Re-blogging this poem, I think its about time there was a bit more Edith Sitwell on the site. it was transcribed from *Facade*, so I have to find my notes to add in the Publication date etcetera.
‘The Octogenarian Leaned from his window, To the Valerian Growing below Said, ‘My Nightcap is the only gap in the trembling thorn where the mild unicorn with the little infanta danced the Lavolta (Clapping hands: Molto Lent Eleganta). The Man with the Lantern Peers high and low; No more than a snore as he walks to and fro… Il Dottore the stoic culls silver herb beneath the superb vast moon azoic.” From: Facade, by Edith Sitwell. … Read More
and I couldn’t find a summer flower poem, so it will have to be a spring flower poem. The earliest blossom in our neighbourhood tends to scatter as soon as a wind rises up, leaving minute wee flowers , scattered all over the ground. They have the virtue of shining milk-white and incandescently in the blue mornings of February before sunrise , looking neatly stitched unto the silhouettes of the trees…..
If you are reading Joyce today, I always recommend the Ithaca Section (17) , as it is beautiful :
“At sea, septentrional, by night the polestar, located at the point of intersection of the right line from beta to alpha in Ursa Major produced and divided externally at omega and the hypotenuse of the rightangled triangle formed by the line alpha omega so produced and the line alpha delta of Ursa Major. On land, meridional, a bispherical moon, revealed in imperfect varying phases of lunation through the posterior interstice of the imperfectly occluded skirt of a carnose negligent perambulating female, a pillar of the cloud by day. “
The next post is the promised blooming blossom pome,
Lilies of the Field Plump nipple blossoms more like, Neatly sewn onto a blue bodice. Virgin surprise! one wink and They’re blown confetti on wet ground
Today is the first of June 2010 , so a June Poem is in order, translation by Roger Little is beneath the French:
Pg 46 : Lost Quatrains
” J’ai noté. J’ai jugé. Vos étoiles sont nues. Vous le verrez, le paradis est si banal ! Malgré le mois de juin , l’aube n’est pas venue. Je reviendrai. Puis-je emprunter votre cheval .”
(Trans , Roger Little) :
” I’ve made a note. I’ve judged. Your Paradise is so banal, you’ll see ! Your stars are bare. Despite the month of June, no dawn has come. I shall return. Will you lend me your mare ?”
I went recently to bury a friend in Dún Laoghire. The sea, as is usual was dark , deep grey and full of white horses , which didn’t make it to the rocks but dissipated in energy before hitting the shore.
The train (a DART) was heading to Greystones and a voice on the intercom kept announcing in Irish, the destination no Clocha Liath , na Clocha (í) Liath . I thought to make a poem after it all … but could not-
Stances Perdue ; Lost Quatrains, by Alain Bosquet. Trans, Roger Little. Dedalus Press. 1999. ( Poetry Europe Series No. 6 )
Poethead has always been about books, indeed the idea initially was to share lots of women poets who have gone out of print or are not easily obtainable (save online through Amazon and such places).
The blog came about as a result of an small bequest of books that Marianne Agren Mc Elroy’s daughter had given me as a gift. Marianne was a translator and an artist. Her art books went to students of the visual and her poetry books which included Mirjam Tuominen, Bagryana, Nagy and others , Moore, Ursu, found their way from a small cardboard container to me (along with some press clippings of Marianne’s translations ).
Comes Somebody by Nelly Sachs, trans, Agren Mc Elroy is on the PH site.
I had added to the site some early edits of Plath (along with the re-print Of Ariel , edited by Frieda Hughes and small collections of poems from my own library which include the really hard to get and immensely popular Simone Weil, Irish language women poets and the odd male poet too !!
Another resource (or set thereof) has been online, I read Pierre Joris translations (not frequently enough) – his ‘Nomadics’ and ‘Homad’ sites are amazing for those interested in translation (aramaic/arabic) and UBUWEB. I am adding the links here to those two sites , along with an exhortation : Read and read lots .
Everyone has their own influences, be it the spoken or written word. I deliberately search for visually intense symbolism in the written word , and find it readily in Ethnopoetics.
A lot of online translations can be weak , so those with a strong interest in the poetry should seek out good translations which are coming from a collaborative base (if at all possible). The dissemination of literature through new media resources should be as protected in terms of the author’s meaning using the established conventions and with regard to the intellectual property rights of the authors. There are reams of discussion online about the issue and some discussion on digitisation on Poethead. PEN international has pages on Translation and linguistic rights which I will put in comments.
White Noise, bundled, beam- tracks cross the table, with the bottle-mail. (which sounds itself, sounds an ocean, drinks it in, unmasks the gangwealed mouths.) The one Arcanum passes forever into the Word. (Apostates roll beneath the tree without leaf.) Every shadowclasp on every shadowhinge, in and out of hearing, all now report. I do like Paul Celan, indeed theres a wee poem by him on Poethead entitled Irish, Use the search engine at the top right of the page to access Poetry by Paul Celan. [from: Fathomsuns and Benighted, Trans Ian Fairley. Carcanet 2001. Fadensonnen and Eingedunkelt, Introduction by Ian Fairley ]
Last year’s Dublin Culture night, wherein mostly all Dublin venues are open to everyone and include galleries, museums, film and readings was fantastic, especially the Poetry Ireland Open Mic sessions down at the Unitarian Church on St Stephen’s Green. The church is often used as a PI venue, indeed I visited to hear the belated International Women’s Day celebrations in 2008 also.
The evening begins at 6pm and goes through until 11pm; and once the poets are signed in for their allotted seven minutes they can come and go as they please. Last year slammers, irish poets and new poets vied on the pulpit memorably, with Ulick O Connor followed by an LA slammer (t’was hilarious). Ulick colour codes his pieces and had a sheaf of original material nested beneath his arm as he ascended to read. I highly recommend the evening and shall leave an info link at the base of this small piece.
I heard that Parnell Square had good writers doing the readings and talk also.
Poetry Ireland Open Mic evening, Unitarian Church, St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2. 6pm-11pm 2009.
‘The wordsmiths mentioned above , Kavanagh, Strong, and Colum are but a tiny example of the triumph of art and literature against what amounts to a repressive and regressive approach to the Arts. They are not contemporary poets but provide for the new writer the amazing root-system which forms Irish Literature in all its wonderousness. Would only that those who claim to lead us politically were aware of their cultural heritage , story-telling and indeed the violence of words that make up this rich history of multifaceted voice and poetry !’
The Devil , by Patrick Kavanagh.
‘ I met the devil too,
and the adjectives by which I would describe him are these:
Solemn,
Boring,
Conservative.
He was a man the world would appoint to a Board,
He would be on the list of invitees for a bishop’s garden-party,
He would look like an artist.
He was the fellow who wrote in newspapers about music,
Got into a rage when someone laughed;
He was serious about unserious things;
You had to be careful about his inferiority complex
For he was conscious of being uncreative.”
Mud-Matressed under the sign of the hag In a clench of blood, the sleep-talking virgin Gibbets her curse, the moon’s man, Faggot-bearing jack in his crackless egg;
Hatched with a claret hogshead to swig He kings it, navel-knit to no groom, But at the price of a pin-stitched skin Fish-tailed girls purchase each white leg.
I am reading a poem while it rains. The day blinks through windows guarded by a griffin; its talons flex, its tail switches. Do you remember those summer showers high in the mountains? The dull pop of a toadstool beneath your bare foot in the dew-covered grass? Under a crystal bell jar, the still life-fleshy ripe bananas, cherries, lemons and the silver knife you bargained for in the bazaar as the Bhosphorus sparkled at the feet of the one you loved. On the wobbly kitchen table, with that very knife, you slit open a pike. And the hunting rifle, propped against stuffed peacocks- has it turned into a lapdog licking the other woman’s hands as she weighs my pearls…?
In the Forest
I wrote the essential poem on an oar just before setting out. Perhaps long ago it’s been erased or maybe the sea knows it now by feel.
Like the woman in Rousseau’s painting I shudder at the sound of footsteps -when the fear comes on too strong.
The path I follow is a knife blade. maybe this is why the sky behind the forest is now so red.
I wrote the essential poem on an oar just before setting out.
These two poems are taken from the Bloodaxe published book, The Sky Behind the Forest by Poet Liliana Ursu. It is translated by Tess Gallagher and Adam Sorkin.
I really like the book, but I always make one suggestion when recommending it, and that is to read and absorb the beautiful writing before reading the introductory and translators essays. The essays are highly important in establishing the appalling context of censorship under which the poet suffered, but one can feel it also in the powerful writing.
The Sky Behind the Forest, Liliana Ursu. Trans, Liliana Ursu, Tess Gallagher,
Adam J Sorkin. Bloodaxe Books. 1997.
Your tender revolt Contained by the illicit apple Pounds in red And your eye’s shattered diamond A woman in seclusion Revolves into a star With you On the surface of water I am thirsty Place the skies in your eyes Blaze out the star So that I can see you The sea is peaceful Silent…
from : The Seven Valleys of Love, trans Sheema Kalbasi Poet , A Bilingual Anthology Of Women Poets from Middle Ages Persia to Present
Today I was reading more of Farideh Mostavi who features on the blog in two sections, her poetry can be accessed by using the search engine to the right of this post. The issue of Translation has been a part of this site since I started it up, Including the works of Mostavi, Tess Gallagher, the translators of Nagy and of Ursu. The sympathetic work of the translator being grossly undervalued in terms of what is actually available for people to purchase in bookshops. The IPWWC and translators committees have done tremendous work in funding and bringing to the reader some of our most incredible women writers.
In Ireland there is a wonderful tradition of writers and poets translating works; and bringing them to an interested readership.
There is a small post somewhere on the blog of a Marianne Agren Mc Elroy translation of Comes Somebody , by Nelly Sachs, it had fallen out of a Paul Celan book which I had been casually mooching at a friend’s house. It was one of three small and old pieces from a now defunct Irish newspaper. It really is an excellent poem, thus I am going to stick it beneath this post on the blog if I can. (the tech occasionally mystifies).
‘The Octogenarian Leaned from his window, To the Valerian Growing below Said, ‘My Nightcap is the only gap in the trembling thorn where the mild unicorn with the little infanta danced the Lavolta (Clapping hands: Molto Lent Eleganta). The Man with the Lantern Peers high and low; No more than a snore as he walks to and fro… Il Dottore the stoic culls silver herb beneath the superb vast moon azoic.” From: Facade, by Edith Sitwell. … Read More
Chris Murray 