Friday, August 06, 2010

The Poem and Its Secret

I was on vacation last week when my translation of Durs Grünbein's essay "The Poem and Its Secret" was the Poetry Daily prose feature for the week. You can find the essay here, and you can buy the book, Bars of Atlantis, through the link there, too!

1 comment:

  1. Such fluency. Reminds me of Ralph Manheim. Here's something I wrote a while ago.

    Ralph Manheim

    This Babel buster
    Now lives in the texts
    Of many others –

    Having levered the spaces -
    Cleared the betweens -
    Exorcised the differences -

    He has placed within reach,
    As folded paper-flowers
    Plucked easily in stores and libraries

    Now I can untie the tongues -
    And revealed is the simultaneous
    Everydayness of the human race

    So separated by the texture of culture
    Clothed in the stiff veneer
    Of language, ethnicity and nation

    John Cline
    October 1994

    [I now can untie tongues
    Revealing the everydayness of everyone
    The simultaneous sameness of the human race]
    burrababa@hotmail.com

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.