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Monday, September second, 2013
En las últimas semanas he escrito mucho de la forma poética (si todavÃa muy desordenado), en ambas idiomas. Aquà unos borredores crÃpticos.
Ibamos muy despacio en busca
del parking tú y yo
esta noche en que me has dicho
como creyeras
que se haya cambiado cosa importante
entre nosotros
en dÃas recientes
¿cuándo vas a entender, Carlos? he dicho
Nunca he podido resistir...
Suspiras solamente y con mirada colérica
te vuelves a la calle
Navegamos callados y tú caes
otra vez consumido
por la negrura
A través de un momento que no coresponde
a ninguna cantidad temporal—
ya has perdido toda
expectación de la secuencia y todo interés
en nombrar los tensos sutiles
de los eventos que forman
tu vida, tu vida
todavÃa que merece esta nombre
Y te encuentras viviendo en el pecho
y cerebro de Manuel que se marcha
en las huestes de Pizarro
andas caminos angostos y peligrosos
por la cordillera. Despiertes
en medio paso tu memoria llena
solamente del recuerdo de la marcha
Los gritos de tus compañeros
te aporrean a las orejas. Están
ambuscados. En la oscuridad
ves a tu brazo, se mueve
como poseÃdo
saca la espada y me corta
y se fluye la sangre
no más de éso puedes soportar y no más ves
porque los dedos negros y vacÃos del tiempo
tu cabeza herida
han atrapado, y no ves nada.
posted afternoon of September second, 2013: 1 response
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Sunday, September first, 2013
I have been writing a lot of poetry lately, much of which has not really taken any shape yet, in both English and Spanish. Here are a couple passages in English that seem worth expanding on.
Act out this savage pantomime
in the distance
crickets
in the distance
the voices of your
subjunctive
saviors
and you stumble thru the steps
of some long forgotten scene
of some brutally ironic
forgotten scene.
and sometimes it can help to be brutally honest
to tell the truth I mean
and to deceive
deceive with honesty
so to speak
deceive with savage apathy
passivity
liquidity and self-congratulation:
conflating
to seed the pastures
of some chaotic Babylon
imagined.
and the insect hum behind the melody
pervasive rhythmic ambiance
Not a form of beauty but of void, this binary
now, so what--
Void is imperceptible when it's cloaked in a mask of being
Void here should be taken to mean Nullity
and our Reality/ is riddled through
is torn asunder by infinite
void and void and voids/ impossible
to pluralize this empty heart
of being.
and the minutes are like hours, like idle, carefree hours
forgotten as they pass.
Forgotten as the second hand
ticks by on some imagined sundial
as streams/ evaporate
into desert
as protostellar nuclei condense
volcanic
intrinsic to our nature/ even
as the void repulses us
¶ and the insect hum behind the melody pervasive
and basic to nature
intrinsic
to meaning.
to say the minutes pass like hours predictable creeping by
o verminous horde, to say
to say you've said all this before, to call the riddle
meaningless and petty
To get behind the riddle to its source, to its creator/
interact for God's sake
and call it growth, and chalk it up
to destiny
so sliding frame by frame by
these episodes and episodic memories
of our ill-spent youths
and current circumstances
different pathways and strands of meaning surround you
encroach on your experience of the moment
your sense of reality
so to speak
you've come unstuck in time and out of luck
so walk your pilgrim's path
so celebrate your misfortune
grin
at the indeterminate slices
of subjunctive structure
that enframe you.
posted evening of September first, 2013: Respond
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Sunday, August 18th, 2013
Occasionally in the past I've blogged about books that I come to with no idea at all in advance, what to expect. Sáez de Ibarra's Mirar al agua is one such. I first came upon the  author's name and the title a few weeks ago when Marta Aponte recommended it. This is always a fun way to read, completely free of expectations.
The first couple of stories I've so far just skimmed the first lines of, not found much of anything to draw me in. "Las Meninas" (left) I find fascinating, a story told entirely in dialog, extremely fast-pased. I find it renders very nicely in English. "Una ventana en Via Spermazella" and the next few stories seem very interesting but have not been quite able to crack the code that will get me into the stories. Especially intriguing among these is "La PoesÃa del Objeto."
"La superstición de Narciso" is just spellbinding. More experimental than anything else thus far. "Escribir Mientras Palestina" (which I'm midway into now) is a nicely engaging piece of first-person narrative about a visit to Palestine.
posted morning of August 18th, 2013: Respond
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Saturday, August 17th, 2013
Wow, there is some great poetry in this issue of Metamorphoses. Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva, Hilst, Orhan Veli, Benny Andersen (whose "Kierkegaard on a bicycle" is going to be my new favorite poem for at least a little while),...
posted afternoon of August 17th, 2013: Respond
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My father's language
is my mother tongue
and the tongues of those around me
are not my own
nor their teeth
my mouth it moves
and forms the words
the moving pen has left behind
nor all your Piety and Wit
too late to say
posted morning of August 17th, 2013: 3 responses
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Another Zupcic story, another Osner translation: "Tescuco, Italy" is printed in the Fall 2013 issue of Metamorphoses, the journal of the five colleges faculty seminar on literary translation.
posted morning of August 17th, 2013: Respond
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Thursday, August 15th, 2013
by Jeremy Osner
The optimal discipline consists
in self-awareness, self-negation
in a parody of cleanliness.
The optimal discipline consists
in self indulgence, self-correction
in a parody of obediance
obeisance,
and the optimal level of discipline
the one we seek
but never quite attain
a balance
calm condolence
over situations we never asked for
were taxed for
avoided all semblance of discipline
in meditation
like a form of recreation
resurrection
and ultimate truth.
AND IT'S NOW! so
why not do it? With a
howl you pounce
into the fiction before you
teeming fiction where you're jostled
cheek by jowl they crowd you
louder now they're grumbling
and muffling you with their scowls
now you're struggling to escape
to leave this sea of narrative
to lift your glance
to glance away
and break your concentration
and not worry about the implicit snub
to your host the author.
posted evening of August 15th, 2013: Respond
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Tuesday, August 13th, 2013
A house at Mount Irazú
by Eduardo Valverde
tr. Jeremy Osner
These little stars, stars setting in the rivers and the streams,
working their way loose from our fingers and our wallets, stars flowing out like water;
and there will be no one to pay the check
nor to tally the coins.
His ashtray has a leak in it,
it's a little cardboard cup with water in it from a bottle.
You can picture the scorching agony of the fire -a little scream-
that split its fibers.
Green is the green, and leaden all the gray.
The girls are playing, they're laughing, out on the deck;
the women are waiting - just a few more minutes-
for them to come back in without a scratch, as big as life.
We were not sleeping.
I know it because I could hear them out the window
fumbling, impatient
those shapes in the dark. Maybe that's how cows dream,
but us, no.
Us, we weren't sleeping.
So many times, I could swear
he just snubbed us;
indifferent to the whisky
and to the electric skillet,
to the mint tea and the conversation.
Cold reigned
like the silence that volcanoes impose.
And the stairs,
stairs shy and ominous in the night,
downstairs to the morning -- sleeping still,
she's ready to arise.
Don't freak,
in this house
no-one yet has died.
posted evening of August 13th, 2013: 1 response
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Saturday, August 10th, 2013
Looking through Mirar al agua to see what will catch my interest... I'm startled and intrigued by this story, which starts out fast-paced dialog and keeps being that with no narration for 12 pages!
posted morning of August 10th, 2013: Respond
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Friday, August second, 2013
Decir que uno no entiende
la conversación en que se está
sumergiendo
decir que Ay, no puedo
escuchar
estos poemas que ando leyendo
que los poemas en que se esté
dispersando/ sean ininteligibles
serÃa últimamente
no justificable
y por éso, debo
pedir
perdón
posted evening of August second, 2013: 1 response
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