August 21, 2020

Rhonda Ganz

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from Rattle #68, Summer 2020
Tribute to Postcard Poems

__________

Rhonda Ganz: “I took part in the August Postcard Poetry Project for the sheer joy of on-the-spot writing. I’d pick a postcard, figure out the response I was having to the image on the front, release expectations, and write spontaneously—the opposite of my usual writing process. I often chose a prompt for the month. The year I wrote ‘The Hunger Games,’ all the poems were named after titles of books I owned. I also loved the anticipation of postcards from other poets arriving in the mail. A big perk: one postcard poem a day for the month of August equals 31 poems. I don’t write that many in the whole rest of the year! This issue of Rattle reminds me how satisfying the Postcard Poetry Project is. Sign me up again.” (web)

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July 31, 2017

Rhonda Ganz

WHAT GETS US OUT OF BED IN THE MORNING

I met a man Thursday whose brain once kept moving at high speed after his skull had come to an abrupt stop. When we met, he was pushing a shopping cart with empty soda cans and wine bottles, which he figured would get him six bucks at the depot. Seventy years old, he’d slipped on the ice three times already that morning because people on his route hadn’t cleared their sidewalks. He couldn’t decide between blueberry or cherry danish at Sally Café so I bought both, and we stepped into rare winter sunshine as he told the story of how he’d come to be where he was. When he got to the part about being in a coma for six weeks in Atlanta, a Southern drawl introduced itself. After the coma, he spent another 540 days in hospital. They were using him for drug experiments by then, wanted to dissect him for research. His sister, a lawyer in the fancy part of town, finally got him out of there and sued the state of Georgia for 5.6 million dollars. A cheque will be ready in February he said, signed by Obama before he leaves office; a cheque the new guy can’t take away from me. That’s great I said, February’s not very far away. Just around the corner, he said back. It’s just around the corner.

salt water aquarium 
jellyfish 
press against the glass

from Rattle #56, Summer 2017
Tribute to Poets with Mental Illness

[download audio]

__________

Rhonda Ganz: “When asked to identify my illness, I have trained myself to answer only with my name, rank, and prescription number. When I write about depression, obsession, compulsion or other mental health issues, I challenge myself to do it without using those words. Sometimes I say to people that poetry saved my life. Unless they’re a poet, they don’t know how to respond, but truly, it has been the combination of psychiatry, the right medication, and the community I’ve found with poets and poetry, that keeps me here.” (website)

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May 17, 2017

Poets with Mental Illness

Conversation with
Francesca Bell

Rattle #55The summer issue of Rattle features a tribute to poets living with mental illness. An estimated 26% of Americans experience mental illness in a given year, and we wanted to acknowledge and explore that reality, while also helping to diminish the associated cultural stigma of these illnesses. Twenty-nine poets contributed to this issue, chosen from over 2,400 submissions. While the topics of the poems themselves vary greatly, each of the poets live with some form of depressive, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive, bi-polar, post-traumatic stress, or eating disorder—all of discussed openly and bravely in their contributor notes. In the conversation section, we talk about mental illness and a wide range of other topics with Francesca Bell.

The issue also includes a dozen poets in another eclectic open section, featuring some reader-favorites like David Kirby and Rhina P. Espaillat, as well as many names new to our pages.

Poets with Mental Illness

Audio Available Roberta Beary Lunch Break
Audio Available Francesca Bell Containment
Audio Available Katie Bickham A Different Animal
Audio Available Jackson Burgess Heirloom
Michelle Chen Kootenai Cradleboard
Audio Available Rachel Custer Color Study While Withdrawing
Audio Available Rhonda Ganz What Gets Us out of Bed in the Morning
Audio Available James Gering Have Coffin, Need Pallbearers
Audio Available John Gosslee My Beautiful Father the Fire Bird
Dan Haney Re: Heaven’s Spam Filter
Alex Harper Fallers
Audio Available Steve Henn What I’m All About
Leland James The Sanitarium Window
Audio Available Ted Jonathan This Has Nothing to Do with Willpower
Audio Available Sam Killmeyer When You Tell Me That You Feel Alone
Audio Available Lorena Parker Matejowsky Long Car Line Prayer
Audio Available Beth McKinney Promotion to Outside Resources in Marion …
Audio Available Aaron Poochigian Divertimento
Colin Pope Why I Didn’t Go to Your Funeral
Audio Available Claudia Putnam The Battle of Brintellix
Cinthia Ritchie Crazy, They Said
Jamie Samdahl Medicated Dream Fragment
Audio Available Sara Springer Spring
Dana Stamps II Buddha’s Villanelle
Audio Available Jill M. Talbot Diversity Checkbox: When I Was Twelve
Audio Available Padma Thornlyre After Reading a 12/4/2001 …
Audio Available Martin Vest The Day I Tried to Commit Seppuku …
Audio Available Mark Lee Webb What Happens When You Don’t Wear Gloves
Audio Available Jess Weitz The Knife

Poetry

Audio Available Sandra Anfang The Hatred of Poetry
Audio Available Tom Chandler The Chandlers
Kevin Coval 400 Days
Rhina P. Espaillat Here
Alan C. Fox Wake-Up Call
Audio Available Maria Mazziotti Gillan What Isn’t Said Crushes
Ceridwen Hall Changing the License Plates
Audio Available David Kirby Mary Weiss of the Shangri-Las …
Ron Koertge Cat Women of the Moon
George Ovitt That Summer
Audio Available Ron Riekki I Had a Librarian Tell Me …
Audio Available Francis Santana Letter Found in a Crate

Conversation

Francesca Bell

Cover Art

Jasmine C. Bell

June 27, 2013

Rhonda Ganz

CRYOGENESIS

Official records of the events of December 7, 2053, remain maligno-encrypted. All my attempts to trace the origin of reproductive plasma stored in the iCrypt of the Proto-Matriarch stall at googleterminus. But this morning, (praise-be-to-the-Supreme-GMO), an anonymous researcher at an untraceable IP sanctuary uploaded these fragments.

Ganz

from Rattle #38, Winter 2012
Tribute to Speculative Poetry

[download audio]

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September 19, 2011

Art Beck

THE IMPERTINENT DUET:
TRANSLATING POETRY WITH ART BECK

#1: SPANISH DANCING ABOARD THE QUEEN ELIZABETH
(in collaboration with Silvia Kofler)

I. A Small Question of He or It

At this year’s American Literary Translators Association conference, Silvia Kofler, an old friend and colleague, showed me a translation of Rilke’s “Spanish Dancer” that she’d come across in an anthology. “Look how they translated this line! Why?” And so began a conversation. While I take full blame for the vagaries of the translation at the end
of this piece, this essay is really a joint endeavor, a record of the dialogue between Silvia and myself.

Silvia is a native Austrian who emigrated to the United States in her twenties. She’s a published poet in both English and German. Rilke is, of course, a poet she’s known since her school days, but it’s worth noting that Rilke is not, for contemporary German readers, the ubiquitously read icon he is in America. A German speaking poetry reader might delve into Rilke as often as contemporary Americans read, say, Wallace Stevens.

And as for us with Stevens, the German reader often has to slow down and mull over just what it is that Rilke is saying. But in this case, Silvia seemed emphatic.

Silvia’s issue was a line in Rilke’s “Spanish Dancer.” Und plötzlich ist er Flamme ganz und gar. The line comes immediately after the first stanza and is, in fact, a stanza unto itself. “Spanish Dancer,” an extended metaphor set in a Paris nightclub, is one of Rilke’s least opaque poems. Most, if not all, Englishspeaking translators have roughly followed Herter Norton’s 1938 translation. Norton’s reading of the first stanza and the stand-alone line that follows is:

Wie in der Hand ein Schwefelzündholz, weiss,
eh es zur Flamme kommt, nach allen Seiten
zuckende Zugen streckt -: beginnt im Kreis
naher Beschauer hastig, hell und heiss
ihr runder Tanz sich zuckend auszubreiten.
Und plötzlich ist er Flamme ganz und gar.

As in one’s hand a sulfur match, whitely,
before it comes aflame, to every side
darts twitching tongues – : within the circle
of close watchers hasty, bright and hot
her round dance begins twitching to spread itself.
And suddenly it is altogether flame.

Why, Silvia asked, did they translate er as it when it should be he?

The answer that Rilke’s myriad translators would uniformly give her is that in German, unlike English, inanimate nouns are gender specific. Either masculine or feminine. Der Tanz is masculine. And so in German, the pronoun for dance is “he.” And er, in this case, refers to the dance.

It’s logical. There’s no “he” mentioned anywhere else in the poem. And, as I said above, I’m not aware of any English or American translator who’s treated the line otherwise.

But, no, no—Silvia said. Sure that’s “logical,” but it’s not the way a native speaker would read this poem—at least at first. This, after all, is a very erotic piece and it’s as much about a man watching as a woman dancing.

Which got me thinking. Grammar has rules that seem logical, but poetry has it’s own linguistic logic. And Rilke, especially, has his own poetics. His imagery can be as musical as his metrics—often fugue-like and ambiguous with interchangeable melody and harmonic lines as it were. In this context, it may well be that another native speaker might read this line differently than Silvia has always read it. But why does she read (and want to read) er as a he rather than a gendered dance? What happens when you interject a specific man into the poem?

First, to me, the effect is reminiscent of a film director zooming in on a face in the crowd. It crystallizes and personalizes the eroticism of the dance. And second, it stops you (at least in German) because you have to ask yourself—did Rilke really mean “he”? And so that image might (for another German reader) flash and disappear if you finally settle on “it.” But the image is there, at least subliminally.

And one shouldn’t overlook the poem’s line structure. Rilke has set one stand-alone line between two five line stanzas. He’s making us stop; the standalone line doesn’t flow smoothly from the Tanz in the previous stanza. Read by itself, without referring to the previous stanza, er is just as readily he as it.

It’s hard for an English speaker to connect with this, because we have so few gender specific inanimate nouns. What’s happening in the German, seems to me, to be similar to what happens if you come across something like:

The queen boarded the Queen Elizabeth
then she promptly set out to sea.

Is the “she” that sets out to sea the queen or the ship? You stop to think, and may say, what’s the difference because both, in fact, set out to sea. But you stop to think. And the image of the queen and the Queen both come to mind.

__________

II. But How in the World Can You Translate Something Like That?

I’m not sure, but I think it’s a good example of why poems as resonant as Rilke’s benefit from regular re-translation. It’s a commonplace observation that Rilke has become overdone in English. There are commercial reasons for this—he’s in the public domain, and most of the selections sell. Sadly, most of the selections read like workshopped versions of each other. So the only reason to do another version is to try to bring something across that hasn’t been attempted. And I think that’s a good enough reason here.

__________

III. So Here’s the Attempt

Some tricks just can’t be duplicated. I can’t think of a masculine English noun remotely equivalent to “dance.” My first thought was to just choose “he”—as Silvia seems to have done. Say something like and suddenly he’s utterly on fire.

That’s consistent, it adds a close-up of a face in the crowd that instantly focuses the poem, makes the dance as much a dialogue as a performance. I can understand why Silvia was so incensed at losing this aspect in the translation she read.

But then, is that too onedimensional? Does it lose the resonance implicit in choosing
between images? You could also dodge the issue entirely and say: and suddenly, completely, helplessly: -fire. Leaving out both “he” or “it.”

If you took that approach, you could stretch Beschauer—spectators, watchers—into something more gender specific and overtly erotic, like voyeurs.

But then you lose that wonderful effect of a close-up, zoom in.

And—as Silvia pointed out to me as our dialogue progressed—there’s another subtlety in the way Beschauer is used. This is another masculine noun, but also one that in German normally takes its singular or plural form from whether it’s prefaced by the masculine der (singular) or the feminine article die. In this case, it’s not prefaced by a definite article, because the plural is inferred from Kreis—the circle of spectators.

Even so, Silvia observed—the lack of the usual definite article might subtly nudge the German reader into the ambiguity of er in the standalone line.

Most of this isn’t possible in English. So finally, the best approach may be to try to find the tangled resonance of “he/it” elsewhere in the poem. And just overtly go with what seems Rilke’s intent.

__________

Rainer Maria Rilke

SPANISCHE TÄNZERIN

Wie in der Hand ein Schwefelzündholz, weiss,
eh es zur Flamme kommt, nach allen Seiten
zuckende Zugen streckt -: beginnt im Kreis
naher Beschauer hastig, hell und heiss
ihr runder Tanz sich zuckend auszubreiten.

Und plötzlich ist er Flamme ganz und gar.

Mit Ihren Blick entzündet sie ihr Haar
und dreht auf einmal mit gewagter Kunst,
ihr ganzes Kleid in diese Feursbrunst,
aus welcher sich, wie Schlangen, die erschrecken,
die nackte Arme wach und klappernd strecken.

Und dann: als wurde ihr das Feuer knapp,
nimmt sie es ganz zusamm und wirft es ab
sehr herrisch, mit hochmütiger Gebärde
und schaut: da liegt es resend auf der Erde
und flammt noch immer ergibt sich nicht -,
Doch sieghaft, sicher und mit einem süssen
grüssenden Lächeln hebt sie ihr Gesicht
und stampft es aus mit kleinen festen Füssen.

Rainer Maria Rilke
—tr. Art Beck


SPANISH DANCER

The way a sulfur match, cupped in the hand, whitens
before it flames, licks out in every direction: –
within the intent ring of watching eyes,
the quick, bright heat of her circling
feet shivers until it flares.

And suddenly he and the dance are altogether fire.

With a blink, she ignites her hair,
then instantly with seductive mastery,
whirls her entire dress into the bonfire
from which her naked arms rear
up like startled rattlesnakes.

As the fire finally clings to her like a slip,
she strips it off completely, aristocratically tosses
it aside with a haughty shrug. And watches:
There it lies, smoldering on the ground, still
burning and unwilling to surrender. And with
a smile on her face and a sweet “hello,” she
stamps it out with small, sure steps.

from Rattle e.6, Spring 2009 (PDF)

__________

Art Beck is a San Francisco poet and translator who’s published two translation volumes: Simply to See: Poems of Lurorius (Poltroon Press, Berkeley, 1990) and a selection Rilke (Elysian Press, New York, 1983). He’s currently trying to atone for some of his earlier Rilke versions by retranslating the Sonnets to Orpheus.

Silvia Kofler teaches at Rockhurst University and is editor/publisher of the poetry magazine, Thorny Locust. Her latest poetry collection, Radioactive Musings, was included in the Kansas City Star’s Top 100 books of 2007 by local authors.

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April 27, 2002

Postcard Poems

Conversation with
Paul E. Nelson

Rattle #68 cover, illustration of a train rolling by a river at duskThe Summer 2020 issue features a tribute to Postcard Poems, in a loose partnership with SPLAB’s August Postcard Poetry Festival, including 19 color postcards and the poems they inspired—or vice-versa. Many of the poets crafted their own visual art, while others focused on the act of spontaneous composition. Timothy Green talked to SPLAB founder Paul E. Nelson in a rangy conversation covering topics from Organic Poetry to bioregions to Buddhism.

In the open section, the poems themselves are as varied as always, with everything from experimental monologues to summer haiku.

The issue releases June 1st, and all subscribers will receive a copy of the 2020 Rattle Young Poets Anthology along with it. Visit our purchase page to subscribe for just $25/year.

 

Postcard Poems

Velid Beganovic Borjen What You Are Left With
Audio Available Tina Mozelle Braziel The Coast Starlight
Audio Available Victor Enns First Train. Boundary Creek Station.
Eugene Fairbanks Postcard from Paris
Where Is It?
Audio Available Sonia Feldman 5,000 Prostitutes of Erice
Laura Gamache What I Want to Tell You
Audio Available Rhonda Ganz The Hunger Games
Audio Available Donna Henderson Postcard from Kailua-Kona
Meghan Howard Perspective
Beverly Jackson Mother
Audio Available Sarah T. Jewell Death in His Robe
Laura R. McCullough You Are All the Pieces
Audio Available Paul E. Nelson Fender Rhodes Transmission
C.R. Resetarits We Never Were
Lindsay Shen Private Garden
Audio Available Jennifer Sheridan 3. À la Recherche du Temps Perdu
Anne Swannell Wheelbarrow Music
Martin Willitts, Jr. Greetings from Syracuse

Open Poetry

Audio Available Megan Alyse Like Waving Goodbye
Audio Available Melissa Andres Arrival
Deborah A. Bennett Five Haiku
Jacqueline Berger Women with Men
Audio Available Alejandro Escudé Bed Sheets (Moving Out After Separation)
Michelle Bonczek Evory Maxing Out
Audio Available Tom C. Hunley The Fact That There’s a Snake Tunneling …
Audio Available Lynne Knight Peeling Potatoes in Puerto Vallarta
Audio Available Gregory Loselle Laudamus
Audio Available Alison Luterman Pulling Weeds
Audio Available James Davis May Which Do You Value More?
Audio Available Jennifer Perrine Fur Baby
Audio Available T.R. Poulson How I Survive Without a Prime Membership
Audio Available Laura Read The Cheerleader
Audio Available Monica
Yaccaira Salvatierra Birdlands: Postales
Audio Available Tina Schumann Dear Morning Commuters
Penda Smith How We Became City Girls
Penda and the Burning Bush Responds …
Laura Tanenbaum An Incomplete List of Places I Have Breastfed …
Martin Vest Asterisks

Conversation

Paul E. Nelson (web)

Cover Art

David Moore (web)

 

September 20, 2008

Christine Wideman, R.N.

HOWLIN’ MOON

must be a howling full moon tonight because everybody is streaming through my hospital and just howling crazy after 15 years in this job there isn’t much that surprises me anymore lets face it being sick brings out the very best and absolute worst in patients and their families and it all comes to a head in intensive care.

take poor grandma here in bed-one with a little bit of dementia at home but she’s mostly functional in her own normal environment but two days in the hospital with a heart attack have taken their toll and knocked her for a loop so i find her standing stark naked at the side of her bed with a river of poop yup poop that’s what we call it running down her leg she is holding the end of her iv tube in her mouth with one hand and staring at the trickle of blood from the bleeding iv insert site on the other hand i’m going home she says this hose isn’t putting out enough water for my flowers she holds the iv tube out to me it’s flooding onto the floor here she smiles you take it oh my God honey what in the world are you doing did you have to go to the bathroom here let me help you are you ok are you in any pain are you in any pain oh no dear she answers there hasn’t been any rain oh damn i think and glance at her ears empty God only knows what she did with her hearing aids now she’s totally confused sun downing and stone deaf too great don the nursing assistant comes to my rescue and 20 minutes later she is cleaned up and put back together we are both hoarse from screaming at her she still wants to know when she can leave her sister’s basement and go home.

(more…)

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