Last Week’s Reading

January 17, 2017January 16, 2017 / Carolyn O / 20 Comments

January 8-14: A haunting novel in translation, debut fiction from a poet, a ghost story, a highly acclaimed play, and a poet I wish I’d read years ago.

South Korean writer Han Kang won the Man Booker International Prize for The Vegetarian (which I haven’t read); Human Acts*, which you can find at your local bookstore today, is the next of her novels to be translated into English by Deborah Smith. It is absolutely riveting, though quite hard to read, given the subject matter. The subject is the viciously quelled 1980 Gwanju Uprising, and the lens is the life and death of one boy, Dong-ho. In chapters that shift focus among different people who knew Dong-ho (well or tangentially), the author explores trauma, resilience, memory, witness, and questions of the soul. At what cost do survivors of torture bear witness to their sufferings? How do ordinary people find the strength to resist brutal injustice? How ought we to feel about being human when humans can be despicable creatures—or brave and kind? Human Acts is a devastating, brilliant book.

After reading Human Acts, I needed something a bit lighter to take the edge off, and Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk, by Kathleen Rooney, was just the ticket. Eighty-something Lillian Boxfish decides to end 1984 by taking a walk around her beloved New York City, reflecting on a life lived to the very fullest—if not always happily. Lillian has verve, and her recollections of working in the advertising department at Macy’s in the 1930s are wonderful (especially if you’re missing Mad Men); the character is based on Margaret Fishback, the highest paid woman in advertising during her heyday. This novel is light but not fluffy; the emphasis on connection was sensitive rather than mawkish. I generally loved the company of Lillian’s sharp mind (with the exception of several instances of fat-shaming, which, please, dear authors, can we dispense with?).

Less delightful was Gillian Flynn’s The Grown Up. Originally included in a short story anthology, the tale would, I suspect, be better served in that format, rather than as a standalone book (it was included in this month’s Book of the Month mailing). It’s a ghost story with a twist; I found it more grotesque than thrilling, and the ending, alas, didn’t satisfy.

One of the last books I read in 2016 was John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt; I couldn’t resist the temptation to make the next play I read Proof, David Auburn’s Pulitzer Prize winner (2001). Sometimes I forget how much I love reading drama (I used to teach it), though I’m happy when plays like these remind me. I suspect I don’t read drama often because it doesn’t get the hype in book-world (where, for good or ill, I spend much of my time) that fiction, nonfiction, and even poetry do. I wonder why that is. Anyway, Proof is about math, mental illness, and family. It’s very, very good.

Last week, I finally read Charlotte Mew’s Selected Poems (edited and introduced by Irish poet Eavan Boland). Mew came highly recommended by friend and poet Emily Mohn-Slate, and I am kicking myself, Dear Readers that I (a.) didn’t pick up this book ages ago and (b.) didn’t read it as soon as it arrived as a birthday present. Charlotte Mew (1869-1928) is an utterly tragic figure, but her poems are marvels—lines like none I’ve ever read before: part Victorian, part Georgian, part Modernist, and all deeply moving. I cried twice reading this slim volume, and friends, I do not cry easily when it comes to poetry.

*I received a copy of this book from the publisher for review consideration, which did not affect the content of my review.

I’m not sure this weekly reading wrap-up is going to be a regular feature, but I’m running with it for now!

“El amor como la resina”: Pablo Neruda’s “Física”

February 25, 2014February 24, 2014 / Carolyn O / 3 Comments

Well, it’s the end of February, which means this is the last entry in my series of sexy poems by dead poets. It’s been fun — let me know in the comments if you think I should try this again next February, or something different?

Neruda is over-anthologized when it comes to love poems, but here’s one that’s less well known. I cannot find the full text of this poem anywhere online, so here it is in the original Spanish, with my (very humble) translation following.

Física

El amor como la resina
de un árbol colmado de sangre
cuelga su extraño olor a germen
del embeleso natural:
entra el mar en el extremismo
o la noche devoradora
se desploma el alma en ti mismo,
suenan dos campanas de hueso
y no sucede sino el peso
de tu cuerpo otra vez vacío.

Physics

Love, like the resin
of a tree, overflowing with blood
suspends its strange scent over the bud
of spontaneous ecstasy:
the sea enters us in the last extremity,
or the devouring night
collapses your soul into itself,
two bells of bone ring out,
and nothing follows except the weight
of your body, hollow again.

“Like an ermine mantle tossed over someone’s shoulder”

April 30, 2013May 1, 2013 / Carolyn O / 1 Comment

This week, I’m departing from Shakespeare only to find him again in a short poem, “While Reading Hamlet” (1909), by Anna Akhmatova, the foremost Russian poet of the twentieth century. She’s perhaps best known for her long cycle Requiem, an outcry against Stalinist oppression, which claimed the lives of two of her three husbands.

This little poem is much lighter in tone, though the menace of the cemetery lingers. I wrestle with reading poems in translation, because to me it tends to feel almost like voyeurism, peeking in at something I don’t really have the right to know about or understand. No-one can speak all languages, though, polyglots notwithstanding, and so I must resign myself to translation if I want to read Milosz or Szymborska or Rimbaud or the great Anna Akhmatova.

I’m reading from my copy of the Norton edition of Akhmatova’s poems translated by Lyn Coffin; you can find it here.

“Dios padre sus miles de mundos / mece sin ruido” // ” God the father his thousands of worlds / rocks without sound”

February 26, 2013 / Carolyn O / Leave a comment

Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral was the first Latin American author to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, so you’d think her poems would be easy to find, since, you, know, she’s pretty darn awesome.

Not so.

I comb bookshelves on a fairly regular basis, and in, say, the ten years that I’ve been on the lookout for one of her books, I’ve never found one.

But the interwebs is a blessing, despite its many flaws, and on Powells.com I found a true gem: a third printing of a 1957 volume of Mistral’s poetry translated by Langston Hughes. THE Langston Hughes. Doubly awesome.

The book’s shortcoming is that it doesn’t include the poems in the original Spanish, but after ten years, I’ll take it. Of course, those ten years took most of my fluency in Spanish with them, but c’est la vie. Sorry. Es la vida. If you’d like a side-by-side translation, you might check out Ursula K. LeGuin’s newer edition, also on Powell’s.

These past few weeks we’ve been watching our son make an speedy transition from babydom into boyhood, and I’m feeling a little nostalgic, so out of the many lovely poems in this volume, I’m learning “Cradle Song” or “Meciendo” in Spanish, which means “rocking.” It’s sweet without becoming treacly, and, as you’d expect, it’s quite rhythmic and repetitive. Underneath the poem runs a current of power and tragedy, which presages, I think, Mistral’s later, dark work. “Meciendo” comes from her early volume Desolacion.

I’m going to try to learn the poem in Spanish. As far as I can tell, Hughes’s translation is less literal than Le Guin’s, but each has its own advantages. I might try my own translation — I’ll post an update next week.

“wylde for to hold”

February 12, 2013February 21, 2013 / Carolyn O / Leave a comment

Who so list to hount, I knowe where is an hynde,
But as for me, helas, I may no more:
The vayne travaill hath weried so sore
I ame of theim that farthest commeth behinde.
Yet may I by no meanes my weried mynde
Drawe from the Diere: but as she fleeth afore,
Faynting I folowe. I leve of therefore,
Sins in a nett I seke to hold the wynde.
Who list her hount, I put him owte of dowbte,
As well as I may spend his tyme in vain;
And, graven with Diamonds, in letters plain
There is written her faier neck rounde abowte:
Noli me tangere, for Caesars I ame;
And wylde for to hold, though I seme tame.

I first read Thomas Wyatt’s poetry in college, and had the singular, wonderful experience of listening to the mellifluous voice of my English-born Renaissance literature professor read this sonnet, a translation from Petrarch. Wyatt (1503-1542) was rumored to be Anne Boleyn’s lover, though he managed to escape execution for the supposed offense, and often this poem is read as a wistful forgoing of her companionship.

The poem’s form never interferes with its meaning, and, I think, makes this one of the most pleasing sonnets to read aloud. I’ve reproduced it here with something close to its original spelling, and I’ve tried to make the punctuation as unobtrusive as possible (you’ll find different punctuation in almost every published version of the sonnet).

Something I noticed on this reading: At line 11, the speaker’s note that the “hynde” wears a diamond collar indicating Caesar’s ownership begins with “And” — it’s almost an afterthought. The exhausting chase makes the hunt impossible, not Caesar’s prior claim.

Rosemary and Reading Glasses

Reads Worth Remembering

translation