Re: [New-Poetry] Re: Tranströmer
Bob Grumman
bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net
Mon Feb 12 06:25:42 EST 2007
Seems to me you gave a plausible paraphrase but nothing more, Crisman. What
happens in the poem that's special? You never said.
--Bob
----- Original Message -----
From: "Crisman Cooley" <ccooley at overdomain.com>
To: <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Friday, February 09, 2007 11:40 PM
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Tranströmer
> 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.
>>
>
>
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