Yarimo / To My Love comes from Datevik Hovanesian’s 1998 album Listen To My Heart. I have used the phrase before in an earlier poem but I like it so much I am using it again. Please enjoy.
Give up my name. Give up my form; this form
I call my body. Angels do […]
This is a translation of The Bluest of Lips by my friend Bella who also helped me with earlier translations for Babylon Crashing. Thank you, Bella!
Միթե՞ փտում է: Նույնիսկ փտելու ձայնն է լսվում կաթիլ առ կաթիլ:
Մատներդ մեղմ այն կիսաշրջազգեստի տակ են սահում,
Որում մահացավ: «Սիրում եմ խակ սեքս» ես ասում,
Իսկ խեղդվածը մեռյալ հայացքով […]
In Armenian my name is Zachar, Զակար — the “y” is dropped since it means (if memory serves me, I could be wrong here) “son of” …. Zachary = Son of Zachar. I have always wondered how the հայ-language would deal with a name that didn’t allow itself to be changed. The […]
the electric company’s jennifer of the jungle
As a wee Zachary I was fascinated by a children’s television show from the 1970s, The Electric Company; especially a segment staring Judy Graubert as Jennifer of the Jungle with her friend and Paul the Gorilla.
This poem wasn’t based on that sketch, I had written it before […]
The New York City poet Frank O’Hara, Ֆրանկ Օ’Հարա, was considered, by some, a Beatnik, Բետնիկ, in the same way Charles Bukowski, Չարլոս Բուկովսկի, is considered a Beat — neither man would embrace the title but because they didn’t belong to any easily identifiable group critics simply lump them in with the Beats. Allan […]
And … I wrote this sonnet about two weeks ago, an ode to Janis Lyn Joplin, Ջանիս Լին Ջափլին, rock star and saint. So far this poem has required me to make up the most words in my translations attempt to date. The words probably exist somewhere I just don’t know where to […]
I have been trying to find a recording somewhere of Frank O’Hara, Ֆրանկ Օ’Հարա, reading Autobiographia Literaria, which I translated into Ինքնակենսագրություն Գրականություն. Who knows? Perhaps there is a better way to say all this. I am sure there is a better way to say all this. Still, I love reading […]
Music Playlist at MixPod.com
neruda’s puedo escribir
los versos más tristes esta noche
About six months ago I talked a friend into recording in his slow Spanish the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda’s Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche. I worked a saxophone over the poem and was rather happy with the effects. I […]
A dictionary is only as good as the words it has in it, or the words it leaves out. If you can’t find words for basic human anatomy, let us say, then as a tool for translation it is rather weak. Armenian dictionaries, even on-line ones, suffer from prudish editors. The words […]
I couldn’t find the word for bittersweet in Heyerin for this translation. Part of me wants to just make up words when my dictionary can’t help; after all, I was able to find the two meanings, bitter and sweet, but I am afraid of doing a disservice to Sappho’s (Սաֆո) work and Armenian by […]
Again, I must apologize. There is a whole nation of people scattered across this earth who speak and read and write better Heyerin than I will ever (Greek and English too, but I can only focus on one language at a time) so if I make errors in my translations, I am sorry. I […]
This Sunday, December 7, 2008, will mark the 20th anniversary of the Gyumri earthquake. If I had talent I would come up with an original song on my duduk to commemorate and remember the disaster. Sadly, being tone deaf, I have no such skills. Instead I will share some translations I have […]
cyndi lauper’s she bop
I was 14 in 1984. It was a time when shameless icon worship was not just unavoidable but seemed to be a good idea as well. That year the person I would have taken a bullet for was Cyndi Lauper. She was the first live concert I ever went […]
the archaeology of
the monolators 2002-2004
My brother Eli and sister-in-law, Mary, are two of the coolest people I know. It’s not just that their music is, to me, the soundtrack of the last 7 years of my life, it’s that they are a total blast to hang out with. I deeply regret I was […]
Redd at Duc des Lombards
At 80 years old and still performing around Europe, Freddie Redd will always be the greatest jazz pianist for me. I know there are bigger names out there than Redd’s — and my praise certainly would never diminish the contributions of, say, Fats Waller or Count Bassie — but so […]
liana papyan
Saxophone players are rare in this world; female sax players doubly so. I had been listening to Ada Rovatti the night before; I love her hard bop sound, her song Airbop. I am sure there must be a female, Armenian sax player somewhere as well, holding court in a jazz club in […]
datevik hovanesian’s yarimo
One of the miracles of being human I find most satisfying is the simple realization that pain cannot last forever. I am not speaking for a particular person or a group or set of people — pain is an identity as much as love — I speak only for myself. However, […]
datevik hovanesian’s ervum em’
Year after year I forget more and more of the Armenian words I use to know. It is a pity, I love the language so but who can I speak it with in Grand Rapids, Michigan? I know no one. The most I can turn up are bizarre little […]
datevik hovanesian’s es gisher, lusniak gisher
I love the moon. No, let me take that back. I do not know the moon — I know the light in the sky; the feeling I get when I am all by myself, walking in a Michigan forest; the happiness moonlight brings me. One of my […]
datevik hovanesian, the breeze, hov arek
The idea that the wind and the breezes will blow us trouble, as Billie Holiday once put it in the song Ill Wind — Blow, ill wind, blow away/ Let me rest today/ You’re blowin’ me no good/ No good — fascinates me. My adopted hometown, Gyumri, sits on […]
datevik hovanesian, partridge, gakavik
To write is to let the world know what we have witnessed, we are told. Often I am cynical of poetry’s positive effect on the world, but that has entirely to do with my own short-comings as a writer, a feeling that everything I do I cast into a void that […]
alfonsina storni, voy a dormir
I have been working on a collaboration with naturalist, illustrator, cartoonist, librarian and the archivist for the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators Diane T. Sands for a while. She creates these fantastic page long, graphic novel-ish drawings I simple adore. The theme is ocean-related and I am very excited […]
“China’s answer to Diana Krall”
I have never attempted to write a jazz review before, but as they say, there is a first time for everything. This also appears in an edited different form on Lala.com.
Perhaps I am the wrong person to critique any modern jazz collection; when it comes to heroes my tastes […]
cover of dongqin’s ye bai
he ye you chun tian (2006)
What a voice! Who in the world is Dongqin and where can I find some information about her?
Sometimes internet hunts can be frustrating. What I find often is that the people who are doing wild, new things with jazz or poetry thrive in corners of […]
“paul celan & the seune” ZJC (2008)
I understand that the Jewish-German poet Paul Celan is, at times, obscure. I won’t pretend I have the skills it takes to translate him; partly because of his goal of dismantling the “Master’s Language” of Nazi Germany, that is, by stripping the language of Hitler and Heidegger and […]
“dream of the guitar” ZJC (2008)
One of the draw backs of the book I have put out is that it is not a bilingual edition. It is wholly in English. I am not as knowledgeable as I should be with copyright law but there is debate as to how much of Garcia Lorca’s […]
“federico: another age” ZJC (2008)
I have been working on a version of Federico Garcia Lorca’s famous poem, Romance Sombambule, or, roughly translated, The Sleepwalker Ballad. Several friends have looked at it and said that it was a good attempt. I must give thanks to France Isabelle, Shirley, Mistletoe
and Elle! You all gave […]
“red bamboo [new year]” ZJC (2008)
It is a new year. Earlier today Dino from Shanghai, China, helped me translate the poem Red Bamboo into Chinese. Thank you, Dino, you are wonderful!
起先我买了一枝的红竹嫩芽，
嫩芽短小未到一英尺的长度，
取了一把手柄缺口鳗鱼状刃。
得花整整一天才好打磨雕刻，
我恐怕三枝是我的最大极限。
又找到一只古旧的粘土罐子，
那由南蛇藤和鲜血塑就而成，
我填满管子在下面点起火来。
在木片上刻下疑问扔进火中：谁在那里？
火焰不断嘶响，直到拼出了“阿曼克斯”。
那是否是你愉快的灵魂言语，我的爱人？
火焰继续燃烧，直到又闪现出“我等你”。
我最后切刻竹子作为祈祷：你何时会来？
你仓促忙碌的灵魂快作答，你何时会来？
Living, as I do now, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, I have begun to become interested in Dutch poetry. When I tell my friends I have moved to the west side of the state I am usually greeted with with reactions that hover between horror, dismay, disbelief and/or incredulity. I can understand this. […]
“Orpheus Naming the Parts” ZJC (2007)
I must thank my friend from Ituzaingo, Argentina, Queenie Damned, who sent me this fabulous Spanish translation of the poem Naming the Parts.
Thank you ever so much! You are wonderful!
Quién sabe lo que siente uno directo antes de impacto?
¿Dicha Negra? ¿La lujuria más aburrida? ¿La angustia del diablo
en […]
“the myth of sedna” ZJC (2006)
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It is raining in Michigan. It is raining out on the lakes. My dear friend Sedna, with her rich songs of betrayal, death and resurrection, sent me a lament. I have been thinking of laments a […]
“me and pablo neruda in corsica” (1964)
I have been working on a translation of Federico Garcia Lorca’s El nino mudo, what I am loosely translating as The voiceless boy. On doing some research on Federico I discovered that in 1933 he met Pablo Neruda in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Later, in Madrid, 1934, he […]
Federico Garcia Lorca was executed in 1936, at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, by General Franco’s Fascist guard. Shortly before he was shot he wrote a series poems based on a style of Arabic poetry called a casida. The website Andalus, based out of Tangier, Morocco, has this to say on […]
“I am the false dawn among the leaves”
In the second to last scene of the play, Federico turns what has been a fairly realistic play into magical realism. It is the dead of night out in a humid forest. Somewhere in it Leonardo and the Bride are stumbling forward while search parties out […]
bad blood, bad blood
In the second scene of act 2 we see everyone returning back to the Bride’s house after the wedding. A celebration begins with music and dancing, but throughout it the Bride appears agitated and nervous and finally retires to her rooms. Suddenly Leonardo’s Wife tells the Bridegroom that her husband disappeared, but […]
let the bride awake
In the first scene of act 2 we see the Bride and Maid alone; the Maid is getting her mistress ready for the next day and the Bride is complaining about the heat, the Maid and her dead mother’s fate. A knock on the door reveals Leonardo; he talks of his […]
the root of the scream
In the third and final scene in act one, the Mother and the Bridegroom go to the Bride’s house, out in the middle of a barren wasteland, where they meet the Bride’s Maid and her Father. The Father, old, tells the Mother of his dead wife and his desire to see […]
[click] to get the big picture
In the second scene of Act 1 we meet Leonardo and his family. He has married the Bride’s cousin (who is simply called Leonardo’s Wife or just Wife by Federico; who gives everyone titles, not names in this play). The two of them live in a run-down hut […]
“the bride” by ZJC
Around January of this year I began to work on translating Federico Garcia Lorca’s poem-play, Bodas de sangre or better known in the English speaking world as Blood Wedding. I think I got through maybe two scenes in the first act and then, like a lot of my projects (short attention […]
Federico Garcia Lorca states in his essay The Theory and Function of the Duende/«Teoria y Juego del Duende»:
“En cambio, el duende no llega si no ve posibilidad de muerte, si no sabe que ha de rondar su casa, si no tiene seguridad de que ha de mecer esas ramas que todos llevamos y que no […]
This is a shout out to my friend, The Absinthe Review Network, a fellow Michigan resident who probably knows more about the French poet Charles Baudelaire and his love affair with absinthe than I do. However, my first exposure to Baudelaire was via Liam Clancy (of Clancy Brothers fame), when he read Charles’ famous […]
[continued from part 2]
The heads that Zurbaran painted, all frozen like the moon; El Greco’s butter yellow and lightning yellow; Father Sigüenza’s narratives; all the work of Goya; the apse in the church of the Escorial; all poly-chromed sculpture; the crypt in the house of the Duke of Oscuna; “Death with a guitar” in the […]
[continued from part 1]
The angel guides and gives gifts like Saint Rafael, defends and avoids like Saint Michael, speaks and forewarns like Saint Gabriel. The angel dazzles. He flies high over our heads shedding grace. It is then we realize effortlessly our work or harmony or dance. The angel that was on the road […]
Friends, today I would like to introduce to you Federico Garcia Lorca’s concept of “the duende,” that is (according to Wiki), “a rarely-explained concept in Spanish art, particularly flamenco, having to do with emotion, expression and authenticity. In fact, ‘tener duende’ can be loosely translated as having soul.”
In 1933, three years before his assassination, Federico […]
I had written a poem for my friend Ekaterina, for the photo-poem project we are working on. Over the summer my friend, Calmfeeler, went on holiday in southern China and when she got back she sent me her translation of this poem, in Chinese! Amazing!
告诉我我的爱， 一定有人可以
如鸽子般从容。 我苍白乏力, 但
爱广袤的天空。 那些向上伸展的
公寓楼的触角， 他们将全世界的
信息统统收纳, 他们将已老旧的
上帝推下了床.。 一定吧, 我想,
穿过了这重门， 就是罗马
在冬日的天际， […]
image taken from the china-fun website.
I have not been able to find all of Qiu Jin’s floral poems yet what I have found, however, intrigues me. I am sure if I knew more about Chinese poetry and various themes and motifs that run through it I might understand a bit better the references she is […]
still from the movie based on the ballet Red Detachment of Women (1930)
In attempting to find information on Qiu Jin’s grave I found a cryptic message on a website concerned with Dragon Boat races, “Qiu Jin, also called rui qin jing xiong, Jianghu Swords-woman and yu gu, born in Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province, was good at […]
actress Li Xiuming as Qiu Jin: Revolutionary
Our modern view of Qiu Jin is … curious, at best. Several Hong Kong produced movies have made it to the States (if you look hard enough); one was filmed in 1953 with the actress Li Lihua and again in 1983 staring Li Xiuming. There is a […]
image stolen from revolutionary women stencils
When the Eight-Nation Alliance invaded China, crushed the Boxer Rebellion and then marched into Beijing on August 14, 1900, they: “undertook several punitive expeditions against the Boxers. Troops from most nations engaged in plunder, looting and rape. German troops in particular were criticized for their enthusiasm in carrying […]
Image taken from www.sx.gov.cn
To understand what motivated Ch’iu Chin (Qiu JIn) and her work we need to remember the time period in which she lived. China had just been internationally disgraced by the invasion of the Eight-Nation Alliance (Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) which sought to […]
image taken from a ballet based on Qiu Chin’s life
Mistletoe sent this link to me, thank you very much! It is collection of Qiu Jin’s poem in original Chinese. It was from that page I found this poem to translate:
秋瑾〈對酒〉
不惜千金買寶刀，貂裘換酒也堪豪。
一腔熱血勤珍重，灑去猶能化碧濤。
For a precious sword I would not resent spending a thousand gold coins;
let me […]
My friend Dian sent me this translation of a poem I wrote this morning. It is Malaysian:
Rintihan Narcissus
Bayanganku samar
ditelan ombak, semuanya
bergerak pantas.
wajahku tercela
oleh bebunga laut yang
terapung.
Thank you, Dian! You rock!
Here is the original.
Narcissus’ Lament
You can’t look
at yourself in these
waves, everything
moves so fast. My
face, […]
taken from Wikipedia (China) “Statue of Ch’iu Chin located
on West Lake, Hangzhou”
The poem I am working on today is an earlier one, written perhaps in Ch’iu Chin’s (Qui Jin) late teenage years or early twenties. It should be noted that while there are numerous biographies written about her most deal with Ch’iu Chin “the […]
reproduced from Ch’iu Chin chuan (1969)
Picking up where we left off with the poet Qiu Jin (Ch’iu Chin), we see that the two years she spent in Japan, 1904 to 1905, were productive ones. Chang and Saussy describe them this way:
In June 1904, having outgrown Beijing and her friends, Qiu left for Japan after […]
photo reproduced from Chiu Chin chuan (1969)
So the Supreme Court has rolled back reproductive rights for women once again and across the nation anti-abortionists chomp and jeer over the victory. What I am curious about isn’t that a group of ultra-conservative male judges would pass laws making women second class citizens by […]
My friend Mistletoe wrote recently suggesting a new poet I should read, Li Ch’ing-chao (the modernized version of her name is Li Qingzhao 李清照).
All sources I read credit her with being one of the best poets of China. She lived from 1084 to 1151, during a time of great war and chaos […]
In a culture dominated by male poets it is refreshing to discover other voices, even if one must look a little harder to find them. In ancient China, during the Tang dynasty (618 — 907 AD), women poets could be found working in several occupations but a large number were entertainers or courtesans. […]
You would think there were no ancient Chinese women poets of consequence by reading the popular translation in English poetry anthologies I can lay my hands on. I suspect this has to do with the translators more than anything else. For example, out of Innes Herdan’s 300 Tang Poems (Far East Book Company, […]
Today I see the importance of friends. It is good to have them and it is even better when a friend puts up with your pestering to have your poem translated into his or her language. So today’s Shout of Joy and Thanks goes out to my wonderful pen pal who goes by […]
I have been thinking all week of the assassination last Friday in Istanbul of Hrant Dink, a prominent Turkish journalist of Armenian descent, by Turkish Nationalists. While it failed to make news here in the States it sparked International outrage in Europe, Turkey and Armenia. In a BBC report:
“The speaker of Armenia’s […]
Bodas de sangre
Federico Garcia Lorca
Blood Wedding
translated by ZJC
Acto primero, cuadrp tercero
interior de la cueva donde vive la novia. al fondo, una cruz de grandes flores rosa. las puertas, redondas, con cortinajes de encaje y lazos rosa. por las paredes, de material blanco y duro, abanicos redondos, jarros azules y pequeños espejos.
Act 1. Scene 3
interior of […]
Bodas de sangre
Federico Garcia Lorca
Blood Wedding
translated by ZJC
Acto primero, Cuadro segundo
habitación pintada de rosa con cobres y ramos de flores populares. en el centro, una mesa con mantel. es la mañana. suegra de Leonardo con un niño en brazos. lo mece. la mujer, en la otra esquina, hace punto de media.
Act 1, Scene 2
morning. […]
“Blood Wedding: Act 1, Scene 1″ ZJC (2006)
“[Drama] is when the word on the page desires to become human and stands up.”
– Federico García Lorca
Of late I have been becoming a tad bit obsessed with García Lorca’s gypsy poetry. There is, of course, his famous Gypsy Ballads, dealing with the myth of the urban […]
Here are two more translations. These are my first attempts at working on the poetry from Amalia Iglesias Serna’s Dados y Dudas (1996). Mistakes will be made by me. However, if someone, somewhere, reads my crude attempts and is able to help bring these poems into English with the same beauty I […]
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 […]
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 […]
Let’s go back a bit; let us start this translation when I woke up in the late dawn of this morning and put my headphones on. I have been listening to the San Francisco Jewish jazz ensemble Davka’s The Golem over and over. It is the soundtrack to Der Golem (1920) from […]
Synesthesia (noun) The description of one kind of sense impression by using words that normally describe another.
I don’t know any Greek, which is a shame. I don’t know Spanish either, but I know less Greek than I do Spanish so I have chosen something by a Spanish poet to translate today. Not just […]
Today I began work on a sonnet by Uruguay’s Juana de Ibarbourou. She was born in 1895 and was an early feminist, among other things. My Spanish is even worse than my French, so I am asking for help with some friends on several of the key terms I am getting stuck on. […]
I took a wonderful Shakespeare course my last semester of graduate school and one of the text we examined was The Tempest. One direction of scholarship that proved extremely interesting was the re-examination of colonial literature not from the point of view of the colonizer but the colonized. In other words, what does […]
Let us look at an actual Baudelaire sonnet and see what makes it different from other sonnets? First, there is the rhyme pattern. ABAB ABAB CCD EED But form in itself is not enough to make this poem Modern. Let us look at the original French. What do you see […]
My friend from Gijon, Spain, sent me this translated version of “Narcissus’ Lament.” Thank you so much!1
No te puedes ver
reflejado en estas
olas, todo se mueve
demasiado rapido
mi cara, nublada
por las flores
flotantes del mar.
The original being:
You can’t look
at yourself in these
waves, everything
moves so fast. My
face, marred
by floating
sea flowers. [back]
You might not know this, but of the few dreams I have one of them is to go to South Africa’s Dyer Island and go diving with the largest colony of Great White sharks in the world. Just wee Zachary surrounded by a dozen or so 10 foot long sharks. What fun! […]
Once more, dear friends, once more.
So the story goes: Janis Joplin wanted to call her first live record, Dope, Sex & Cheap Thrills. Through the power of editing the record company issued it as Cheap Thrills. The rest, as they say, is history.
Now I have gone back to an earlier translation of Neruda’s […]
This morning I woke up humming Janis Joplin. I am not sure why, I haven’t thought of the dead hippie in a long time, and it is not like the radio stations in my town play her music. In fact, for the most part, you would never know there was music recorded before […]
Blah, blah, blah. This new system is terrible! I feel like I am learning to speak a new language all over again, ham-stringed by the fact whatever I try comes out in baby-talk. I tried to post things that come out all wonky because I am still using the old system to […]
I discovered the Cuban poet Dulce María Loynaz while reading Marjorie Agosín’s wonderful These Are Not Sweet Girls: Latin American women poets (Fredonia, NY: White Pine Press, 1994) a few weeks ago. Anyone who wants a introduction to the shakers and movers of modern poets making a name for themselves should not only buy […]
Back on 18th of December I translated Neruda’s Deber del poeta. What a wonderful poem! It makes me very happy and I think I want to share a bit of the first stanza here with you:
A quien no escucha el mar en este Viernes
por la mañana …
a éste yo acudo y sin hablar […]
So what did I do wrong? How can I improve? Where can I go from here? In a slightly different world than this one I would have workshopped all my translations with other poets, all of us best friends and fluent in Spanish, to get their points of view on my poor […]
Oda a la sal
Pablo Neruda
Ode to Salt
translated by ZJC
Esta sal
del salero
yo la vi en los salares,
sé que
no van a creerme,
pero canta,
canta la sal, la piel
de los salares,
canta
con una boca ahogada
por la tierra.
Me estremecí en aquellas
soledades
cuando escuché
la voz
de la sal
en el desierto.
Cerca de Antofagasta
toda
la pampa salitrosa
suena:
es una
voz
quebrada,
un lastimero
canto.
Luego en sus cavidades
la sal gema, montaña
de una luz […]
El hombre invisible
Pablo Neruda
The Invisible Man
translated by ZJC
Yo me río,
me sonrío
de los viejos poetas,
yo adoro toda
la poesía escrita,
todo el rocío,
luna, diamante, gota
de plata sumergida,
que fue mi antiguo hermano,
agregando a la rosa, pero
me sonrío,
siempre dicen “yo,”
a cada paso
les sucede algo,
es siempre “yo,”
por las calles
sólo ellos andan
o la dulce que aman,
nadie más,
no pasan pescadores,
ni libreros,
no pasan albañiles,
nadie […]
In these dark times, will there also be singing?
Yes, there will be singing.
About these dark times. — Bertolt Brecht
I have been thinking about Harold Pinter’s comment yesterday about this poem: “nowhere in contemporary poetry have I read such a powerful visceral description of the bombing of civilians.” Is this true? Carolyn Forché’s Against […]
The windflower, Garcia Lorca’s anemonas, takes us into a land of sleep and dream. The notes from Collected poems tell us: “[the windflower] is the flower of Morpheus” (page 946).1 According to Encyclopedia Mythica, Morpheus is the Greek god of dreams:
[He] lies on a ebony bed in a dim-lit cave, surrounded by […]
Every time I have had the opportunity to correspond with him, Dr. Samuel H. Gruber has always appeared to be a thoughtful and courteous man of science. He heads the the Bimini Biological Field Station in the Bahamas and knows more about sharks than anyone else I can think of. One of the […]
Time being as short as it is, I have not had enough of it to meditate on this poem by Wang Wei to see what interested me to try my hand at it. However, the act of translation was meditation enough, I feel. The text I worked from was Gems of Classical Chinese […]
“I engage in the work/ of undressing myself./ And I love …” warns Ana Istarú in the 4th poem from her La estación de fiebre. It is an interesting poem, concerning a type of love that was once present in everyday life, “the forgotten fashion of our/ grandmothers,” but now is horrible, a love […]
I discovered Ana Istarú’s work in an anthology edited by Fernández Olmos & Paravisini-Gebert some two years ago, but like lots of projects I dreamed about I was hesitate to try my hand at translating what was a series of highly compelling poems. Luckily, my library also had Istarú’s award winning book of poems, […]
amantes
Alejandra Pizarnik
lovers
translated by ZJC
una flor
no lejos
de la noche
mi cuerpo mudo
se abre
a la delicada
urgencia del rocío
a flower
not so far
from nighttime
my silent body
relaxes
to the delicate
urgency of the dew
To keep this in retrospect, in 1971, a year after I was born, Carole King’s “It’s Too Late” was on the Pop Charts, as well George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord” and Three Dog Night’s “Joy To The World.” Movies, such as Brian’s Song, A Clockwork Orange, Dirty Harry and The French Connection, were in […]
Here is the completed translation of Pizarnik’s Árbol de Diana in all its 38-stanza glory. I removed the Spanish original that I had been trying to follow in earlier postings simply because of formating reasons. Due to different line breaks on the computer screen each poem varied in length as I posted them. […]
The Mexican poet, essayist and translator Octavio Paz wrote in Alejandra Pizarnik’s introduction to Árbol de Diana, “[the book] does not conatin a single false detail.”1 These were, Paz demanded, Pizarnik’s finest poems. That might be true.
What I find interesting about Árbol de Diana is that even though the sections are […]
To my best knowledge, there have been only two full translations of Alejandra Pizarnik’s Árbol de Diana; that is, Graziano (1987) and Bassnett (2002). Now I shall add my version of The Tree of Diana to the mix.
I am so much more comfortable with the ancient religions than I am with the modern ones. […]
My brother Eli, his wife Mary and Baby Ivan have just left for the Detroit Airport. It is raining. I have left Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juilet Overture-Fantasy on endless CD playback. I love that music right now. It is dramatic, brassy, cocky, alive while so much of our 21st Century art […]
Poema para Emily Dickinson
Alejandra Pizarnik
Poem for Emily Dickinson
translated by ZJC
Del otro lado de la noche
la espera su nombre,
su subrepticio anhelo de vivir,
¡del otro lado de la noche!
Algo llora en el aire,
los sonidos diseñan el alba.
Ella piensa en la eternidad.
Across the night
this delay; its name,
its surreptitious yearning to live,
across the night!
Something cries in the very air,
a […]
Algo
Alejandra Pizarnik
Something
translated by ZJC
noche que te vas
dame la mano
obra de ángel bullente
los días se suicidan
¿por qué?
noche que te vas
buenas noches
the night that you went away
the woman’s hand
the work of a frolicsome angel
the days that commit suicide
but why?
the night that you went away
good night
This poem is part of the miscellaneous verse collected in the “1971-72″ section of Pizarnik’s Obras Completas (page 243); though La Muerte y la Muchacha (Schubert) is dated November 1970, a couple of months after I was born. It is interesting that she was working with the concept of music and death as a […]
How can three lines cause me so much stress, dither, pang? I have been struggling with this poem since Monday when I first discovered it. At first I thought the problem was me. My Spanish is, of course, muy malo. There was nothing I could do, it seemed, to render it […]
The title poem from La última inocencia/ “The Last Innocence” (1956). Bassnett (2002) translates it as “Final Innocence.” However, perhaps because I have been listening to the Last Exile, vol.2 soundtrack (2003) all day there is dread, tension, conflict in the word “Last.” Last Exit to Brooklyn. Last Temptation of the Christ. […]
Cenizas
Alejandra Pizarnik
Ashes
translated by ZJC
La noche se astilló de estrellas
mirándome alucinada
el aire arroja odio
embellecido su rostro
con música.
Pronto nos iremos
Arcano sueño
antepasado de mi sonrisa
el mundo está demacrado
y hay candado pero no llaves
y hay pavor pero no lágrimas.
¿Qué haré conmigo?
Porque a Ti te debo lo que soy
Pero no tengo mañana
Porque a Ti te…
La noche sufre.
The night shattered into […]