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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 […]
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 […]
“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 […]
[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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
“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 […]
The poem Canto from La última inocencia/ “The Last Innocence” (1956) would be considered a ditty if ditties were this dark, this wrapped up in death, catastrophe, torture. Martínez, writing in Salgado’s anthology, analyzes Pizarnik’s obsession concerning death:
As attested by her poetry, death haunted her in the image of a female in many guises […]
A few hours sleep and then more translations. Z. Nelly Martínez, writing in Salgado’s anthology of Spanish American poets, notes that before Pizarnik committed suicide, she left behind, “a few words scribbled on a slate that same month, reiterating her desire to go nowhere ‘but the bottom,’ [which] sum up her lifelong aspiration as […]
I have finished translating Garcia Lorca for now. He is always a joy, but there are over a dozen collected works of his poetry in English and even as I labored with my beloved English-Spanish Dictionary, I wondered: does the world really need yet another translation of Federico? So I wandered out yesterday […]
The last poem of the Gypsy Ballads, is a retelling of the biblical rape of Thamar by her half-brother, Amnón. This is a highly problematic poem, for what Garcia Lorca does here, I argue, is to present us with a sympathetic view of Amnón, that it was his overpowering sexual desire that caused him […]
The last of the three poems based on a saint, San Gabriel (Sevilla), appears whimsical at first glance, but there is a sinister quality to the whimsy. Two figures parade their way through the poem, Gabriel, saint and archangel, who pays a visit to Annunciatión de los Reyes, a gypsy woman, to tell her […]
Even though Garcia Lorca’s San Miguel (Granada) left me feeling a tad unsatisfied, San Rafael (Córdoba) makes up for it in dollops. First, there is Federico’s admiration for the lustrous Moorish architecture found in the city of Córdoba, along with the erotic imagery and a discreet exchange of Niños de cara impasible/ en la […]
This is the first poem by Garcia Lorca I have come across an expression or reference I have not been able to translate. He writes: efebo de tres mil noches,/ fragante de agua colonia/ y lejano de las flores, which I translated as: “An efebo, 3 thousand nights old,/ fragrant with cologne,/ yet […]
It’s only a speculation, but the images I have in my head of the hot-tempered Spanish might have a little to do, in part, with this poem.
Garcia Lorca wrote of Reyerta, “[the poem] expresses the mute struggle latent throughout Andalusia and Spain among groups that attack each other without knowing why, for mysterious […]
Perhaps, next to Romance sonámbulo, La casada infiel is the most famous poem from the Gypsy Ballads. I recall one of the first Dead Poet readings Ruelaine put on (this is 1992 or 93, I believe), Joyce Benvenuto came as the Gypsy of this poem, dressed with two cartridge belts and a sombrero, looking […]
What do we want out of poetry? Wrong question? Right; too voluminous in desire, too “we.” It is always easier to deconstruct than construct what we want.
What do I want out of neo-triad, quasi-shamanistic verse? A sense of other wildness? Order of a theophany type? More “cavort,” […]
I was sent a copy of Enrique Morente’s Lorca, his take on a dozen different poems by Federico, set to his powerful and deep cante, flamenco singing. A poem like Romance de la guardia civil española requires a Deep Song to carry it through. Even if the events of the poem are of […]
This photo was taken by my mother of the three of us; my father, myself and my brother (on the uke), singing in a little cabin up on the western shores of Beaver Island, Lake Michigan, June, 1996. I’d like to say we were singing gypsy ballads, but it was probably songs from the […]
Like the poem Ballad of the moon, moon the motif of kidnapping of a child by supernatural forces continues; however Garcia Lorca has introduced a now explicit erotic subversion. The poem takes place in another nocturnal setting, down by an un anfibio sendero, an “amphibious tidewater,” the seashore, where Preciosa is playing with […]
“Ballad of moon, moon”1 is a simple poem, though there is Garcia Lorca’s preoccupation with the end of his childhood innocence, martyrdom, the world of myth and dream; in other words, it is a poem of the subconscious. Loughran (1994) notes:
1. Forge The trade of the farrier and metalworking in general are tradionally associated […]
Of all the translations of the title of this poem, Romance de la pena negra, Loughran’s (1994) “Ballad of The Black Anguish,” is the closest to getting the same nuance as “Black Dread.” However, to understand why the more common “Ballad of Black Pain,” while an accepted, literal, traditional translation, doesn’t seem to work […]
Lorca’s La Monja Gitana, The Gypsy Nun has been examined as a Freudian metaphor for repressed sexuality; which, considering Federico’s closeted self and the nature of repression in the Catholic Church, really isn’t that much of a stretch for the imagination.
The idea of the nun, sewing bizarre and sensual designs into her lemon-colored cloth […]
“A dead man in Spain is more alive as a dead man than any place else in the world.”
– FGL
Here is the second part of Garcia Lorca’s ballad concerning the gypsy, Antoñito el Camborio. It is an interesting device the poet uses, having a character within the poem talk to the poet as if […]
One down side to having to flee off to work at 3 in the afternoon each day is when you’re on a roll, say with one’s blog, it hurts having to stop in mid-sentence. Having said that, I went back to the translations I was working on when I abruptly broke off yesterday and […]