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Friday, July 5th, 2013
 Today I am submitting my translation of Marta Aponte's story "1955: Lavender Mist" (edited by Scott Esposito) to the Close Approximations contest. I want to thank Marta for the story, which is magnificent, and for her readings and corrections of my translation; also to thank Scott for his invaluable suggestions which (IMO of course) have turned a good translation into a great one -- I am billing the piece as translated by me in collaboration with Scott. Very excited -- I could imagine this story being selected; and if that does not happen, as of course it may well not, I believe it will be relatively easy to find another publisher. Beautiful images abound in this story; here is one of my favorites. Señor Suárez is in the vestibule of the unfamiliar Museum of Modern Art, making his way to the exhibit whose opening he has been invited to:
Outside, the chestnut smoke was thickening, the space seeming to gain in scope what it lost in sharpness. It gave the impression of a canvas that you've covered with a layer of gray paint, in hopes that from the stillness of this interior, from the depths of this lake will burst forth some new, some unexpected creation. Something fashioned from the shards of memory, which darken and fade but are never lost; which will take you by surprise as they now took him by surprise, looking down at his orphan hands, blue and knotty. He might have fallen useless at the feet of these barbaric columns, had he not suddenly overheard someone saying the name — it was like a change of scenery coming in from the wings — of Pollock; had he not seen the two women walking, with the assurance of sturdy windmills, toward the elevator.
posted morning of July 5th, 2013: 2 responses
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Saturday, June 29th, 2013
 divídeme por favor
exactamente por el medio
despégame con tus manos la piel
y arranca los huesos
con tus dedos
es mi carne, cómela, digo,
pero déjame por favor la sangre.
sepárame por supuesto
de todo conocido
llevaré en cubos la sangre
mi sangre olorosa mientras busco
corazón
(y ¿cómo vas llevarlos sin huesos? preguntas y te pido permiso)
y hacemos viajes y aventuras sobre continentes
obscenos y ridículos
posted morning of June 29th, 2013: 3 responses
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Saturday, June 22nd, 2013
Un Sentido del Lugarpor Félix Fojas
tr. Jeremy Osner
Cada poema necesita
un sentido de época y lugar.
Cada poema debe existir
en el lugar nativo de su
corazón o de su pensaje
En un momento determinado y
una fecha memorable que rebosa
de cosas actuales prolongadas
como una mosca que aterriza en una fruta
o un joven mientras besa la primera:
un perro que busca a un hueso seco
o un gato aullante
que da zarpazos a una rata aterrada.
O tal vez se esculpe el poema
simplemente del aire enrarecido
y se halle simplemente a ninguna parte.
Tenga siempre en cuenta que
El lector medio tiene miedo
de explorar a un pueblo
fantasma
y prefiere siempre oler
la aroma de alguna flor salvaje,
el sabor jugoso de una naranja,
o la lluvia de la primavera que se moje
y sus hojas verdes que hagan rumores
y bailen en las brisas.
posted evening of June 22nd, 2013: 1 response
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Wednesday, June 19th, 2013
Yo voy escuchando en las músicas que suenan
entre corredores negros y tan largos que se desvanecen
todavÃa no recuerdo las lecturas -- pensativo
frunciré me rascaré apartaré
la mirada triste
Estoy escribiendo sobre rÃos y lecturas
y las pildores que necesito para emociones puras
y virilidad la que mofo pero ocultamente deseo
miéntras gano a duras penas
mi recreo
No voy reluciendo, no podrÃa soportarlo
yo no quiero agarrarlos a MarÃa y tonto Carlos
pero sé que todavÃa su secreto queda oscuro
soy inquieto, no entiendo, nunca voy a descansar
hasta todo lo que busco se revele
posted evening of June 19th, 2013: Respond
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Thursday, June 13th, 2013
A few lines from Marta Aponte Alsina's "Glen Island (1900)" . A prayer to Expeditus, the patron saint of urgent causes:
The days do not have 24 hours -- what you do today you will atone tomorrow, what today you seek will be bestowed on you tomorrow -- sometimes it will not even be your turn. The only speedy saint is San Expedito. ....
Do not envy the lion his mane, nor the untamed colt
his skull; nor yet the brawny
hippopotamus his enormous loin
Who prunes the bushy branches of the Baobab,
Roars at the wind.
posted evening of June 13th, 2013: 2 responses
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Tuesday, June 11th, 2013
Heaven is what I cannot reach!
The apple on the tree,
Provided it do hopeless hang,
That "heaven" is, to me.
The color on the cruising cloud,
The interdicted ground
Behind the hill, the house behind, --
There Paradise is found!
Kind of an interesting problem -- when an English work is quoted in translation in a Spanish text I'm translating, I normally would quote from the original in my translation, if it's available -- doing anything else seems a bit perverse.
But the situation in "Versos pedestres (1915)" ("A Few Prosaic Lines (1915)"), from La casa de la loca, is a bit unusual. At the end of the story, the narrator writes out her translation of the 8 lines above ("which my handwriting, as erratic as my writing, transforms into 9") on a piece of cardboard. To quote from the original would be not to acknowledge the story. The original would be out of place here.
Lo que no alcanzo es el Cielo.
La fruta que el árbol
ofrece sin esperanza
el Cielo es para mÃ.
El color que en la nube vagabunda pasa
el suelo a mis plantas prohibido
detrás de los montes,
más alla de la casa,
¡Me espera el ParaÃso!
Cannot ignore the original either of course; it has an important role in the story. But the back-translation should sound like the translation, not like the original. (And is it a "good translation"? I'm not sure -- I don't think I get the same sense from reading it as I get from the original; but I have never been very good at understanding Emily Dickinson's poetry. So am probably not the best judge.)
posted evening of June 11th, 2013: 1 response
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Monday, June 10th, 2013
 My latest translation project is the story "Lavender Mist (1955)", from La casa de la loca. An exciting project, and I'm close to finished with it; I'm planning to submit this story to Asymptote journal's Close Approximations contest.
This book is another that I bought on the strength of its cover illustration -- Rafael Trelles' painting "El suceso inesperado" (The Unexpected Event) pulled me right in. Contents:
- "The Madwoman's House (1915)" -- Rosario Diaz, widow of the author Alejandro Tapia y Rivera, works on an unfinished story of her husband's.
- "Glen Island (1900)"
- "Black House (1904)"
- "A Few Prosaic Lines (1915)" -- a woman sews clothing to support her family and writes (and translates!) poetry on pieces of a cardboard box.
- "Lavender Mist (1955)" -- Salvador Suárez visits the MoMA.
- "Birds of the Soul (1963)" -- After he was released from prison, Nathan Leopold ended his days as a birdwatcher in the Caribbean. Here he writes about the Paloma Sabanera (Columba Inornata Wetmorei), the final entry in his Checklist of Birds of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
- "Coconut Milk (1988)" -- A sort of repulsively smug New Yorker named Thomas Smith describes his travails in attempting to reproduce a recipe from Puerto Rican Desserts: An Illustrated Cooking Tour of our New Possession by Rose Kilmer (1900), given him by his uncle William.
- "The Poison Pen (1999)" -- Nurse Belisa Weaver, daughter of an Irish man and a Puerto Rican woman and mother of an estranged son, tries to make some money for her retirement by connecting couples seeking to adopt with pregnant young women.
- "The Green Man's Interlude (20--)"
The final section of the book is "Fragments of a Novel" about a young man who kidnaps people to steal their experiences. Tantalizingly pretty but very difficult to follow.
posted evening of June 10th, 2013: Respond
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Sunday, May 26th, 2013
-- Compadre, usted es un bárbaro, pinta como tuviera un ojo en la luna y el otro in Marte. Su pintura no me gusta, pero me ha hecho llorar y las lágrimas son la sangre del alma.
Salvador Suárez to Jackson Pollock (from "Lavender Mist" by Marta Aponte Alsina)
posted evening of May 26th, 2013: 1 response
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Friday, May 24th, 2013
reconozca yo
en sueños
mi tiempo sea pasado
que los jotes que me mordisquean
el hidalgo
tengan últimamente razón
reconozco
en sueños
los nenes que me
habÃan llamado papá
érase una vez
en sueños
reconozco
por supuesto
no serÃa justo
reconozco
por supuesto
debo admitir, o más bién
me corresponde a mi decir
últimamente
afirmarme que
reconozco
en sueños
posted evening of May 24th, 2013: Respond
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Sunday, May 12th, 2013
I was complaining to a friend recently about how the New Yorker had printed its translation of "The Prefiguration of Lalo Cura" split up into paragraphs where the original was a single paragraph, and he did not really get where I was coming from -- if it was more readable in paragraphs, isn't that the way to go? As I'm reading the first sentence of Queen Isabel was singing rancheras, I'm wondering why it seems so important to me that this block be preserved as a single sentence, thinking I ought to justify that somehow. If it's more readable broken up, why not break it up? In the flow of a book or story I do not slavishly follow the syntactic boundaries in the source text -- well perhaps I err a bit on the side of slavishly following them; still. There are certainly points where a period in English seems like the correct translation of a comma or a y in Spanish. But these long paragraphs and long sentences in Spanish seem to me to fill more than a syntactic role; they are communicating a rhythm and pacing which splitting them up has a tendency to spoil. And not only in Spanish -- being a single paragraph seems to me like a fundamental quality of (for instance) "Ein Landarzt"; it pulls the reader insistently into the driving rhythm of the story, will not let go.
posted evening of May 12th, 2013: Respond
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