Off topic: Off Topic - Adrienne Rich Thread poster: Marcela García Henríquez
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Last night I was reading a book that quoted Adrienne Rich. This morning, while browsing thru the pages of another book at a suburban bookstore, I found another quote, introduced in a novel by another author whose book I was going to get...
Anyways, here\'s Adrienne Rich. I would like to know if any of you has translated her into other languages.
Rural Reflections
This is the grass your feet are planted on.
You ... See more Last night I was reading a book that quoted Adrienne Rich. This morning, while browsing thru the pages of another book at a suburban bookstore, I found another quote, introduced in a novel by another author whose book I was going to get...
Anyways, here\'s Adrienne Rich. I would like to know if any of you has translated her into other languages.
Rural Reflections
This is the grass your feet are planted on.
You paint it orange or you sing it green,
But you have never found
A way to make the grass mean what you mean.
A cloud can be whatever you intend:
Ostrich or leaning tower or staring eye.
But you have never found
A cloud sufficient to express the sky.
Get out there with your splendid expertise;
Raymond who cuts the meadow does not less.
Inhuman nature says:
Inhuman patience is the true success.
Human impatience trips you as you run;
Stand still and you must lie.
It is the grass that cuts the mower down;
It is the cloud that swallows up the sky.
Diving into the Wreck
First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.
There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise
it is a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.
I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.
First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
it pumps my blood with power
the sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.
And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.
I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed
the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and away into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.
This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he
whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
obscurely inside barrels
half-wedged and left to rot
we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass
We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.
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| | | | smorales30 
Local time: 02:28
English to Spanish
+ ...
| Adrienne Rich | Mar 28, 2003 |
Hi,
Adrienne Rich is one of my fave poets. It is extremely difficult to find her poems translated into Spanish, my mother tongue. However, a book with her poems from 1963-2000 has been recently published in Spain (Poemas, A Rich, Traducciones Sevilla 2002, Renacimiento, prólogo, traducción y notas de María Soledad Sánchez Gómez, a college professor specialized in Rich).
Not long ago, Rich visited Barcelona, Spain.
By the way, this compilation of poems is bilingual.
| | | | | Thanks for the info | Mar 28, 2003 |
Adrienne Rich is a wonderful poet.
I will try to get that book. I wonder if I can get it here in Buenos Aires, but if not, can you recommend a Spanish virtual bookstore where I can get it?
Thanks again!
| | | | smorales30
Local time: 02:28
English to Spanish
+ ...
| virtual store | Mar 31, 2003 |
I think it will be a bit difficult to get because this is a university publication. However, the bookshop where I bought it from is on-line: www.lacentral.com
I am sure you can order it on-line. Also you will be able to order it at www.laie.es.
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