Currently Reading...
White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings, Iain Sinclair
Parish Krewes, Micah Ballard
Twelfth Night, William Shakespeare

Aimé Césaire has died.

from NOTEBOOK OF A RETURN TO THE NATIVE LAND
by Aimé Césaire

Death traces a shining circle
above this man
death stars softly above his head
death breathes, crazed, in the ripened
cane field of his arms
death gallops in the prison like
a white horse
death gleams in the dark like the
eyes of a cat
death hiccups like water under the Keys
death is struck bird
death wanes
death flickers
death is a very shy patyura*
death expires in a white pool of silence.

(translated by Clayton Eshleman and Annette Smith)
* apparently a "Paraguayan peccary" (pig-like wild animal)
*******
Guillermo Juan Parra's personal take on reading Césaire can be found here.
*******
Eshleman's thoughts on translating Césaire can be found here.
As a "ward and precinct man" who wishes he had a better grasp of the local flora and fauna, I was especially moved by Eshleman and Césaire in this passage:

"The case of plant names was especially complex, as we had to be careful to highlight Césaire’s concrete and political interest in Caribbean flora. The fol­lowing comments by Césaire himself (from a 1960 interview) reinforced our concerns in these regards: 'I am an Antil­lean. I want a poetry that is concrete, very Antillean, Mar­tinican. I must name Martinican things, must call them by their names. The caňafistula mentioned in ‘Spirals’ is a tree; it is also called the drumstick tree. It has large yellow leaves and its fruit are those purplish bluish black pods, used here also as a purgative. The balisier resembles a plantain, but it has a red heart, a red florescence at its center that is really shaped like a heart. The cecropias are shaped like silvery hands, yes, like the interior of a black’s hand. All of these astonishing words are absolutely necessary, they are never gratuitous . . .'"

As a translator who has struggled with making known in English (what seem to me to be) secondary meanings in some of Lorca's word choices in "Remanso" and as a reader who has tried to make sense of some of the strange features of Vallejo's poems, I also appreciated these thoughts from Eshleman:

"Neologisms constituted another pitfall. Some were relative­ly easy to handle because their components were obvious. 'Negritude,' 'nigromance,' 'strom,' and 'mokatine' were clear by association with 'infinitude,' 'nécromancie,' 'maelstrom,' and 'nougâtine' (a rich French almond candy). But coining equivalents for 'rhizulent,' 'effrade,' and 'des­encastration' (which we translated respectively as 'rhiz­ulate,' 'frightation,' and “disencasement,” in the last case giving up on the castration aspect, required a solid sense of semantics. Only Césaire himself was in a position to reveal, in a conversation with me in a Paris cafe, that 'verrition' which preceding translators had interpreted as 'flick' and 'swirl' had been coined on a Latin verb 'verri' meaning 'to sweep,' 'to scrape a surface,' and ultimately 'to scan.' Our rendition ('veerition') attempted to preserve the turning motion (set against its oxymoronic modifier 'motionless' as well as the Latin sound of the original - thus restituting the long-lost meaning of an important passage (the last few lines of 'Notebook of a Return to the Native Land')."

Would that I could turn to Lorca for advice translating "Remanso."

& this passage is also of considerable interest, especially with regard to recent discussions I've had with friends-peers-colleagues-students about context:

"For the general public, 'noir' and 'nègre' may well have been interchangeable, but the very civilized and very complexed Antilleans considered themselves as 'Noirs,' the 'nègres' being on that distant continent, Africa. And it is in this light that one must read Césaire’s use of the word 'nègre' and its derivatives 'nègritude,' 'nègrillon' and 'nègraille': he was making up a family of words based on what he con­sidered to be the most insulting way to refer to a black. The paradox, of course, was that this implicit reckoning with the blacks’ ignominy, this process of self-irony and self-denigration, was the necessary step on the path to a new self-image and spiritual rebirth. It was therefore im­portant to translate 'nègre' as 'nigger' and its deriva­tives as derivatives or compounds of 'nègre' and 'nigger' ('negritude,' 'nigger scum,' 'little nigger,' etc)."

Although I understand and respect Eshleman's choices, I don't think he got it quite right here. If "for the general public" Césaire’s choice "nègre" and "noir" were "interchangeable" then I don't think "nigger" is the appropriate U.S. equivalent even if "nègre" was used by "the very civilized" Antilleans to refer (pejoratively?) to black people from Africa. Seems the self-identification (apparently self-ironic and mockingly-self-denigrating) Césaire is after is more subtle and, therefore, only loosely analogous to the n-word -- a taboo! -- in USAmerica.

But, as I believe all translations are provisional versions and that none are definitive, I see the usefulness and power of Eshleman's choices, here and elsewhere.
*******
If interested in this brief discussion of Césaire, I also recommend his A Tempest which I read too quickly (out of the Tufts University library while also taking four grad classes and doing my teaching practicum at Cambridge Rindge and Latin) more than ten years ago. I am adding it to my summer reading list.

Samuel James Cornish, my mentor at Emerson College and the first of the Sams after whom my son is named, has been named Boston's first poet laureate.

(I snagged the image from ChickenBones: A Journal. See the photo & read from Sam's poem & prose memoir 1935 by clicking here.)

"You took my dreams from me
when I first found you.

I kept them with me, babe.
I packed them with my own.
Can't make it all alone;
I've built my dreams around you."

Kirsty MacColl died seven years ago yesterday. (I was reading an article about the controversy over the BBC's threat to fade out "slut" and "faggot". Then a tickling in the back of the brain reminded me that Kirsty died just before Christmas--as did Joe Strummer, who died five years ago this coming Saturday. Not are the two of them linked in their association with the Pogues but also "Fairy Tale of New York" & "Straight to Hell" (w/ the line beginning "When it's Christmas out in Ho Chi Minh City...") are two of the songs I use to help me through the season.

Peace to Kirsty.
Health to you all.

I couldn't help but notice that the roof was caving in.
It wasn't a dream.
It was neither here nor there and it was here and there.
Ashes were in the air.
The cows were in the meadow lying fast asleep
in another century.
A tissue, a tissue we all get up again before flying
into less than ourselves.
& you call this a community? Of what, solipsists &
blind men? Or worse?

I need to spend more time with poetry. Period.
& not just because of what you said in my dream last night.

Limitations are defining; that is, deafening.
On and on
And then it's over.
*
Spiderthreads make taut patterns that collapse in rain.
Piano keys in a pattern we play patterns on. Language likewise.
The anniversary passed with little notice. Nostalgia is easy in fall. Harder elsetime.
Spiders go to work in the wee hours and are kings of new kingdoms by morning.
We watched it all. Kept records. Annotated the photographs which we will pass along to our children's children whose strange nonexistence is pure mockery come to think of it.
*
Having a haven is heaven.
More than a quota of birthrights.
Expectations and entitlements broach no nuance.
We've all wanted to live in the bosom of knowing and safety before tragedy.
Come, come now admit it!
It'll lose you in itself. And that's one way of getting along.
One place to call one's habitat.
A fall all year long beside a summer at the beach.
Abby knows where it's snowing and darking out. It happens everyday.
See you there!

Eons have passed and you don't look a day.
*
The Bumptious Bump of Gloucester Paramilitary Politics Reached the Public News Media
*
She said she was feeding animals. Later she said they all had hands.
*
Never forget: the hate us for our freedom.
*
Princesses always help their moms & the castle is working.
*
Today I will set about poking out the eyes of every rock dove I've ever written. But not until the children are asleep.
*
A funnel spider emerging from his dark cylindrical web amidst a stack of red bricks is something to see. For an instant you are no bigger than the bug he wants to snare. An instant later you've forgotten all about him & so head unknowlingly into the darkness of the alluring narrow passageway.
*
My dreams? Rotten beams holding up the first floor. Ceilings buckling, heavy with water. Rat's nest electrical wiring sending off sparks. And then I'm cast off. I'd be happier if the lonesome whistle would blow.

Discussions of interest:

A commons or a market?
*****

Poet as folk-artist: here (July 10, 11, 12) and here and here and here (July 11) and here and so on.

Oh, okay, here I am. This looks familiar.
"That door."
I point.
"Yes, that one. Walk in. And shut the door behind you."
Locked. Only one way out now.
***
This summer I've read _Wide Sargasso Sea_ (immediate entry into my personal cannon, grazing in that part of my mind's country also inhabited by _Under the Volcano_ and _Ulysses_ and her _Good Morning, Midnight_ one hill over from Emily Dickinson's poems), _Magic Lies Outside_ (thanks Gerrit), Eagleton's _How to Read a Poem_ (a tedious waste...though I like _Ideology_ and _Literary Theory_), A Book of Propehcies (a link between the lyrical and the de/arranged in Wieners work (thanks to Jack for the link; order this from Bootstrap Productions), Derek Fenner and Ryan Gallagher's new chapbooks, and I should finish _Jane Eyre_ today (taking longer than expected...how do I find it? humorously predictable, a bit tedious, well-observed (w/ the ring of truth), cleverly constructed...WSS haunts the book for me, and I'm pleased that I read it first...my sympathies lie w/ Ms. Rhys; the moralizing narrative rhetoric repels me...I choose the unruly overgrowth over the mastery of the English garden...with my machete I'll cut back enough to get to where I'd like to go but that's all...at least that's who I hope I am...my Weymouth-founding ancestors, of course, laugh at the thought.
***
After _Magic Lies Outside_ I've been noticing telephone poles and lines lately. Does anyone else remember the lines along the train in Paul Blackburn's _The Cities_. I need to re-read this book.
***
Time to go home. I found a key. There are now two ways out.

The blog format works against a chronological reading of the Ireland Journal. For chronology read Part One the Part Two etc.

*

New York (3/17-3/18) & San Francisco (4/17-4/21) Journals still to come

*

Been reading Alice Notley's Mysteries of Small Houses . One answer to the problem of maintaining both a narrative and the Dickinsonian sense of having the top one's head taken off by poetry.

TRAVEL BLOG PART FOUR

2/21 from Dublin out

Interviews w/ theatre actresses. One on the tele. Two on the radio. Three in one morning.

...heading SE out of Dublin.

Hours in midday in an Irish traffic jam on the N7. [Everywhere we go people know about it. Infamous.]

Two off ramps w/o route numbers. No chance for an alternate route. Listen to RTE 1. Lots of talk about car accidents & the ways to stop them.

*

Thought I'd keep a record of Irish breaksfasts too. So Monday morning in Galway: one egg, a storebought fried potato (sort of a thick hash brown), a tomato, sausage & bacon. This morning in Dun Laogaire: an egg, tomato, white pudding, sausage, and bacon. Egg overhard Monday & then quite easy -- lovely -- this morning.

*

End up at Morrissey's in Abbeyleix at 3:10 pm. Sit next to the old turf stove piping heat into the rest of the pub.
***
2/22
at Rock of Cashel

rushes as bedding in summer
*
implications of the plague (1385) on genetic heritage
**
on Dingle
The Grapevine Hostel
Colin, the bilingual two year old...Abby falls in love.
***
2/23 & 2/24
Assorted jottings about purchases and practical matters.
***
2/25
Eat black pudding, bangers, rashers, tomato, onion, mushroom, eggs

Drive to Croom. People in a pub & at a bookmaker. Nowhere else.

Drive to Adare. Wedding capital of Ireland. Pleasant meals & pints & chat & Rugby at the two sides of the Collins pub. The one side in the afternoon fish & chips during France v. Italy. The other side in the afternoon an Irish lamb stew during Scotland v. England. (A famous Scottish victory!) Stay at a lace curtain B & B. Reminds me of a great aunt's house near the South Shore Mall in Braintree.
***
2/26
Now I have values not just anger. Beliefs I came to protect & pass along. These are beliefs I'll stand for but the point is to live them--no longer always to fight.

TRAVEL BLOG PART THREE

[back to Dun Laoghaire theatre February 20th, 2006 (Juno and the Paycock)...]
Mom tells son about O'Casey's later plays. They check their phones. Mom asks him what she's done wrong. "Have I gone too far." She's talking about the phone.

The girl now to my left eats ice cream off a stick. My feeling is this crowd might stand up and walk out or shout down the actors if the play's no good.

"So di'ya get pissed Sah'erdat ni'"

Could this scene--a theatre in a wall filled w/ a range of ages--happen in the states. Could a Miller Or a T. Williams do it? The Crucible?

I want to read a history (up to the present moment) of Irish theatre & its audience.

Earlier today we went into the city centre--an lar--to see j.P. Donleavy's paintings at the Molesworth Gallery all of the show except for enough paintings to fill one room were packed up for the buyers.

The art was Steadman-like. Lots of simple--primitive?--four legged animals. I liked the simplest of them, the most gestural. An animal rendered with a few flicks and scrawls of the pen.

The play is to begin...

Begins with a recording of "Molly Malone". The teens snicker
*
[Misc. notes on the play]
*
[Intermission]
The teen girls says to her boyfriend: "We're doing King Lear. it's more intricate than your mind."

He claims that he too is "doing Lear".

"I'd like to see your reading table," she says.

Later, "stop alienating me because I'm a girl."

& then he puts his hand our palm up. She puts her hand into his, curls her fingers between his while his hand is still outstretched, palm up.

Then they talk about getting into pubs.
She: You're forgetting I'm w/ you
He: I'm not.
She: Yea y'are. I wouldn't get in.
[Pause.]
He: What?
She: You need a hair cut. Go get one tomorrow.
He: Yours is longer
She: It suits a girl when her hair is longer. What's up w/ guys when they wear their hats this way.

The boys--the boyfriends & his mates to his left, furthest from me--show the different ways to wear hats: truck driver (pulled back, brim up), dads (sitting atop the head above the ears--but I've never seen a dad wear a baseball cap in Ireland that way or any way) backwards which (sarcastically) "is just cool."

The idle talk of teens. Great fun to eavesdrop. Eavesdropping is working for a writer.

She (pretty & tomboyish in brown trousers & skateboarding sneakers w/ a pink insignia) puts her legs over his. Their legs are both outstretched. His on the seat in front of hers at an angle over his. He sings a parody of the song "Mandy". I imagine its a bawdy parody because they all laugh with wicked grins.

Now he's sitting up. Her legs still draped over his as he sips a Redbull.

"Bull hormones," he says to his malke buddies. Then a beat or two later he turns & gives the girl a sip.

They talk of their favorite drinks.
Her: Vodka and coke or Gin and tonic.
Him: Pints of Heineken or Bud. Occasionally a Guinness.

There's a lot of noise when the lights go down. Then a stray voice or two. Then nothing.

[More notes on the play including a meditation on the line "No man has done enough for Ireland"; mentally I replace "Ireland" with "America" & play it out. Also this from the play "'What can God do against the stupidity of man?'" And this, "with an Irish accent "police" sounds like "polis". And "nostalgia is bullshit." [Important to remember while I'm in Ireland.]

After the play I can't find a pub in Dun Laoghaire at least not one w/o kids (some clearly under 18) streaming into it or one w/o an angry man standing in front of the door. So I find two pubs but skip them both. Find closed restaurants, open pizzarias, closed shops. I turn around & head for a chain: Abrakedabra. Fish & chips to bring back to the B & B. Then I'll read a bit of Potrait before failling asleep.

I did pass an open off-license on the way back but when I stopped to look in I saw only wine & liquor. I'd like a pint of Guinness properly poured. Am I in the wrong country? No, just the wrong neighborhood. & I'm hungry. It's 11:00 & I haven't eaten since a donut six hours ago on O'Connell St. between the GPO & the Liffey. Stop there if you get the chance. (It's on the opposite side from the GPO & closer to the Liffey. A little donut windown. Donuts soak up alcohol they say. I say.) Before that had a late lunch of chicken & curry by the Davey Byrne pub (couldn't go in with the wee one...assholes). Now my fish & chips are ready.

This from John Landry:

Poetry Bookshop Changes Hands
The Grolier Poetry Book Shop in Harvard Square, the oldest poetry bookstore in the United States, is about to change hands for the second time in eight decades, Publishers Weekly reported. The influential store, opened in 1927 and a favorite of poets including E. E. Cummings, T. S. Eliot and Marianne Moore, has been sold to Ifeanyi Ment iki, a professor of philosophy at Wellesley College. He is also a poet whose most recent collection, "Of Altai, the Bright Light," was published last year by Earthwinds Editions. "The store has meant a lot to so many of us," he said. "I wanted to make sure it continued." The sale, by Louisa Solano, who owned the store for 31 years, was prompted by her ill health and will become final tomorrow. "I'm going to catch up on 30 years of sleep," Ms. Solano said.

PROCRASTINATION

From "Clip-On Tie: The Diary of a New York Art Museum Security Guard"

Dance, Devox, Dance

Jennifer Moxley, "Invective Verse"

Octopus Magazine

TRAVEL BLOG PART TWO

2/20 Dun Laoghaire

Always check what's going on in town wherever you travel. Checking over the brochures downstairs at a B & B in Dun Laoghaire south of Dublin I find announcements for the local theatre. Currently running? Juno & the Paycock for 15 Euros. I had it swapped 'round in my mind momentarily with Shadow of a Gunman my favorite O'Casey but even when my momentary thrill abatted I was still thrilled to see professional theatre for about twenty bucks. I never made use of student rush (is that what it's called) while at Emerson even when The Importance of Being Earnest played over at BU. I was too meek to figure out how the process of getting a seat for $10 actually worked. Since then I've seen five professional plays, three of the five while in Ireland.

Great to see dramakids loitering out front...Oh, before I go on remove the idea of a Georgian theatre from your mind. The theatre in Dun Laoghaire is in a large mall-like complex. The theatre itself is not unlike a megaplex movie theatre in size & design. Audience? Scruffy teens there seemingly on their own. The aforementioned dramakids. Older couples. A mom & her teenaged son. A teenage couple on a date. The boy brought along two friends too. Strange, no? I couldn't imagine this scene in the States. A group of kids way in the back shout to friends as they walk in. One checks phone for text as he walks in. This is modern Dublin. He's Black. Mates are white. They chat away excitedly. Mom & son beside me talk about the local match on the weekend. Footbal but soccer or Gaelic? This can be confusing in Ireland where some people say "soccer," as we do in the States, to refer to Association Football. For these people "football" means "Gaelic football". Other people say "football" & mean, what for us & some of the Irish, is "soccer". Generally in the east, where Dublin is, "football" means "soccer". The east tends to be more British. Some in the west call Dublin "West Britain". [to be continued]

Belle & Sebastian at Avalon (Boston, MA) February 28, 2006

Aaron.

Joe.

TRAVEL BLOG PART ONE
(transcribed from a 4 1/2 IN x 3 1/4 IN notebook w/ small changes)
2/19 GALWAY

Looking for...
Poets in Charlie Byrne's bookstore

Maurice Scully
Geoffrey Squires
Catherine Walsh
Billy Mills
Randolph Healy
Trevor Joyce
Austin Clarke
Thomas Kinsella's Wormwood

Eight swings & misses.

Go to Mullingar for music. Closed.
Head for a drink at the Blue Note on West William. Take a look. Walk on. No use trying to recreate the past.

At Charlie Byrne's find Midwinter Day for five euros. Find it as the shopkeepers begin to turn off the lights.
***
Past Dusk
Dark green football field
Indigo cobalt sky
Saffron yellow nightlamps
thrum & spot the distance
a dusting yellowing
the bluegreen scene
white Gaelic goalposts organize
the blueblack sky slopes
away from my eye then inverts
as I walk past
& look back
***
The Sullivan brothers butcher "Olivers Army" on You're a Star (sounds like Euro Star). (Later in the Irish Times I get the answer to the question I ask aloud: does anyone else *get* this?) "White nigger" becomes "white figure". The cheeriness. Argh. The judges love the upbeat tempo. Huh? "Send you to Johannesberg"? Cheery? "White figure"? What the fuck does that mean? ... praise heaped on 'em all around. (A judge says the brothers showed "killer instinct". No pun intended it seems.) I must be an alien. (I am an alien.) Where is Myles na Gopaleen to give these brothers their proper comeupance in tomorrow's paper.

Go to an old haunt. Name changed to Vinnies Take Away. (No apostrophe. Later see sign at an upscale restaurant in Dingle Town with the sign "Toilet's".) Vinnies Take Away is allegedly an "Italian Style Take Avay" but it's actually a chipper or chipshop (whichever designation you prefer). "Garlic chips" are the only vaguely "Italian" dish I see on the menu. But there're also "Mexican Chips" so...

No Club Orange at Vinnie's. That's disappointing. Also disappointing that curry is no longer a condiment. Now costs a euro. & now they put the vinegar on for you now.

For a month while I took a class at NUIG, I'd order a fishburger w/ chips & a Club Orange for under three pounds. (That was pre-Euro). Sometimes I'd douse the chips with salt & vinegar. Other times w/ the curry.

This meal was especially great w/ the windows of the place opened for the July breeze off Galway Bay. Also especially great after a wee smoke along the Corrib from the University nearly to the quays (where the chipper is).

Around the corner an army of swans live off the dole so to speak.

I will not try the Bar * B * Que Pork Rib Steak nor the Batter Burger at Vinnie's but I like to come here to write. Would that I could walk through my wardrobe and end up here. As it is, I find the place tonight without following directions. Let my feet take me.