Stingy Kids

Kit Kats and Jellyfish

A couple of months ago, the on line and print journal Zeek: A Journal of Jewish Thought and Culture created a partnership with Jewcy, an entertainment and media company.  The print journal will continue to come out twice a year, but here on out on line content will be presented in more of a blog form.  This new format gives Zeek "a more flexible web presence."  I've published several translations of Israel literature in Zeek (see left sidebar for links) but my first translation to appear in Zeek @ Jewcy is the prose poem "Rita" by Roman Baembaev.  This new format now allows readers to leave comments, which I hope will generate discussion around these texts.  Also check out Lisa Katz's translation of "All" by Agi Mishol.

Artist Robert Ladislas Derr also participated in the "Theory and Practice" show that I saw recently at Gallery Aferro.  His piece "Intellectual Economy" is a video installation consisting of two computer monitors standing, back to back, on a table.  On one monitor, you see a man from the back, banging his head against the wall.  On the other monitor, you see his head coming through the wall.  In Derr's own words: "The front side view of the rupturing wall echoes the process of birth and challenges the notions of illusionistic space. Breaking through the wall from one side to the other illustrates that art is not easy."

Rilke's "Liebeslied," published in Neue Gedichte (New Poems, 1907).  Cliff Crego's English translation is lovely, as is Stephen Mitchell's.

I was reading about Elizabeth Barrett Browning and came across a bibliographic reference to Critical Kit-Kats, a 1896 collection of literary portraits by Edmund Gosse.  I've never heard the term "kit kat" used to refer to anything other than a chocolate wafer confection so I was intrigued.  The Kit-Cat Club was an 18th century club based in London that attracted those of political and literary persuasions (Jonathan Swift was a member).  The name also refers to a kind of pie, named after Christopher Catling, a pie maker.  In the preface to Critical Kit-Kats, Gosse offers another meaning:

In an age when studies multiply and our shelves groan with books it is not every interesting and original figure to whom the space of a full length or even a half length portrait can be spared For the low comfortable rooms where people dined in the last century there was invented the shorter and still less obtrusive picture called a Kit Kat and some of our most skilful painters have delighted in this modest form of portraiture which emphasises the head yet does not quite exclude the hand of the sitter I have ventured to borrow from the graphic art this title for my little volume since these are condensed portraits each less than half length and each accommodated to suit limited leisure and a crowded space.

You can download a scanned copy of the entire book through Google Reader.

Finally, I don't know how but I came across a fantastic and fun post on jellyfish by Molly Lambert, managing editor of This Recording.  I find jellyfish endlessly fascinating and recently learned about an "immortal" variety, Turritopsis nutricula (which Lambert mentions).  Appropriately titled "In Which They'll Outlive Us All," the post features a bunch of great illustrations and some mp3s.  I also recommend  this post on John Ashbery.

Tracie Lee @ Gallery Aferro

Up Close and a long ways out..., originally uploaded by ambienttraffic.

I wish I had checked out the Theory and Practice show at Gallery Aferro when it first opened.  Unfortunately, I went on closing day, so I can't recommend that you go see Tracie Lee's incredible series "Pieces of Sky."  But I do recommend that you read on to learn more about this remarkable work.

For the past year, Lee, who is based in Brooklyn, NY,  has been painting the sky every day.  She tries to complete these pieces in the morning from home but this isn't a rule:

...[T]he ritual of the project is independent of my location, and it has become a way of measuring and grounding myself, whether I am in my studio or traveling. The paintings are markers of an accumulation of time and place. They form a record of my observations, but also my state of mind. How closely was I able to observe and not let distractions come in? This project has redefined my notion of discipline, and how it should not be seen as a negative and rigid force. Rather I wanted to approach it as a positive part of a practice, and utilizing it to work through frustrations and doubts. I have just begun to understand how the skills of observation, discipline and painting are vitally intertwined, and create momentum for other ideas to germinate.

In September of 2006, Lee painted the sky every day for a month.  It's interesting to compare that project with the year long "Pieces of Sky."  In the September 2006 series, it seems that Lee worked within a larger frame, so that the individual paintings end up containing a great deal more detail. As a result, each individual painting seems to encompass more sky.  The paintings that comprise "Pieces of Sky," on the other hand, capture a detail of the sky rather than the sky in detail.  Taking several steps back from "Pieces of Sky," I was impressed by how the paintings worked together, each piece enhancing the light, weather and color in pieces surrounding it. Lee displayed about 260 frames from this ongoing project, which can be purchased in a series of seven.

When Tracie first told me about this project, I was reminded of Elaine Reichek's "A Lexicon of Clouds," which I had seen at MAD's Pricked: Extreme Embroidery exhibit.  This piece consists of cloud details from works by El Greco, J.M.W. Turner, and Albert Pinkham Ryder, among others.  Threaded throughout are bits of text from the poems of Wallace Stevens (see his poem "Sea Surface Full of Clouds").  Both Tracie's and Elaine's work made me think about the representation of clouds in art. Prudence Peiffer's essay "Sky Writing" takes John Constable's sky studies as a point of departure for discussing contemporary sky/cloudscapes.   

Tracie uploaded to Flickr many frames from the piece (you can find them under the tag "sky") as well as pictures from the installation. 

Peter Parasol #2

Peter Parasol #2 went live this week and features poems that, in very different ways, are inspired by or interact with an artwork by S. Lariviere.  The piece "The Gasp Mechanism" is a vibrant hybrid of tapestry, quilt and collage.  Bits of text and images come together through what seems to be a very spontaneous and intuitive process.  But cutting and stitching these materials also take time, and I began to wonder how these "pauses" determined the placement of certain elements.  In Bobbi Lurie's poem, the speaker observes that "the material of a painting allows the brain another region to believe in."  This is beautifully stated.  There is a long standing, productive exchange between the visual arts and poetry.  In "The Gasp Mechanism," for instance, the visibility of the seams and the way in which ribbons created internal frames sparked new ways of thinking of line, break and juxtaposition in poetry.

My contribution to this issue is a poem titled "Mechanism" (and includes an audio reading of the poem).  I didn't set out to describe the piece but rather to take certain visual juxtapositions and see what could happen to them in the "blank" space of the poem.  Somehow this fused with the myth of Cassandra.  The image that appears in this post is a snapshot of one of my favorite details, "the rooster becomes a scythe."

Peter Parasol is currently accepting submissions for issue #3.

Pistorius

Earlier this year, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) ruled that use of "technical aids" was forbidden in competition.  The broad interpretation of what constitutes a "technical aid" ultimately disqualified Oscar Pistorius, a double-amputee who runs on carbon fiber prostheses.  That's right--Pistorius, a 21-year old South African sprinter who was born without fibulae, is so fast on his "Cheetah" blades that he has blown away his competition at the Paralympic level, acquiring the sobriquet "Blade Runner" in the process.  For the past year, he had been competing against able-bodied runners, until the January IAAF ruling made him ineligible for these races.  In considering Pistorius' case, the IAAF determined that his running blades gave him an advantage over able-bodied runners.  Pistorius and his supporters (including Ossur, the company that makes his blades) contested this decision, arguing that more extensive research and tests were required.

Yesterday, taking new research into consideration, the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which is based in Switzerland, reversed the IAAF's ruling.  Pistorius is now eligible to qualify for the Beijing Olympics.  In order to do so, he needs to shave at least 3/4 of a second from his current 400m time.  If he makes it, expect a great deal more discussion and debate on this subject.  It's amazing to me that the relative "advantages" or "disadvantages" of prostheses were never a question or a problem when Paralympic runners came nowhere near the running times of able-bodied runners.  Advances in the technology of protheses have helped narrow the gap but it isn't clear if modern protheses represent an improvement on the human body or simply level the playing field between the able and disabled.

Washington Post columnist Sally Jenkins participated in a fascinating on line discussion on yesterday's ruling. Many of the questions that she was asked concerned the issue of advantage and "the line between natural and artificial."  Is the use of prostheses an "enhancement" equivalent to steroid use?  Or is it more like wearing specially designed running shoes?  Do Olympic athletes from wealthy countries ever wonder about "leveling the playing field" when they compete against athletes with considerably fewer resources? Is that gold medal any less golden because you had a better swimsuit? Or a personal nutritionist?    Jenkins remarks:

There are profound inequities in what athletes from various parts of the world have access to. The first time you go to the Games and see what some athletes have and what others don't, the illusion of a level playing field is lost forever.

Her comment made me wonder if there are debates at the Paralympic level regarding protheses.  The blades that Pistorius uses are very expensive, costing anywhere between $15000-18000, the "BMW"  of protheses. Arguably, having the best protheses gives a runner an advantage over other disabled runners--is that fair? Or is that like having the best Nike running shoes? (And is that fair?) But what really intrigued me was that the current technology of running prostheses is having trouble keeping up with Pistorius' abilities.  In other words, as Pistorius becomes a better, stronger and faster runner, his protheses may need to adapt accordingly.  I can see how this line of thinking reveals a potentially slippery slope--at which point do the protheses, which are designed "to restore maximum biological function," actually make him a super-human?  This question came up in Jenkins's discussion:

Vienna, Va.: I think this case is extremely interesting. I know that DARPA (defense research agency) is working to develop an exo-suit for soldiers to enhance physical capabilities. Maybe in the future, there will be two types of competition--one for "natural" bodies and one for "enhanced" bodies (mechanical, chemical or any other).

Sally Jenkins: Wow.

Yes. WOW. There are so many ways to approach the story of Oscar Pistorius, but what most fascinates me is how it brings to the foreground the question of what makes us human and how a fear of disability illuminates this question.   

In 1998, Aimee Mullins, a bilateral amputee, appeared on the cover of the London magazine Dazed and Confused. On the cover, her long, athletic legs spliced the question "fashionable?" in two--"fashion" and "able?"  "Able," notably, remaining in question.  What the cover and its accompanying article illustrated provocatively was the "cyborgian quality" of the disabled body and the extent to which this quality is both appealing and disquieting (Mullins played the "cheetah woman" in Matthew Barney's Cremaster 3).  In her work as a model and actress, Mullins, a former competitive runner, challenges traditional ideas of disability--the idea that prosthetic legs should resemble human legs, the idea that disability should strive toward invisibility.  I recommend that you take a look at the images in "Walking as Art" (which includes the Dazed cover) and "A living sculpture." I was particularly struck by a picture of Mullins's prosthetic legs. She has several pairs of varying styles and uses.  This range marks one way that the disabled body challenges loss and absence by becoming a site of hybridity, change and transformation.

Watching a clip of Pistorius running the 400m with able-bodied athletes, I'm struck by how different his race strategy is.  Because of the blades, he actually has to kind of stand up straight at the start in order to continue moving forward.  As a result, his start is much slower than that of the other athletes. But halfway through the sprint, he starts to pick up tremendous speed and, while other runners are starting to show signs of slowing down, he sustains this speed across the finish.  It's amazing to watch--and not only because Pistorius is doing this on prosthetic legs.  In order to accomplish this feat, he has to utilize muscles and techniques that able-bodied runners don't rely on.  Why should these things necessarily place him in a separate category?  Embracing new kinds of competitors and strategies is how a sport--how anything, really--evolves. 

In his tribute to Pistorius, who was named one of TIME's 100 for 2008, Eric Weihenmayer wrote:

When I was learning how to climb mountains as a blind person, I had a lot of encouragement from experts. But after I summited Mount Everest, these people weren't ready to accept what I had done at face value. Some said I must have cheated; one even claimed I had an unfair advantage: "I'd climb Mount Everest too if I couldn't see how far I had to fall."

A disability is by definition a "deficiency," an "incapacity."  So it follows that an ability is the opposite, what makes us complete.  But does this definition still hold if it's our very abilities that hold us back?  For Pistorius, "able" is not in question. "I'm not disabled, I just don't have any legs," he says. 

image credit: ossur

Linkage

• Anne Carson's (b. 1950) author bio is succint:  "Anne Carson lives in Canada."  Its brevity was the subject of a very funny discussion in a 2004 post on Rake's Progress.

• John Ruskin (1819-1900) and Rose La Touche (1848-1875) shared a "morbid love."

• Elizabeth "Lizzie" Siddall (1829-1862) was a muse for many Pre-Raphaelite painters, particularly the poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rosetti (1828-1882), who later became her husband.  She was an observant muse and, in time, took up drawing and painting.  Reportedly, her interest in poetry was inspired when, as a child, she came across a Tennyson poem in "on a scrap of newspaper that had been used to wrap a pat of butter."  She died at 32 of a laudanum overdose.

Poetry Sign

How to sign "poetry" in ASL:

(via HandSpeak)

Anna T. Szabó

During the PEN World Voices panel "Rewriting Family," Hungarian author György Dragomán mentioned that his wife was a poet and frequently collaborated with translators. Dragomán blew me away with his generous and gracious comments on translation and translators, so I was interested to learn more about his wife and her translation background.  Her name, I learned, is Anna T. Szabó. and she has published several books of poetry.  Her website is in Hungarian but her author page on HunLit provides some biographical and biographical information in English and German translation (the English page is more comprehensive than the German).

In October 2004, Szabó and other Hungarian poets visited the UK and participated in Converging Lines, a program sponsored by the British Council Arts Group, which teams up writers and translators from the UK with poets from other countries.  It works both ways--first the UK writers toured Hungary and later the Hungarian poets came to the UK for reading tours and to participate in translation workshops.  Szabó was paired with Clare Pollard, a poet, educator and translator.  In creating her translations, Pollard, who doesn't know Hungarian, maintained an ongoing conversation with Szabó.  She had a literal translation to work with but the final translation also reflected how she interpreted and incorporated Szabó's comments on variant meanings, word play, sound and structure.  The program invited those who attended the public readings to participate in this translation enterprise.

Antony Dunn, who participated in this program, recounts:

We've created a leaflet for every audience member, which contains four literal translations of poems by the Hungarians€“ the very same literal translations that some of the Brits worked from at Lake Balaton. These literal (or plain text) translations contain a range of alternatives, notes and suggestions, to reflect the shades of meaning carried by the Hungarian words or phrases. Some are annotated with details of the rhyme scheme, or the rhythm, or with explanations of the Hungarian colloquialisms employed in the poems. The audience is invited to take these leaflets home and have a go at translation for themselves.

In some ways, it'€™s been rather easier for us, with access to the poets themselves. To be able to ask, What did you mean, exactly? and get an answer.

You can download from Dunn's website a pdf file that contains some of the translations put together by the group, including one of Pollard's translations of Szabó's poem "Around the Tree" (from a longer poem "Winter Diary").  It's a fantastic poem--here's the first stanza:

In the ice-storm these cats now mate,
light frozen on their soft, black skins.
They stage their hot, furred winter show,
wild things.

Reading this translation out loud, I'm struck by the cadence and the rhyme between "skins" and "things," as well as the internal rhyme between "soft" and "hot."  Also, most of the words are monosyllabic which can't be incidental.  A great deal of attention has been given to the sound of this translation, which makes me wonder how its sounds in Hungarian.  Hungarian sounds nothing like English so the translation isn't necessarily striving for aural equivalence, but perhaps there is something interesting about the original poem's prosody that the English poem is trying to evoke. 

In an on line interview, Szabó, who translates from English to Hungarian, acknowledged that she prefers not to self-translate.  "I have tried, but what comes out is not what I had intended."  This is an incredible admission and, in a way, contradicts Dunn's comment that having the original authors on hand gave the UK translators an advantage.  There is a prevailing assumption (that even translators tend to perpetuate) that original authors always know what their work means.  And, frankly, speaking as a translator, I'd rather have a range of meanings and possibilities to work with. 

For Szabó, translation is not only a creative exchange (that is more productive when the translator is someone else) but also a way to assess the merits of a work, to go beyond first impressions:

I used to think that mutuality in translation was some sort of a gesture of respect. In fact it is nothing of the kind. It is extremely useful. While you work on the translation you are also in contact with the author. During these conversations you find your place into their world and their vision, and it becomes much easier to get an understanding of their poetry. When you place yourself in the other's poetic world you really get in tune with them. This can be mutual, which is really a very exciting process. It was during translation that I grew to like Pollard's poems a lot. There were poets I started to translate convinced that they were great, and found out during the translation process that they were not. You come to stumble upon subtle shifts more easily, and find that things which look graceful from the outside may not be all that well put together, after all.

This has happened to me on several occasions. I'll start translating a poem I really like in Hebrew or Spanish and, in the process, certain flaws or missteps are revealed.  In this way, translation serves as a mode of critical reading.  I'm looking forward to reading more work by Szabó and Dragomán.  It's been very exciting to encounter their ideas on writing and translation and to find in them something "mutual."

Links:

Two Poems by Anna Szabó, Translated by David Hill

"Poetry in the NIght" (prose) and "This Day" (poem), Translated by George Szirtes

Poems from "The Labour Ward," Translated by Clive Wilmer and George Gömöri

Short Stories @ PEN World Voices

May 2, 2008

Short Stories
Scandinavia House
Participants: Young-ha Kim, Dafna Zur, Etgar Keret, Abdourahman Waberi and Ingo Schulze (Moderated by Radhika Jones)

"Short Stories" was an outstanding panel.  Jones asked very direct questions that not only got the writers talking about their work but also generated discussion between writers.  I'm sure that these writers have talked on numerous occasions about their interest in the short story, its status among other literary genres, and the different ways they approach writing.  Even so, there were numerous moments of "thinking out loud," of discovery and unveiling.

PEN Worlds Voices 2008

I just got around to organizing my notes on the PEN Worlds Voices Literary festival, which took place last week in NYC.  It's an amazing gathering of writers, publishers, translators and readers.  The only drawback: there was just too much to do and so many good things overlapped!  Here are my notes from the panels and readings that I attended--my notes on the panel "Short Stories" will appear in a separate post:

Wednesday, April 30

Rewriting Family
Housing Works Bookstore Café
Participants: P.F. Thomése, György Dragomán, Yael Hedaya (Moderator: Stacey D'Erasmo)

Dragomán is a Hungarian novelist and translator who was born in Marosvásárhely/Târgu Mureş, Romania in 1973.  As a literary translator, he's aware of the limits of translation but doesn't let them become an excuse for not translating.  So let's say you can only get 90%, he said, that's something!  He also conceded that the kinds of limits or problems that one translator faces may be entirely different for another.  If you can't find the solution, someone else will.  This is a very generous and optimistic approach to translation and I thank Dragomán for it.  An audience member asked about the different between translating poetry and prose and remarked that poetry, in particular, tends to be untranslatable.  Dragomán smiled and told us that his wife is a poet and frequently works with translators.  "First, the rhyme goes,  second, some of the meter....but it's ok!  Something stays and that's what's important."  I really wish more readers and critics would focus on how much remains in translation rather than fixating on "losses," which I put in quotes becomes often those who assert that something has been lost in translation 1) haven't read the original or 2) haven't/won't read the translation.

He has a fantastic author website (authors, take note!), where he's posted excerpts from and links to a number of interviews.  I recommend highly his interview with James Smith in which he discusses at length his relationship with his translators and how he approaches the task of translation.