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Thursday, February 6th, 2014
What we need is a memoir without a self. A memoir about somebody other than 'me.'
This weekend I started Zachary Lazar's new novel, I Pity the Poor Immigrant, set in New York and Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and the beginning, middle and end of the 20th Century -- a nice broad span to cover in 250pp! I am enjoying it. The narrative structure of the book is a little different than any I have seen before -- the framing story is told in the first person by Hannah Groff, a journalist. The three framed stories (well there are more than that -- the three main ones) are a first-person narrative of Groff writing an article about the killing of David Bellen, an Israeli poet; a third-person narrative of events earlier in her life; and a third-person narrative of events in the life of Meyer Lansky. I'm finding the middle one of those especially interesting because the narrator is clearly Groff; but she refers to her younger self in the third person. It gives me a little frisson of weirdness every time she refers to "Hannah".
posted evening of February 6th, 2014: Respond
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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
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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
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Saturday, February first, 2014
por J Osner
Quiero otra vez rebosar
otra vez saber
la palabra exacta
necesaria
para describir este mundo
lo que concibo
la frase
esencial
posted evening of February first, 2014: Respond
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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
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Sunday, January 26th, 2014
So a couple of weeks ago I was writing a murder tune based loosely on iconic murder tune "The Banks of the Ohio" -- I came up with "Braddock" as a good name for a town to be the setting; did a little research and found there is such a town, and it is pretty ideally located on the banks of the beautifully named Monongahela River, one of the two principal tributaries of the Ohio. Came up with "Veil of Mourning", which John and I played at our New Year's jam. And weird, this story seems to be sticking with me -- I spent some time last week listening to "The Cuckoo, she's a pretty bird" in different versions including Richard Fariña's, "The Falcon"; and the thing to do suddenly seemed to be to write a new version of the Braddock story, called "The Buzzard" -- so that's what I did. Check it out:
It was fun picking up my guitar -- I have not played it in a while.
posted morning of January 26th, 2014: Respond
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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
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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
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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
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Friday, January 10th, 2014
Herewith two magnificent poems about Lot's nameless wife.
Lot's Wife
by Anna Akhmatova, translated by Richard Wilbur
The just man followed then his angel guide
Where he strode on the black highway, hulking and bright;
But a wild grief in his wife’s bosom cried,
Look back, it is not too late for a last sight
Of the red towers of your native Sodom, the square
Where once you sang, the gardens you shall mourn,
And the tall house with empty windows where
You loved your husband and your babes were born.
She turned, and looking on the bitter view
Her eyes were welded shut by mortal pain;
Into transparent salt her body grew,
And her quick feet were rooted in the plain.
Who would waste tears upon her? Is she not
The least of our losses, this unhappy wife?
Yet in my heart she will not be forgot
Who, for a single glance, gave up her life.
from
What Lot’s Wife Would Have Said (If She Wasn’t A Pillar of Salt)
By Karen Finneyfrock
Do you remember when we met
in Gomorrah? When you were still beardless,
and I would oil my hair in the lamp light before seeing
you, when we were young, and blushed with youth
like bruised fruit. Did we care then
what our neighbors did
in the dark?
...
Cover your eyes tight,
husband, until you see stars, convince
yourself you are looking at Heaven.
Because any man weak enough to hide his eyes while his neighbors
are punished for the way they love deserves a vengeful god.
I would say these things to you now, Lot,
but an ocean has dried itself on my tongue.
So instead I will stand here, while my body blows itself
grain by grain back over the Land of Canaan.
I will stand here
and I will watch you
run.
...or of course there's the Gang of Four...
posted evening of January 10th, 2014: 3 responses
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