Up where the air is thin: reading letters to "Poetry" magazines

Given all the time in the world, the astounding amount of reading you could do would still leave gaps in your education. That's why I enjoy reading letters in small magazines like Poetry. By reading -- glancing, really -- through the "Letters to the Editor" section, I get to witness the workings of entire literary universes, most of which I have no critical knowledge. That may indeed be my loss, but how vast is the knowledge of my ignorance!

And fun, too. There are mighty storms, no small tempests, raging in the simple black-and-white type of this small magazine, founded in 1912 by Harriet Monroe (first publisher of T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land") and currently edited by Christian Wiman. There is titanic struggle in the give-and-take of letters on every page: the opposing schools of thought, the defender and the challenger of the writer (and reviewer) in question. Seldom do I see such erudite name-calling in such well-chosen words as in the "Letters to the Editor" section of Poetry magazine.

If one wasn't reading carefully, one could be hurt by the flying bouquets and brickbats being tossed about, and never know it. Up where the air is thin, I get the giddy feeling of learning much more than I should ever know about the clockworks of poetry. Without more ado, and without further comment:

My experience with Zbigniew Herbert is, I suspect, much like the majority of readers who have struggled over the years simply to find the work of this great poet. The narrative detailed by Michael Hoffman in the May issue of Poetry ("A Dead Necktie") is reminiscent of my own. ... For all our similarities in our background as readers, however, I feel confident that Herbert's long-time advocates will find less agreement with Hoffman's vituperative review of Alissa Valles's new translation of the Collected Poems. ...

(Todd Samuelson, Houston TX)

I applaud Michael Hoffman's review of Alissa Valles's Zbigniew Herbert translations. What he says supports my own dismay, but more importantly I think it's a masterpiece of literary reviewing -- highly intelligent, thoughtful, and insightful. ... I also learned a great deal about translation from reading a review by someone so intimately familiar with the process himself. ... If there were a Pulitzer for reviews, I think this should get it.

(Sharon Bryan, Clinton WA)

Michael Hoffman describes the poetry of Zbigniew Herbert:

"There was a novelty, a surprise, an unpredictability, an ongoing untangling as one read ... The poem remade itself -- squeezed itself as out of a tube -- before one's very eyes. It is like reading something still wet, not set, not combed."

In my opinion, Michael Hoffman is also describing the prose of his essay. Incomparable!

(James R. Wilson, San Francisco, CA)

Hoffman reminds us that we can no longer take for granted Seamus Haney's assessment of Herbert in translation -- that "what convinces one of the universal resource of Herbert's writing is just this ability which it possesses to lean, without toppling, well beyond the plumb of its native language."

(Jeff Frank, Plainfield NJ)

... But now I find in the May issue a lengthy review of a translation of the Collected Poems by Zbigniew Herbert, and that review was written by someone who says (nonchalantly? shamefacedly?) "I can't ... read Polish," while at the same time he has the chutzpah to assert that two Polish Nobel laureates are "of, as I see it, manifestly lesser gifts and importance." ... I hope that in the future you will be able to find reviewers who, if not linguistically competent, are at least modest enough to realize their limitations.

(Elias L. Rivers, Coral Gables, FL)

I know Michael Hoffman about as well as he knows Polish, which is to say, in translation; but I do know Peter Dale Scott ... if Hoffman doesn't know who Peter Dale Scott is, it's not because his work is obscure, nor obscurred. ...

(Joshua Weiner, Washington, DC)

Writing not only as an avowed fan of Morri Creech's Field Knowledge, but also as a graduate student of comparative literature frightened to death by the paths that criticism and poetry have taken over the last few decades, I cannot help but respond to Ange Mlinko's discussion of Creech's new book. ... Mlinko is not only a voice from the stands speaking in unison with all that is current and cliched in the realm of both poetry and criticism, but her response is an absolutely shocking display of what she herself is criticizing. She has responded to an "old fashioned text" by citing the most old-fashioned of artists. Ashbery is her paradigm of contemporary poetry? Who else could be more canonical? ...

(Dafydd Wood, Austin, TX)

Although I liked the idea of two critics from two different schools of poetry arguing over books, your recent staged battle between David Yezzi and Ange Mlinko fell into that same old bloated diatribe. Before even reading it, I had a feeling it would be one Language poet fighting with one "traditional" poet, and, of course, Yezzi didn't like the experimental Girly Man and Mlinko thought the Hecht-like Creech was too boring. If I had a nickel for every time I heard this argument, I wouldn't have to beg for fellowships. It seems to me that what this boils down to is just the right to say "I told you so" in a hundred years. Maybe Charles Bernstein will survive the ages, maybe Morri Creech will -- who knows. At the moment it may be fun to argue about it, but this debate just seemed like a "Letters to the Editor" section, wearing a bowtie.

(Jordan Rome, Yonkers, NY)

All of the excerpts above appeared in the September 2007 issue of Poetry magazine.

"Ride Off Any Horizon," John Newlove

"Ride Off Any Horizon"

(John Newlove)

Ride off any horizon

and let the measure fall

where it may--

on the hot wheat,

on the dark yellow fields

of wild mustard, the fields

of bad farmers, on the river,

on the dirty river full

of boys and on the throbbing

powerhouse and the low dam

of cheap cement and rocks

boiling with white water,

and on the cows and their powerful

bulls, the heavy tracks

filling with liquid at the edge

of the narrow prairie

river running steadily away.

*

Ride off any horizon

and let the measure fall

where it may--

among the piles of bones

that dot the prairie

in vision and history

(the buffalo and deer,

dead indians, dead settlers,

the frames of lost houses

left behind in the dust

of the depression,

dry and profound, that

will come again in the land

and in the spirit, the land

shifting and the minds

blown dry and empty--

I have not seen it! Except

in pictures and talk--

but there is the fence

covered with dust, laden,

the wrecked house stupidly empty)--

here is a picture for your wallet,

of the beaten farmer and his wife

leaning toward each other--

sadly smiling, and emptied of desire.

*

Ride off any horizon

and let the measure fall

where it may--

off the edge

of the black prairie

as you thought you could fall,

a boy at sunset

not watching the sun

set but watching the black earth,

never-ending they said in school,

round: but you saw it ending,

finished, definite, precise--

visible only miles away.

*

Ride off any horizon

and let the measure fall

where it may--

on a hot night the town

is in the streets--

the boys and girls

are practicing against

each other, the men

talk and eye the girls--

the women talk and

eye each other, the indians

play pool: eye on the ball.

*

Ride off any horizon

and let the measure fall

where it may--

and damn the troops, the horsemen

are wheeling in the sunshine,

the cree, practicing

for their deaths: mr poundmaker,

gentle sweet mr big bear,

it is not unfortunately

quite enough to be innocent,

it is not enough merely

not to offend--

at times to be born

is enough, to be

in the way is too much--

some colonel otter, some

major-general middleton will

get you, you--

indian. It is no god to say,

I would rather die

at once than be in that place--

though you love that land more,

you will go where they take you.

*

Ride off any horizon

and let the measure fall--

where it may;

it doesn't have to be

the prairie. It could be

the cold soul of the cities

blown empty by commerce

and desiring commerce

to fill up the emptiness.

The streets are full of people.

It is night, the lights

are on; the wind

blows as far as it may. The streets

are dark and full of people.

Their eyes are fixed as far as

they can see beyond each other--

to the concrete horizon, definite,

tall against the mountains,

stopping vision visibly.

"Ride Off Any Horizon" appeared in Poetries of Canada, a special poetry section in the East Village Poetry Web. John Newlove (1938-2003) was born and raised in Saskatchewan. His work includes Lies (1975),The Green Plain (1981), The Night the Dog Smiled (1986), and a collection, A Long Continual Argument: The Selected Poems of John Newlove (2007).

Pierre Joris: "Why do I translate?"

Pierre Joris, globetrotter

The Nomadics blog of Pierre Joris is one of those truly rare things on the internet these days, a delight to read on a regular basis. The author, teacher, and translator (not necessarily in that particular order) has interesting things to write on many topics, from linguistics to melting Arctic ice, with a global perspective welcome in America's ever-more-parochial age.

He also, very obviously, enjoys writing in many different forms. From his own biography, Joris has written more than forty books (poetry, essays and translations) while also teaching at SUNY Albany. He's translated Picasso and Kurt Schwitters into English, Kerouac and Corso, Pete Townshend and Sam Shepard into French. Forthcoming in late 2010/2011 arePaul Celan: The Meridian (Stanford University Press), Exile is my Trade: The Habib Tengour Reader (Black Widow Press), and The Stations of Mansur al-Hallaj (poems).

And, of course, he blogs. Here's a recent post showing that even a polymath ransacks his files looking for material and occasionally finds something that illuminates not only his writing but his personality as well. By way of introduction to his entertaining blog, here's an excerpt from "Seven minutes on translation" which is worth a mention.

Why do I translate?

Because it pleases me.

Because it beats watching television, except when the Mets are on, but they play so lousily much of the time that I avert my eyes & continue to translate looking up only to check the score.

Because, to be frank, I want to know what the poets in Ghana are up to.

Because I am foolish enough to believe the 16th C philosopher & poet Giordano Bruno who said that all science has its origin in translation, and was burned at the stake for that and a few other peccadilloes in 1600 on the Campo Fioro in Rome. Bruno is of course the patron saint of translators.

Because by accident of birth I was blessed or damned with a batch of different languages and a perverse pleasure of pitting them and their different musics against each other.

Because I can.

Because I love doing it.

Because I have to because if I and everybody else don’t translate the world will be a way shittier place than it already is. ...

Because I speak with many-forked tongue and always wanted to be a Mescalero Apache healer.

Because the congealed mass of anglo-‘merican ugliness, greed & basic Christian fascism will continue to blow up the people & libraries & homes & museums of a hundred Baghdads unless we can make enough American citizens realize the beauty of the other, of the poetry of the other, of the speech of all the others. ...

Because, although I gave up translating into French a number of years ago, last year I could not resist saying yes to translating 25 pages of Allen Ginsberg’s poems for a French version of Philip Glass’ opera Hydrogen Jukebox, given that the last time I saw Allen in Paris he asked be to be involved with the translations of his work, something I had neglected to do until now when the occasion to pay back my dues presented itself out of the blue.

Because the Mets are losing again.

A readers' list of 25 best non-fiction books

Open Culture asked its readers to name the best non-fiction books (of all time!) and, as this kind of open-call goes, the results were pretty broad and with a few surprises here and there. The top 25 were selected primarily through a process of repeat nominees, and it would be interesting to see what else was nominated but didn't make the cut -- for example, Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States.

Still the list leaves a wide range of reading -- much of it 20th century history, some American school-room classics, and the thoughts of a Roman emperor. Commenters tossed a few zingers: only two women writers made the top 25, and suggested Beryl Markham's excellent West With the Night and Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard.

And at least the number one nomination reveals all that heavy reading doesn't ruin a sense of humor.

It is encouraging to see that the list isn't top-heavy with university-taught philosophy: whoever the readers of Open Culture might be, they are obviously reading for themselves and not for a college curriculum. And not a single book about the death of the printed word -- an encouraging sign that readers are still cracking open books, although Open Culture contributor Sheerly Avni does admit that the selection process "leaned toward books that are available for free online."

The List, in descending order:

Hunter S. Thompson - Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Friedrich Nietzsche - The Gay Science

Richard Dawkins - The Selfish Gene

Wendell Berry - The Way of Ignorance

Joseph Mitchell - Up in the Old Hotel

Brian Greene - The Elegant Universe

Norman Lewis - Voices of the Old Sea

Joan Didion - The White Album

Benjamin Franklin - The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

Tony Judt - Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945

Henry David Thoreau - Walden

Marcus Aurelius - Meditations

Bill Bryson - A Walk in the Woods

George Orwell - Homage to Catalonia

Hannah Arendt - Eichmann in Jerusalem

Booker T. Washington - Up From Slavery

Jorge Luis Borges - Other Inquisitions (1937-1952)

Marcus Rediker - Villains of all Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

Lao Tzu, Stephen Mitchell, trans. Tao Te Ching

Victor Klemperer - I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years (1933-1941)

Greil Marcus - Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century

Philip Gourevitch - We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed with Our Families

Winston Churchill - A History of the English Speaking Peoples

and as any journalist might add to the top 25:

Lastly, and only in part because we’ve been warned that we would be roundly scolded for the omission: The Elements of Style, by William Strunk and E.B. White.