That's Sicily
At night we sailed past shadowed,
enigmatic shores. Far off, the huge leaves
of hills swayed like a giant's dreams.
Waves slapped the boat's wood,
a warm wind kissed the sails,
stars rushed, helter-skelter,
to tell the history of the world.
That's Sicily, someone whispered,
three-cornered island, owl's breath,
handkerchief of the dead.
One small, whole poem, representative of so much of what I've loved reading this collection. Having flown over Italy, having seen maps, having climbed to the deck of a ferry at five o'clock in the morning to see a red sky rising over this ancient island, having in mind Whitman's "handkerchief of the lord, a scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropped," I think I see what the poem suggests. Regardless, I am full of gratitude for these ten lines.
Saturday, March 3, 2007
Thursday, March 1, 2007
Letter #2: Clare Cavanaugh
Dear Clare,
One of my wife’s best friends was in Ecuador when we got married. She brought us back a hand-made, clay bowl painted in deep browns and white and black. Though it chipped a bit two years ago when movers carried a new sofa through our living room, the bowl still lives in our basement, all the way from Ecuador. For me, your translations are gifts like that, brought back with care from countries where I have never been.
When Robert Pinsky visited my school three years ago to speak at the dedication of our new library, he spent some time during the day with a group of students. When asked about his translations of Dante, Pinsky talked about the way all writing is a kind of translation in which a writer draws language from a wordless realm. As I understood it, Pinsky was saying, in essence, that Dante was the first translator of The Inferno. He also described his hope that his translations might help new textures and surfaces emerge.
Though I know no Polish, and therefore cannot access the original language used by poets like Adam Zagajewski and Wislawa Szymborska, your renderings of their poems have given me access to the truths and the beauty these poets, and others, have brought into the realm of language. Below are some of my favorite lines and images from your translations of Adam Zagajewski’s Mysticism for Beginners, poems you brought back from Poland with such care. Thank you, Clare, for these gifts.
With Gratitude,
Peter Gaines
from “September”
…September kissed the hills
and treetops like someone leaving
on a long trip who realizes only at the station
that he’s lost his keys.
from “The Three Kings”
For four years a cold wind blew,
but the star was yellow, sewn carelessly to a coat
like a school insignia.
from “Referendum”
Fog infiltrated lips and lungs
as if the air were sobbing,
going on about itself, about the cold dawn,
how long the night is,
and how ruthless stars can be.
from “For M.”
Soldiers walked along the street, but the war
was already over and rifles bloomed.
from “Tierra del Fuego”
Sometimes the sun’s coin dims
and life shrinks so small
that you could tuck it
in the blue gloves of the Gypsy
who predicts the future
for seven generations back
from “Albi”
The traveler greets his new setting,
hoping to find happiness there,
perhaps even his memory.
from “The House”
The old piano dozing in the parlor,
a hippo with black and yellow teeth.
from “Planetarium”
On the ceiling stars like dancers
made appearances, comets hurried
on their errands to the far ends of the earth.
from “Long Afternoons”
…tell me how to cure myself
of silence.
from “The Room I Work In”
I drink from a small spring,
my thirst exceeds the ocean.
from “On Swimming”
Swimming is like prayer:
palms join and part,
join and part,
almost without end.
One of my wife’s best friends was in Ecuador when we got married. She brought us back a hand-made, clay bowl painted in deep browns and white and black. Though it chipped a bit two years ago when movers carried a new sofa through our living room, the bowl still lives in our basement, all the way from Ecuador. For me, your translations are gifts like that, brought back with care from countries where I have never been.
When Robert Pinsky visited my school three years ago to speak at the dedication of our new library, he spent some time during the day with a group of students. When asked about his translations of Dante, Pinsky talked about the way all writing is a kind of translation in which a writer draws language from a wordless realm. As I understood it, Pinsky was saying, in essence, that Dante was the first translator of The Inferno. He also described his hope that his translations might help new textures and surfaces emerge.
Though I know no Polish, and therefore cannot access the original language used by poets like Adam Zagajewski and Wislawa Szymborska, your renderings of their poems have given me access to the truths and the beauty these poets, and others, have brought into the realm of language. Below are some of my favorite lines and images from your translations of Adam Zagajewski’s Mysticism for Beginners, poems you brought back from Poland with such care. Thank you, Clare, for these gifts.
With Gratitude,
Peter Gaines
from “September”
…September kissed the hills
and treetops like someone leaving
on a long trip who realizes only at the station
that he’s lost his keys.
from “The Three Kings”
For four years a cold wind blew,
but the star was yellow, sewn carelessly to a coat
like a school insignia.
from “Referendum”
Fog infiltrated lips and lungs
as if the air were sobbing,
going on about itself, about the cold dawn,
how long the night is,
and how ruthless stars can be.
from “For M.”
Soldiers walked along the street, but the war
was already over and rifles bloomed.
from “Tierra del Fuego”
Sometimes the sun’s coin dims
and life shrinks so small
that you could tuck it
in the blue gloves of the Gypsy
who predicts the future
for seven generations back
from “Albi”
The traveler greets his new setting,
hoping to find happiness there,
perhaps even his memory.
from “The House”
The old piano dozing in the parlor,
a hippo with black and yellow teeth.
from “Planetarium”
On the ceiling stars like dancers
made appearances, comets hurried
on their errands to the far ends of the earth.
from “Long Afternoons”
…tell me how to cure myself
of silence.
from “The Room I Work In”
I drink from a small spring,
my thirst exceeds the ocean.
from “On Swimming”
Swimming is like prayer:
palms join and part,
join and part,
almost without end.
Friday, February 23, 2007
Letter #1: Adam Zagajewski
Dear Adam,
For months I’ve been reading and reading—nearly all poetry—and I’ve come across individual poems that have resonated with me, a few that have inspired me, and even one that made me weep. But just this week I took your book—Without End—from my shelf, and started, more seriously this time, to read it again. I first bought the book after encountering your poem, “The Generation,” in an essay by Carl Dennis. I was blown away at the time by the sweep of the poem, the historical references, the philosophical considerations of death and religion, but most of all by your statement that, “Every thought is a light coin which / rolls, in its shy secretive / being, into a song, into a painting.” That image was something I kept, something I still keep. I have carried that coin ever since, its face now worn by the ongoing praise of my forefinger and thumb.
And then this morning, as I made my way deeper into the poems gathered from Mysticism for Beginners, I was simply moved. When I’d put the book down, your poems haunted, stirring me back to the book. This hadn’t happened since I read all of Jack Gilbert’s work in a fever last fall. Your poems awakened words and images inside of me and suddenly I want to write again.
The way you close transformation—“I’ve taken long walks, / craving one thing only:
lightning, / transformation, / you”—echoes my experience of late as a reader. I have been waiting for and craving the burst and surge that springs—for me—from writing and from reading. And I am grateful to you for that. I am also grateful for so many of your images, your statements, your poems. Here are a few that I treasure…
from “A Quick Poem”
Far from dawn. Far from home.
In place of walls—sheet metal.
Instead of a vigil—a flight.
Travel instead of remembrance.
from “The Greenhouse”
Suddenly you see the world lit differently,
other people’s doors swing open for a moment,
you read their hidden thoughts, their holidays don’t hurt,
their happiness is less opaque, their faces
almost beautiful.
from “Postcards”
We had nowhere to go
although the day was empty
like a sleeve buoyed by the wind.
from “A Shell”
A poem may hold the thunder’s echo
like a shell touched by Orpheus
as he fled. Time takes life away
and gives us memory, gold with flame,
black with embers.
from “Letter from a Reader”
Write about those moments
when friendships footbridges
seem more enduring
than despair.
from “That’s Sicily”
That’s Sicily, someone whispered,
three-cornered island, owl’s breath,
handkerchief of the dead.
From “Self-Portrait”
I read poets, living and dead, who teach me
tenacity, faith, and pride. I try to understand
the great philosophers—but usually catch just
scraps of their precious thoughts.
rom “Cello”
Not everything turns into song
though. Sometimes you catch
a murmur or a whisper:
I’m lonely,
I can’t sleep.
from “She Wrote in Darkness”
Darkness wrote,
having taken this middle-aged woman
for its fountain pen.
I am grateful for whoever took you for his fountain pen. I am grateful for the transformations that have come for me while reading your work. I am now full of ways to think of cello strings, and houses, and traveling, and pianos, and maps of Mediterranean countries, and maybe even the beginnings of a kind of mysticism I found in your poems.
Please forgive the long list of your images and words which you obviously already know. I have included them here for two reasons. First, I wanted you to know the particulars of what I so loved and admired in your work. Second, I thought that given the (semi)public nature of this letter—which I hope you will someday stumble across or be alerted to—perhaps there are would-be readers of your work who might find a few ways in through some of my favorite portals.
Your poems are, for me, a gift. I too read poets, “living and dead, who teach me.” They are often my deepest teachers. They give me lessons I find nowhere else. And for those who are still living, I want to say thanks. If, as a byproduct of this letter, it opens one new person to your work, I am happy to have said my thanks in this strange, vast, public (cyber) space.
With gratitude,
Peter Gaines
For months I’ve been reading and reading—nearly all poetry—and I’ve come across individual poems that have resonated with me, a few that have inspired me, and even one that made me weep. But just this week I took your book—Without End—from my shelf, and started, more seriously this time, to read it again. I first bought the book after encountering your poem, “The Generation,” in an essay by Carl Dennis. I was blown away at the time by the sweep of the poem, the historical references, the philosophical considerations of death and religion, but most of all by your statement that, “Every thought is a light coin which / rolls, in its shy secretive / being, into a song, into a painting.” That image was something I kept, something I still keep. I have carried that coin ever since, its face now worn by the ongoing praise of my forefinger and thumb.
And then this morning, as I made my way deeper into the poems gathered from Mysticism for Beginners, I was simply moved. When I’d put the book down, your poems haunted, stirring me back to the book. This hadn’t happened since I read all of Jack Gilbert’s work in a fever last fall. Your poems awakened words and images inside of me and suddenly I want to write again.
The way you close transformation—“I’ve taken long walks, / craving one thing only:
lightning, / transformation, / you”—echoes my experience of late as a reader. I have been waiting for and craving the burst and surge that springs—for me—from writing and from reading. And I am grateful to you for that. I am also grateful for so many of your images, your statements, your poems. Here are a few that I treasure…
from “A Quick Poem”
Far from dawn. Far from home.
In place of walls—sheet metal.
Instead of a vigil—a flight.
Travel instead of remembrance.
from “The Greenhouse”
Suddenly you see the world lit differently,
other people’s doors swing open for a moment,
you read their hidden thoughts, their holidays don’t hurt,
their happiness is less opaque, their faces
almost beautiful.
from “Postcards”
We had nowhere to go
although the day was empty
like a sleeve buoyed by the wind.
from “A Shell”
A poem may hold the thunder’s echo
like a shell touched by Orpheus
as he fled. Time takes life away
and gives us memory, gold with flame,
black with embers.
from “Letter from a Reader”
Write about those moments
when friendships footbridges
seem more enduring
than despair.
from “That’s Sicily”
That’s Sicily, someone whispered,
three-cornered island, owl’s breath,
handkerchief of the dead.
From “Self-Portrait”
I read poets, living and dead, who teach me
tenacity, faith, and pride. I try to understand
the great philosophers—but usually catch just
scraps of their precious thoughts.
rom “Cello”
Not everything turns into song
though. Sometimes you catch
a murmur or a whisper:
I’m lonely,
I can’t sleep.
from “She Wrote in Darkness”
Darkness wrote,
having taken this middle-aged woman
for its fountain pen.
I am grateful for whoever took you for his fountain pen. I am grateful for the transformations that have come for me while reading your work. I am now full of ways to think of cello strings, and houses, and traveling, and pianos, and maps of Mediterranean countries, and maybe even the beginnings of a kind of mysticism I found in your poems.
Please forgive the long list of your images and words which you obviously already know. I have included them here for two reasons. First, I wanted you to know the particulars of what I so loved and admired in your work. Second, I thought that given the (semi)public nature of this letter—which I hope you will someday stumble across or be alerted to—perhaps there are would-be readers of your work who might find a few ways in through some of my favorite portals.
Your poems are, for me, a gift. I too read poets, “living and dead, who teach me.” They are often my deepest teachers. They give me lessons I find nowhere else. And for those who are still living, I want to say thanks. If, as a byproduct of this letter, it opens one new person to your work, I am happy to have said my thanks in this strange, vast, public (cyber) space.
With gratitude,
Peter Gaines
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