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Translations and Other Sept/Oct Poetry Finds, Sawako Nakayasu on Translation and Bringing Improvisation to Poetry Readings, Blake’s Illustrations, and Interesting New Poetry Criticism Releases (From the Notebook #10)

I’m working on some fall decluttering (more trying to clear the decks of year-end tasks before the holidays pick up speed rather than tidying physical space, though that needs to be done too). In that spirit I’m releasing another batch of links that have been accumulating.

First, the poems. September was National Translation Month, if that helps explain some of the choices.

“Farewells” by Oriana Méndez, translated by Erín Moure (if you’ve never read a poem originally written in Galician, now’s your chance)

“Vas Doloris” by Julián del Casal, translated from the Spanish by William George Williams

“Kiss Me” by Emily Bark Brown

“Translation” by Erika L. Sánchez

“Deep Water Trawling” by Jorie Graham

“job prescription” by Evie Shockley. I think her comment on the poem is especially notable: “This poem offers my briefest, clearest response to anyone who doesn’t yet see the value of poetry. I could say a lot more about it (and I have, many times over the years). But instead of spending more time defending poetry, I’ll be reading, hearing, writing, and performing — that is, enjoying it.” Let’s spend less time feeling defensive about poetry, and more time in the thick of it living our lives now. I’m sure before too long I’ll write something that gets defensive anyway, but it’s a nice reminder.

Re-reading the email that brought me the Méndez poem led me to an interview with Sawako Nakayasu, who was The Academy of American Poets Guest Editor for Poem-a-Day in September. It includes some nice thoughts on translation (including an introduction to the new-to-me concept of a “spiral translation,” where a translation of a work is re-translated back into the original language) and some intriguing ideas on taking the traditional poetry reading and making it more improvisational (I’d be interested in hearing from those who do more performative poetry like Slam whether this is already a thing in those spaces, and now that I think about it there’s also the example of David Antin’s Talk Poems).

Additional links:

The New York Public Library has a treasure-trove of William Blake’s luminous illustrations up on the web for all to enjoy.

Last year in a class I talked about how interesting it can be to browse Amazon’s bestseller list in the poetry criticism category, but I just recently tuned into the “New Releases” version. There’s a lot of great books recently published or coming soon (and this is not even all the ones that caught my eye):

Real Toads, Imaginary Gardens: On Reading and Writing Poetry Forensically by Paisley Rekdal

Three Talks: Metaphor and Metonymy, Meaning and Mystery, Magic and Morality by Brenda Hillman (Brenda is on my short list of best teachers, so this has my heartiest recommendation)

Other Influences: An Untold History of Feminist Avant-Garde Poetry edited by Marcella Durand and Jennifer Firestone (also mentioned in the Nakayasu interview)

The Kinds of Poetry I Want: Essays & Comedies by Charles Bernstein

Meditations: The Assorted Prose of Barbara Guest

A second edition of Timothy Steele’s All the Fun’s in How You Say a Thing: An Explanation of Meter and Versification (While some view this as “the correct source on meter in English,” I’d advise some caution. His system of four as opposed to two levels of stress remains a footnote more than a standard scansion method even now 25 years after this book was first published. It may be helpful, but be careful about taking it as the last word.)

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