{"id":305156,"date":"2016-12-19T17:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-12-19T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2016\/12\/19\/radio-wireless-poem-in-thirteen-messages\/"},"modified":"2018-06-12T12:18:31","modified_gmt":"2018-06-12T16:18:31","slug":"radio-wireless-poem-in-thirteen-messages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2016\/12\/19\/radio-wireless-poem-in-thirteen-messages\/","title":{"rendered":"“Radio: Wireless Poem in Thirteen Messages” by Kyn Taniya"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
\nRadio: Wireless Poem in Thirteen Messages<\/em> by Kyn Taniya
\nTranslated from the Spanish by David Shook<\/strong>
\n66 pgs. | pb |\u00a0978-0-9906601-5-6 | $14.99<\/strong>
\nCardboard House Press<\/a><\/strong>
\nReviewed by Vincent Francone<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Prose translators will likely disagree, but I believe translating poetry requires a significant level of talent, a commitment to the text, and near mania, all of which suggests that the undertaking is the greatest possible challenge. The task is to take a form of writing known for its discipline, its strict forms, rhymes, and meanings suggested through language and render it into a second tongue. It\u2019s inevitable that something will be lost in the process of translation. Prose might survive such a transformation (it may even benefit from it), but poetry is wounded each time it\u2019s translated. I don\u2019t speak Italian, but I know for sure that I\u2019m missing something when I read Dante in English.<\/p>\n

Perhaps this is why so much of the poetry in translation I come across seems to fall into the free verse, avant-garde category. One need not fret over how to turn a rhyme from a language like Spanish\u2014a language that allows for easy rhyming\u2014into English when the original doesn\u2019t rhyme. Iambic pentameter from French to English could be rough, but if the French poem doesn\u2019t adhere to a rigid pattern, so much the better for the translator.<\/p>\n

That being the case, the free verse poems had better be good. That\u2019s significant pressure on the integrity of the work. A mediocre but clever work in one language can easily fall flat when presented in another. Cultural quirks or idioms might carry an otherwise slight poem, but, robbed of these strengths via translation, the work is ineffective.<\/p>\n

Of course, this being a fool\u2019s errand, it is inherently worth doing. Why not try to climb Everest? And it stands to reason that poetry translations are often published with the original nearby so the dedicated reader can at least compare the two versions, even if they have no skill with the original language. Read Vicente Huidobro in Spanish\u2014even if you just sound out the words without understanding them, you\u2019ll grasp some musicality sacrificed by translation. The hope is that committed readers will take the time to approach poetry in translation differently than translated prose. Poetry, being language at its apex, deserves the effort.<\/p>\n

This is a long way of stating that the book, Radio: Wireless Poem in Thirteen Messages<\/em> by Kyn Taniya (born Luis Quintanilla) is worth your attention. Published by Cardboard House Press in a slim volume, Radio<\/em> is something to observe, an artifact from a not-so long ago era (1924) when lines like \u201cThe full moon anesthetized all the gardens \/ and in the romantic night \/ a nude woman spills tears of orange-flower water\u201d connected with readers, a time when the \u201cavant-garde\u201d was as engaging as it was baffling.<\/p>\n

Kyn Taniya is concerned with movement, from page to page, poem to poem; from the interior to the external; from generation to generation of his native Mexico where \u201cYOU HAVE<\/span> TO STAND<\/span> ON YOUR<\/span> TIPTOES<\/span> AND<\/span> KISS<\/span> THE<\/span> SUN<\/span> ON THE<\/span> MOUTH<\/span>.\u201d As bizarre as this may sound out of context (or, frankly, in context), savvy readers might see a connection to the celebrated eccentricities of Russian Futurist Vladimir Mayakovsky, who spoke, in poetry, to the sun, not to mention the supposedly genre-shaking Frank O\u2019Hara, who riffed off of the Russians. Kyn Taniya is not consciously aligning himself with these writers (his work predates O\u2019Hara\u2019s) but his work is every bit as experimental as theirs, and often more touching. The contemporary avant-garde\u2014too concerned with pushing boundaries\u2014has demonstrated a lack of concern with the tactile beauty of surrealism, but Kyn Taniya never loses physicality in his poems, even when they verge on the uncomfortable:<\/p>\n

In the fields of dew
\nhours of happiness digress
\nand burning men lustfully fertilize
\nthe lukewarm wombs of elastic virgins
\nthat enjoy ecstatic contemplations of eternity<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

It is easy to see how generations have run with lines like these and used them as permission to discuss whatever they regard as shocking, though with the sole intent to shock. Kyn Taniya\u2014perhaps protected by his era\u2014was the poet as observer, turning his vision into something above common diction, something strange. These lines conjure everything written since then, all of the poor imitations that we\u2019ve grown accustomed to, so much so that the most shocking thing a poet can do in the year 2016 is write a sonnet. But it would be wrong to look at a work like this\u2014a \u201ccult classic of the Mexican avant-garde\u201d according to the back cover\u2014through the lens of current poetry. The avant-garde has too long being the sanctuary for facile experiments. But one can imagine Mexican readers, seduced by the surreal, responding to Radio<\/em> in a way that feels alien to a contemporary audience. Radio<\/em> has merits, which reside mostly in the play of language, though this linguistic somersaulting may not be appealing to jaded readers long done with Apollinaire and Breton.<\/p>\n

While this is very debatable (close examination offers much to the attentive reader), the language is evocative and playful, never better than in the bonus work \u201cStadium,\u201d written \u201cin anticipation of the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam,\u201d and the sensual, call-and-response poem, \u201cAll of Her.\u201d These poems alone should delight poetry readers regardless of their affiliations.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s likely something missing in the Spanish-to-English translation, not to mention the time that has passed since Radio<\/em> was written, but if one believes (as I do) that the reader\u2019s job is to find her way into the text, then issues regarding fidelity shouldn\u2019t be a concern. Kyn Taniya has done his job by providing puzzles, emotions, exaltations, and lamentations. Visit with them and you may find yourself somewhere in the jumble between his world and your own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Radio: Wireless Poem in Thirteen Messages by Kyn Taniya Translated from the Spanish by David Shook 66 pgs. | pb |\u00a0978-0-9906601-5-6 | $14.99 Cardboard House Press Reviewed by Vincent Francone   Prose translators will likely disagree, but I believe translating poetry requires a significant level of talent, a commitment to the text, and near mania, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":166,"featured_media":401072,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67456],"tags":[65126,39996,65106,65136,65116],"class_list":["post-305156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-review","tag-cardboard-house-press","tag-david-shook","tag-kyn-taniya","tag-radio-wireless-poem-in-thirteen-messages","tag-vincent-francome"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305156","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=305156"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305156\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":401082,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305156\/revisions\/401082"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/401072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}