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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
I have spent the morning trying to find an Armenian translation of Rimbaud’s The Drunken Boat other than what I am working on. My tutor, Lucine, told me that she was familiar with the poem, having read a translation of it in high school. She could not recall who the translator was, or […]
One of the reasons I am keen on translating this poem is the sense of bright drunkenness Rimbaud crafted. I have been reading and re-reading “Arthur Rimbaud,”1 while one song plays endlessly on loop: “believe it now/ a wave is breaking/ I’ve been tracking you across the sky … look at you your hands […]
Translating a work into two languages simultaneously is hard work. I have been examining six French to English translations, Simpson, Sorrell, Mason, Spitzer, Cameron and Hill; all of them lacking. With the exception of Spitzer, what I take objection to is the various ways translators have butchered the poem simply in order to […]
“And I am a pretty/ piece of flesh, I am a pretty piece of flesh”; I got the news last night when I got home from work, the anthology is: “alive.”1 Yes, ISBN: 0595370594 is a reality. What, might you ask, is ISBN: 0595370594?
About six months ago a group of Lansing […]
All this translating gives me a heady feeling; as if I am gobbling on ballad mongering; omnivorous with Modernism and chewing up rhapsodism. There are several Armenian artists I would like to find on the Internet, not because I like to gab and blab over e-mail but that I am always curious if my […]
“… I think the world is so complicated that I can’t be so presumptuous as to justify pessimism or optimism, so I’ll stay agnostic. But I like waking up every day and I think breakfast is a fantastic thing.”
Moby, as quoted in Time magazine, 10/24/05
Thinking about the comments I made in yesterday’s post, I might […]
“It is very certain that the desire for life prolongs it.” — Byron
Կյանքի տենչը անշուշտ երկարացնում է այն: — Բայրոն
Yesterday was Thanksgiving in Canada. Over the weekend I went to my first Tim Horton’s. It’s good to know one’s own weaknesses, and one of mine is caffeine and industrial, refined sugar […]
Apparently in early September the “Seven Things I Plan To Do Before I Die” list was circulating the poetry blog world as I keep finding more and more people posted it. Artichoke Heart’s #6 wish is: “See the Jellies: Living Art exhibit at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.” I like that; it calls up […]
Around five years ago, while living in Las Vegas1 I fell in love with Carcharodon carcharias, the Great White Shark. It happened in the same manner other people fall in chocolate, Jesus and pet rocks “Obsession,” might be a better word. Sharks appeared in my dreams, my poetry, even my magazine subscriptions. […]
It was about a year ago I started my search for the Armenian Sonnet. It was a description of the work of Vahan Tekeyan (1879-45) by Diana Der-Hivanessian, poet and translator, in The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics: “… his painstakingly honed sonnets have earned him a reputation as a visionary” (page […]
One of the aims for this website is to generate a new home for translations. The whole concept of the power of good translations was brought home to me during one of the conversations held at the 2004 Dodge Poetry Festival at the Duke Farms. I attended “The Mysterious Life Within Translation” […]