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Saturday, February first, 2014

🦋 In the cellar

por J Osner

Inmóvil en el sótano escucho
Los pisos chirriantes
Mientras los pisa ella
Y la casa hecha carne gruñe
Pesada
Del fardo acumulado
De todos los años
Y miles de años
De todos los pies
Que sus tablas han pisoteado
De todos los vientos
Que sus maderas han azotado
Que las tejas han desalojado
De sus techos
Hace años

Y caída la noche
Suspira
La casa y se
Asienta. En su tanque
Callan
Los peces. Afuera
Escucho
El ruido suave
De hojas.

posted morning of February first, 2014: 2 responses
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Sunday, January 26th, 2014

🦋 Analogies for time, now with rhyme!

Sullen entropy
by J Osner


It's sullen entropy holds sway
decay is part of every system
sands of time just slip away
now vanished, now too late to listen
wax cylinder records the ticking
clock that measures out our days
you listen now, can't find the second
when your life began to play
so play it backwards, scratch the groove
so lose the time that you've been tracking
irreversible flow now cracking
stationary mass begins to move
now creaking, warming as it slides across
this muddy, fecund, fetid marsh
with nothing left to prove:
now found, now lost

posted morning of January 26th, 2014: Respond
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Saturday, January 25th, 2014

🦋 Impersonating Lot's nameless wife

My translation (current draft -- there are still a couple of constructions that I'm not 100% sure about to call this "final") of Karen Finneyfrock's astonishing What Lot's Wife Would Have Said (If She Wasn’t A Pillar of Salt):

posted morning of January 25th, 2014: Respond
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Monday, January 20th, 2014

🦋 Reflections on translating first-person narrative

I have been translating two stories told in the first person recently -- "Power", by Javier Sáez de Ibarra (from Bulevar), is one that I did a pretty fast rough draft of several months ago and just recently revised -- it is narrated by a factory worker who is trying to project an unwanted level of intimacy with his titular co-worker; and "A few prosaic lines" by Marta Aponte (La casa de la loca) is the story (still not totally sure I have this straight) of the wife of a poet in a village outside of San Juan,

An interesting comparison between these two is how strongly I have to twist my sense of identity to say "I" like I mean it -- I find it quite easy to identify with the "I" in Power's "friend"'s story -- less so with the poet's wife on a personal level. With her I have a hard time finding a personal center; and yet the voice of this story is attractive to me as well. The story's climactic moment is a translation of Emily Dickinson being written onto the soles of her husband and son's shoes!

Tonight, when they walk into the club, my two men will be treading, without knowing it, on a few words stolen from the yankee poetess...

posted morning of January 20th, 2014: 2 responses
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Saturday, December 14th, 2013

🦋 Well that was exciting

I was briefly in touch with Roberto Bolaño's literary agent over the idea of my publishing Teach me to dance... The answer as it turns out is unsurprisingly "No, the estate has other plans for his early poetry" -- oh well, it was fun anyway to have that contact.

posted morning of December 14th, 2013: 1 response
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Monday, December second, 2013

🦋 The Domestication of Lightning

Another Infrarealist poem: this is by Guadalupe Ochoa, one of the few female Infrarealists.

The Domestication of Lightning
by Guadalupe Ochoa/ tr. Jeremy Osner

the lightning of touch announces
the downpour engendered in our embrace
fiery water of our bodies

posted morning of December second, 2013: 1 response
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Friday, November 29th, 2013

🦋 Enseñame a bailar

Here is a poem of Bolaño's from Pájaro de calor. (It is quoted in Hiram Barrios' fabulous essay on the infra poets, Visitando al infrarrealismo.)

Teach me to dance
by Roberto Bolaño/ tr. Jeremy Osner

to draw my fingers through the cottoncandy clouds
to stretch out my legs tangled up in your legs...

(translation redacted, write me if you'd like to see it)

posted evening of November 29th, 2013: 1 response
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Sunday, November 24th, 2013

🦋 ¿Quiénes son los «verdaderos» Detectives Salvajes?

Once son ellos, once, ferozmente poetas:
Hernán, Roberto y Montané, chilenos;
el ecuatoriano Nieto Cadena;
de la patria de Sandino: Beltrán Morales;
el peruano Enrique Verástegui,
el también peruano Jorge Pimente;
Luis Suardíaz, del primer teerritorio
libre en América: Cuba, cubanamente;
más tres meshicas que son, qué remedio,
Orlando Guillén, ¡impresente!,
Mario en el camino de Santiago
y Julián Gómez... once son, pues,
y, ¿se fijaron?, ni una sola hembrita,
con tan buenas, guapamente sabrosas que son
y que escriben como Afroditas que surgieran
no de un pantanoso taller literario
sino de un bárbaro océano de pantalones de mezclilla.

--Efraín Huerta

It's eleven, eleven, ferociously poets:
Hernán, Roberto and Montané from Chile;
Ecuadorian Nieto Cadena;
from the land of Sandino, Beltrán Morales;
Peruvian Enrique Verástegui,
and Peruvian too, Jorge Pimente;
Luis Suardíaz, from the first-ever free
territory of the Americas: Cuba, Cubanly;
and there's three Meshicas, what else can I say,
Orlando Guillén, absent!,
Mario on the road to Santiago,
and Julián Gómez... so they're eleven,
and notice? Not a single chick,
for all the lovely, sweet things out there
that write like Aphrodites sprung
not from some fetid literary workshop
but from a savage ocean of blue jeans.

posted afternoon of November 24th, 2013: Respond

Saturday, November 16th, 2013

🦋 In the spirit of W.H. Mearns

The other day upon the stair
I met a boy who didn't care.
Again today he didn't care.
And by the way, his name's Pierre.

posted evening of November 16th, 2013: Respond

Friday, November 15th, 2013

🦋 Sueños

posted evening of November 15th, 2013: Respond
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