\u201cThe more bored you are, the more attached you get.
\nI\u2019m so bored, I no longer want to die.\u201d<\/p>\n
So reads an entire poem by Patrizia Cavalli (translated by Gini Alhadeff) confirming for many critics of poetry what they\u2019ve always believed: poets are gloomy, self-pitying bastards.<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
The (incredibly exaggerated) dilemma of poetry in these United States, at least in the minds of poets, is that no one cares to read verse. The complaint is often made: readers have no appreciation for poetry here, not like they do in Russia and Latin America and Ireland and Poland. And, it turns out, in Italy. If the jacket of My Poems Won\u2019t Change the World<\/em> is to be believed, Patrizia Cavalli is a national treasure in Italy, much the way Wis\u0142awa Szymborska was in Poland or Nicanor Parra is in Chile. Patrizia\u2019s readings pack halls and her elegant, colloquial poems have enchanted European readers. At long last, her \u201cmusic,\u201d as Jorie Graham calls it, is available for American readers to ignore.<\/p>\n What brought this collection to life? The answer is the concerted effort of its editor and primary translator, Gini Alhadeff, who does a very good job rendering Italian into airy, digestible English. Alhadeff has had some help along the way; none other than Kenneth Koch, Mark Strand, and the before-mentioned Jorie Graham\u2014all relatively famous American poets\u2014have lent their skills to the translations, as have J, D. McClatchy, David Shapiro, Jonathan Galassi, Rosanna Warren, and Geoffrey Brock. With such a large group of translators focusing on one poet\u2019s work the results can sometimes be intriguing, albeit unfocused. The reader sees something of the translators\u2019 individual fingerprints in the English renditions, sometimes benefiting the poems, but the cumulative effect is not unlike current hip hop records made with an all-star lineup of heavy-hitting producers. Sometimes it is better to select one producer and let them work closely with the artist, creating a unified vision.<\/p>\n I suppose the idea is to allow American readers to see the work of Cavalli through the eyes of poets they know and trust. But this American reader had not heard of Alhadeff, and her translations still seem the most competent, a few exceptions not withstanding. Geoffrey Brock did this with Cavalli\u2019s Italian:<\/p>\n If you knocked now on my door Not possessing enough Italian to do more than get my face slapped, I\u2019ll take it on faith that this is damn close to what Cavalli wrote, though reading later, equally pleasing translations by Brock lead me to the conclusion that his style suits my taste, which is to say that his reading of Cavalli suits my taste. And, apparently, Jorie Graham\u2019s doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t get me wrong; the book is by no means a mess. The many hands that produced it have not inadvertently created obvious seams in the fabric. No, the tone shifts occasionally but I was never taken out of the poems, many of which are short, subtle, and compelling. Like much good poetry, Cavalli\u2019s work can be read quickly, resulting in superficial responses, but returning to them allows for deeper appreciation. Poetry demands patience, investment, reinvestment, consideration, patience, commitment, patience, and patience. It is helpful when the work is as smooth as Cavalli\u2019s (in most of the translations) and when the poet offers enough of an emotional core to attract readers. <\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n To return to the subject of American audiences and their supposed disinclination toward poetry . . . While this disinclincation may be fact, I can\u2019t help but think that if we had more poets like Cavalli, whose work drew comedy, ethics, and passion from the stillness of the everyday, and who were less concerned with abstractions and convolutions, then perhaps we\u2019d have more readers of poetry.<\/p>\n Consider these lines from longest poem in the collection, and one of the few with a title, \u201cLa Guardiana,\u201d translated by Alhadeff as \u201cThe Keeper,\u201d which come after a little girl has pried a door open:<\/p>\n No mystery lay beyond that door, Portrait of the artist as a young girl or easy metaphor, you decide, but to me this is the sort of clear, compelling work that is easy to dismiss and rich upon return.<\/p>\n This collection may not sway more Americans to poetry, but it certainly won\u2019t alienate any, either. Cavalli will likely not become a household name, at least not in this country, but I, along with the other fools who write and read poems, and who sometimes (wrongly) bemoan the lack of attention poetry receives, now have one more writer of verse to recommend.<\/p>\n Fight on, brothers and sisters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cThe more bored you are, the more attached you get. I\u2019m so bored, I no longer want to die.\u201d So reads an entire poem by Patrizia Cavalli (translated by Gini Alhadeff) confirming for many critics of poetry what they\u2019ve always believed: poets are gloomy, self-pitying bastards. *** The (incredibly exaggerated) dilemma of poetry in these […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":166,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[17726,54306,54326,54316,54296,22356],"class_list":["post-295866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-farrar-straus-and-giroux","tag-gini-alhadeff","tag-italian-poetry","tag-my-poems-wont-change-the-world","tag-patrizia-cavalli","tag-vincent-francone"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295866","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\/166"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295866"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":338836,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295866\/revisions\/338836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\nand if you took off your glasses
\nand I took off mine which are like yours
\nand then if you entered my mouth
\nunafraid of kisses that are not like yours
\nand said to me: \u201cMy love,
\nis everything alright?\u201d\u2014 that would be quite
\na piece of theater<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n
\nit was a door a door like any other
\nand in the drawer was whatever was there,
\neveryone knew. And as to praises,
\nthe only reward for my feats, many
\nat first, then fewer and fewer
\n\u2014my prowess, with time, was taken for granted\u2014
\nI cared little or nothing at all.
\nMy pleasure lay only in the challenge
\nof unravelling that obstinate
\ninaccessible resistance to which
\nI was only the chosen instrument
\nof surrender: forces withdrawn
\nentering without forcing, only listening,
\nindifferent to the prize and to the profit,
\nthe sound that rises form every sealed
\nthing, wanting just
\nto open and give itself away
\nbut only to one ready for that sound.
\nWith those bent wires, then words,
\nI practiced poetry.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n