[New-Poetry] Re: Tranströmer

[Crisman Cooley]

Okay, I'm playing the game.  The title, I notice, is Breathing Room  
(or Space) July.  From this I gather that the poem takes place in  
July and that it has something to do with space or breathing or room  
to breathe... We shall see.  (I'm playing the game, coincidentally,  
after 3 glasses of organic Merlot from Hectore at La Carpa-- a wine  
that ages very slowly even after it is opened and comes in a 4-liter  
bottle-- I believe wine is no longer the drink of poets... but I  
don't know what is.  Any faults in the interpretation I lay upon  
Dionysius.  I'd prefer to know what they were doing in the Eleusinian  
mystery cults, which seems much more relevant to me.  And if I'd just  
done THAT, the interpretation would probably be flawless.)   So  
"lying on his back" leaning, loafing [foul! -- rule 4 broken],  
breathing we assume, with room to breathe.  Then the very odd: "he is  
also up there."  But that's not difficult.  He is in two places at  
once.  Likely, he's "under tall trees" and simply looking up-- but  
looking up with such intensity that he's also up there.  Or imagining  
himself up there.  Or having burst the boundaries of his own skin...  
further evidence for this in: "He rills into thousands of twigs and  
branches..."  Rills of course as a verb is weird.  [Breaking rule 4  
again: look in the Oxford American (the OED having died inside of my  
dead IBM laptop) for rill: "verb intrans. (of water) flow in or as in  
a rill."  Okay.  So he's flying or flowing up into the branches, and  
the flowing is splitting off getting smaller and smaller-- very  
well.  "...is swayed back and forth..." so these rivulets are moving  
up in the air-- no problem.  "As if in a catapult seat outflung in  
slow motion" ... huh?  Is that him flung up from the ground into the  
air?  Yeah probably.  "Slow" because that's how trees move in wind.   
I'm breaking rule 4 to infer wind from tree motion.  But perhaps the  
motion is from a man climbing up there with a chainsaw...  no, no  
evidence for that!

"Standing by the jetties..."  okay, suddenly by the water.  Trees  
gone and flowed right down into the sea.  Eyes squinting, narrowing  
or screwed up.  Prefer MS's squinting.  "Narrowing" is confusion of  
parallax with a change of distance between the eyes-- completely  
fallacious.  And screwed up-- well, it's just not something someone  
is in polite society.  "The docks ages sooner than men."  An artifact  
of the poor web master typing furiously late at night to get the  
Transtromer translations up on the web before she eats at midnight,  
sleeps at 12:20am-- despite the latte at 10:30.  Surely neither  
Transtorm or Ms. Swenson would (do or) say such a thing.  Fulton and  
Bly have avoided the grammatical error, but the sheer effort reminds  
me of a dance between Gargantua and Pantagruel-- but that may be the  
wine.  Men and docks both turn silver with age-- thereupon turns the  
metaphor.  No?  And wood turns silver in less than 50 years.  A  
statement of fact, by way of metaphor.  "Stones in their bellies" or  
"stomachs" or "boulders in their guts."  Bly is consistently  
funniest.  I think this is the pebbles stuck between the boards of  
the piers... what else?  Which would preclude "boulders" unless the  
space between planks is larger than a man's waist, so that boulders  
would fit in.  In that case, even Bly would fall through.   
"...blinding light rips ... through" or "beats right in" or "drives  
in" [in a yacht, perhaps? ...no].   "In" what?  Well, remember, the  
guy is squinting.  So maybe it rips into his eyes.  Or into the  
pier.  But anyway "across the waters..."

"Sailing all day in an open boat" ... no problem here!  "over the  
glittering bights".  I remember bight meaning the gravitational curve  
in a rope or the inertial curve in a wave as it moves up sand.  So  
glittering bights would seem to be waves out in the water... though  
not quite, therefore back to the dictionary.   "A curve or recess in  
a coastline, river, or other..."  but if it's a curve, how come  
Fulton translates the same thing as "straits"?  Straits may not be  
straight but they're narrow and not necessarily curved.  Bly calls  
'em bays.  So be it.  Bright waterways.  "he will fall fast asleep at  
last inside a blue lamp"  Finally, we're reintroduced to the "he".   
But this he is in a boat, sleeping.  The first was sleeping under  
trees, the second standing on a pier, the third now is lying in a  
boat.  And we presume they all have "breathing room".  Each is doing  
essentially nothing.  The hard work of the poet.   "a blue lamp"  or  
"his blue lamp" -- the sky?   Bright sun does light the sky's mantle  
like heat lights the coleman lantern mantle.  "...islands... creep"  
or "crawl" like --  what is drawn to the lamp?  "moths".  Very well.   
"over the glass", "across the glass", "over the globe" -- water is  
glass, covers the globe (at least in the sea)... and is ripped by  
light, made to look shiny, glass.

Okay, it is one guy or three?  It could be 3 poses of one guy during  
July.  Or a particular day and 3 different approaches to breathing.   
Just like the guy can lie on the ground and be in the tree-- it can  
be one guy in 3 places all at once, or 3 guys at the same time,  
brought into proximity only in the poet's imagination, or one guy at  
three different times.  The poem gives permission to take all three  
perspectives.

On Dec 15, 2006, at 2:53 PM, Crisman Cooley wrote:

> 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; 2. As you read these 3 versions of a Tranströmer poem,  
> you must actually pay attention to your own esthetic reactions; 3.  
> You must report what is your esthetic reaction to a particular  
> word, phrase or image; 4. You must not comment on what is NOT in  
> the poem, only what is in 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.  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); 7. these translations are the only  
> object of 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?"  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?
>
> 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,
> is swayed back and forth,
> as if in a catapult seat outflung in slow motion.
>
> Standing down by the jetties he squints across the waters.
> The docks ages sooner than men.
> Made of splintered silver gray planks, and with stones in their
> bellies.
> The blinding light rips its way straight through.
>
> Sailing all day in an open boat
> over the glittering bights,
> he will fall asleep at last inside a blue lamp
> while islands like great nocturnal moths creep over the glass.
>
> 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.
>
> The man down by the jetties narrows his eyes at the water.
> The jetties grow old more quickly than people.
> They have silver grey timber and stones in their stomachs.
> The blinding light beats right in.
>
> The man traveling all day in an open boat
> over the glittering straits
>
> Will sleep at last inside a blue lamp
> while the islands creep like large moths across the glass.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> Translation by Robert Bly
>
>
>> Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2006 20:50:49 -0500
>> From: "Bob Grumman" <bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net>
>> Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Re: Transtromer
>
>
>>> It doesn't matter whether you've read a whole book.  What matters  
>>> (if  you
>>> are interested in educating yourself and others about your  esthetic
>>> predilections) is that you make specific comments about a   
>>> specific poem.
>>
>> How about a specific question such as the one implied by my post,  
>> what's
>> this guy do that's special?
>>
>> --Bob G.
>