about Translation
|  |
Saturday, December 14th, 2013
I was briefly in touch with Roberto Bolaño's literary agent over the idea of my publishing Teach me to dance... The answer as it turns out is unsurprisingly "No, the estate has other plans for his early poetry" -- oh well, it was fun anyway to have that contact.
posted morning of December 14th, 2013: 1 response
➳ More posts about The Savage Detectives
|  |
Monday, December second, 2013
Another Infrarealist poem: this is by Guadalupe Ochoa, one of the few female Infrarealists.
The Domestication of Lightning
by Guadalupe Ochoa/ tr. Jeremy Osner
the lightning of touch announces
the downpour engendered in our embrace
fiery water of our bodies
posted morning of December second, 2013: 1 response
➳ More posts about Roberto Bolaño
| |
Friday, November 29th, 2013
Here is a poem of Bolaño's from Pájaro de calor. (It is quoted in Hiram Barrios' fabulous essay on the infra poets, Visitando al infrarrealismo.)
Teach me to dance
by Roberto Bolaño/ tr. Jeremy Osner
to draw my fingers through the cottoncandy clouds
to stretch out my legs tangled up in your legs...
(translation redacted, write me if you'd like to see it)
posted evening of November 29th, 2013: 1 response
➳ More posts about Readings
| |
Sunday, November 24th, 2013
Once son ellos, once, ferozmente poetas:
Hernán, Roberto y Montané, chilenos;
el ecuatoriano Nieto Cadena;
de la patria de Sandino: Beltrán Morales;
el peruano Enrique Verástegui,
el también peruano Jorge Pimente;
Luis SuardÃaz, del primer teerritorio
libre en América: Cuba, cubanamente;
más tres meshicas que son, qué remedio,
Orlando Guillén, ¡impresente!,
Mario en el camino de Santiago
y Julián Gómez... once son, pues,
y, ¿se fijaron?, ni una sola hembrita,
con tan buenas, guapamente sabrosas que son
y que escriben como Afroditas que surgieran
no de un pantanoso taller literario
sino de un bárbaro océano de pantalones de mezclilla.
--EfraÃn Huerta
It's eleven, eleven, ferociously poets:
Hernán, Roberto and Montané from Chile;
Ecuadorian Nieto Cadena;
from the land of Sandino, Beltrán Morales;
Peruvian Enrique Verástegui,
and Peruvian too, Jorge Pimente;
Luis SuardÃaz, from the first-ever free
territory of the Americas: Cuba, Cubanly;
and there's three Meshicas, what else can I say,
Orlando Guillén, absent!,
Mario on the road to Santiago,
and Julián Gómez... so they're eleven,
and notice? Not a single chick,
for all the lovely, sweet things out there
that write like Aphrodites sprung
not from some fetid literary workshop
but from a savage ocean of blue jeans.
posted afternoon of November 24th, 2013: Respond
| Previous posts about Projects
Archives  | |
|
Drop me a line! or, sign my Guestbook.
•
Check out Ellen's writing at Patch.com.
| |
