Myth of Arrival

  

Last week I was feeling a bit blue. Maybe it was the humidity? Hard to know. Whatever the case I found myself in the Spanish language section of the Michigan State University library (4 East) randomly pulling books of poetry off the shelves and seeing if I could read anything. While I cannot speak Spanish (yet) I have, maybe at best, a kindergarten-level ability and can sound out many words if I go slow and no one is around to giggle. My goal was to find a book of poetry that had not been translated into English.

The first book I pulled down, at random, was Dados y Dudas, "Dice and Doubts," which seemed a good sign. It was by Amalia Iglesias Serna, who I had not heard of but was curious about. This is not a slur at the poet. I am grossly ignorant of most non-English speaking poets. Sure, I can identify on a map where Pablo Neruda hails from, but if I had to name five contemporary Latin or South American poets? Five Latin or South American women poets? Let us just say it would be highly embarrassing. Still, what one can do about one's own ignorance is learn and that was what I wanted to do.

The first thing I did one I got home was to see if anyone else had attempted to translated Dados y Dudas. For all I knew there was an excellent copy waiting for me to read and my labors would be for not. I found on the on-line journal Terra Incognita one her poems, Amanece en el tren, translated by Juan Manuel López and Marta López-Luaces. But that was it, as far as I could tell. One of the strengths of the Internet is that if you look in the right direction you can find almost anything it seems. Nonetheless, if you misspell a word or don't know which was to turn a whole lot can also pass you by.

At the website Amediavoz.com I did discover, however, that our poet was born in the Spanish city of Palencia in 1962 but at the age of eight moved to the Basque city of Bilbao where she later received a master's degree at the University of Deusto. Among her books she has written are Memorial de Amauta (1988), Mar en sombra (1989), Dados y dudas (1996) and her newest book, Antes de nada, después de todo (2003). She has been awarded numerous awards, including the highly esteemed Adonáis award in 1984 for "Un lugar para el fuego."

I like her work. It appears (from what I have read so far) hep in the sense of her exploration of the fragmented self in this modern age. In an article subtitled El poder de las palabras ("The power of words") Dionisia García desrcribes the poetry in Dados y dudas says of the poems that they are (again I must apologize for this rough translation, I know I do not have all the words right):

… un lenguaje contenido, sugerente, donde entre el azar y la duda se esconde la sombra, las preguntas sin respuesta … a pesar de la nebulosa, de la incapacidad para comprender … [Amalia] sigue violentando las palabras para hacerlas resonar, porque no es una “amauta” enloquecida, sino que posee la lucidez de quien ha tenido que plantarle cara al destino, no siempre benevolente.

… a contained language, suggestive, where between chance and doubt the hides shadows, questions without answers … in spite of this obscurity, its unwillingness to include/understand… [Amalia ] continues doing violence to the words to make them resonate, because the "amauta" is not driven crazy, but that she has the lucidity to stand up to experience her destiny, one that is not always benevolent.

I will be able to make a better assessment of her work as I go along. It is my goal to translate, slowly, all the poetry in this book. I am, I hope, open to all comments, criticisms, concerns and questions. If I make shamefaced errors with my translations, it is not out of pride or hubris but rather outrageous ignorance on my part.

Here is the first poem (page 11):

Cuando quise leer la caligrafia de las brasas,
las palabras sin certezas hacían un ruido de celofán
entre los dedos, ya entonces alguna brecha abierta,
arrugas que no supe interpretar. Las manos de un
alfarero loco modelaban mi sombra y el orfebre puso
a secar mi corazón encima de la empalizada.

When I wanted to read the calligraphy of live coals,
without certainties the words made noise like cellophane
between the fingers, already then an opened gap,
wrinkles that I did not know how to interpret. The hands of
a crazy potter modeled my shadow and the goldsmith put
my heart to dry upon the fence.

My dear friend, Ruelaine Stokes, the coordinator of the Old Town Poetry Series, sent me this email today, which I am passing on to you:

Right now in the Lansing Area, poets and musicians … are organizing a performance event to celebrate the life of Trinidad Sanchez, Jr. and to raise money for his family. The event will take place on Friday, August 18, 2006, at 8 PM at the Creole Gallery, 1218 Turner Street in Lansing.

Trinidad died without health insurance — of a massive stroke at age 63. His wife has been quite ill this past year. Our plan is to collect as much money as we can on Friday night and send it down to San Antonio with Rina Risper, who will be attending the memorial there for Trinidad on Sunday, August 20. Rina will give our contributions to Regina Chavez y Sanchez, Trinidad’s wife. Similar benefits are taking place in San Antonio, Denver and Detroit.

Sort of like Johnny Appleseed, Trinidad traveled around the country planting the seed of poetry in the hearts of anyone he met—rich or poor, women or men, old or young, black, white or brown. He was a real minstrel, an artist from the inside out.

What impressed me so much is that he took the time to visit every poetry group in Lansing that he could — the Chicano poets, the black poets, the white poets, the young poets, the old poets. He wasn’t afraid to cross the social borders, and he was just an awesome poet.

If you are unable to join us, and you want to contribute something to his family, you could send a check to:

Regina Chavez y Sanchez
2803 Fredericksburg Rd. #1215
San Antonio, TX 78201

But do join us! It will be a real celebration — not only of Trinidad — but also of our own capacity to “shine” and to sing our truth with a powerful voice. That is what he wished for all of us.

I will see you all there!

This is fab-oo news!

My friend Erin posted this fantastic news on her blog:

I'm pleased to announce that my chapbook manuscript Alluvium will be published by dancing girl press in June of 2007. Alluvium is a collection of poems surrounding the necessary struggles of queerness, with the river as an overarching motif.

You rock, Erin!

Alfonsina took a train to Mar del
Plata. That much is true. She took a train
and walked into the sea. The rest? I tell
you I was not there, I don't know. Complain
all you want. Argentina is not Spain
and your lousy geography does not
make it so, ever. Please try and explain
this. We spend millions, send a cosmonaut
to space and still a girl is only taught
about spinsterhood and her maidenhead.
She had cancer, you know. It was not caught
in time. She wrote, "voy a dormir." She said,
"I am going to sleep." That is true. She
took a train and walked out into the sea.

My sonnet is about Alfonsina Storni (May 1892 — October 25, 1938); Argentina's first feminist poet and one of the greatest writers of all South American verse. I do not know if that will come through in my translations of her yo en el fondo del mar¹ but that is the fault of the translator, not the poet. Tarraugh Flaherty says this of the poet:

Alfonsina Storni's life serves as a reflection to the problems that may have faced any intellectual woman during the early to mid 20th century in a male dominated society. Storni introduced pertinent issues well before the Women's Liberation Movement even began to impact society. She was a Latin woman, of lower income who … spoke on the behalf of many women by suggesting that relationships between men and women be intellectual and more balanced. She urged the government to grant women the vote and wrote articles and essays on women's rights. La Nacion of Buenos Aires published several articles that she wrote under the pseudonym "Tao-Lao." She became a part of a group of writers, poets, artists, and musicians of the time who together visited "La Pena," a restaurant where Alfonsina used to stand to recite her poetry.

However, it is always dramatic deaths that make front page news and Storni, like her fellow Argentine poet Alejandra Pizarnick, took her own life. Though Pizarnick battled life-long depression, Storni's battle was with cancer. Following her sister-in-writing, Virginia Woolf, on October 25, after writing her suicide note in the form of the poem, Voy a Dormir, she filled her pockets with stones and drowned herself in the surf off Mar del Plata.

Some very good translations of her work can be found in Marjorie Agosin's These Are Not Sweet Girls (1994) as well as Rachel Phillips' Alfonsina Storni: From Poetess to Poet (1975).

***

at the bottom of the sea
there is
a crystal house.
it flows
to an avenue
of stony coral.
around five o’clock
a great golden fish
comes to greet me.
to me it brings a red
bouquet of coral
flowers.
I sleep in a bed
a little bit bluer
than the sea.
through the crystal
a squid
winks at me.
in the green wood
that surrounds me
"din, don," "din, dan" …
sing and dance
the blue-green sirens
of mother-of-pearl.
and over my head,
burning in the sunset,
the spiny bristles of the sea.

1. Yo en el fondo del mar goes as follows:

   En el fondo del mar,
   hay una casa
   de cristal.
   A una avenida
   de madréporas
   da.
   Un gran pez de oro,
   a las cinco,
   me viene a saludar.
   Me trae
   un rojo ramo
   de flores de coral
   Duermo en una cama
   un poco más azul
   que el mar.
   Un pulpo
   me hace guiños
   a traves del cristal
   En el bosque verde
   que me circunda,
   din don … din dan ñ
   se balancean y cautan
   las sirenas
   de nácer verdemar.
   Y sobre mi cabeza,
   arden en el crepúsculo,
   las erizadas puntas del mar.
   [back]

  

X — Wheel of Fortune/ Migration

The destiny of the ocean's creatures are wrapped up in their seasonal migrations in much the same way that our fortunes and successes are shaped by the visible and invisible patterns we create in our daily lives. In the Rider-Waite deck the Wheel of Fortune has more to do with happenstance, gambling, disarray than any patterns one could predict. In Migration, the idea is a little different. It is true that a gray whale, migrating from Alaska to Baja California, might be subjected to various unforeseen dangers (whalers, sharks, illness) but still there is a larger idiosyncratic pattern that is driving the whale to migrate in the first place.

What an outside observer calls luck the whale, responding to the call to migrate, would say that there are greater spiritual forces at work here and that, when followed, these forces will guide the whale to the birthing lagoons in Baja. The same thing can be said of our lives; everything has its own life patterns, regardless of whether you travel a million miles to see it out or simply open and close in your daily tide pool. When you allow these forces of abundance to work with you versus against you things become ingenuously simple to accomplish.

Ask yourself, should Migration wander into your reading, what are some of the daily patterns you have created that act upon your life, and in relationship, connect to your question? Should the card be reversed in your reading, then we are dealing with some of the more darker patterns of your life; see which of these you are fighting with? Are there "issues" that seem to haunt you? (addictions?obsessions?) Once you see your own patterns and the forces in your life then you can act accordingly to follow them and harvest the increase they bring.