{"id":289516,"date":"2012-03-13T19:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-03-13T19:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2012\/03\/13\/watchword\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T16:11:43","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T16:11:43","slug":"watchword","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2012\/03\/13\/watchword\/","title":{"rendered":"Watchword"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dehiscent<\/em>: in botany, the spontaneous rupture of a plant structure at maturity to release seeds; in medicine, the rupture of a wound with much discharge.<\/p>\n

In this strong, propulsive collection of poems translator Forrest Gander uses dehiscent<\/em> for the Spanish word diesminandose<\/em> in one poem, and in the title of a second for ensimismada.<\/em> L\u00f3pez Colom\u00e9\u2019s images draw on the dual meaning of the English word. The botanical one with the positive pitch of natural propagation of a species (picture a milk pod releasing its silk parachuted seeds) occurs for example in poems that reference the tibuchina flower and almonds, and with images of bees filled with pollen, silk flowers and blooming real ones (“My Life\u2019s Portrait”). L\u00f3pez Colom\u00e9 though is not a “nature poet.” The substance of the poems are also wedded to the medical, colored by the idea that pain, pus, blood are pouring out of a wound. Thematically L\u00f3pez Colom\u00e9 touches on both, related concepts over and over again. The language also performs a verbal dehiscence, as is announced in the poem “Heart\u2019s Core”:<\/p>\n

\n

. . . .
\nBut
\na certain sentence
\nperfectly measured,
\na shard, black onyx dart,
\nkeeps hitting the target inside me
\nwith all its sinister, atomic
\nplunk.
\nHow curious that it feels less like prickling than throbbing.
\nthat between words
\nwe find the heart\u2019s core,
\nnot merely an account of it.
\nthere, where pain isn\u2019t forgotten.
\nThere, where memory
\nradiates,
\ncandescent:
\nin signal strength enduring
\nwith no need
\nto plead its case.
\n. . .<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

You know that you are in the hands of a master who has control over language. Echoes of the cultural past (“a shard, black onyx dart”), religious imagery allusively rendered (“the heart” in its iconographic Latin American role) are interwoven with the contemporary “atomic” and the technologically yoked reference to light, “candescent.” Thematically the poet is addressing the realities of pain at the heart\u2019s core, but which can only be pointed to “between words . . . not merely an account of it.”<\/p>\n

While this poem relies strongly on inner feelings that seem intimate, many of the other poems tell about states of emotion\/being at a more distant remove. In this next poem the reader also encounters the use of images and language drawn from the poet\u2019s reality. From the three part poem “My Life\u2019s Portrait,” the second section, WATERWORM<\/span> AGAINST<\/span> A BLUE<\/span> BACKGROUND<\/span>:<\/p>\n

\n

A radiant
\neight year old
\non her way from the possible
\nto the shameful.<\/p>\n

Reinvented
\nin the guise of a good girl
\nwho learns to not be herself,
\nto sit still, all but immobile,
\nto adopt a pose
\nfrom this moment on
\nThe expression on her face, fabulous.<\/p>\n

A dress of purple velvet
\nwith a lacy collar;
\nsocks conscientiously folded down
\nto the top of the ankle
\nnew patent leather shoes.
\nBut her hands once again
\nescape the artist . . .<\/p>\n

They reach into the future.
\nAnd they oblige
\neverything else to pose.
\nAs she would pose and stare at that garden
\nwith its interminable whirlwind
\nand the dizziness would intensify
\nuntil she tumbled into the grass
\nand discovered
\nthat when her body wasn\u2019t spinning around,
\nthe stars themselves were circling;
\nthen the telescopes in her eyes
\nwould gradually funnel
\naway the delirium bit by bit . . .
\nBecause I refused to be
\na still life,
\nI lost the only grip I had.<\/p>\n

The very cord that set me free
\nwas twisted around my neck
\na transparent slipknot
\nchoking me
\nwhile fireflies
\nflickered
\nbetween the bars of my fingers
\nas I made
\na fist.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The speaker ruminates on the ruptures in life; it starts with the promise of seemingly unlimited possibilities reduced on the one hand by societal expectations, and on the other hand the challenges of human existence. While the picture which emerges is dim\u2014flickering fireflies seen through bars of fingers curving into a fist\u2014it is not, from the adult speaker\u2019s perspective, without humor or glimpses of happiness, the “fabulous” expression on the child\u2019s face, the twirling of an eight year old in a garden.<\/p>\n

This next poem continues with the child grown into adulthood. The “torment” emerges at the end, in the acorns grown into a choiring grove, a potentially poetic clich\u00e9 that actually terrorizes. Gander interprets this in his introduction as an allusion to the cancer which L\u00f3pez Colom\u00e9 dealt while writing many of these poems.<\/p>\n

\n

“Tormented”<\/p>\n

Enormous solids were falling
\nfrom who knows what heights,
\nwho knows what places.
\nI trembled,
\nand in my mouth
\nan inky taste. Ready.<\/p>\n

Hail, maybe
\nenormous kernels of ice;
\ncoming down,
\nwith a scandalous impact,
\ndidn\u2019t bury me, terrorized,
\nunder the covers.
\nIt didn\u2019t happen, it wasn\u2019t that.<\/p>\n

A below-zero temperature
\ndrove into the soft center of my bones.
\nA truly searing cold.<\/p>\n

Nothing to do with monsters came to pass.
\nNothing to do with endless distance.
\nNothing to do with brutalities.
\nOnly the agony of acorns.
\nOnly a cycle that completes itself
\nevery few years
\nand transforms into a tropical forest
\na choiring oak grove.<\/p>\n

Which is my terror.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In one of the longer poems “Dehiscent, Enraptured Invention” L\u00f3pez Colom\u00e9 brings another key concern of hers, the pull toward some spiritual reality, although not one tied to any traditional religious tradition.<\/p>\n

\n

To be able to speak<\/p>\n

without punctuation<\/p>\n

jubilant infinite moment
\nmoment jubilant infinite
\ninfinite moment jubilant
\ngibberish
\nand as if that weren\u2019t enough
\nto burn and sing
\na solipsist
\nheard
\nby no one
\nbeyond
\nthe weird world\u2019s
\ndistant core . . .<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

and what follows. There is an inner light here, with words as fuel, language in-itself pouring outward:<\/p>\n

\n

To be able to speak<\/p>\n

without contrivance,
\nfiligrees
\nunderlinings or cursives<\/p>\n

supreme instant
\nof unbounded
\npleasure
\nat the center of an immensity
\nwithout any outside pressure
\nknowing that the vital forces
\npeel away from muscle easily
\nand drift off
\nand you drown
\nand it doesn\u2019t matter
\nsince you\u2019re protected
\nenraptured
\n. . . <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The first poem cited above, “Heart\u2019s Core,” includes that image of a black onyx arrow piercing the heart, a contemporary version of ecstasy of St. Theresa captured once in Bernini\u2019s sculpture. Here though the angel and long arrow are language itself. L\u00f3pez Colom\u00e9 makes it clear in her “Afterward” to this collection that her religious upbringing included exposure to religious poetry. She recalls that the words, the sound and movement and moving of the hearer, were her revelation, not that of a god\u2019s visitation. As a child she confessed, “When I pray, I talk to God, but He doesn\u2019t talk to me.” To which her confessor counseled, “Pray in your own words.<\/em>” This directive she says gave her “a whole new imago mundi<\/em>; a capacity to describe perceptions and emotions in a fresh way, with intimate verbs.” In adolescence she realized that “you could save the right words<\/em> just to talk to yourself, without the Most Holy watching over your shoulder . . . a dialogue with my personal penumbra.” L\u00f3pez Colom\u00e9 is a religious skeptic, but definitely a fideist in the power of the Words. <\/p>\n

Finally, the metaphor of dehiscence strikes me as a great way to understand the project of translation. The idea that a text, especially in the concentrated form of poetry, bursts out into multiple meanings in its original language, then in a translated text, and further in the two held in the tension of facing poems in Spanish and English. In L\u00f3pez Colom\u00e9\u2019s and Gander\u2019s hands this bursting sometimes is propagative, at other times a lancing of wounds.<\/p>\n

I have on my bookshelf at least five different approaches to that proto-text of vernacular poetry, Dante\u2019s Divine Comedy<\/em>, in which translators try to match the terza rima structure, others the plain meaning of the text, with all sorts of ground in between. Gander, an accomplished poet (essayist and novelist) in his own right and translator of many Spanish language writers, honors the voice and tone of L\u00f3pez Colom\u00e9. If you pick up one of Gander\u2019s several collections you would encounter a different voice, with his own unique concerns. Yet his approach is one of a poet with word choices that represent the meaning of the original, not the plain translation. Some of the changes are practical\u2014both inventive and of a more mechanical, problem solving nature. The poem \u2018Almendra\u2019is in English titled \u2018Almond.\u2019 In the last stanza of the poem L\u00f3pez Colom\u00e9 draws attention to the actual word “almendra,”: <\/p>\n

\n

Consonantes trituridas        A vowel and two consonants
\nsin gastar savia en balde    worth the spit it takes
\nse repiten, se digieren         to chew them, repeat, and digest
\nse repiten sin cesar             them one after another
\nene d\u00e9 erre ene d\u00e9 erre      ah el em ah el em
\nn d r  n d r                            alm alm<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The translator has the challenge in a poem that uses in Spanish three consonants (consonantes trituridas) n<\/em>, d<\/em>, and r<\/em>, which of course do not occur in the English translation, the word almond. So the first line quoted above keeps the intent but changes the literal wording, to a vowel and two consonants, which in “almond” are alm<\/em> in Gander\u2019s translation. Note here as well Gander\u2019s mastery of Spanish colloquial speech in translating the second line to an English saying (not) “worth the spit it takes.” <\/p>\n

Gander is able to take the project one step further, for example, in “Tormented,” when he translates “Un verdadero calor frio” not into “A truly\/really hot cold,” but instead into the intended, equivalent meaning in English, “A truly searing cold.” Perhaps another English word could have been used in the place of searing, but I am hard-pressed to come up with any better.<\/p>\n

Then there is a wholly different level of the translator\u2019s engagement and interpretation. With true artistry Gander takes a series in Spanish “lagrimas, anhelos, nadieras” and turns it into “tears, longing, and ratty nothings.” Ratty: that\u2019s a nice touch, as is the translation of “Aparacete tal cual, \/ resono” into (the Gander added italics and explanation mark) “Show yourself!<\/em>”<\/p>\n

In a world where what is truly of value received attention, L\u00f3pez Colom\u00e9 and Gander would be soon going on tour to read from this collection in the same range of venues that a popular rock group might appear. As it is, I urge anyone who wants to read moving poetry that unfolds with multiple re-readings to buy this book, and then to buy a second and third copy to put into others\u2019 hands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dehiscent: in botany, the spontaneous rupture of a plant structure at maturity to release seeds; in medicine, the rupture of a wound with much discharge. In this strong, propulsive collection of poems translator Forrest Gander uses dehiscent for the Spanish word diesminandose in one poem, and in the title of a second for ensimismada. L\u00f3pez […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[34936,27746,2756,34946,6516,17976],"class_list":["post-289516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-forrest-gander","tag-grant-barber","tag-mexican-literature","tag-pura-lopez-colome","tag-spanish-literature","tag-wesleyan-university-press"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289516"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":341636,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289516\/revisions\/341636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}