Saturday's poetry event co-sponsored by PEN and the Poetry Society, the oldest poetry organization in America, showcased five poets from four continents reading selections of their poetry to a small crowd in the intimate Grand Gallery of the National Arts Club near Grammercy Park in Manhattan. Of little to note other than the poetry itself, I have included some poems from each author in the order that they presented their works during the course of the night. Have a read and click on their names under the "panelist's bio" section to read more from each of these amazing authors.
Homero Aridjis (Mexico)
Come Ancestral Poet
Come ancestral poet sit
take the shadows from your mouth
and shake the darkness from your clothes
come to this morning
that seems to last forever
just appearing
seems ancient
almost eternal
come to this mountain
that raises its white peaks
like pure thoughts
to this river
that flows from darkness
into night
crossing the day
like a white god
come to this moment
and give these things that are leaving
a verse now
From Quemar las naves/Burn the boats (1975); Exaltación de la luz/Exaltation of light
Translated from Spanish by: Eliot Weinberger
****
The Slaughter in the Main Temple
The captain sought gold in the temple of god
Greedy soldiers sealed the exits
The drummer was decapitated
The god stripped of his paper clothes
Swords tumbled idols cut down men
The Indians tried to climb the walls
Or at the pоint of death played dead
Shades newly born in the far land
Setting out throats slit toward the sun
The captain sought gold in the temple of god
From Quemar las naves/Burn the boats (1975)
Translated from Spanish by: Eliot Weinberger
Ariel Dorfman (Chile)
Last Waltz in Santiago
All that you've danced they take from you
they just take it
just like that.
They kill the dancer in you
they crush her slowly,
they skeleton, smoke,
before she can
dance this dance
with you.
They break your rhumba, tango
they break you,
they dissolve your carnival in urine,
they put needles through the skin of your record,
they use the trumpet like a knife
and they shatter your violin
just like that.
They lock you in walls
that have no number,
among mirrors and songs covered with ashes,
they lock your hands, your feet, your collarbone,
and they tell you now dance you cripple,
dance now you motherfucker,
they sentence you to tomb, they scrape you with sand.
let's dance, then,
my dear,
because they're taking away all that we've danced
right now, listen to the footsteps coming closer
and someone is trying out shiny soldier's boots
right now
right now.
****
First Prologue: Simultaneous Translation
I'm not so different from the interpreters
in their glass booths
at endless international conferences
translating what the peasant from Talca
tells about torture
repeating in English that they put him on the cot
stating in the most refined and delicate French
that electric shock produces lasting transmissible effects
finding the exact equivalent for rape by dogs
pau d'arara I insulted the murderers
finding a phrase without emotion
that describes exactly the sensation
please forgive any rhymes or rhythms you may find
when the wall is at your back
and the captain begins to say the word fire,
trying to take the melodrama out of the sentences
trying to communicate the essence and the feeling
without giving in to the dark cloying current
of what they are really saying
they were torturing my son in the other room
they brought back our companero unconscious
they put rats inside out companera it's Gods truth.
Not so different from them
with their voices their dictionaries their notes their
culture their going back home
in Geneva in New York in the Hague,
an intermediary, not even a bridge,
simultaneous translation for good pay
because we are specialists
and the incredible thing is that in spite of us
in spite of my river of interpretations and turns of phrase
something is communicated
a part of the howl
a thicket of blood
some impossible tears
the human race has heard something
and is moved.
Cathy Park Hong (U.S.)
Somehow I'm Not Very Comfortable
Such poisonous families
I startle. Alarum, the feudal world.
I plowed the oil rig and plum blossom fields, the fields where they
danced half-ring, the
Aorta mortuary fields. The fields. If not for
The fields here, there are
Animal wanderings.
My father watched he watched
Outside the window he saw he saw
The comet streak klieg-light the setting light the world parcels off
into mindless.
Trees in essence flagrant assonance
I suck back into my mouth.
I am this chair, talking to him,
If the burden is to go back.
The world parcels off into seepage, capillary tea-bags he said, he
said I must work, I said
I had no dreams that night.
But allure the shoe-polished twilight,
Brunt flotilla of stars
This minus store amid the fields,
Amid the blight amid
The cold-ball bearing I yearn,
For you who lastly fueled breathing this air this air.
Inga Kuznetsova (Russia)
I know: truth is fleeing me
like a needle in a haystack
and I am unable to grasp
it with my verse’s coarse net.
But the body vanishes
where the land curves,
it lies there like a forgotten
revolver in a desk drawer.
*****
I am this butterfly pierced straight through
the sinciput. Someone’s shaking an enormous nail.
I am this hanger with broken shoulders,
powerless to observe things
falling in the darkness.
If you would have pressed me,
Perhaps I would have dared to say
that I am sick to death from the eternal
waiting room, from agonizing trifles.
If you would have . . .
I am your conquest,
fastened, like Andromeda, to a chain.
You do not come and I cannot budge from this place.
I crumble in the hand, turning into an aging ashen woman.
I have been stabbed to death by English pins.
You have all your ruses and games,
I have no ruse and no strength.
I am taking the pills of insult and adjustments
for the course of time―flicking away bits of wing.
translation: Matvei Yankelvich, ©2010 CEC ArtsLink
*****
Brueghel
A drowsy child rides, an extremely useless babe,
distinguished dignitary, the space reduced to nonsense
with the aid of papa-rickshaw. Jagged knees crack through the snow
at twilight; clashes with dogs, yawning at full speed.
Everything is shrouded, the tram rails covered.
Passing beneath pines the child views peculiar, ancient dreams:
father’s twisted cap, dust in the folds, an antler near his belt,
a deer carcass close behind, as the son slashes across a rink on wooden skates.
Marlene van Niekerk (South Africa)
this my dearest countrymen
is a jingle like scarlatti’s for princess benjamin
and sweetness pikini both of them police women
at the station in macassar
enter around ten o’clock li’l sweetness pikini who does not fit in ‘er bikini
as princess bejamin stirs sweetener into her mug of herbal tea
this is now behind the counter for serious complaints
when the station mice had fallen quiet
and the walrus had dozed off
the one who is supposed to guard
the grass like crystals and the ecstasy
the coke the mushrooms and the crack
confiscated from the white pipes
and the harsh heads and the mandrax mules and the
bling buddies with the rayban shades
who’s stamping ground this is
and who also just like them two earn a pittance
for their toils
this is a scarlatti jive for the princess with her little baton
and the sweetie pie second in command
the hatcher of the hectic schemes, check ‘er
as she swishes from the canteen with her coffee
prods pikini the roaring royalty on her rank insignia
left right left as they clink their teaspoons
In the terrible twin cups of macassar
while the watchman at the service bell
is snoring in his cubicle
hi there blue blood of the station, winks nikita pikitini,
my coolest mini-skirted queenie
who is the boss girl of this precinct
I know something ‘bout this ninconpoop policing dive
that two worthy women like us cannot survive
without coming out in shingles
a haystack grass is stacked in sacks and going
flat i our storeroom, what do you say lets nab it
this so called evidence of the black hole in the universe
and fuck the waiting for a pipsqueak paycheck
what about your sergeant, my bucks are sucked,
and I dig a Sony and an iPod and a perm
I want a lexus like the one that madam drives
who heads the prisons and who won’t be seen alive
in a rickshaw from Toyota
and these tons of Woolworths quality weed
lie here rotting day and night under our noses
no one will split if we drop it in the township
and make our million dollar dreams come true
this is a little jumpstart like scarlatti’s for the officers of justice
who do not know how they must chastise their highnesses
the swishy sweeties in macassar town
now take it from me one can only pick a little music
just a wee bit with domenico scarlatti who clicks
my tongue from its spitting dicky and switches me
like dominoes on trickle
and christ the princess is like snappy on the uptake and she says
fuck pikini you make my nipples tight and ping she thwacks her teaspoon
in her cup and cracks the service bell from its bracket
and tweaks the bunch of keys from the big belt of the walrus
and they make a go for it like Thelma and Louise
like Bonnie and Clyde, but with that chique sashay of the swinging
macassar chickies and they haul the sacks of grass
from the evidence hole and pile it in the hatchback van
this won’t b five trips only, more likely forty, says miss bejamin
to the dilly dolly with the brainwaves in the macassar copshop
we need a bloody lorry and a few lawless fellas from the flats for
operation transport
this is a scarlatti jig for the in-house scandal of macassar
and the understandable motives of the suspects
‘cause guilty they can’t be if one looks at the example of the selebi’s
and the missus of cwele the comissioner
who bleeps her mules on her mobile phone from Cape Town to Colombia
while the whole bang shoot that is South Africa goes down the bloody
tubes again
this is a ditty like scarlatti’s a little blue at the twinkle hour
with the night jars screeching in the corpse and the smell of burning rivers
it is time to modulate into a minor but my grammar is exhausted
And pogorelich wakes the neighbors what’s the chance
my rapping brother from the township, may I invite you to promote this
number under the slogan: poets of our father land unite
and keep the nation from the crooked ways of the law enforcers.
Link to pictures of event: here
Poet's Bios (click on their names to go to their works):
Homero Aridjis: has received numerous honors not only for his writing, but for his work as an environmental activist, his ambassadorial appointments, and his two-term stint as President of International PEN. He has written forty books of poetry and prose and his writing has been translated into a dozen languages. His newest book of poetry is Solar Poems. His literary honors include the Xavier Villaurrutia Prize (Mexico), the Roger Caillois Prize (France), the Grinzane-Cavour Prize (Italy), and two Guggenheim Fellowships.
Ariel Dorfman: a Chilean-American poet, novelist, playwright, human rights activist, and a Distinguished Professor at Duke University. He has received numerous international awards, including the Sudamericana Award, the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Play (Death and the Maiden, made into a feature film by Roman Polanski), an O. Henry Award for Short Stories and two theater awards from the Kennedy Center. His books, written both in Spanish and English, have been translated into more than forty languages, and his plays have been staged in over 100 countries. His most recent novel is called Americanos: Los Pasos de Murieta.
Cathy Park Hong: chosen for the Barnard Women Poets Prize for her second collection of poetry entitled, Dance Dance Revolution. Hong is the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and a Village Voice Fellowship for Minority Reporters. Her poems have been published in A Public Space, Paris Review, Jubilat, and many other places.
Inga Kuznetsova: born in the Krasnodar region in 1974. She studied journalism, philosophy, and literary criticism at Moscow State University, and published her first poems at 19, winning the Pushkin National Prize for Student Poetry two years later in 1995. Her first book of poems, Sni-Sinitsi (Chickadee Dreams), won the Triumph youth prize and the Moscow Score Award for best debut in 2003. Kuznetsova’s poems have been translated into English, French, Chinese, and Georgian.
Marlene van Niekerk: an award-winning poet, novelist, and short story writer. Her publications include the short story collection The Woman Who Forgot Her Spyglass, the novella Memorandum, and the novels Triomf and Agaat. Triomf, translated by Leon de Kock, was a New York Times Notable Book in 2004, and won the CNA Literary Award, the M-Net Prize in South Africa, and the prestigious Noma Award (the first Afrikaans novel to do so). In 2007, Agaat received the Sunday Times Literary Prize and the Hertzog Prize and was translated as The Way of the Women by Michiel Heyns, who received the Sol Plaatje Award for his translation. Van Niekerk is currently an associate professor in Afrikaans and Dutch literature and creative writing at Stellenbosch University in South Africa.
Post new comment