[New-Poetry] Crisman's Game re: Tranströmer

[Bob Grumman]

This is from the 16th, Crisman.

I unexpectedly have a few moments, so will try your game, CC.



> Let's see if we can make this an interesting discussion.  Here are  the 
> rules: 1. You must think, really think before you say something;

I always think before saying anything, but will try to pause and think some 
more before saying anything here.  My problem is not not thinking but in not 
having sufficient data to come to an reasonable conclusion.  But it isn't 
really a problem because I'm aware of it.

> 2. As you read these 3 versions of a Tranströmer poem, you must  actually 
> pay attention to your own esthetic reactions;

That goes without saying.

 3. You must
> report what is your esthetic reaction to a particular word, phrase or 
> image;

That doesn't sound easy but I'll try.


4. You must not comment on what is NOT in the poem, only what
> is in it;

That's poor literary criticism, but what you want here, which is something 
different.  So I'll go along with it.


5. You can only voice your own esthetic reaction, and are
> strictly disallowed from making political comments or any other  comments 
> other than A. your own esthetic experience, or B. comments  about your own 
> esthetic experience.

I consider it one of my flaws that I almost never voice others' aesthetic 
reactions, just my own.  I almost never bring politics in my engagement with 
a poem, unless in response to politics in the poem.


6. You are allowed to comment on
> the variation between translations, knowing, but not caring, that  these 
> are not about Tranströmer, but are about the text actually in  the new-po 
> post (the Object of Discussion);

Okay.

7. these translations are
> the only object of discussion;

Right.  What I'm doing now is in advance of the discussion.

 8. The question "What's this guy do
> that's special?" must be changed subtly to "What is my esthetic  reaction 
> to what these translators say this guy does?"

I'm not sure I understand this so what I'll do is express my aesthetic 
reaction to what the translators do (and therefore indicate what they think 
the guy does).

  9. In the
> process of following the rules, your original question will be  answered, 
> but not in a way to prove anything, since esthetic  discussions never 
> prove anything.  Proving something would be  breaking rules #2,3,4, and 5. 
> Ready?

As already stated, I can't see how this will come about, but I'm ready.


> Here are the texts:  [note that the May Swenson translation appears  to 
> have an error in line 6]
>
> Breathing Room: July
>
> Lying on his back under tall trees
> he is also up there. He rills into thousands of twigs and branches,


I like "rills," a word I don't know.  Oh, I do know it, sort of--small 
valley, I thought, but it's small brook.  Anyway, I understood it in the 
context as airly joining the twigs and branches of the trees.  Liquidly, 
like a brook, I now add, having checked the dictionary.  My aesthetic 
response is--what do you want?  just that I like it?  Good image for 
carrying a thinking or a soul into Nature.



> is swayed back and forth,
> as if in a catapult seat outflung in slow motion.

Happy motion, happily imaged.  The slow motion increases the pleasure, the 
serenity.

> Standing down by the jetties he squints across the waters.

Okay, the person's on a pleasant jaunt in a countryside.  That's not an 
aesthetic reaction but I have to set-up my aesthetic reactions, don't I?
Here, I'm not having an aesthetic reaction.  The language is humdrum, the 
scene humdrum.  But not unpleasantly in either case.

> The docks age sooner than men.

(Has to be "age," so I changed it.

> Made of splintered silver gray planks, and with stones in their
> bellies.
> The blinding light rips its way straight through.

Nice postcard scene.  "The blinding light" I guess is reflection of the 
water of the lake or ocean.  It doesn't dazzle me but I don't mind it.  I 
sort of like the image of the docks aging faster than men.  It's an odd 
remark; therefore it makes one think/feel the aging more, and about the 
water and weather that causes it.

> Sailing all day in an open boat

I have no aesthetic response to the words, but the image of sailing all day 
picks up nicely on the opening image of, in effect, sailing with the twigs 
and branches.

> over the glittering bights,

"bights" is an odd word (to me), so effectively freshening here--that is, it 
makes me feel good aesthetically.  And makes up for "glittering," which 
comes close to annoying me, or giving me aesthetic pain, because a standard 
poetic word.

> he will fall asleep at last inside a blue lamp
> while islands like great nocturnal moths creep over the glass.

My aesthetic reaction to this is inseparable from what you might call my 
intellectual reaction.  I like the idea of his falling asleep inside the 
lamp the sky makes around him, but am confused somewhat by the islands, so 
they cause me some aesthetic discomfort.  They suggest he's submerged in a 
dream like the body of water he's been sailing on.  Okay, that works, I 
guess--he becomes such a part of the water world he's been sailing (as he 
earlier became a part of the trees overhead) that he enters it.  He became a 
brook up into the twigs and branches, now he's become a lake or sea whose 
islands move above him.  So I find the pay-off aesthetically nice.

> Translation by May Swenson
>
> Breathing Space July
>
> The man lying on his back under the high trees
> is up there too. He rills out in thousandfold twigs,
> sways to and fro,
> sits in an ejector seat that releases in slow motion.

"High" may add a little to the exhiliartion of becoming one with the trees. 
I'm somewhat unpleasantly jolted by the "ejector seat that releases," which 
sounds too mechanical to me, so without the happy organic flow that 
Swenson's version had, due mainly to "outflung."



> The man down by the jetties narrows his eyes at the water.

I'm confused because in the first version I thought there was only one man 
in the poem.

> The jetties grow old more quickly than people.
> They have silver grey timber and stones in their stomachs.
> The blinding light beats right in.

About the same aesthetic reaction to this text as to Swenson's--with a 
preference for "grow old more quickly" to "age sooner," which, now that I 
think more about it, doesn't quite make sense since everything begins to age 
as soon as born.

> The man traveling all day in an open boat
> over the glittering straits

"traveling" would feel aesthetically neither good nor bad here if I didn't 
remember "sailing," which is much more exciting, and seems to me to involve 
the persona more than "traveling."  And it brings back the slow motion sail 
into the trees.

> Will sleep at last inside a blue lamp
> while the islands creep like large moths across the glass.

This again seems enjoyable, but not as viscerally rich as Swenson's version.



> Translation by Robert Fulton
>
> Breathing Space July
>
> The man who lies on his back under huge trees
> is also up in them. He branches out into thousands of tiny branches.
> He sways back and forth,
> he sits in a catapult chair that hurtles forward in slow motion.

This affects me about the way Swenson's version did, except that I like 
hers, with its "outflung," better.


> The man who stands down at the dock screws up his eyes against the  water.
> Docks get older faster than men.
> They have silver-gray posts and boulders in their gut.
> The dazzling light drives straight in.

Another confusion--this one about the light, which I thought was up from the 
water, driving straight in.  So a different image, and okay, I guess.

> The man who spends the whole day in an open boat
> moving over the luminous bays
> will fall asleep at last inside the shade of his blue lamp
> as the islands crawl like huge moths over the globe.

Again, I miss the sailing.  And now I envision three men, and realize three 
men were in the second version.  Or "the man" at three times in his life. 
All three versions are a bit confusing in this respect--the first because 
the persona could not have spent all day sailing if he lay under the trees 
at one point.  I have trouble connecting the dock scene with the other two 
unless it's one man going from lying under the trees to the dock, then to 
his sailboat.  That is, the first and last stanzas lead to some oceanic 
experience that seem, for me, to fuse; the second does not.  This time 
around Bly's rendition doesn't suck, for me.  But his final stanza seems to 
state a generality I can't believe in and so can't sympathize with enough to 
experience much aesthetic delight.  Swenson's man is an individual whom I 
can feel might experience sailing the way the poem's man does.  Her version 
flows, the others don't.

Oh, and Bly has the man inside the lampshade, not inside the lamp, which is 
much more logical than the other two versions, but cost it the deep mystery 
the others have.

In all versions a man or men are flowing through the world while the world 
flows through them.  A fine expression of serenity.

> Translation by Robert Bly

End of my attempt to play your game, CC.  I don't feel I was doing anything 
I don't always do when reading a poem knowing I will be more or less 
explicating it--so I probably didn't play the game right.  One note: I find 
that I don't, perhaps can't, think harder than usual.  What I do is think 
and express my thought, then return a rethink it, and--if 
necessary--re-express it.  I didn't do much of that this time.  I don't feel 
I had to think really hard to get into the poem--mainly because surrealism 
and oneness with Nature, etc., are common in the poetry I've been most 
involved with over the years.

I didn't learn what the guy is doing that's special--really special.  So 
that part of the experiment was a failure.  Now, why don't you play your 
game, CC?

--Bob G.