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Monday, June 13th, 2011
This is my translation of Pelele's poem "Mutilaciones," which touched me so strongly when I read it last week.
Hacking it Apart
by Eduardo Valverde
The cripple in the morning
is the flight, the flight to nowhere,
is the light, the graveyard's light
that's shining, shining in my windows,
it's the bus, the line of buses
stinking sweetly on the roadway,
it's the cat up on the rooftop
where it's watching over the bells.
Half-blindness in the morning
is the frigid bite of dawn,
and forgetfulness's knockers
have no prince, have just a frog,
with the freezing rain foreseen
inside the blossom of my eyes,
inside the corpses of my
promised lands, still warm.
Half-lameness in the morning
is the spirit of the road,
and I've got my eyes wide open,
got my shrunken spirit's cough;
the sun, the half-lit sun, oh
how it's burning in their motors,
it's the end of every heartbreak,
they're in mourning for their games.
The birds get off scot-free,
my reading glasses going blind,
with whole decades slowly
dawning on this Monday.
A tantalizing thought I had on the train home this evening: with fairly minor rewrites, this poem could be set to the tune of David Rawling's "I Hear Them All".
posted evening of June 13th, 2011: 4 responses
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Sunday, June 12th, 2011
New businesses are opening in Vailsburg, Newark's western spur,
The sign on Sweeney's closed-down Liquors says a Subway's coming soon.
Improvement? Well perhaps, but anyways not detriment, besides
It’s good to see the signs of any economic life.
We’re riding bikes through Vailsburg, a group of us from west of here,
To see Marie and Ryan’s shop in Lincoln Park in Newark --
We’re waiting for some slower riders, an older man in slacks and straw hat
Chats with us about riding, about the 5-borough tour, he rides it yearly,
About his bike, a Trek (my model!), it's
“An old-school Trek,†he says, we chuckle.
Now the light turns green, we’re off, we ride due east, South Orange Ave.
We go
til it hits Springfield, downtown Newark and we’re nearly there,
We cut a little south on University and find their place
A few blocks down the way, on Crawford over by the school.
Marie and Ryan greet us and we look around -- Folk Engineered’s
Their company, builds custom bikes, with steel frame for classic look
And high performance, also something new, this year we see,
They’re putting out their first stock model bike, looks great, looks sweet.
Marsupial they’re calling it (still built to order), sleek clean lines --
It looks like an old Schwinn at half the weight.
They show us around the shop and walk us through the steps
Of building a steel frame, the measuring, the milling,
Ryan brazes lugs in for a water-bottle holder and we
Ooh and aah to see his reconditioned old machine tools
And the stately, austere frame that’s standing ready in a vise.
A lovely couple, they infect the whole group with their brio
And they serve us tasty crudités and cookies, fresh-baked,
Ryan’s cool iced-tea, we eat and chat and then we’re ready to head home.
On the way back I break from the group to get home a bit faster,
Sky is clouding up, the rain will come down soon, I think as I look up.
I always feel a little twinge as I ride by South Eleventh Street,
Where Brother’s BBQ was, my old favorite, it’s been closed for years.
I get back to South Orange, sweat is pouring off me,
Coast my way down Montrose in the cloudy twilight, here I am, back home.
So I’ll write up this whole journey as a verse and post it on my blog --
A verse? I’ve never done this -- but it fits to some rough meter,
So let’s get it out there, click on "Publish," see what people think.
Click through for more photos of the shop.
posted evening of June 12th, 2011: 3 responses
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The basic metric unit I've been thinking in poetically's the pæon, tetrasyllable with one stress on the third: and subtly varying the beat count and the emphasis, occasional cæsura, I find it stretches out the thoughts that I come up with and allows me to continue, to connect ideas that I'd not been aware of at the start. This basic pattern of stresses which I've been working with (and which I felt a shock of recognition at seeing confirmed in Pelele's piece the other day) is opening up new ways of hearing my thoughts. Two poems that I wrote yesterday venture a little further afield rhythmically; today's theme is dreams and transitions.
Fuzzy Punctuation
The dreams which I was just inside
come back to me, they give my day
unasked-for structure, so the friendly
stranger walking by on Broadway
smiling beatifically
is in some sense a page from last night's dream-book
(though he doesn't know it)
and he'll stay with me: be
smiling through my day's transactions,
follow to my office, he'll be
watchful as I give my notice,
end another chapter
of my life-book, and his visage
in my dreams and in my waking dream,
illuminates this bland transition,
lifts me up -- his dark brown moustache
serves as fuzzy punctutation,
marking off this minor epoch,
leading on, betokening
the job search that's to come.
Mentor
You can't escape your dreams, the old man said,
and I was not sure what to counter with,
I smiled shyly, hemmed and hawed
and joked, I don't imagine I'll be needing them
where I'm bound, I was going for a reference
to film noir, but it came out more sincere than I intended,
piss-poor irony, the old man said Don't worry,
I remember what you're going through,
I'm sure that you'll pull through until tomorrow. --
Then what? Felt a chill, to hear him use that ugly word,
the one that I'd been dreading,
but he laughed, and clapped me on the back, and winked,
and said that I'd be fine.
posted morning of June 12th, 2011: 1 response
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Saturday, June 11th, 2011
Here are a couple of poems I have written recently. Experimenting with story-telling and with prosody.
Horizon
The best-laid tracks converge, they meet
way out there by the setting sun
confounding engineering dreams perspective in the desert
where the train runs off the vanished rails and crashes, yes,
it's tragic, sad-sack Sam the goldrush pioneer will never see his lover
who was riding west to meet him, look how Jesse and his outlaws
are confused, the hold-up won't play out, they may just ride their horses over the edge behind the train or else perhaps they'll turn back just in time, they'll skirt impending doom and spend their days retelling stories of the one that got away.
Crystal Armies
Fit the image to the meter
We can print it when you're done
When the armies that you're dreaming
Wander sleepy off the page and
Wave their effervescent banners
To the rhythm of your drum.
Marching softly, scarcely there,
You have to strain to make them out
Their dusty footprints on the pages
Almost like a printer's error
When they finally encamp
Inside your thawed out cerebellum
They'll build ghostly fires and sing
About the journeys of their fathers
And you'll scratch your forehead wondering
(In your clarity of vision)
Where the simple, crystal image
Of your verbal armies went.
I'd like to thank Pelele of Muchacha Recostada, who has posted what I believe to be a great poem, Mutilaciones (from 2009) -- my working definition of a great poem is one the reading of which alters how you read and write poetry -- I believe that "Mutilaciones," with its frantic, driving meter and its clarity of vision, will have a permanent effect on my reading of poetry and on my poetic output. "Crystal Armies" is written strongly under the influence of Pelele's piece. I'm working on a translation of "Mutilaciones"* which will be my first time (even dreaming of) translating a metered poem -- I do not think I am going to be able to keep the rhyme, but the meter is coming through very naturally.
 * Update: translation is here.
posted morning of June 11th, 2011: Respond
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Saturday, June 4th, 2011
For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time [are] not worthy [to be compared] with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected [the same] in hope, Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. -- The letter of St. Paul to the Romans
Chapter â…§: 18-22
King James version
For a long time I have been wondering how a translation of JoachÃn Pasos' Battle-song: The War of Things might best preserve the voice of the poet. Throughout the poem he is addressing vosotros, the explicitly familiar, explicitly plural second person which does not exist in English. Turns out the key is the epigraph to the poem.For an epigraph, Pasos quotes from the Vulgate version of the above verses of Romans; but he prefaces the quotation with "Fratres:" -- "Brethren:", which is not part of these verses. Paul's letter is addressed to his brethren the Roman Christians, so this insertion makes good sense. And if you read Pasos' poem as a continuation of Paul's address to his brethren, then the familiar second-person plural is clear from context. This morning I had what seems to me like a good idea for a non-literal translation of the poem's third stanza:
Give me a motor, a motor stronger than man's heart.
Give me a robot's brain, let me be murdered painlessly.
Give me a body, metal body without and within another metal body,
just like the leaden soldier's who never dies,
never begs oh Lord, your grace, let me not be disgraced among your works
like the soldier of mere flesh, our feeble pride,
who will offer, for your day, the light of his eyes,
who will take, for your metal, take a bullet in his chest,
who will give, for your water, give back his blood.
Who wants to be like a knife, like one no other knife can ever wound.
(With liberal borrowings from Steven F. White's more literal translation.) This poem reminds me strongly of León Ferrari's paintings of armaments. Remember that the poet is addressing his brethren: He is asking for these cybernetic enhancements not from his God but from his peers.
posted morning of June 4th, 2011: Respond
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Saturday, May 14th, 2011
 bust of Pindar: National
Archæological Museum
of Naples
ἄÏιστον μὲν ὕδωÏ, ὠδὲ χÏυσὸς αἰθόμενον πῦÏ
ἅτε διαπÏÎπει νυκτὶ μεγάνοÏος ἔξοχα πλοÏτου
-- Pindar, Olympian Ode â… :
for Hieron of Syracuse
I got interested in this passage yesterday... I was trying to find out more about Œdipus and about Thebes, and one of the references was to Pindar's second Olympian ode. That particular reference* didn't turn up so much of interest; but I found the beginning of the first Olympian ode enchanting. Diane Svarlien translates it as "Water is best, and gold, like a blazing fire in the night, stands out supreme of all lordly wealth." I don't know Greek, but let's see how this works. The Perseus Digital Library makes it easy:
- ἄÏιστον μὲν ὕδωÏ: Water is best. This seems clear enough, I know "arist-" from its use in English, and "udor" is close enough to "water" for my ear. What does Pindar mean? That water is the most virtuous/noblest of the elements? It looks sort of like he's setting up water in opposition to gold; the lexicon at Perseus says μὲν ... δὲ can be rendered as "on the one hand... on the other hand" -- this does not come through in Svarlien's translation.
- χÏυσὸς αἰθόμενον Ï€á¿¦Ï á¼…Ï„Îµ... νυκτὶ: Gold blazing just like fire at night.
- διαπÏÎπει: It catches the eye.
- μεγάνοÏος ἔξοχα πλοÏτου: It looks to me like this phrase is meant to modify "gold" -- it's not too clear to me what "meganoros" is meant to do -- maybe in English this could be rendered as "but then again gold, the greatest wealth of great men, catches the eye; it blazes just like fire in the nighttime."
What does it all mean? ...Pindar is setting up some standards of greatness, it looks like, and then he is going to say that the greatest of all is the exploits of the Olympic contestants. Today in the NY Times magazine, Gary Wolf uses a different superlative in a similar construction when he calls gold "the most primitive form of wealth" -- seems like you could argue against that assertion, but anyways it caught my eye on the heels of reading Pindar.Another sort of amusing detail, for me anyways: AOTW one of the top Google hits for this passage is Belle Waring's post a few years ago at Crooked Timber about the badness of comments sections at various moderate-left political blogs.
 * "In such a way does Fate, who keeps their pleasant fortune to be handed from father to son, bring at another time some painful reversal together with god-sent prosperity, since the destined son met and killed Laius, and fulfilled the oracle of Pytho, spoken long before." -- Svarlien's translation
Update: I found my copy of Lattimore's translation of Pindar. (Which also is online at archive.org.) His rendering of the opening lines:
Best of all things is water; but gold, like a gleaming fire
by night, outshines all pride of wealth beside.
rings most pleasantly in my ears.
posted morning of May 14th, 2011: Respond
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Wednesday, May 11th, 2011
Below the fold, something that might become a first paragraph of a longer piece. I'm sort of wondering if it's worth pursuing; if you have any reaction to the piece I would be interested to know what it is. I'll post a comment a bit later concerning where I'm thinking about going with it; my hope is that its rhythm will grab the reader (or a particular few readers) and make him/her/them want to come along wherever I am going with it.
↷read the rest...
posted evening of May 11th, 2011: 3 responses
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by J Osner
Sinking into the warm black pillow of night. I’m dreaming
Masks, new faces, costumes I will wear
Internally, so I won’t know myself,
My face, my clean white tablet lies
There on the pillow looking up at me.
So paint! Draw crazy patterns on your cheeks;
Sculpt horns and wild protuberances, scars
Where your clean virgin skin is lying smooth.
Add blemishes and warts around your mouth,
Sprout tufts of wiry hair beside your nose --
just let yourself go,
make a May Day parade
of masks:
We’ll set them up
For all to see
We’ll let you know
Which ones will work,
Which ones will trick you out obscenely sinister unrecognized and sneaking stealthy sliding past
the doorways of your ego lurking dark around the alleys of your childhood memories;
And when I've gone to sleep I’ll see
My costumed armies waiting
And the desolation staging
Where they play.
posted morning of May 11th, 2011: Respond
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Saturday, May 7th, 2011
One of my very favorite-ever pictures of myself is this one, taken 8 years ago, when Sylvia was 3 and my parents were visiting -- I believe it was their first visit at our new house, the house we live in today. My dad took this picture of 3-year-old Sylvia on my shoulders, entranced by the dogwood blossom.Every year since then, the dogwood has produced fewer blossoms, fewer leaves; and this year it is well and truly dead. I spent some time this afternoon cutting off its limbs. For Sylvia's documentation of the process, look at our family album.
 Update -- a year later, it is down.
posted afternoon of May 7th, 2011: 1 response
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Sunday, April 24th, 2011
A story idea (or, well, a character idea -- nothing happening in the story, yet) that developed in China as I interacted with vendors at the Shanghai textile market. I was not really there to buy anything, just keeping Ellen and Sylvia company in their hunt for silk... So the idea is, there's this character, a sexually/interpersonally-frustrated American businessman who spends time in China working for his company. Not really sure of the details of this, possibly I would model him on a British expatriate we met in Suzhou who had lived there for several years doing marketing for a British telecommunications firm. I think the character's name is Morris Babel, just because I was reading 100 Years of Solitude recently and thinking what a great character name that would be, and it seems to work for this character. Babel's business does not involve textiles but he develops the kink of hanging around the fabric and clothing markets having people sell to him -- the salespeople, who are generally attractive young women, make eye contact, greet him, ask him to look at their wares, and if he pauses to take a look, aggressively market the merchandise, pulling him in and connecting with him, or creating the appearance of a connection. Babel finds this addictive and returns daily to the markets, buying clothing and fabric and trinkets he does not have any use for in exchange for this experience of feeling wanted. It seemed to me at the market like this form of direct personal marketing was the primitive form of the advertising industry I have been exposed to all my life in America, probably (almost certainly) more effective on a per-exposure basis than mass media advertising but of course much less efficient in terms of money, since labor is involved in each exposure.
posted morning of April 24th, 2011: Respond
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At Shady Characters, Keith Houston opens his 