{"id":296206,"date":"2014-01-21T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-01-21T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2014\/01\/21\/fungus-skull-eye-wing\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T15:44:28","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T15:44:28","slug":"fungus-skull-eye-wing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2014\/01\/21\/fungus-skull-eye-wing\/","title":{"rendered":"fungus skull eye wing"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I pick up a book of poems labelled \u201cnature poetry\u201d I expect images of autumn leaves, sunrises and sunsets, flowers in various stages from spring through the end of summer, tracking a first person reflection on life\u2019s challenges. Roethke, Ammons, and contemporary poets such as Patti Anne Rogers craft authentic metaphorical images from nature, but for the most part nature poems can seem tired or forced. D\u2019Aquino\u2019s poems are deeply informed by the natural world, but his images are fresh, the reach of his poetry is into a fusion of the natural world with human experience that does not privilege one over the other.<\/p>\n

Gander is one of the English-speaking world\u2019s foremost translators of contemporary, living poets from Latin America. In his introduction Gander explains that D\u2019Aquino lives a life apart from the central poetic world found in Mexico City, which Gander terms as combative. Instead D\u2019Aquino has lived on the outskirts of Cuernavaca, in jungle-like vegetation where the poet has learned the names and uses of plants, and is an expert on the fauna. Gander and D\u2019Aquino had significant face-to-face time, together translating each other\u2019s works into their respective native languages\u2014so fitting for a poet who translates between the human and natural, as if this is the node in which D\u2019Aquino dwells. The poems are presented with the original Spanish facing the English translation.<\/p>\n

While this volume is a selection of poems from several previous books, they are arranged in a way that gives insight into D\u2019Aquino\u2019s poetics. One of the first poems, a longer one whose last line gives the volume its title, is \u201cNetworks.\u201d It begins:<\/p>\n

\n

resonant forms
\ninternodes gleaned between dreams
\ncattails      grasses      circles<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

pale sapwood trembling tender
\nseed      berry      grass<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

the apperception of each blade
\nthe distinction of each blade
\nand gaps gleaming between them all<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

crops of words
\n\u201cthe ten thousand growing things\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

D\u2019Aquino is building a concrete world of related particularity\u2014the stand-apart, in lists\u2014perceived, then merged with language, the \u201ccrops of words.\u201d Attention is given to the things themselves, from the general to the particular, and the space that separates, but all in connectedness to create a whole as the wide-angle view zooms in. Perhaps the best place to capture the interplay between the natural and the written as found in D\u2019Aquino\u2019s use of language is that first line, \u201cresonant forms.\u201d<\/p>\n

Note the Taoist \u201cten thousand things,\u201d plentitude. In the longest poem of the collection D\u2019Aquino draws from another ancient source, the Greek mythological figure Zagreus, a pre-figuration of Dionysus. D\u2019Aquino is one of those thinkers so immersed in the particularities of place and life that the vision and vocabulary opens up to other traditions not in a superficial, buffet-style borrowing, but in a mastery of similarities that joins times and cultures.<\/p>\n

Two poems further in the resonant forms become even more explicit in \u201cSpores,\u201d arranged on the page as lists of three joined images on each line, separated by a dot:<\/p>\n

\n

Rhyme and rubble  \u2022  Lily and line  \u2022  Bough and ballad<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

. . . .<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

Thought\u2019s nut  \u2022  Sonorous membrane  \u2022  Lingual root<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The effectiveness of this use of language on the page accumulates over 20 lines. The poem \u201cFrond\u201d is a concrete poem, with related stanzas appearing side by side, separated by a hollow \u201cstalk\u201d of space, seven paired leaves\/stanzas that reach to the ground with the last line\/frond,<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

While most of the poems here are shamanistic summonings, my favorite poem of the volume is one of the few narrative poems, during which the poet goes on a walk that leads to unexpected results. \u201c13\u201d starts:<\/p>\n

\n

As I walk, I\u2019m holding in mind
\ntwo visions in counterpoint,
\nor better yet, two co-penetrating visions:
\nthe carnal abyss where all empties out
\nand my vivid perception of airborne threads
\nthat interweave and connect everything.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

I pause to pick up a stone
\nand this act which I\u2019ve repeated countless times
\n. . . .<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

As he \u201csquint[s] fixedly\u201d at the stone he experiences some version of a moment in time where connections are briefly made, with the violet filaments in the stone \u201cjoining the filaments in my hands \/ and emptying out in the lake of luminous air . . .\u201d The very existence of the stone, he realizes, will \u201cburn his hand\u201d and \u201cbruise his eye,\u201d so that he flings the rock to his immediate regret; it arcs through the \u201cluminous suspended sky\u201d into the <\/p>\n

\n

mental depths of the lake
\nthe elemental depths of the water
\nin its fall
\nto the bottom of itself<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

As I go on walking . . .<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

As usual, Copper Canyon Press has produced a beautiful book, and closely in time to another volume of Spanish poetry, edited again by Gander but of poems from multiple poets by multiple translators, curated by Raul Zurita, Pinholes in the Night: Essential Poems from Latin America<\/em>, also from Copper Canyon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I pick up a book of poems labelled \u201cnature poetry\u201d I expect images of autumn leaves, sunrises and sunsets, flowers in various stages from spring through the end of summer, tracking a first person reflection on life\u2019s challenges. Roethke, Ammons, and contemporary poets such as Patti Anne Rogers craft authentic metaphorical images from nature, […]<\/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":[],"class_list":["post-296206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296206","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=296206"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":338716,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296206\/revisions\/338716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}