poems_2024.csv

pid,title,transtitle,author,translator,poem,transpoem,note,abio,tbio,epigraph,language,lang,image,imagecredit,origaudio,translaudio,edition,pagetype,wrapformat,sequence
editor-note,,Editor's Note,Editors,,,,"<p class=""ednote"">Dear readers,</p>
    <p class=""ednote"">Our Editor's Note will be coming soon. Thank you for your patience.</p>
    <p>Sincerely,<br><em>DoubleSpeak</em></p>
    <p> . </p>
    <p> . </p>",,,,,en,assets/images/images_24/ednote24.png,photo by Katherine Rozsypalek,,,2024,frontmatter,,0
machine-of-the-world,A Máquina do Mundo,The Machine of the World,Carlos Drummond de Andrade,Anthony Doyle,"e como eu palmilhasse vagamente
uma estrada de Minas, pedregosa,
e no fecho da tarde um sino rouco

se misturasse ao som de meus sapatos
que era pausado e seco; e aves pairassem
no céu de chumbo, e suas formas pretas

lentamente se fossem diluindo
na escuridão maior, vinda dos montes
e de meu próprio ser desenganado,

a máquina do mundo se entreabriu
para quem de a romper já se esquivava
e só de o ter pensado se carpia.

Abriu-se majestosa e circunspecta,
sem emitir um som que fosse impuro
nem um clarão maior que o tolerável

pelas pupilas gastas na inspeção
contínua e dolorosa do deserto,
e pela mente exausta de mentar

toda uma realidade que transcende
a própria imagem sua debuxada
no rosto do mistério, nos abismos.

Abriu-se em calma pura, e convidando
quantos sentidos e intuições restavam
a quem de os ter usado os já perdera

e nem desejaria recobrá-los,
se em vão e para sempre repetimos
os mesmos sem roteiro tristes périplos,

convidando-os a todos, em coorte,
a se aplicarem sobre o pasto inédito
da natureza mítica das coisas,

assim me disse, embora voz alguma
ou sopro ou eco ou simples percussão
atestasse que alguém, sobre a montanha,

a outro alguém, noturno e miserável,
em colóquio se estava dirigindo:
“O que procuraste em ti ou fora de

teu ser restrito e nunca se mostrou,
mesmo afetando dar-se ou se rendendo,
e a cada instante mais se retraindo,

olha, repara, ausculta: essa riqueza
sobrante a toda pérola, essa ciência
sublime e formidável, mas hermética,

essa total explicação da vida,
esse nexo primeiro e singular,
que nem concebes mais, pois tão esquivo

se revelou ante a pesquisa ardente
em que te consumiste… vê, contempla,
abre teu peito para agasalhá-lo.”

As mais soberbas pontes e edifícios,
o que nas oficinas se elabora,
o que pensado foi e logo atinge

distância superior ao pensamento,
os recursos da terra dominados
e as paixões e os impulsos e os tormentos

e tudo o que define o ser terrestre
ou se prolonga até nos animais
e chega às plantas para se embeber

no sono rancoroso dos minérios,
dá volta ao mundo e torna a se engolfar
na estranha ordem geométrica de tudo,

e o absurdo original e seus enigmas,
suas verdades altas mais que tantos
monumentos erguidos à verdade;

é a memória dos deuses, e o solene
sentimento da morte, que floresce
no caule da existência mais gloriosa,

tudo se apresentou nesse relance
e me chamou para seu reino augusto,
afinal submetido à vista humana.

Mas, como eu relutasse em responder
a tal apelo assim maravilhoso,
pois a fé se abrandara, e mesmo o anseio,

a esperança mais mínima — esse anelo
de ver desvanecida a treva espessa
que entre os raios do sol inda se filtra;

como defuntas crenças convocadas
presto e fremente não se produzissem
a de novo tingir a neutra face

que vou pelos caminhos demonstrando,
e como se outro ser, não mais aquele
habitante de mim há tantos anos,

passasse a comandar minha vontade
que, já de si volúvel, se cerrava
semelhante a essas flores reticentes

em si mesmas abertas e fechadas;
como se um dom tardio já não fora
apetecível, antes despiciendo,

baixei os olhos, incurioso, lasso,
desdenhando colher a coisa oferta
que se abria gratuita a meu engenho.

A treva mais estrita já pousara
sobre a estrada de Minas, pedregosa,
e a máquina do mundo, repelida,

se foi miudamente recompondo,
enquanto eu, avaliando o que perdera,
seguia vagaroso, de mãos pensas.","And as I came wandering, ponderously,
down some rough old Minas road, rocky, potholed, 
and at evening-fall the rusted peal of a bell

mixed its bronze moan with my crunching footsteps,
paced and crisp on the stones; and in the leaden sky
birds were hovering, their charcoal, corvid forms

slowly dissolving, as if swallowed back
into the greater darkness coming off the mountains
and from my ownmost, disabused self,  

the machine of the world unveiled itself 
to me, who would sooner have recoiled on sight,
just turned and ran at the very prospect of it.

It gaped before me, majestic and circumspect,
and none but the purest of sounds met my ears
and a brilliant light unburdened my glare-worn eyes, 

soothing pupils baked by constant, painful
inspection of searing wastes and deserts,
and mind exhausted by contemplations

of a reality beyond the reflections
watching from the pool over which it leans,
lost in the face of mystery, in the abyss.

It opened to me calm and pure, inviting
what meanings and intuitions there remained
to one who had used up a life’s-worth already

and had no inclination to recover them
if only to retread, forever and in vain,
the same sad unscripted peregrinations,

but here it beckoned to them, one by one in train,
to ruminate upon this virgin pasture
of the mythical nature of all things.

Or so I was told, though no voice was heard,
or wind rush, or echo, or simple percussion
to testify that one, up on the mountainside,

addressed, in colloquy, this listening other 
—nocturnal, miserable—, with these uttered words:
“That which you seek within yourself, or beyond

your own restricted being, and has never
revealed itself, or feigned revealing, but coyly
withdraws further and further from perception,

Mark it now, watch and listen: this abundance
vastly richer than any pearl, this science,
sublime and formidable, yet hermetic,

this total explanation of all life,
this nexus, primordial and singular,
so elusive it forever slipped your grasp,

impenetrable to the ardent inquiries
that long consumed your mind…see, contemplate,
open your bosom and let it come in.”

The most superb of bridges and high-rise towers,
all that the workshops of men conspire to design,
and once so drawn take form and far outstrip

in distance even the widest striding thoughts,
the resources of the earth harnessed to our will,
and the passions, and the impulses, the endless torments,

everything that defines terrestrial being,
creaturely being, down to the animals, 
to all organic life, and beyond that still,

to the rancorous slumber of minerals and ores,
it swirls around the globe and is swallowed back
into the strange geometry of the whole,

and the primal absurdity, its mysteries,
and towering truths, taller than so many 
monuments erected in the name of truth;

and to the memory of the gods, and the solemn
sentiment of death, which flowers on the stem
of even the most glorious existence,

it all presented itself in that same flash
beckoning me to its august kingdom,
finally bared for human eyes to see.

But as I hesitated, balking before
that miraculous and startling appeal,
for my faith had waned, and even my desire,

the most minimal of hopes—the yearning
to see dispelled those folds of blackened cloud
that still encroached upon the sun's bright rays;

but as moribund beliefs scrambled to the front,
summoned from retirement, could not muster
sufficient verve to reanimate that neutral face

which I along these roads have shown the world, 
as if some other man, no more the tenant
who had occupied this body decades long, 

had seized the reins and stirrups of my will,
which, fickle as was its wont, curled itself shut,
after those shy, ungenerous flowers

that are, in themselves, both open and closed;
but just as ""late"" is often worse than ""never,""
and the belated gift is greeted with disdain,

I lowered my gaze, listless, uncurious, 
declining to claim what was freely given,
there for me to do with as I pleased. 
 
The most peerless darkness fast descended
upon that rough old Minas road, rocky, potholed,
and the machine of the world, its invite rebuffed,

recomposed in a shrinking whorl and then withdrew,
as I, trying to measure what I’d spurned,
continued on my way, hands wrung empty.
","<p>“A Máquina do Mundo” is widely considered the best Brazilian poem ever written, but I have yet to find an English translation that captures both its style and content with equal fidelity. Some take far too many liberties (one even imposes a non-existent rhyme scheme), while others are excessively literal in their approach. None, to my ear at least, really sounds like Drummond. So I wanted to produce a translation that was true to his original in content and style.</p>
<p>The key to the pace and flow of this ninety-six-line poem is the fact that it is only six sentences long in Portuguese. While it wasn’t possible to match that exactly, I was able to keep it to only seven sentences.</p>
<p>The poem was largely written in dodecasyllabic lines, with slight variations (many lines drop to eleven syllables or overshoot to thirteen). The basic pattern was three to four long stresses per line. To capture that stress pattern in English, I oscillated between decasyllable and dodecasyllable lines, to compensate for the reductions of unstressed syllables in Portuguese.  As English words tend to be shorter than Portuguese, I sometimes found that lines needed some padding so as not to break the pattern. However, this was always done without departing from Drummond’s basic intentions. For example, the line “passasse a comandar a minha vontade…” (thirteen syllables) would usually translate as “had begun to command my will…” (eight syllables), so I fleshed this out with a horse-riding image that spoke to the verb “command”—‘had seized the reins and stirrups of my will” (10 syllables). This allowed me to keep pattern with the preceding and following lines without altering the sense in any way.</p>
<p>There is no rhyme in the poem, but there is frequent assonance, and I tried to mirror that where possible. Portuguese words are heavy in gender-specific “a” and “o” noun, adjective and participle endings, and a lot of the assonance is based on these (“uma estrada de Minas, pedregosa”). As English word endings are far more varied than in Portuguese, I often had to opt for alliteration and other forms of consonance (“rough old Minas road, rocky, potholed”) instead.</p>","<p>Carlos Drummond de Andrade was born in the mining town of Itabira, Minas Gerais, in 1902. He studied pharmacy, worked for a time as a journalist, and finally settled into a career in the civil service.  He is considered one of Brazil’s most important poets, and left an extensive oeuvre behind him upon his death in Rio de Janeiro, in 1987. Though he was part of the generation of modernists that transformed Brazilian literature and art, he was only ever modernist on his own terms, and he would be bound to no manifesto. Early on, he was mentored by both Oswald de Andrade and Mario de Andrade, but his own firmly held beliefs about poetry and the directions he wanted to take it put constant strains on these relationships. Original, mischievous, and critical, Drummond’s poetry probed Brazil’s sociopolitical reality and the often stark contrast between industrialized, urban modernity and the simplicity of the rural heartlands. There’s also a strong existentialist quality to his work, with his exploration of the themes of mortality, memory, regret and his own awkwardness in the world. As Mauro Villar points out, some critics see “three Drummonds”: the early humorous poet, the mid-career “social poet,” and, finally, the “semiclassical pessimist.” “A Máquina do Mundo” is perhaps best described in terms of the latter. It belongs to the volume <em>Claro Enigma</em>, published in 1951. </p>","<p>Anthony Doyle grew up in Ireland, but has lived in Brazil since 2000, where he works as a translator of fiction, nonfiction, screenplays and poetry, with over forty published titles. He is also the author of the children’s book <em>O Lago Secou</em> (Companhia das Letras, 2013) and the recently published speculative-fiction novel <em>Hibernaculum</em> (Out Of This World Press). He is a founding member of the poetry collective Old Scratch Press, based in California. In addition to his own poetry, he is currently translating an introductory selection of Drummond’s best poems.</p>",,Portugese,pt,assets/images/images_24/machineofworld.png,photo by Andrea Barajas,,,2024,submission,,0
i-dont-stay-long,JE NE RESTE PAS LONGTEMPS ,I DON'T STAY LONG,Cécile Coulon,Ester Luna,"Je ne reste pas longtemps 
pour que vous gardiez de moi une image agréable, pour que chaque parole prononcée ne soit pas perdue, pour que vous n’ayez pas la possibilité 
de trouver sur mon visage une expression de douleur ou d’agacement, 
votre présence ne me fait pas mal et j’aime les gestes tendres simplement il m’arrive d’avoir besoin d’une nuit 
sans étoiles et d’un jour sans déclarations. 

Je ne reste pas longtemps 
pour ne pas peser sur vos épaules nues, 
pour ne pas prendre la place qui n’est pas la mienne, 
pour ne pas vous voir pleurer, 
je ne considère pas les larmes comme des aveux de faiblesse, il faut du courage pour noyer le regard 
et la voix : 
elle est impitoyable la révolte des sanglots 
elle exige que l’on fasse dans la neige un petit pas 
de coté. 

Je ne reste pas longtemps 
pour garder de notre rencontre une belle entaille au cœur, pour ne pas me sentir irremplaçable, 
pour avoir envie de vous revoir : 
parfois un simple sourire m’atteint comme une flèche aveugle et je dois ramasser très vite les morceaux qui tombent de moi-même 
par le trou qu’elle a ouvert. 

Je ne reste pas longtemps 
pour ne jamais être déçue par ce que j’attendais de vous, pour la promesse d’un retour très bientôt, 
pour le baiser qui vient naturellement à ceux qui s’aiment : 
je vous écris souvent car j’ose à peine vous toucher, 
comment font-ils pour effleurer des mains, et approcher des lèvres, 
et frôler des bouches closes 
alors que ces mouvements sont pour moi 
des actes qui contiennent tout ?

Je ne reste pas longtemps 
pour que chaque pas vers vous soit un pas de géant, pour que chaque étreinte soit une longue histoire, pour vous comprendre sans vous blesser : la nuit est belle sur les vallées profondes quand on sait que bientôt le jour va se lever. je ne reste pas longtemps 
pour ne rien salir dans la petite chambre sur la Loire, pour ne pas embêter les fantômes 
qui étaient là avant moi, 
je ne reste pas longtemps 
pour vous aimer encore.","I don’t stay long 
so that you keep a good impression of me, 
so that every word spoken isn’t lost, 
so that you don’t have the chance 
to see a look of sorrow or annoyance 
on my face, 
your presence doesn’t pain me and I love kind gestures it’s just sometimes I need a night 
without stars and a day without declarations. 

I don’t stay long 
so that I don’t weigh down your bare shoulders 
so that I don’t take the place that isn’t mine, 
so that I don’t see you cry, 
I don’t consider tears confessions of weakness, 
it takes courage to drown out your gaze 
and your voice: 
the revolt of sobs is ruthless 
it demands that we take one small step 
to the side 
in the snow. 

I don’t stay long 
so as to preserve the beautiful gash in my heart from when we met, so as to not feel irreplaceable, 
so as to want to see you again: 
sometimes a simple smile hits me like a stray arrow and I have to quickly pick up the pieces falling 
out of me 
through the hole that it opened. 

I don’t stay long 
so as to never be disappointed by what I expected from you, for the promise of returning very soon, 
for the kiss that comes easily to those in love: 
I write you often because I hardly dare touch you, 
how do they manage to graze hands, and bring their lips close,
and brush closed mouths 
when to me these motions are 
acts that contain everything? 

I don’t stay long 
so that every step towards you is a giant’s step, so that every embrace is a long story, 
so as to understand you without hurting you: night is beautiful over deep valleys 
when we know that day will break soon. 
I don’t stay long 
so as to taint nothing in that little bedroom on the Loire, so as to not bother the ghosts 
who were there before me, 
I don’t stay long 
so as to love you still.","<p>Like most of Coulon’s poems, “I Don’t Stay Long” does not follow any obvious rhyme scheme or metrical structure, which posed a stimulating challenge.</p>
<p>The stylistic feature I most consistently prioritized throughout my translation was form. In Coulon’s original, line breaks are meticulously planned to emphasize key phrases and images. One notable example is in the verses “elle exige que l’on fasse dans la neige un petit pas / de côté” (Coulon 13). Coulon places “de côté” (“to the side”) to the leftmost side of the page in a line of its own, thus creating a visual rendering of the small movement this verse describes. I wanted to preserve this clever link between form and content, but I initially struggled to reconcile it with the syntax of the whole sentence, which literally translates to “it demands that we take in the snow one small step / to the side.” This word order, while appropriate in French, sounds stilted in English. Hence I chose to shirk syntactic faithfulness, instead translating these verses as “it demands that we take one small step / to the side / in the snow.”Thus, “to the side” is still placed at the leftmost side of the page as a verse of its own, preserving most of the visual structure in Coulon’s original — and, with it, a touching image of humility and resignation.</p> 
<p>I also strived to accentuate connections between individual scenes and overarching themes of the poem. For instance, I hesitated between various translations of ‘salir’ in the verse “Je ne reste pas longtemps / pour ne rien salir dans la petite chambre sur la Loire” (“I don’t stay long / so as to taint nothing in that little bedroom on the Loire”). While ‘salir’ directly translates to ‘to dirty’ or ‘to soil’, I ultimately opted for ‘to taint.’ This verb, like the aforementioned two, denotes physical filth — but also holds a connotation of permanent psychological damage which simultaneously contrasts with and highlights Coulon’s discussion of fleeting interactions and romantic attachments throughout the poem.</p>","<p>Born in 1990, Cécile Coulon is a renowned poet and novelist from the village of Saint Saturnin, situated near the foot of the Auvergne volcanoes in central France. This rocky landscape has been a significant source of inspiration for her oeuvre thus far.</p>
<p>Coulon’s literary career took off when she was in high school –– she published her first novel when she was sixteen. She began receiving recognition for her works in 2012, when she won the <em>Prix Mauvais Genres</em> and the <em>Prix Coup de Foudre des Vendanges littéraires </em>for her novel <em>Le Roi n’a pas sommeil</em>. She has published eight novels, which have earned prestigious awards like the <em>Prix des libraires</em> and the <em>Prix littéraire Le Monde</em>.</p>
<p>Coulon’s first venture into poetry came in 2018 with the collection <em>Les Ronces</em>, followed by <em>Noir Volcan</em> (which contains the poem “Je ne reste pas longtemps”) in 2020 and <em>En l’absence du capitaine</em> in 2022. Coulon’s poems reveal a striking ability to juxtapose the banality of the everyday with fervent reflections on love, grief, and anger. She touches on various facets of romantic relationships –– budding attraction, lovers’ quarrels, nostalgia for past partners –– but grounds these loftier themes with frequent allusions to mundane activities and processes like eating, sleeping, and aging. This delicate, autobiographical lyricism has earned her substantial praise from critics and the general public alike, making her a prominent literary voice of her generation.</p>","<p>Ester Luna is a junior at Yale University, where she studies linguistics and comparative literature. She grew up in Washington, D.C. and speaks Italian, French, Mandarin, and Spanish. Her multilingual background sparked her interest in the art of translation as a means of bridging gaps between different cultures and literary traditions. Ester translates from and into French, Italian, and English, with a focus on modern and contemporary prose and poetry. She has recently translated Cécile Coulon’s poetry collection <em>Noir Volcan</em> (<em>Black Volcano</em>) from French into English, as well Alba de Cèspedes’s short story “Incontro con la poesia” (“Encounter With Poetry”) from Italian into English. She is also a managing editor of the <em>Yale Journal of Literary Translation</em> and of <em>L’Amuse-Bouche</em>.</p>",,French,fr,assets/images/images_24/dontstaylong.png,photo by Katherine Rozsypalek,,,2024,submission,,0
the-song-of-flowers,Cantica de Floris,The Song of Flowers,Samuel M. Elazar (compiler),Denis Ferhatovic,"Alavar keru al Djo
A el Djo grande i abastadu
Ke krija para ombri
De mučas maneras de floris.
I di todas las mižoris
Es la maskerini
Sovri todu es de alavar
A el Djo el grande.

Salto la roza i dišu:
Todus kedin a un ladu
A mi mi toka a alavar
Al Djo grande i abastado.
Ki di mi kitan azeti
I tanbjen asukri rozadu.
I in agua so alavada
Los ožos hazinus si lavan di mi
Sovri todu es di alavar
Al Djo el grande.

Arespondijo la klavinjina
Mas grandis son mi famas
Jo so roza di novijas
I mi jevan in las plantas.
I mi mandan pur prizenti
A todas las lindas damas.
Mi kerin komu sus almas
Todas las novijas se adoran kon mi.
Sovri di todu es di alavar
Al Djo el grande.

Salto la ruda i dišo
Grandes son la mis famas
Jo so roza di paridas
Me teten en sus kamas.
I todo el ožo malo
Lo kemo kon las mis plantas
Le guardo la su alma.
Del ke me jeva a mi.","I wish to praise God,
Our Great God Almighty
Who created for people
Many kinds of flowers.
And among all, the best
Is the lily flower.
Above all we must praise
Our Great God.
 
The rose sprang up and said:
“All of you step aside.
It is my turn to praise
Our Great God Almighty,
For they press oil from me
And also make rose jam,
And when dissolved I’m praised.
They rinse their sore eyes with me.
Above all we must praise
Our Great God.”
 
The carnation responded:
“Great is my renown.
I am the rose of brides.
They carry me in bunches.
They send me as presents
To all the lovely ladies.
They love me like their souls.
All the brides adorn themselves with me.
Above all we must praise
Our Great God.”
 
The rue sprang up and said:
“Great is my renown.
I am the rose of new mothers.
They suck on me in their beds,
And all the evil eyes
I burn with my bunches.
I guard the soul of those
Who carry me on them.”","<p>I do not know exactly why this <em>cantica</em> spoke to me. It seems like it sprang to my attention like its characters, the gently competing plants. I have attempted to reproduce some of the delicate balance of tone, the sense of importance of the rose, carnation, and rue tempered by their joint praise of the Creator. The echoes became important to keep since they highlight the individual strengths of the speakers and fold them into the larger structure of God’s creation and the assembled <em>cantica</em> itself: “It is my turn to praise.../ I am praised”; “Great is my renown./ I am the rose of…”; “They love me like their souls./… I guard their soul.” While I could not maintain the inconsistent yet fascinating rhyming sequence (likely resulting from the composite nature of the <em>cantica</em>), I included some alliteration and assonance to give coherence and delicacy to the text. Incidentally, the letter <em>r</em> occurs in almost every line of my rendition.</p>
<p>The plants argue for their centrality in human lives as they appear in crucial life events like courting, wedding, and childbirth. They can heal sore eyes and protect from the evil eye. The rose — entering like a mighty queen with the direction “All of you step aside” (“Todus kedin a un ladu,” literally “All [of you] stay on one side”) – underlines her role in cosmetics and cuisine. Nehama-Cantera’s Judeo-Spanish/French dictionary confirms that the rue protects against the evil eye according to Sephardic folk beliefs, adorning women in childbirth and children to ensure their health; our present-day encyclopedias, however, warn that the plant in large doses can act as an abortifacient, damage liver, and even lead to death.</p>","<p>* The text comes from Samuel M. Elazar’s <em>El romancero judeo-español (romances y otras poesías)</em> (Sarajevo, 1987; reprinted Paris, 2008). Judeo-Spanish is here written using the Serbo-Croatian/Croato-Serbian Roman alphabet: č = ch; j = y; nj = ñ; š = sh; ž = zh (or j in French).</p>
<p>In his endnotes, Samuel Elazar reports that he compiled “Cantica de Floris” from folk-song fragments he received from Gina Finci and Rikica Gottesman and those he found in the collection of Nina Škoro-Levi, which had probably been recorded by her sister, the foremost Bosnian Sephardic woman intellectual, poet, and playwright Laura Papo Bohoreta (1892-1942).</p>
<p>Born in Gračanica and living in Sarajevo for most of his life, Elazar (1902-1989) was a pharmacist by training with a strong interest in art, history, and philosophy. During World War II, he hid with his family in Zenica where he worked as a pharmacist for a mine; the rest of his and his wife’s family perished in the Holocaust. After his retirement, he dedicated himself to collecting and preserving oral tradition in his mother tongue, Judeo-Spanish. Elazar’s continuous study of medicinal plants, attested in his scientific publications, must have inspired him to assemble “Cantica de Floris.”</p>","<p>Denis Ferhatović (b. 1980) is a Bosnian-American scholar and writer, working and playing with English, French, Turkish, Indonesian, South Slavic microlanguages, and medieval Germanic and Romance languages. His essays, poems, reviews, translations, and co-translations have been published in <em>Rumba under Fire, Index on Censorship, The Riddle Ages, Iberian Connections, Turkoslavia, Trinity Journal of Literary Translation (JoLT), DoubleSpeak</em>, and <em>Asymptote</em>. His scholarly work appears in various journals and essay collections. His monograph <em>Borrowed Objects and the Art of Poetry: Spolia in Old English Verse</em> came out in 2019.</p>",,Judeo-Spanish,es,assets/images/images_24/songofflowers.png,photo by Sanaa Patel,cantica-de-flores_orig.mp3,cantica-de-flores_english.mp3,2024,submission,,0
july-is-around-the-corner,七月不远,July Is Around the Corner,Haizi,Penglin Chen,"性别的诞生不远
爱情不远————马鼻子下
湖泊含盐


因此青海湖不远
湖畔一捆捆蜂箱
使我显得凄凄迷人
青草开满鲜花。


青海湖上
我的孤独如天堂的马匹
(因此 天堂的马匹不远)


我就是那个情种： 诗中吟唱的野花
天堂的马肚子里唯一含毒的野花
(青海湖 请熄灭我的爱情！)


野花青梗不远 医箱内古老姓氏不远
(其他的浪子 治好了疾病
已回原籍 我这就想去见你们)


因此爬山涉水死亡不远
骨骼挂遍我身体
如同蓝色水上的树枝


啊！ 青海湖 暮色苍茫的水面
一切如在眼前！


只有五月生命的鸟群早已飞去
只有饮我宝石的头一只鸟早已飞去
只剩下青海湖 这宝石的尸体
暮色苍茫的水面","July is around the corner
Close to the birth of gender
Love is close---beneath the horse’s nose
Qinghai Lake is salty 
Thus Qinghai Lake is close
Bundles of beehives alongside the lake
Grievous I appear
Green grass suffused with flowers 

On Qinghai Lake
my loneliness is like a horse in heaven
(Thus the horse in Heaven is not far away)
I am the seed of love: the wildflower being chanted in poems,
the only toxic flower in the heaven's horse's belly
(Qinghai Lake, please quench my love's flame)
I am still in love with her
With no herbs to heal
(Other prodigal men with wounds of love found solace for their pain, and returned to their birthplace, I wish to meet you）
Thus trudging across mountains and streams, death is around the corner 
Bones adorn my body, like branches floating on blue water,
All flash before my eyes
Birds who stay here for only five months flew away long ago
Only the first bird that sipped from my flow flew away long ago
Only Qinghai Lake remains, this gem-like corpse
On twilit waters, reflections aglow","<p>Haizi wrote “July is around the corner” in 1986. In this love poem, Haizi utilizes Qinghai Lake as a confidant and employs subtle imagery like horses and fresh blooms to convey his profound sense of solitude and the excruciating pain of lost love.</p>
<p>One of the most challenging aspects of this translation is in the line, “I am still in love with you / With no herbs to heal.” A direct translation from the original text would be, “Wildflowers and green stems are not far away, ancient last names in the medical chest are not far.” However, such a rendering appears quite vague. The Chinese pronunciation of “green stems” is a homophone for <span lang=“zh”>情根</span> (<em>qing gen</em>), which conveys the enduring nature of the poet’s faithful love. It likens this steadfast love to the root and stem of a plant, implying that this unwavering love has been deeply rooted in the poet's heart.. Therefore, I translated it as “I am still in love with you,” emphasizing such deep-rooted affection. “Ancient last names in the medical chest are not far” shows the author’s search for a remedy for his wounds of love. This is because many Chinese herbal medicine names include common surnames. “Ancient last names” thus symbolize various herbs. Although “ancient last names” are “not far,” they are still unattainable, implying that the author’s suffering is actually incurable. Signifying the poet’s profound emotional pain, I chose to translate this line as “with no herbs to heal.”</p>
<p>Lastly, in the original poem, the term <span lang=“zh”>情种</span> (<em>qing zhong</em>) literally translates to “the love seed.” However, within the Chinese cultural context, <span lang=“zh”>情种</span> refers to an individual deeply enamored of someone. This phrase describes love as a seed rooted in one’s heart. Finding no equivalent in English, I chose to translate <span lang=“zh”>情种</span> as “the seed of love.”</p>","<p>Zha Haishen, who wrote under the pen name Hai Zi, was born in Anhui Province (China) on March 24, 1964. He spent his childhood in rural China during the Cultural Revolution. In 1979, he enrolled in Peking University at the age of 15. He began writing as a student in the early 1980s. After graduation, he worked at China University of Political Science and Law. From what he felt was an extremely dull environment at the university, Hai Zi sent his poems to different newspapers and presses, but his works were rarely accepted for publication. He remained unknown to the general audience until he passed away in 1989.</p>","<p>Penglin Chen is a junior majoring in English Literature and World Literature at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. She came to Penn for a semester in 2023 and studied literary translation.</p>","——For Qinghai Lake, please quench my love",Chinese,zh,assets/images/images_24/july.png,photo by Aiyana Nosizwe Mate,,,2024,submission,,0
from-my-garden,De mi jardin,From My Garden,José Palma y Velásquez,Isabella Garcia Bernstein,"Me pides sampaguitas... No te envío, 
porque, al ir a cortarlas de la rama, 
sentí temblar mis manos y mi pecho 
prensado por la lástima. 

No quiero que padezcan esas flores, 
como padece, lejos de tí, mi alma, 
no quiero que al contacto de mis manos 
perezcan marchitadas. 

¡Qué caigan ellas solas! Yo, que siento 
más que nunca mortíferas nostalgias, 
no quiero que por mí tengan las flores 
nostalgia de las ramas. 

Es crueldad separarlas de sus tallos 
antes que lo haga el soplo de las áuras 
¡quién sabe si en las horas más de vida 
que se irán al troncharlas, 

ellas esparcirán en el ambiente 
la esencia más sabrosa y delicada 
que formada con mieles de rocío 
en sus corolas guardan! 

Deja que vivan. A nosotros mismos, 
a pesar de seguir nuestra jornada, 
marchando sobre espinas y entre sombras 
la vida nos es grata. 

Nada tememos más sino la muerte... 
¿Y si tuvieran esas flores alma? 
¡Quién sabe si sintieran asimismo 
temor de verse lacias!

No; déjalas vivir. Que vivan siempre 
en su palacio de hojas y de ramas; 
que las encuentre allí la mariposa, 
su eterna enamorada; 

que saluden los ocres de la tarde, 
que esplendan con las púrpuras del alba, 
que beban del rocío de las noches 
y halaguen las miradas. 

Las pobres sampaguitas se resienten 
cuando alguien de su tallo las separa; 
al hallarse en el pecho o en las trenzas, 
sufren; se tornan pálidas. 

Y cuando están así ¿qué hombre puede 
contener de los ojos una lágrima? 
¿Quién no se acuerda de los tristes seres 
que mueren de nostalgia? ","You ask me for sampaguitas… I will not surrender them to you
because, in trying to cut them from the branch, 
I felt my hands tremble 
and my chest tighten from shame. 

I do not want these flowers to suffer as my soul, 
far away from you, suffers.
I do not want them 
to wither and perish at the touch of my hands. 

How they might die alone! I, who feel relentless nostalgia 
now more than ever, 
do not want these flowers to feel nostalgia 
for their branches because of me. 

It is cruel to sever them from their stems 
before the spirits of the wind deem it time. 
Who knows if in the last hours of life,
they will put an end to them, 

They will scatter into the atmosphere 
their sweetest and most delicate essence 
formed with dewdrops of honey 
that their petals earnestly protect! 

Let them live. For us, 
in spite of following our day’s journey, 
marching on thorns and between shadows, 
life is pleasant to us. 

Nothing frightens us more than death… 
And if these flowers were to have a soul? 
Who knows if they might feel the same 
fear of seeing themselves wilted. 

No; let them live. May they live always 
in their palace of leaves and branches; 
may a butterfly, their eternal lover, 
find them there; 

may they greet the ochers of autumn, 
may they shine with the purple hues of daybreak, 
may they drink from the nighttime dew 
and flatter the eyes. 

The poor sampaguitas ache 
when someone plucks them from their stem; 
upon discovering their chest or tresses, 
they suffer; they lose their brilliance. 

And when they are like this, what man can 
contain a single tear? 
Who does not remember the sorrowful beings 
who die of nostalgia? ","<p>At first glance, Palma’s work is a lyrical ode to the humble and beautiful sampaguita flower, which is a national symbol of the Philippines. The sampaguita, derived from the Filipino phrase <em>sumpa kita</em> or “I promise you,” symbolizes innocence, loyalty, and hope. Bearing this symbolism in mind, I also focused on Palma’s political views during the movement for Philippine independence. Knowing Filipinos’ struggle for autonomy largely shaped how I chose to translate this poem. Just as the author spoke about nostalgia for one’s homeland, I used my memories from my grandparents’ home in the Philippines to determine the word choice and tone of my translation.</p>
<p>It is crucial to recognize that Palma wrote this poem in 1900, two years after the United States began its occupation of the country, following the Spanish-American War and the Philippine Revolution. Considering his political motives and occupation as a soldier, I was very deliberate about how I wanted to translate the introductory line of the first stanza: “me pides sampaguitas…no te envío”. In Spanish <em>enviar</em> elicits a passive image of sending the flowers without a fight. However, I took <em>enviar</em> to mean “surrender.” Placing more value on the flowers and their agency, I translated the line as: “You ask me for sampaguita flowers…I will not surrender them to you.” This word choice highlights the struggle for land ownership and portrays Filipinos as strong, moral, and heroic like Palma might have intended.</p>
<p>The image of the sampaguita guided me in prioritizing Palma’s loving and protective tone over any particular rhyme scheme. To conserve the poem’s emotion, I adapted some of the descriptions in English. I translated <em>sabrosa</em> in the fifth stanza as “sweet” and “se tornan pálida” in the tenth stanza as “they lose their brilliance” to signify that the white flowers lose their vividness once they are picked from the branches. Throughout my translation process, the connection between sampaguitas and Filipinos became increasingly clearer. After many drafts of attempting to see the flowers as an extension of humanity (beyond personification), I chose my diction based on how I would write an obituary for a human being. The flowers are not simply plucked from their stem but violently stolen and killed by imperial powers: “que se irán al troncharlas” – “they will put an end to them.”</p>","<p>José Palma y Velásquez was an author of hispanofilipino literature born in Manila, Philippines in 1876 under Spanish colonial rule. He was the younger brother of acclaimed senator, journalist, and scholar Rafael Palma. The two brothers collaborated extensively in Philippine revolutionary journalism. In fact, it was in journalism where José Palma’s work began. As a staff writer for <em>La Independencia</em>, one of the most notable newspapers published at the time of the Philippine Revolution, he debuted his poem “Filipinas” which are the lyrics to the country’s national anthem. This work has been translated into various Filipino languages and English.</p>
<p>A dedicated revolutionary, he fought for Filipino political and cultural autonomy during the Spanish-American War. As a soldier of the Katipunan (a group of Filipino nationalists who advocated for armed resistance against the Spanish government), he advocated for independence against the Americans. Inspired by the natural beauty of the Philippine landscape, particularly flora, he wrote poems and music to raise morale and bring awareness to the resilience of Filipino people. Under pseudonyms, he shared these works in publications like <em>El Renacimiento, La Patria</em>, and <em>La Moda Filipina</em>. He died tragically young in 1903, at the age of twenty-six.</p>","<p>Isabella Garcia Bernstein (they/she) is a third-year Filipina-American student majoring in Hispanic Studies and Archaeological Anthropology at Barnard College. Funded by the Laidlaw Foundation and hosted by New York University’s KJCC as the first undergraduate scholar in residence, they founded the Paglaban Pilipino Literature Project, a non-profit curriculum website that promotes Philippine literature produced in the Philippines and the diaspora. At Columbia, they serve as the president of the university’s sole Filipinx heritage organization and the editor-in-chief for the Columbia Journal of Asia. They currently research hispanofilipino literature at the turn of the twentieth century and corresponding themes of environmental personhood, post-colonialism, and exophony.</p>",,Spanish,es,assets/images/images_24/frommygarden.png,photo by Sanaa Patel,from-my-garden_orig.mp3,from-my-garden_english.mp3,2024,submission,,0
what-gaza-will-say,قليلٌ مما ستقولُهُ غزة عما قليل,A Little of What Gaza Will Say in a Little,Khaled Juma,Michael Karam,"هذا دمي، يبدأُ من حيثُ يسكتُ النشيد، ومن حيث يتسلّى الموتُ على طريقتِهِ بطفلين زائدين عن قدرةِ الساسةِ على احتمالِ الحقيقة.


هذا دمي، لمن أخلى مساحةً ليورِدَ النارَ في منشأةِ القلبِ، يفركُ يديهِ ليحتمي بالنومِ من رؤيةِ الحريقِ على بابِ المعنى، يسخرُ المعنى من المبنى، وتقولُ لغةٌ لقائلِها: ليسَ من أجلِ هذا خُلِقتُ، ويضحكُ عابرٌ في ممرٍّ ضيّقٍ ويرفعُ صوتَهُ بدعاءٍ قديمٍ فيهِ خطأٌ شائعٌ، وتنهارُ حولَهُ بنايتانِ من خجلٍ على أرضٍ لم تشربْ خشونةَ الأرقامِ بعدُ، فيصابُ الغيمُ بالحيرةِ، فلم يأتِ محمّلًا برغبةِ الغسيلِ، وكانت كلُّ قطرةٍ في السحابةِ تحلمُ أن تكونَ لونًا في ورقةِ شجرْ، مشهدٌ لا يشبِهُ شيئًا أن ترى غيمةً مخذولةً ونايًا يحرُسُ الحنطةَ في المكانِ بديلًا عن ساقيةٍ ويدينِ وثوبٍ شعبيٍّ يقاتِلُ وحدَهُ.


سينتفضُ سيّدٌ من رائحةِ النَّحلِ الغاضبِ ومن بقايا الصهيلِ في قصص البطولاتِ، ويلجأ عاريًا إلى الغاباتِ كي يبدأ القولَ من أوَّلِهِ ويعطيني لقبَ مدينةٍ، ويتسلّى ببعضِ المراسمِ في وقتٍ سأكونُ فيهِ مشغولةً بالجنازةِ التي لا تنتهي، سأقولُ كلامًا يجرحُ الجميعَ وسأنتهي سريعًا من طقوسي لأخبرَ كلَّ مفتونٍ بدورِهِ في الروايةِ بما كان يجبُ عليه ولم يفعلْه، وسيكونُ الوقتُ قد مرَّ طويلًا وصارَ تاريخًا حين يتذكَّرُ الذي لا ذاكرةَ لهُ، أن قليلًا من الكلامِ كان يعني بقاءُ أغنيةٍ على قيد الشفاه، والولدُ الذي لم يعدْ يغني، فعلَ هذا فقطْ لأنّهُ ماتَ قبلَ أن يقولَ لأمِّهِ كم يحبُّها، ومأساة أمِّهِ كانت أنّهُ مات قبلَها بأغنيتين، ولم يعدْ هناكَ من يتذكَّرْ الأغاني ولا العائلة.
سأقولُ كلامًا يجرحُ الناظرين، عما قليلٍ حين أفرغُ من دفنِ يديَّ، ونبضتين من قلبي الغارق في الحدادْ، سأقولُ ما لا تحتملْهُ حضارةُ الآخرينْ، لن أجعلَ النائمينَ يشعرونَ بالندمِ، ولا الجيوشَ المرصوصةَ على الرفوفِ تخجلُ من شاراتِها، لن ألومَ حرّاسيَ ولن أغرزَ حسرتي في جِلدِهمْ، فقطْ، سأقولُ كلامًا يجرحُ الناظرينَ كي لا ينظروا فيزيدُ الدمعُ في الكُتُب، سأحفظُ أولادي في ثلاجةٍ من حنينٍ إلى الأبد، ولا أريدُ من يصبُّ ماءً على جرحي كي أقيمَ صلاتي وحدي دونَ إمامٍ أو تابعين.


ما سأقولُهُ عما قليلٍ سأقولُهُ عما قليل، فلا تجرحوا زوجاتكمْ بالغضبِ الظاهرِ في مكانكم القريبِ من الشاشةِ، الأشياءَ تبدو أعظم حينَ ترويها الإذاعاتُ، فلا تصدقوا موتاي، ولا جرحاي، ولا أراملي ولا اليتامى تحت إبطي، لا تصدقوا انهياري ولا انفجاري، لا تصدّقوا لغتي، ولا حيرتي أمامَ الجهات، وصلّوا من أجل أنفسكُم، فقط من أجلِ أنفسِكم.


هذا دمي، نعمْ، هذا دمي..


وعمّا قليلٍ سأقولُ كلامًا من دمٍ، فلا تخطئوا التفسيرَ، فنحنُ المُدُنُ، يجرحُنا من يوقفُ النشيدْ، فنقولُ كلامًا لا يُحْتَمَلْ.","This is my blood, it begins where the anthem goes quiet, beyond politicians’ ability to bear the truth, where death entertains himself with two disposable children.

This is my blood, for whoever makes space to stoke the fire in the heart’s furnaces, rubs hands together to hide, sleeps away from the fire at the door of meaning, harnesses meaning from the building, and a tongue says to its animator: I was not born for this, and the animator laughs passing through a narrow hall, and he raises his voice in an ancient prayer and a common mistake, and two buildings collapse around him out of embarrassment onto an earth that is not yet drunk with the stiffness of numbers, so the cloud is stricken, confused, it did not come to wash away, and each raindrop in this cloud had dreamed of being a color on a leaf on a tree, it is a sight like no other to see a cloud disappointed, to hear a ney watching over the wheat in place of a stream and two hands, and a folk dress fighting alone. 

A man will rise up from the smell of angry bees and from the echoes of hooves in the stories of heroes, and flee naked into the forests so he can start the discourse from the beginning and call me a city, and entertain himself with some ceremonies while I am preoccupied with this never-ending funeral, I will say words that hurt everyone and I will quickly finish my ceremonies so I can tell each one who was fascinated with his role what he should and should not have done, and so much time will have passed and have become history by the time he without memory will remember that saying a little meant a song barely off the lips, meant the child who no longer sings simply because he died before he told his mother how much he loved her, meant his mother’s tragedy was that he died before her by two songs, and there is no one left to remember the songs or the family.

I will say words that hurt spectators, in a little, once I finish burying my two hands, and two beats from my heart that sinks in mourning, I will say what others’ civility cannot bear, I will not make those who sleep feel remorse, nor will I make the armies lined on the roofs feel embarrassed of their badges, I will not blame my guards and I will not dig my sorrow into their skin, I will only say words that hurt spectators so they look away, so the tears run in books, I will preserve my children in a freezer of yearning forever, and I do not want anyone to pour water onto my wound, so I can pray—alone.
In a little I will say what I will say in a little, so do not hurt your spouses with the anger you can see up close on screen, things seem grander when recounted on screen, so do not believe my deaths, nor my wounded, nor my widows, nor the orphans under my arms, do not believe my collapses or my bursts, and do not believe my language, or my loss at directions, and pray for yourselves—only for yourselves. 

This is my blood, yes, this is my blood—

and in a little I will say words of blood, so do not misunderstand me, for we cities, when we are hurt by whoever quieted the anthem, we say unbearable words. ","<p>This poem haunts me. It was written in 2011 but feels as if it were written yesterday, or tomorrow, or the day after. The speaker is a Gaza that haunts us, that knows we are watching, that knows the words it speaks are unbearable, and that the new words it will speak will be unbearable too. <em>This poem was written in 2011</em>. While Arabic is a more gendered language, gender feels less pronounced to me in Arabic, and it becomes more obvious in English. Death is suddenly male in translation.</p>
<p>Where the English says “echoes of hooves,” the Arabic says “remains of neighs,” but neighs do not seem as loud in English. I also did not want “neigh” to rhyme with “ney,” the wind instrument common to the region. There is one cloud in the original Arabic, and I almost pluralized the cloud in English. The title could have been “an excerpt of what Gaza would soon say,” which more aligns with the true meaning of the original, but I wanted the reader to hear the word “little” twice, the way the word for little is repeated twice in the Arabic. The word for little in Arabic has two “L” sounds too. The speaker prays without an imam and without followers. I did not want the religious connotation to distract from how common, how lonely, it can be to pray.</p>
<p>The first verse was the hardest. The Arabic implies that death was playing with two children, that these two children are in excess of what truth politicians can bear—that these children are too much, that they are extra. The translation, “disposable,” feels harsh. It also feels appropriate.</p> 
<p>The line “and his mother’s tragedy was that he died before her by two songs,” is why I picked this poem. I hope it haunts you too.</p>
<p>Thank you to Nick Capri and Professor Taije Silverman for their edits.</p>","<p>Khaled Juma is a Palestinian poet from Gaza, born in Rafah and raised in Al-Shaboura Refugee Camp. He is also a playwright and writer of children’s stories. Juma directs or until recently directed the Department of Culture in the Palestine News and Information Agency. His poem, “Oh Rascal Children of Gaza,” first published in 2014, has circulated online in recent months. The poem translated here was first published in 2011.</p>","<p>Michael Karam. Also <span lang=""ar"">مخايل</span>. Raised in Lebanon. Born in Massachusetts. Lives in DC. Occasionally writes. Sometimes translates. Cries more. Studies law. Reminded often that poetry can save the world. That it cannot. That we have more power than we think. That we do not. Cooks. Hugs. Available in Arabic, French, and some Spanish.</p>",,Arabic,ar,assets/images/images_24/whatgazawillsay.png,photo by Elias Ziyadeh,what-gaza-will-say_orig.mp3,what-gaza-will-say_english.mp3,2024,submission,,0
dirigent,Dirigent,Conductor,Bart Moeyaert,Arno Bohlmeijer,"Als de regen traag blijft vallen
en het licht wordt als aan zee,
sluit de ochtend naadloos
op de avond aan. Dat klinkt

als somberheid, maar niet
per se. Je hoeft niet alles
in mineur te zingen. Je doet
de dingen met je beste been

vooruit. Aan donker zit altijd
een kant die glanst zoals
de natte straat. Het heet ook
hondenweer voor iets.

Is het niet grappig dat je
je evenwicht verliest bij het
schudden van je vacht.
Je weet dat oefenen niet

bij het leven hoort. Alles is
altijd voor echt. Je moet
de straat op en verdrinken,
je borstzak brandend van

het kaartje voor een stoel
dicht bij de dirigent. Hij
wijst je met het tillen van zijn
handen op het belang van

het moment.","When the rain keeps falling slowly
and light is growing as by the sea,
morning follows evening
seamlessly. That could be

a bleak thing, but not
necessarily. You don’t need to 
sing everything in low keys. Go on 
with your best leg

in front. All darkness
has a side that shines like
the wet street. It’s called
beastly weather for a reason.

Isn’t it weird that 
shaking your fur, makes you
lose balance.
You know that rehearsal is no

part of life. Everything is
always for real. You need
to get on the street and perish,
your breast pocket glowing with

the ticket for a seat
close to the conductor. He,
lifting his hands, will 
show you the interest of

the instant.
","<p>When poems are in motion of their own accord, there’s a rewarding interplay. While the shapes and contents blend independently, as a dazzling combination of intention and surprise, the author can ‘follow or steer’. 
Translations are happy to work that way too: when the original poems connect the heart and mind, or flesh and blood, their words will find the new language with equal rhyme or rhythm and meaning.</p>
<p>This bunch reflects that wondrous process.</p>","<p>Bart Moeyaert is a Flemish author, winner of a dozen major awards in various countries, former Antwerp’s poet laureate, and a widely acclaimed poet and novelist. He also writes song lyrics, plays, and screenplays for movies and television.</p>

<p>As a poet, novelist, artist, screenwriter, graphic designer and song-text writer, Ted van Lieshout is an international phenomenon. So far he’s published ninety books and won twenty major prizes. There is no end to the variety of his themes and styles, from utterly playful to dead serious – or all at the same time: as funny as profound.</p>

<p>Shy and quiet, but published in the US and Europe, Phebe Rasch writes novels and poetry, all in her very own way, pace, and level, for utter authenticity. Her third book is acclaimed in both Ukraine and Russia, the fourth appeared in 2022. Behind so-called simplicity, all kinds of depth can be found: literary, psychological, practical.</p>","<p>Arno Bohlmeijer, winner of a PEN America Grant 2021, poet and novelist, writing in English and Dutch, published in six countries, two dozen renowned Journals and Reviews, 2019 – 2024, and in <em>Universal Oneness</em>: an Anthology of Magnum Opus Poems from around the World, 2019.>p>",,Dutch,nl,assets/images/images_24/conductor.jpeg,photo by Hannah Bradley,conductor_orig.mp3,conductor_english.mp3,2024,submission,,first
halfway-stop,Halte halverwege,Halfway Stop,Ted van Lieshout,Arno Bohlmeijer,"Er ging op een dag een vader dood.
Hij was van mij en hij viel zomaar
ineens de rand van het leven af.

Ik keek voorzichtig het donkere gat
van de kelder in en zag dat hij nergens
lag; dat kwam omdat het daar te diep is

om te zien wat vaders doen als ze eenmaal
op zichzelf zijn gaan wonen in het huis
dat hemel heet. De hemel, dacht ik eerst,

was hoog in de lucht, maar hij is ergens
beneden, trap af, nog onder de kelder waar
papa’s spullen zich in dozen bewaren.

Lager kan ik niet, maar ik heb geen haast
en de kelder is wel een gezellige halte
halverwege met weinig verkeer:

soms een metro waarin mensen zitten
die naar je zwaaien omdat ze zijn weggegaan.
Dag, wuiven ze. Dag, roep ik terug.

Ik wacht op de volgende om mijn vader
fatsoenlijk uit te zwaaien. We herkennen
elkaar vanzelf hier in het donker.","One day a father died.
He was mine, and suddenly
he fell off life’s edge just like that.

Carefully I gazed into the dark hole
of the basement and saw that he was
nowhere; because it’s too deep there

to see what fathers do once they’ve moved 
to live by themselves in the house 
called heaven. Heaven, I thought at first, 

was high in the sky, but it’s a space
below the stairs, under the basement where 
Dad’s things keep themselves in boxes.

I can’t go any lower, but there’s no rush
and the basement seems a homey stop,
halfways, without much traffic:

sometimes a subway train where people
raise a waving hand, because they’ve left.
Goodbye, they wave. Bye, I call back.

To send my dad off properly, I’m waiting 
for the next train. In this darkness here
we’ll recognize each other, no effort.","<p>When poems are in motion of their own accord, there’s a rewarding interplay. While the shapes and contents blend independently, as a dazzling combination of intention and surprise, the author can ‘follow or steer’. 
Translations are happy to work that way too: when the original poems connect the heart and mind, or flesh and blood, their words will find the new language with equal rhyme or rhythm and meaning.</p>
<p>This bunch reflects that wondrous process.</p>","<p>Bart Moeyaert is a Flemish author, winner of a dozen major awards in various countries, former Antwerp’s poet laureate, and a widely acclaimed poet and novelist. He also writes song lyrics, plays, and screenplays for movies and television.</p>

<p>As a poet, novelist, artist, screenwriter, graphic designer and song-text writer, Ted van Lieshout is an international phenomenon. So far he’s published ninety books and won twenty major prizes. There is no end to the variety of his themes and styles, from utterly playful to dead serious – or all at the same time: as funny as profound.</p>

<p>Shy and quiet, but published in the US and Europe, Phebe Rasch writes novels and poetry, all in her very own way, pace, and level, for utter authenticity. Her third book is acclaimed in both Ukraine and Russia, the fourth appeared in 2022. Behind so-called simplicity, all kinds of depth can be found: literary, psychological, practical.</p>","<p>Arno Bohlmeijer, winner of a PEN America Grant 2021, poet and novelist, writing in English and Dutch, published in six countries, two dozen renowned Journals and Reviews, 2019 – 2024, and in <em>Universal Oneness</em>: an Anthology of Magnum Opus Poems from around the World, 2019.>p>",,Dutch,nl,assets/images/images_24/conductor.jpeg,photo by Hannah Bradley,halfway-stop_orig.m4a,halfway-stop_english.mp3,2024,submission,,middle
een-leven-lang,Een leven lang,A Lifetime,Phebe Rasch,Arno Bohlmeijer,"Er is een plekje dat zeer doet. 
Het doet al een paar dagen pijn. 
Mama heeft de dokter gebeld. 
Ze neemt me mee op de fiets, 
langs de ganzen en het riet. 
De wind kietelt mijn kin. 
 
De dokter kijkt en voelt. 
Hij is voorzichtig, drukt maar even. 
Maar ik hoor ze praten, zacht en lang. 
In het ziekenhuis zijn andere dokters, 
die kunnen nog meer zien. 
Het is belangrijk dat ik gekomen ben. 
 
Papa gaat mee, hij neemt vrij van zijn werk. 
Hij pakt mijn hand en knijpt. 
‘Een vleugelslag, een kiespijnlach, 
zo snel zijn we weer weg.’ 
Maar ik word koud en kan niets verzinnen 
voor het gevoel dat ik heb vanbinnen. 
 
Ik moet langer blijven,  
twee dagen van huis. 
Ze nemen een stukje van dat plekje 
om het van dichtbij te kunnen zien. 
Daar voel ik niets van, ik mag slapen, 
tot het weer dicht zit, zoals eerst. 
 
‘Als je thuiskomt,’ zegt papa, 
‘bak ik pannenkoeken, 
met slagroom, ijs  
en chocoladesaus.  
Nog twee dagen en dan is alles  
weer zoals van ouds.’ 
 
Het is niet goed, dat weet ik. 
En papa weet het ook. 
Hij houdt zich groot en hoopt zo 
dat ik het ook geloof. 
We gaan naar huis en eten niet veel. 
Het verdriet doet pijn in mijn keel.   
 
‘Als ik doodga, pap, 
zorg jij dan voor mijn konijn? 
Hij heeft elke dag water nodig, 
een knuffel en een beetje zonneschijn.’ 
 
‘Ik ga hem niet vergeten. 
Ik geef hem alles dat ik heb. 
Jij gaat misschien iets eerder dood,  
maar jouw leven is zo lang als je genoten hebt.’ 
 
Het duurt nog even, toch ben ik bang. 
Ik plak mijn lievelingsposter op het behang. 
Er is iets dat anderen niet hebben, 
maar daarin schuilt ook een geheim. 
Ik zal niet langer zoeken 
naar wie ik echt zou willen zijn.","There’s a spot that hurts.
It’s been aching for days.
Mom has phoned the doctor.
She’s taking me on her bike,
past the geese and reeds.
The wind is tickling my chin.
 
The doctor sees and feels.
He’s careful, pressing just briefly.
But I can hear their voices, low and long.
There are other doctors in the hospital,
they can see more.
It’s important for me to have come.
 
Dad has joined us, not going to work.
He takes my hand and squeezes.
“A wing beat, a wry smile,
that’s how fast we’ll leave again.”
But I’m growing cold and don’t know
the words to show what I feel inside.
 
I need to stay here longer,
two days away from home.
They’re taking a piece of that spot,
so they can see it even closer.
That doesn’t hurt, I can doze off,
until it’s just the way it was.
 
“At home,” says my Dad,
“I’ll make pancakes,
with whipped cream, ice-cream,
and chocolate sauce.
Two more days, and all
will be like before again.”
 
It’s not quite right, I know that.
And so does Dad.
He’s holding up and hopes
this way that I also believe it.
We’re going home and don’t eat much.
The grief is a pain in my throat.
 
“Dad, when I die,
will you mind my bunny?
He needs water every day,
a hug and some sunshine.”
 
“I won’t forget him.
I’ll give him all I’ve got.
It might be early to die, but your life
is as long as you’ve had the time and joy.”
 
There will be time, but I’m afraid.
I pin my favorite poster on the wall.
There is something that other people don’t have,
but a secret is also lying inside.
I won’t try to find anymore,
who I’d really like to be.","<p>When poems are in motion of their own accord, there’s a rewarding interplay. While the shapes and contents blend independently, as a dazzling combination of intention and surprise, the author can ‘follow or steer’. 
Translations are happy to work that way too: when the original poems connect the heart and mind, or flesh and blood, their words will find the new language with equal rhyme or rhythm and meaning.</p>
<p>This bunch reflects that wondrous process.</p>","<p>Bart Moeyaert is a Flemish author, winner of a dozen major awards in various countries, former Antwerp’s poet laureate, and a widely acclaimed poet and novelist. He also writes song lyrics, plays, and screenplays for movies and television.</p>

<p>As a poet, novelist, artist, screenwriter, graphic designer and song-text writer, Ted van Lieshout is an international phenomenon. So far he’s published ninety books and won twenty major prizes. There is no end to the variety of his themes and styles, from utterly playful to dead serious – or all at the same time: as funny as profound.</p>

<p>Shy and quiet, but published in the US and Europe, Phebe Rasch writes novels and poetry, all in her very own way, pace, and level, for utter authenticity. Her third book is acclaimed in both Ukraine and Russia, the fourth appeared in 2022. Behind so-called simplicity, all kinds of depth can be found: literary, psychological, practical.</p>","<p>Arno Bohlmeijer, winner of a PEN America Grant 2021, poet and novelist, writing in English and Dutch, published in six countries, two dozen renowned Journals and Reviews, 2019 – 2024, and in <em>Universal Oneness</em>: an Anthology of Magnum Opus Poems from around the World, 2019.>p>",,Dutch,nl,assets/images/images_24/conductor.jpeg,photo by Hannah Bradley,a-lifetime_orig.m4a,a-lifetime_english.mp3,2024,submission,,last
dont-let-the-poet-leave,Не пускайте поэта в Париж,Don't Let the Poet Leave for Paris,Veronika Dolina,Sophia Ampgkarian,"Не пускайте поэта в Париж! 
Пошумит, почудит — не поедет. 
Он поедет туда, говоришь, — 
Он давно этим бредит. 

Не пускайте поэта в Париж! 
Там нельзя оставаться. 
Он поедет туда, говоришь, — 
Не впервой расставаться. 

Не пускайте поэта в Париж! 
Он поедет, простудится — сляжет. 
Кто ему слово доброе скажет? 
Кто же тут говорил, говоришь. 

А пройдут лихорадка и жар — 
Загрустит ещё пуще: 
Где ты, старый московский бульвар? 
Как там бронзовый Пушкин? 

Он такое, поэт, существо, — 
Он заблудится, как в лабиринте. 
Не берите с собою его. 
Не берите его, не берите! 

Он пойдёт, запахнувши пальто. 
Как ребёнок в лесу, оглядится. 
Ну и что, говоришь, ну и что? 
Он бы мог и в Москве заблудиться. 

Всё равно где ни жить, говоришь. 
Кто поймёт, говоришь, не осудит. 
Не пускайте поэта в Париж! 
Он там всё позабудет. 

Всё равно где ни лечь, говоришь, 
Под плитой да под гомоном птичьим. 
Не пустили б поэта в Париж — 
Он лежал бы на Новодевичьем.","Don’t let the poet leave for Paris!
He will fuss, fool around – but won’t go.
Oh, he will go there, you say,
He’s been babbling about it for ages.

Do not let the poet leave for Paris!
One cannot remain out there.
Oh, he will still go, you say,
It’s not the first time we part ways.

Do not let the poet leave for Paris!
He will go, catch a cold – fall gravely ill.
Then who will speak kind words to him?
As if someone said them here, you say.

And when the fever and flush pass –
His heartache will deepen alas.
Where are you, old Moscow boulevard?
How fares our dear bronze Pushkin bard?

Such a creature is the poet,
That he will go astray, as in maze.
Do not bring him along with you.
Don’t bring him, please do not!

He will stroll, overcoat crossed,
Gawking round – a babe in the woods.
So what, you say, so what?
He could get lost in Moscow, too.

Wherever one may live, you say,
They who understand won't chide.

Do not let the poet leave for Paris!
He will forget everything there.

Wherever one may rest, you say,
It will be beneath tombstones and chirping birds.
Had they not let the poet leave for Paris,
He would be resting in Novodevichy.","<p>It was important to me that this translation carried a sense of conversation and argument between two voices as strongly as the original. On one hand, we have a voice fearful of the poet leaving, protective of his fragility, and on the other, we have a disenchanted cynic who has lost hope in Moscow and longs to go abroad.</p>
<p>This back-and-forth argumentation is conveyed in the original with strong contradictions and negations in between lines, and the reproachful address <em>govorish</em> (“you say”). To preserve this stubbornness of both speakers, I chose to add the “oh” interjection in the first lines of the disagreement because I felt that it heightened the pessimism of the second voice. It conveys a certain nonchalance which knows the poet all too well.</p>
<p>Another important aspect of the poem I paid attention to while translating was the characterization of the poet. He is portrayed as a ditz of sorts: hot-tempered, disoriented, and unable to act in self-preservation. I chose to connote this child-like innocence through verbs like ""gawk"" and ""chide”.</p>
<p>Finally, it must be noted that Veronika Dolina recites the poem in the form of a light song, accompanied by her guitar. The repetition of <em>govorish</em> (“you say”) over and over with different statements each time gradually builds up frustration for her interlocutor. This effect is helped along by the phonological composition of <em>govorish</em>, which has three syllables yet is quick and harsh to pronounce, with a grating quality. Dolina almost mutters it under her breath in her performance. In English, however, “you say” is more bouncy with vowels, it is more smoothly digestible to the ear. To compensate for this reduced feeling of accusatory annoyance, I opted for more informal and fragmented sentences in stanzas 5 and 6, which mirror the hurried, staccato rhythm of the <em>govorish</em> clauses.</p>
<p>I believe that these additions and compromises all helped to enhance in English the original’s emotionality, the impression of two sides tugging on different ends of a chord — one convinced that abroad is scary, and the other that home is no worse.</p>","<p>Veronika Dolina is a Russian poet, songwriter, and bard born in 1956 in the USSR. She is seen as the successor to two of the greatest poetesses of twentieth-century Russian literature, Anna Akhmatova and Marina Tsvetaeva, and is called by her fans ‘the last one of the sixties’. She started writing and performing songs in her teenage years, but her career truly took off in her twenties, as she participated in the Grushinkiĭ Festivals and even appeared on television in 1978. She has written over 500 songs of romance, of longing for the past, and has an eye for lyrically masterful metaphors which make her so beloved by old and young listeners alike. Her songs, often accompanied by her guitar, carry emotional tones of melancholy, liveliness, and passion. Today, Dolina acts as a judge in the “Romance of the 21st Century” writing contest on the Kultura television network and resides in Moscow.</p>","<p>Sophia Ampgkarian is a junior at Penn triple-majoring in Comparative Literature, Political Science, and REES. Born and raised in Switzerland to Russian parents, she is curious about the cultural and geopolitical transitions of the post-Socialist world. This is her first submission to <em>DoubleSpeak</em>.</p>",,Russian,ru,assets/images/images_24/dontletthepoet.png,photo by Sanaa Patel,,,2024,submission,,0
skull-in-a-graveyard,Lebka na hřbitově,A Skull in a Graveyard,Václav Jaromír Picek,Anthony Burger,"Na hřbitově lebka leží 
V trávě tamo na pokraji, 
Z důlků dvou, kde oči plály, 
Dvě pomněnky vykvetají; 
Vedle nich se na lupínku 
Liliový motýl houpá, 
Kvítky líbá, již se vznáší, 
Již se v modru nebes koupá. 

Raduj se ty, lebko bílá, 
Zas máš oči modrojasné, 
Zase libě na svět hledíš, 
Nežel těla smrti časné; 
Ona není tak přehrozná, 
Jak bojácný duch to soudí, 
Ona nový život dává, 
Z prachu se zas síla proudí. 

A ten motýl? aj to duše 
Svoji schránku navštívila, 
A když oči živé našla, 
Do nebe se navrátila. 
Nuže, smrti se nebojte, 
Ta jen nové kvítí sází; 
A co anděl míroplodný 
Duši nad hvězdy provází. ","In a graveyard lies a skull 
In the grass there at the side 
In two holes where eyes once burned, 
Two forget-me-nots reside; 
Beside them on a leaf 
A lily-white butterfly prepares to fly, 
Kissing the flowers, now taking off, 
Now swimming in the blue of the sky. 

Be happy, you white skull, 
Once more you have clear blue eyes, 
Once more you gaze kindly at the world, 
Don’t mourn a corpse of timely demise; 
It isn’t as terrible 
As the scared soul would surmise, 
It brings a new life, 
From dust strength can again rise 

And the butterfly? oh the soul 
Visited its skeleton, 
And when it found the living eyes, 
It went back to heaven. 
So do not be afraid of death, 
It just sows new seeds; 
And a peace-bringing angel 
the soul above the stars leads.","<p>I am drawn to poems partly because of their meaning and partly because of the skill it takes to follow rules in making them. I found Picek’s piece while looking for Czech poetry online, and appreciated the moment it described as well as the rhyme scheme it maintained. I therefore chose to approximate the structure of the poem as best I could in my translation. Naturally, translating to maintain both meaning and rhyme is a balancing act, and leads to sacrifices on certain counts.</p>

<p>In this poem, the last two lines were the hardest to translate: “A co anděl míroplodný / Duši nad hvězdy provází.” These lines describe an angel that brings peace and leads the soul above the stars. The constraints of rhyming, however, led me to take poetic license and choose a slightly strange word order.</p>

<p>Another difficult aspect was the somewhat archaic language used. The poem was published in 1851, and as such, much of the language now sounds old-fashioned to a modern reader. I did not attempt to imitate this use of language, as the poem was written in the 1850s for an audience in the 1850s, however a translator could just as easily have decided to attempt to simulate old-fashioned English, as though a reader were reading an 1850s poem in English and looking back from the modern day.</p>

<p>This poem was the first translation I attempted from Czech into English, and it was a fun challenge. I hope that my translation brings the reader a sense of peace unbroken by any liberties I have taken.</p>","<p>Václav Jaromír Picek (1812-1869) was a Czech poet in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, known primarily for the inclusion of his poems in a few patriotic songs, including the lyrics to the song “Čechy krásné, Čechy mé” (“Beautiful Bohemia, My Bohemia”). Professionally, he also had a career as a civil servant and judge. He was part of the early Romantic literary movement in the region, and drew inspiration from growing nationalism as well as from other poets of the time. His poems are largely forgotten today, and he is often considered to be a lesser follower of František Ladislav Čelakovský.</p>
<p>Picek was born in the Austrian Empire in 1812, the son of a farmer. He studied philosophy and law in Prague until 1938, and became the head of the Liblín estate in 1841. He joined the civil service as a lawyer in 1849, and was the editor of the Prague newspaper from 1850-1852. He later worked as a civil servant in Smíchov and Příbram. In his personal life, Picek supported nationalism and education, and often donated to libraries. He became a district judge in Nový Venátky in 1868, and died there in 1869.</p>","<p>Anthony Burger graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a bachelor’s degree in linguistics, and has a soft spot for Slavic languages. He grew up speaking Czech at home, but never significantly interacted with Czech literature until college. After taking a course on German literature at Penn and discovering the joy of poetry, he started looking for poems in Czech online — Anthony felt that he was long overdue in exploring the literature of his second homeland. Picek’s poem about a skull in a graveyard reminds him of my grandmother’s small town, where the graveyard is indeed the home of many flowers, and quite honestly a quaint place to walk around. Fortunately, in all the times he's visited, he's never come across a human skull there. </p>",,Czech,cs,assets/images/images_24/graveyard.jpg,photo by Ryan Hardy,,,2024,submission,,0
the-awakening,El despertar,The Awakening,Alejandra Pizarnik,Mariana Martinez,"Señor 
La jaula se ha vuelto pájaro 
y se ha volado 
y mi corazón está loco 
porque aúlla a la muerte 
y sonríe detrás del viento 
a mis delirios 

Qué haré con el miedo 
Qué haré con el miedo 

Ya no baila la luz en mi sonrisa 
ni las estaciones queman palomas en mis ideas 
Mis manos se han desnudado 
y se han ido donde la muerte 
enseña a vivir a los muertos 

Señor 
El aire me castiga el ser 
Detrás del aire hay monstruos 
que beben de mi sangre 

Es el desastre 
Es la hora del vacío no vacío 
Es el instante de poner cerrojo a los labios 
oír a los condenados gritar 
contemplar a cada uno de mis nombres 
ahorcados en la nada. 

Señor 
Tengo veinte años 
También mis ojos tienen veinte años 
y sin embargo no dicen nada 

Señor 
He consumado mi vida en un instante 
La última inocencia estalló 
Ahora es nunca o jamás 
o simplemente fue 

¿Cómo no me suicido frente a un espejo 
y desaparezco para reaparecer en el mar 
donde un gran barco me esperaría 
con las luces encendidas? 

¿Cómo no me extraigo las venas 
y hago con ellas una escala 
para huir al otro lado de la noche?
El principio ha dado a luz el final 
Todo continuará igual 
Las sonrisas gastadas 
El interés interesado 
Las preguntas de piedra en piedra 
Las gesticulaciones que remedan amor Todo continuará igual 

Pero mis brazos insisten en abrazar al mundo porque aún no les enseñaron 
que ya es demasiado tarde 

Señor 
Arroja los féretros de mi sangre 

Recuerdo mi niñez 
cuando yo era una anciana 
Las flores morían en mis manos 
porque la danza salvaje de la alegría les destruía el corazón 

Recuerdo las negras mañanas de sol cuando era niña 
es decir ayer 
es decir hace siglos 

Señor 
La jaula se ha vuelto pájaro 
y ha devorado mis esperanzas 

Señor 
La jaula se ha vuelto pájaro 
Qué haré con el miedo","Lord 
The cage has ripened into a bird 
and it has fled 
and my heart has gone mad 
because it howls at death 
and smiles behind the wind 
to my ravings 

What shall I do with this fear? 
What shall I do with this fear? 

Light doesn’t dance upon my smile anymore 
and the seasons no longer burn doves into my thoughts My hands have been undressed 
and they have gone to where death 
teaches the dead how to live 

Lord 
Air punishes my being 
Behind the air there are monsters 
drinking from my blood 

It’s a disaster 
It’s time of the emptiness not void 
It’s time to lock the lips 
listen to the doomed scream 
muse on each one of my names 
hung in oblivion 

Lord 
I am twenty years old 
And so are my eyes 
and yet, they say nothing 

Lord 
I have accomplished my life in but an instant 
The last of my innocence has shattered
Now it’s never or nevermore 
or maybe it just was 

How do I not kill myself in front of a mirror and vanish only to resurface in the sea where a vessel waits for me 
with the lights on? 

How do I not dig out my veins 
and craft them into a ladder 
to flee to the other side of the night? 

The beginning has given birth to the end Everything will stay the same 
The worn out smiles 
The interested interest 
Questions cobblestone after cobblestone
The gestures that mimic love 
Everything will stay the same 

But my arms insist on embracing the world because still no one has taught them
that it’s now too late 

Lord 
Hurl the coffins of my blood 

I remember my childhood 
when I was an old woman 
The flowers would die in my hands because the wild dance of joy 
would shatter their hearts 

I remember the black mornings of sun when I was a little girl 
that is yesterday 
that is centuries ago 

Lord 
The cage ripened into a bird 
and devoured my hopes
Lord 
The cage ripened into a bird What shall I do with this fear","<p>Moving into college meant I was forced to leave my Pizarnik anthology behind. Surprisingly scarce, Pizarnik translations in the States excluded most of her earlier gems. My translation stemmed from the desire to share Pizarnik's early brilliance with the English-speaking world.</p>
<p>I started by doing a literal translation using my knowledge as a native Spanish speaker. However, to achieve my goal I felt the need to take some liberties to evoke the irreversible nature of maturing, a central theme of the poem. Unlike some unofficial translations that used the words “Sir” or “Master” for the repeating verse, I chose the word “Lord” because I wanted the poem to read like a prayer. I also went for a bolder choice in the verse(s) “la jaula se ha vuelto pájaro,” as I didn’t choose “turn” or “twist” for the verb but “ripen” which emphasizes the idea of maturing.</p>
<p>Wanting to make this translation all about maturing, I manipulated verb tenses to evoke an awakening throughout the poem. I prioritized the use of the past perfect in the first half of the poem to create the nostalgic sense of something once vibrant and existing, now gone. The climatic stanzas eight and nine maintain instead a blunt simple present to show the shift from reminiscing and nostalgia to acceptance and action taking.</p>
<p>After the climax, once again the poem seems to change and the speaker remembers the past, but without yearning, which is why for this last part I chose to use the past simple. I used this most vigorously in the last two stanzas where I used “ripe” in the past simple. I loved compromising with the idea that indeed the bird ripened into a cage, but it no longer matters that it was a bird once, because all there is now is a cage.</p>
<p>All in all, my choices in this translation not only aimed for linguistic accuracy but to create an emotional weight, so the English readers would feel Pizarnik’s prayer as intensely as I did in Spanish.</p>","<p>Alejandra Pizarnik (1936–1972) was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina to the tumultuous life of an exiled Jewish family during WW2. Constantly grappling with a sense of alienation and comparisons with her sister, she turned to the works of Joyce, Rimbaud, Baudelaire, and other surrealists for comfort. Her fascination with psychoanalysis, existentialism, and death infused her poetry with a visceral voice, delving into themes such as childhood, nostalgia, exile, and the impossibility of language to accurately express reality, madness, and fear.</p>","<p>Mariana Martinez is a Penn English and Classical Studies student. She has loved reading for as long as she can remember. Like many of her favorite authors, she is concerned about the use of language as a resource to give and take away power. Translating has recently become a new passion, as she sees it as an arena to explore and push against the limitations and extents of language. In her free time Mariana loves to write poetry, go out for food, and listen to music.</p>
",,Spanish,es,assets/images/images_24/awakening.png,photo by Izzy Duccini,,,2024,submission,,0
sunthorn-pu-untitled,(Untitled),(Untitled),Sunthorn Phu,Peeriya Pongsarigun; John Viano,"แล้วสอนว่าอย่าไว้ใจมนุษย์
มันแสนสุดลึกล้ำเหลือกำหนด
ถึงเถาวัลย์พันเกี่ยวที่เลี้ยวลด
ก็ไม่คดเหมือนหนึ่งในน้ำใจคน

มนุษย์นี้ที่รักอยู่สองสถาน
บิดามารดารักมักเป็นผล
ที่พึ่งหนึ่งพึ่งได้แต่กายตน
เกิดเป็นคนคิดเห็นจึงเจรจา

แม้ใครรักรักมั่งชังชังตอบ
ให้รอบคอบคิดอ่านนะหลานหนา
รู้สิ่งใดไม่สู้รู้วิชา
รู้รักษาตัวรอดเป็นยอดดี","And then he goes, “Do not trust any man.
They are too complex to understand.
Vines tangled, twisted, and turned
Aren’t as crooked as the human mind — you must learn.

Humans only love their mothers and fathers.
Caring for anyone else and we won’t bother.
We can only rely on ourselves.
Think before you speak; that’d help.

Return love to someone who loves you.
Return hatred to the haters, too.
There’s nothing better than to think and learn.
Be safe, dearest; that’s my singular concern.”","<p>We translated this work because it was one of the first fantasy epics written in Thai. Sunthorn Phu’s imagination goes far beyond the typical genres and imagery of traditional Thai literature, which mainly discusses Buddhism, karma, and the concept of heaven and hell. He features fantastical creatures and situations like mermaids, demons, the magical onyx horse, a hermit who rode rainbows and a man who had a child with a mermaid. We also seek to increase awareness of and access to the works of Thailand’s most talented author (Amazon has only one listing of his work in English) and to share Thailand’s rich literary heritage with the world.</p>
<p>The scene we translated occurs after Sutsakhon, the son of Phra Aphai Mani and the mermaid, has been robbed by the naked priest. The naked priest has stolen Sutsakhon’s magic cane and onyx horse, then pushes Sutsakhon off a cliff, but the hermit saves him and teaches him a life lesson, as in the poem. Thai children study this poem in primary school, and it has been a part of the curriculum for over sixty years. It is so popular that if you ask any Thai student (and many adults), they would most likely recite the passage from memory on the spot.</p>","<p>Sunthorn Phu (1786 – 1855), Thailand’s Shakespeare, lived during the Rattanakosin Period between the reigns of King Rama I and King Rama IV. He was famous for his epic poetry and memoirs. He invented “internal rhyming” (rhymes within each half line that are additional to the standard Klon Suphap rhyme scheme — see translators’ note), which became his signature. In 1986, he was honored by UNESCO as a world poet and Thai children study his poems to this day.</p>
<p>“Phra Aphai Mani” is a 48,700-line epic poem written between 1821 and 1845. During that time, Sunthorn Phu flourished because of King Rama II’s patronage, which stemmed from His love of literature and poetry. Phra Aphai Mani was completed early in the reign of King Rama III, which became Sunthorn Phu’s dark period because the King focused His patronage on commerce and economy instead of literature. Sunthorn Phu struggled financially and so became a Buddhist monk for eighteen years. Sunthorn Phu’s experience as a monk may have influenced the ending of the epic tale, as Phra Aphai Mani and several of his former wives embarked on a pilgrimage together, leaving the concerns of the secular world behind. It is common in Thailand that when people suffer grievously, they turn to Buddhism to detach themselves from their pain. Hence, it is plausible the titular character of Phra Aphai Mani represents Sunthorn Phu — how he saw himself and how he dealt with his struggles during his dark period.</p>","<p>John and Peeriya are authors and translators who excel in creating English language rhyme schemes which echo that of their sources, while accurately communicating the author’s message. They co-founded InterThaiMedia LLC to create media that brings people together across languages and cultures. InterThaiMedia’s first project was <em>Can You Carry Me?</em>, a children’s book about sibling rivalry. The second project was <em>Calm</em> by Cheewan Wisasa, an IBBY honor list book which helps children use their superpower of mindfulness to manage their feelings.</p>
<p>John and Peeriya have translated more than 200 children’s books. They last published with <em>DoubleSpeak</em> in Spring 2023. InterThaiMedia provided voice-acting to the National Health Foundation of Thailand in a national effort to digitize children’s picture books, enabling a touch-and-say reading experience. Also, they are developing an application empowering children to learn English independently through use of color-coded grammar and vocabulary puzzles.</p>",,Thai,th,assets/images/images_24/phraaphaimani.png,photo by Ryan Hardy,,,2024,submission,,0
living-in-translation-musing,,Living in Translation,Jenny Fu,,,,"<p>I find it hard to introduce myself.</p>

<p>Attempt 1: Hi, my name is Jenny, and I'm from Shanghai.</p>
<p><em>Factually accurate. I was born in Shanghai, but my family immigrated to Canada when I was eight.</em></p>

<p>Attempt 2: Hi, my name is Jenny, and I'm from Canada.</p>
<p><em>Factually accurate. Yet after spending six years in Toronto, my family moved back to Shanghai. I've lived in China too long to exclude it from my answer.</em></p>

<p>Attempt 3: Hi, my name is Jenny, and I was born in China, but my family immigrated to Canada when I was little, and after many years, we returned to China.</p>
<p><em>Factually accurate. But it's too long and confusing—a story with too many beginnings and endings, a jeopardy to the crisp cleanness of the brief self-introduction.</em></p>

<p>Usually, I go with attempt number one. My family has settled in Shanghai, and if I ever have the opportunity to elaborate, I can relate my experiences in detail. But the chance to talk about my background with my peers at Penn rarely appears. I get nods of acknowledgment before the conversation turns to other topics.</p>

<p>But something extraordinary happens when I make a quick footnote about having lived in Toronto for a long time. People take an interest. I get questions about whether I see a difference between the cultures of Toronto and Philly. I hear personal stories about someone having once visited family in Toronto, or spending holidays there. And I am delighted at the intimacy of these exchanges; I savor the connections. Yet, behind these conversations, my Chinese identity looms in oblivion. Perhaps it's the foreignness of the word <em>Shanghai</em>, a signifier of unrelatable and unfamiliar experiences that hinders people from inquiring about my life in China. Something that lacks points of reference may be too distant physically, culturally, and emotionally. Perhaps we feel safe approaching what is somewhat different but conceptually familiar, while remaining fearful of what eludes familiarity altogether.</p>
<p></p>
<p align=”center”>***</p>
<p align=”left”></p>

<p>It was my first October in Toronto, a week after my parents and I flew into this new city. While everyone enjoyed the lovely autumn weather back home, I zipped up my thick hoodie in Toronto. Mom, Dad, and I returned to our apartment after seeing some friends. Excitement and anticipation floated in the air as my parents prepared me for entering third grade in a new curriculum. Approaching the patina-colored gate leading to our apartment, Dad asked whether I had picked an English name. I told him that I liked the name Jenny. <em>Why not Fei?</em> Dad asked. <em>It starts with an F, like your last name</em>. I didn't know what to say. I never considered how the letters were arranged in my name—not to mention that the consonance of words in the English language was beyond my understanding. I simply liked the sound of <em>Jenny Fu</em>. My rationale was purely subjective and arguably meaningless. I felt nervous about my thoughtlessness. In the end, it turned out I didn't have to be so anxious because my parents gladly approved of my choice.</p>

<p>But when my Dad asked me to spell <em>Jenny</em>, I couldn’t answer. I struggled with the alphabet, wondering in silence whether my name was ""Jeny,"" ""Jenny,"" or ""Jeeny."" Shame burned my face because, all of a sudden, I couldn't even speak.</p>

<p>A month into third grade, I started another typical morning sitting cross-legged in the ESL classroom with kids whose families had immigrated to Canada like mine. As usual, Mrs. R prepared questions on the whiteboard using thick, colorful markers. In green: <em>What is the capital city of Canada?</em> In red: <em>What is the capital city of Ontario?</em> After singing along with a beautiful song that I later recognized as the Canadian national anthem, she took us down the list of questions. I had no clue what these meant, but classmates who had arrived several months earlier understood them. They raised their hands enthusiastically, answers racing off their tongues. Gradually, I memorized their responses–<em>Ottawa, Toronto</em>... But what is <em>Ontario</em>? What is <em>Toronto</em>? <em>Canada</em>? The names were elusive, words and letters jumbled together without meaning. Even so, one morning, I raised my hand after trying out each word in my head. Mrs. R was happy that I knew the correct answers.</p>

<p>In my eighth-grade homeroom, the tables were arranged into clusters of four. I sat at the back with my friend, whose family immigrated from Iran. The fluorescent lights above brightened the gray afternoon typical of early February in Canada. Mr. G asked us to share what we wanted to be in the future. I jotted my dream down on scrap paper: a writer. I loved reading and dreamed of publishing my own books. When I proudly shared my aspirations, a classmate sitting before me turned around. With a puzzled expression, he asked for clarification. Never before had I felt the need to ruminate on this question: Do I want to be a <em>Chinese</em> writer or a <em>Canadian</em> writer? I only thought I would write in English. I used English at school, I read and watched English books and films at home, and I conversed with my friends in English. More importantly, I am Canadian, so wasn’t it obvious that I would become a Canadian author writing in English? Flabbergasted and irritated that he had asked his question altogether, I answered with my brows furrowed. <em>A Canadian writer</em>.</p>

<p>But I sensed my set of assumptions crumbling. His words opened a line of inquiry too hazy and destabilizing to my identity. I am Canadian, but I have always spoken Mandarin with my parents. I am Canadian, and my playlists are filled with English songs, but I love watching Chinese television programs and enjoy the hosts' sense of humor. I am Canadian and grew up with <em>Harry Potter, Percy Jackson</em>, and <em>A to Z Mysteries</em>, but I also immersed myself in the thrilling <em>wuxia</em> novels written by <span lang=”zh”>金庸</span> (Jinyong). Overwhelmed, I felt my voice evaporating like thin strands of smoke. I didn't know how to speak or write. How could I translate the fantastical world of <em>wuxia</em> into English?</p>

<p><em>Wuxia</em>: “A genre of Chinese fiction or cinema featuring itinerant warriors of ancient China, often depicted as capable of superhuman feats of martial arts.”</p>
<p>– Oxford Languages</p>
<p></p>
<p>“The words <em>Brot</em> and <em>pain</em> ‘intend’ the same object, but the modes of this intention are not the same. It is owing to these modes that the word Brot means something different to a German than the word <em>pain</em> to a Frenchman, that these words are not interchangeable for them, that, in fact, they strive to exclude each other. As to the intended object, however, the two words mean the very same thing...”</p>
<p>– Walter Benjamin, “<em>The Task of the Translator</em>”</p>

<p><em>Itinerant... warriors... martial arts... ancient China…</em> What do these concepts mean? What images do they conjure? A brave soldier in heavy armor (it couldn't be a knight or samurai!) traveling across ancient Chinese landscapes (how? in what way? and what do <em>Chinese landscapes</em> mean anyway)? Through different “modes of intention,” the “intended objects,” the concepts defining <em>wuxia</em>, come to mean distinct things. In my mind, I recreate Jinyong's <em>wuxia</em>. A warrior need not be armored and fierce, but rather a young and sprightly person, making her or his first journey away from home. In fact, they can be elderly women or men who use giant sticks or fruit seeds as weapons. I recall the bamboo forests in which strands of light shone through leaves, brilliantly reflecting on swords that danced in the hands of our heroes or heroines. I think about the rich genealogy behind their <em>zhaoshi</em>, or fighting techniques, irreducible to the conventional understanding of martial arts and kungfu in popular movies. Wooden huts with square-shaped mahogany tables and long wooden benches appear before my eyes. Yes, over food and drink, our heroes forge lifelong connections, promising loyalty until death does them part. If languages, as Benjamin claims, “strive to exclude each other” through these different “modes of intention,” how can meaning reach across linguistic and cultural boundaries?</p>

<p></p>
<p align=”center”>***</p>
<p align=”left”></p>

<p>I sat in the backseat of the car. The smell of old leather made my head pound in synchrony with the rhythm of my heart. Dad and several family friends came to Pudong International Airport to pick up my mom and me. They've prepared a welcome dinner to celebrate our first day back in Shanghai. This humid August, I would officially enter 9th grade at a school close to home. ""Home""–what a strange word to use when I had just left home for this vaguely familiar place. Everything around me felt new, but not really, because I'd spent many summer holidays in this city. The scene outside the window became a blur as the car whizzed down the road. When it came to a halt at a red light, I read the street sign to myself: <span lang=”zh”>高科中路</span> (gāo-kē-zhōng-lù). Its characters formed a beautiful cadence, three flat tones culminating to a shift at the end, a resolute falling tone grounding me in my surroundings. Yet, this road and my immediate environment felt empty-- because I could not relate to them in a personal way. <span lang=”zh”>高科中路</span>—over and over again, the sound of these words, the music of the sign, played in my head to no end. The reality dawned upon me. This time, I could not simply treat the signs as a mere convenience, as I did when I spent my summers here. I must befriend these streets, these green railings, shrubs, bricks, and buildings. Tears filled my eyes. I was overwhelmed by the foreignness of the city of my birth.</p>

<p>Outside, the sun's rays burned like the taste of spicy pepper. In the classroom, the air conditioner blasted away the fiery heat of a humid September morning. A few weeks into the semester, I had adjusted fairly well to my new school in Shanghai. Studying at an international high school, I followed an American curriculum and my school life remained highly westernized. Around me, classmates jotted down notes as Mrs. M and Mr. K taught us Grade 9 Humanities. As a short exercise, the teachers asked us to reflect on our identities: most students at an international high school have a complicated history of moving between places, so it's challenging to talk coherently about ourselves. I remember an outgoing girl in the class who shared her extensive family tree that stretched across multiple countries on more than half of the continents. In my case, I was torn between Canada and China: the country of my childhood versus the country of my roots, the country familiar versus the country that I was learning to love. I didn't know how to balance my feelings between the two countries and cultures. In this anguish, I thought, rather than choosing between one or the other, it would be more adequate to think of myself as a combination between the two. ""It's more of a 50-50,"" I told the class.</p>

<p>I think of the contemporary poet Shu Ting, and these lines from her widely read poem:</p>

<span lang=”zh”>
<p>《致橡树》</p>
<p>  舒婷</p>
<p>…</p>
<p>我必须是你近旁的一株木棉,</p>
<p>做为树的形象和你站在一起。</p>
<p>根，紧握在地下,</p>
<p>叶，相触在云里。</p>
<p>每一阵风过,</p>
<p>我们都互相致意,</p>
<p>但没有人 听懂我们的言语。</p>
</span>
<p>...</p>
<p></p>
<p><em>To the Oak</em></p>
<p>... I must be a kapok tree by your side,</p>
<p>Standing with you in the image of a tree.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Our roots</p>
<p>hold tightly beneath the ground;</p>
<p>our leaves</p>
<p>brush and blend in the clouds.</p>
<p>With every passing breeze </p>
<p>we greet each other—</p>
<p>But no one, not a soul, </p>
<p>understands our language...</p>
<p></p>

<p>It's never as clear as a ""50-50"" division.</p>

<p>To the music of blending leaves and tightly held roots, cultures and languages dance together. I live in these jagged convergences, breaking, and reforming as the trees encounter and grow. I sing the notes, confused and babbling, jigsaws that don't fit together but complement each other to create a whole. <em>Do you think you are Canadian or Chinese?</em> I can't respond because the notes of the leaves that brush and blend have no name.</p>

<p></p>
<p align=”center”>***</p>
<p align=”left”></p>

<p>In a modern poetry class at Penn, we studied the American poet John Ashbery’s poem, “Some Trees.” Reading these lines again, I cannot help but connect them to the lines from Shu Ting:</p>

<p></p>
<p>“Some Trees”</p>
<p>John Ashbery</p>
<p></p>
<p>These are amazing: each</p>
<p>Joining a neighbor, as though speech </p>
<p>Were a still performance.</p>
<p>Arranging by chance</p>
<p></p>
<p>To meet as far this morning </p>
<p>From the world as agreeing </p>
<p>With it, you and I</p>
<p>Are suddenly what the trees try</p>
<p></p>
<p>To tell us we are:</p>
<p>That their merely being there </p>
<p>Means something; that soon </p>
<p>We may touch, love, explain…</p>
<p></p>

<p>Shu Ting’s oak and kapok can't grow side by side, just as it's logically impossible for something to be ""arrang[ed] by chance."" Yet these paradoxical relationships exist: the trees thrive together, complementing each other's existence. As Ashbery suggests, meaning lies in this uncanny relationship, this extraordinary interdependence. Am I reading Shu Ting in Ashbery, or did Ashbery's lines help me understand Shu Ting? Perhaps it's both. Like the trees, languages and cultures break away from isolation and separation, <em>touching, loving, explaining</em>…</p>

<p>Translation completes these poems.</p>

<p>So, languages need not, borrowing Benjamin’s terms, live in a “constant state of flux.” (see 1) The splintering of the division between languages and cultures allows meanings to complement each other, and the various modes of intention exist and interact in harmony.</p>

<p><em>Do I want to be a Chinese writer or a Canadian writer?</em></p>
<p>I don’t need to answer this question because translation makes me complete.</p>

<p>1. “In the individual, unsupplemented languages, meaning is never found in relative independence, as in individual words or sentences; rather, it is in a constant state of flux until it is able to emerge as pure language from the harmony of all the various modes of intention. Until then, it remains hidden in the languages. If, however, these languages continue to grow in this manner until the end of their time, it is translation which catches fire on the eternal life of the works and the perpetual renewal of language.” (Walter Benjamin, “<em>The Task of the Translator</em>”)</p>

",,,,,,assets/images/images_24/livingintranslation.png,photos by Jenny Fu,,,2024,musing,,0
you-pure-and-slight-like-candlefire,Du schlank und rein wie eine flamme,you pure and slight like candlefire,Stefan George,Eric Tao,"Du schlank und rein wie eine flamme
Du wie der morgen zart und licht
Du blühend reis vom edlen stamme
Du wie ein quell geheim und schlicht

Begleitest mich auf sonnigen matten
Umschauerst mich im abendrauch
Erleuchtest meinen weg im schatten
Du kühler wind du heisser hauch

Du bist mein wunsch und mein gedanke
Ich atme dich mit jeder luft
Ich schlürfe dich mit jedem tranke
Ich küsse dich mit jedem duft

Du blühend reis vom edlen stamme
Du wie ein quell geheim und schlicht
Du schlank und rein wie eine flamme
Du wie der morgen zart und licht.","you pure and slight like candlefire
you like the morning tender clear
you blooming sprout from noble sire
you like a fount remote sincere

escort my mien to sunsoaked meadows
encompass me in evening depth
illuminate my way in shadows
you chary gust you bateless breath

you are my wish and my sole knowing
i breathe you in with each inhale
i drink you in with each cup flowing
i kiss you close with each sweet gale

you blooming sprout from noble sire
you like a fount remote sincere
you pure and slight like candlefire
you like the morning tender clear","<p>Any translation is a tightrope act balancing the global—form, look, mood—with the local—imagery, diction, device; here is my best attempt at preserving both. I started by listing off what absolutely could not be sacrificed, the elements of the poem which made it speak to me when I discovered it in a book of German poetry one still night. Above all, it had to sound right, with four stanzas of four lines each with an ABAB rhyme scheme, the A rhymes being feminine and the B rhymes being masculine, and with a delicate parallelism between the lines of each stanza. The original poem feels perfectly balanced, one word flowing into the next. Thus, some individual meanings needed to be done away with, so George’s „Du kühler wind du heisser hauch“ (“You cool wind you hot breath”) became “you chary gust you bateless breath” with entirely transformed adjectives. Similarly, the syntax of the second and fourth lines is thrown away to make room for the rhyme scheme, meter, and feel. A minor aside needs to be made about the typography: George de-capitalizes nouns in the original, so taking his lead, I de-capitalized the beginnings of lines to create an analogous but unsatisfyingly different effect.</p>
<p>In the spirit of Symbolism, I have tried to preserve countless other small effects—to take the aforementioned line as an example, the binary of „kühler“ and „heisser“ transforms into another binary of “chary” and “bateless”, and the alliterative „heisser hauch“ becomes the similarly alliterative “bateless breath”. Also significant is how the hard consonants in the first half of the original line melt into the gentle and whispering „heisser hauch“, an effect which I’ve attempted to preserve in my translation. Finally, George is an outlier in the German poetic tradition in that he strays far away from the vernacular, dipping into archaic and inventive diction, so I have attempted to channel a similar register. I hope this translation has a fraction of the magic of the original so that non-German-speaking readers might be as enchanted with this poem as I was the night that I discovered it.</p>","<p>Stefan George (1868-1933) was a Symbolist poet and himself a frequent translator, translating his idols from Dante to Baudelaire into German. A fierce defender of art for art’s sake, George’s works are shrouded in aristocratism, classicism, and metaphor, a sharp reaction against the literary tendency of the age toward a more democratic naturalism and realism. During his lifetime, he decried the militarism and materialism of German culture, finding inspiration among Parisian bohemian poets and returning to Germany with the hope of newly invigorating the German language, starting the literary magazine <em>Blätter für die Kunst</em> (<em>Journal for the Arts<em>) to promote what he saw as “the new art.” His poems strive toward an ideal of unearthly beauty and eternal truth, and he saw the artist’s mission as the endeavor to create a noble society out of the ashes of German culture.</p>
<p>Like those of Nietzsche before him, George’s works were co-opted by the Nazi Party to use as propaganda, a development George personally detested, declining any association with the Party. At the time of his death, George’s legacy remained troublingly mixed, as those inside Germany declared him as the prophet of the Third Reich while those outside Germany mourned the loss of a man who had fought his whole life for a worthier future for Germany, the Nazis embodying the brutality and banality that George had spent his entire life decrying under the German Empire.</p>","<p>Eric Tao is a third-year undergraduate student at the University of Pennsylvania studying mathematics and cognitive science, and he is deeply indebted to his friends and family for their love and support. He first encountered Stefan George through Arnold Schoenberg’s second string quartet, in whose last movement there is a mystical moment where the soprano enters with George’s words: „Ich fühle luft von anderem planeten“ (“I feel air from other planets”). In his spare time, he is an avid composer and an aspiring writer, and in all these respects, an enthusiastic lover of the German artistic tradition—and of art worldwide.</p>",,German,de,assets/images/images_24/candlelight.png,photo by Katherine Rozsypalek,,,2024,submission,,0
there-is-no-tomorrow,내일은 없다 - 어린 마음이 물은,There is No Tomorrow,Yun Dong-ju,Graham Borden,"내일 하기에 물었더니 
밤을 자고 동틀 때 
내일이라고 
새날을 찾던 나는 
잠을 자고 돌아보니 
그때는 내일이 아니라 
오늘이더라 
무리여! 동무여! 
내일은 없나니 ","I asked what to do for it to become tomorrow 
You sleep and when it’s dawn 
That is tomorrow 

I, searching for a new day, 
Slept and looked back 
At that time it wasn’t tomorrow 
Today had arrived 

Everyone! Friends! 
There is no guaranteed tomorrow","<p>Originally, I was hesitant to choose this poem, as it has already been translated before. However, after reading about Yoon’s harrowing past and taking time to compare the various translations, I noticed some shortcomings and knew this was the poem for me. I was so inspired by Yoon sharing his emotions and wanted to honor his words by conveying them through my own translation.</p>

<p>Yoon was alive during a very tumultuous time, when there was no guarantee of a safe tomorrow. People had no way to predict what each day might bring. To clearly show this message, I translated sentences with this in mind. In particular, I translated the last sentence as “there is no guaranteed tomorrow,” rather than “there is no tomorrow,” to show the questioning nature of the sentence rather than portraying it as a factual statement. I also translated the Korean word <span lang=“ko”>마음이</span> to “heart,” instead of “mind” which other translated versions often do. I choose this because <span lang=“ko”>마음이</span> doesn't exactly mean mind, rather it means the body of a person, and the state of them. This way, the sentence “a young hearted inquiry” feels more intimate, and I feel this is more in line with Yoon’s intention. The rest of the poem was translated as directly as possible, also in order to keep with the spirit of the original work.</p>

<p>Through my translation I hope to offer readers a new way to step into the emotions of the author, his experiences, and the context in which the poem was written. Yoon’s poem is so powerful, no matter the language. I tried to capture its meaning so his poem can impact many more people for many more years.</p>","<p>Yoon Dong-ju was born on December 30, 1917 during the Japanese occupation of Korea. Yoon was dedicated to the Korean independence movement and used his poetry as a tool to fight against oppression. Under Japanese control, Korean culture was greatly suppressed. Koreans were forced to speak Japanese and change their names. However, Yoon continued writing his poems in Hangul, Korean orthography opposed to Japanese. At the age of seventeen, he released his first four poems, including “There is no Tomorrow.”</p>

<p>Yoon was offered a chance to study in Japan to continue his studies in literature, under the condition he changed his last name and followed Japanese rule. This caused Yoon to have conflicting ideas about himself, which he expressed later in a poem, “Confession.” While in Japan, Yoon was captured and put in prison because of his involvement in the independence movement. Due to harsh treatment during imprisonment, Yoon died at the young age of twenty eight. To this day, Yoon’s works are still some of the most beloved in Korea, where there is a museum dedicated to him in Seoul’s Jongno District (<span lang=“ko”>종로구</span>).</p>","<p>Graham Borden is a sophomore in high school in Northern Kentucky. His interest in learning new languages started a couple years ago. Currently, he is learning Korean and Spanish. In the summer of 2023, he studied in South Korea through the National Security Initiative for Youth (NSLI-Y), an intensive language immersion program. While abroad he attended Korean classes daily, lived with a host family, and interacted with locals regularly. This opportunity allowed him to improve his Korean while developing his understanding of the culture. With these skills, he has been able to find deeper meanings in the language, helping him to more effectively translate the ideas into English.</p>",<em>a young-hearted inquiry</em>,Korean,ko,assets/images/images_24/notomorrow.png,photo by Tsubasa Somasundaram Inada,there-is-no-tomorrow_orig.mp3,there-is-no-tomorrow_english.mp3,2024,submission,,0
simply-nothing,വെ റുതെ,Futile,O.N.V Kurup,Sridevi Hariharan,"ഒടുവി ലീ വാ ഴ്വി ന്‍റെ ബാ ക്കി പത്രം 
ഒരു വാ ക്കി ല്‍ ഞാ ന്‍ കുറി ക്കാം :'വെ റുതെ ' ... ഒരു തി രി ക്കുള്ളി ല്‍ കുറുമണി കള്‍ 
തുരുതുരെ ത്തി ങ്ങി നി റഞ്ഞപോ ലെ , പെ രുമാ രി യാ യ് മാ റും ജലകണങ്ങള്‍ ഒരു മേ ഘപാ ളി യി ലെ ന്നപോ ലെ , 
നി രവധി യൂര്‍ജ്ജകണങ്ങളൊ ന്നി - 
ച്ചൊ രുവി ദ്യു ല്ലേ ഖയി ലെ ന്നപോ ലെ , 
'വെ റുതെ 'യെ ന്നൊ രു വാ ക്കി ല്‍ ജീ വി തത്തി ന്‍ പൊ രുളുകളാ കെ യുള്‍ച്ചേ ര്‍ന്നുവല്ലേ ? ഒടുവി ലീ ത്താ ളി ലെ ന്‍ ശേ ഷപത്രം 
ഒരു വാ ക്കി ല്‍ ഞാ നെ ഴുതാം : 'വെ റുതെ ' ... ഗതകാ ല സ്മൃതി കള്‍ ചുരന്നി ടുന്ന 
മധുരവും കയ്പും കവര്‍പ്പുമെ ല്ലാം 
ഒരുപോ ലെ യൊ ടുവി ല്‍ സ്വാ ദി ഷ്ഠമാ യി വെ റുതെ നുണഞ്ഞു നുണഞ്ഞി രി ക്കെ , മി ഴി മുനയൊ ന്നു നനഞ്ഞുവെ ങ്കി ല്‍ , 
മൊ ഴി കള്‍ മൌ നത്തി ല്‍ കുടുങ്ങി യെ ങ്കി ല്‍ , നി മി ഷത്തി ന്‍ ചി റകൊ ച്ച കേ ട്ടുവെ ങ്കി ല്‍ , ഹൃദയത്തി ന്‍ താ ളമി ടഞ്ഞുവെ ങ്കി ല്‍ , വ്യ ഥകള്‍ നി ദാ നമറി ഞ്ഞി ടാ ത്ത 
കദനങ്ങള്‍ ചേ ക്കേ റാ ന്‍ വന്നുവെ ങ്കി ല്‍ , എവി ടെ യോ ചൂള മരങ്ങള്‍ കാ റ്റി ന്‍ 
ചെ കി ടി ലെ ന്തോ ചൊ ല്ലി ത്തേ ങ്ങും പോ ലെ , ബധി രനാം കാ ലത്തി ന്‍ കാ തി ലെ ന്‍റെ ഹൃദയം നി മന്ത്രി പ്പതും 'വെ റുതെ '! 

ഒടുവി ലീ ത്താ ളി ലെ ന്‍ ശേ ഷപത്രം 
ഒരു വാ ക്കി ലെ ഴുതി വയ്ക്കാം :
'വെ റുതെ ' .. 
ഗഗനകൂടാ രത്തി ന്‍ കീ ഴി ലെ ത്ര 
നഗരങ്ങള്‍,നാ ട്ടി ന്‍പുറങ്ങള്‍ കണ്ടു! അവി ടത്തെ ഗാ നോ ത്സവങ്ങളി ലെ കുഴലുകള്‍, ചെ ണ്ടകളൊ ക്കെ വേ റെ . ശ്രുതി വേ റെ ,താ ളങ്ങള്‍ , വേ റെ ,യെ ന്നാ ല്‍ ഹൃദയത്തി ന്‍ സത്യ ങ്ങളൊ ന്നുപോ ലെ ! അവയി ലെ ന്‍റേ തെ ന്തോ 
ഞാ ന്‍ തി രഞ്ഞൂ! 
അവയുമെ ന്‍റേ തെ ന്നു 
ഞാ നറി ഞ്ഞൂ! 
വി വി ധമാം സ്വാ ദും സുഗന്ധവും കൊ - ണ്ടവി ടെ യെ ന്‍ പാ ഥേ യമാ ര്‍ നി റച്ചൂ? അതുമേ ന്തി യലസമലക്ഷ്യ മാ യ് ഞാ ന്‍ 
അലയവേ ,യേ തൊ രു കാ ന്തശക്തി ഒരു നൗ കയെ കടല്‍ക്കാ റ്റുപോ ലെ 
വെ റുതെ യി ത്തീ രത്തണച്ചി തെ ന്നെ ! ഒടുവി ലീ വാ ഴ്വി ന്‍റെ ബാ ക്കി പത്രം 
ഒരു വാ ക്കി ല്‍ ഞാ ന്‍ കുറി ക്കാം -'വെ റുതെ !' പതറാ ത്തൊ രോ ര്‍മ്മ തന്‍ വടി യുമൂന്നി പഴയ വഴി കള്‍ നടന്നു കാ ണ്‍കെ , ഒരു കുറി മാ ത്രമരങ്ങി ലാ ടാ ന്‍ 
വരുതി ലഭി ച്ചൊ രു നാ ടകത്തി ല്‍ 
മൊ ഴി യും ചമയവുമഭി നയവു- 
മൊ രുപോ ലെ തെ റ്റി യെ ന്നോ ര്‍ത്തുപോ കെ , പഴയ വി ളക്ക് വി ലയ്ക്ക് വാ ങ്ങി 
പുതി യതു നല്‍കും വണി ക്കി നെ പ്പോ ല്‍ നടകൊ ള്‍വു കാ ലമെ ന്നൊ പ്പമേ തോ 
നവമാം പ്രലോ ഭനമന്ത്രവുമാ യ്. 
വി ലയി ടി യാ ത്ത കി നാ ക്കളുണ്ടോ ? വി ലപേ റുമെ ന്തുണ്ട് വാ ഴ്വി ല്‍ ബാ ക്കി ? എവി ടെ യൊ രമ്പി ളി ച്ഛാ യയുള്ളി -
ലെ ഴുമെ ന്‍റെ കണ്ണാ ടി ?-യതുമുടഞ്ഞു.... 
ഒടുവി ലീ വാ ഴ്വി ന്‍റെ ബാ ക്കി പത്രം 
ഒരു വാ ക്കി ലി ങ്ങനെ യാ യ്:'വെ റുതെ '...","In the end, in the rest of the balance sheet of life 
I will write a single word: “futile”. 
Like small pearls stringed and pressed together in a thread 
Like torrential rain happening from water droplets in a slab of cloud 
Like many energy particles combined in a bolt of lightning 
Isn’t the meaning of life summarized in one word: “futile”? 
In the end, I can write my remaining summary for this sheet of paper 
Into a single word: “futile.” 
Oozing out past memories 
That are sweet, bitter, and sour 
In the end all became the same taste 
While I nibble and nibble for simply nothing. 
If my eyes well up with tears 
If words are suddenly entangled up in silence 
If I listen to the sounds of the wings of a second 
If my heartbeat loses its rhythm 
If the grief, which doesn’t know the reason for its sorrows, came to roost Somewhere, like the firewood trees speaking and weeping something to the wind’s ears To the ears of time who is deaf, my heart was whispering—
Futile! 
In the last page of the sheet of life 
I can write a single word: 
“Futile.”
How many cities and villages have I seen under the tent of the sky! The trumpets and drums in the songs and festivals there are different. Different pitches, different rhythms, but the truths of the heart are the same! In all these things, I searched for something that is mine! 
I realized that those too, are mine! 
Who filled my paths with various flavors and aromas? 
While I wandered carelessly and aimlessly holding them, some magnetic force simply washed me to the shore like a sea breeze sweeping a boat. In the end, the balance sheet of life can be summarized in one word: “futile.” 
An undaunted memory walks the old ways with his stick, 
When I remember the one opportunity to perform onstage, in one note All the dialogue, makeup, and acting—all together ruined 
Like a merchant buying an old lamp for a price and giving a new one
The time walks with me, 
with a new mantra of temptation. 
Are there any dreams that have lost their value? 
What’s left of this life that has value? 
Where is my mirror that rises inside the reflection of the moon? That also broke… In the end, the balance sheet of life 
can be summed in one word: “futile.” ","<p>Translating this poem was not easy. First came the challenge of even finding a poem to translate at all. I did not know many famous Malayalam poets, although I knew there were many, but I did not initially have many resources online or know where to start. Thankfully, my parents, having grown up speaking Malayalam, gave me some names, O.N.V Kurup and Suguthakumari among others. I had to search their bios and find some of their works in books and Malayalam poetry blogs. I realized that some works had already been translated into English, but many had not, so I thought I would try to translate those.</p>

<p>Next came the challenge of actually translating. Translation of Malayalam poetry is hard, even for native speakers sometimes, because much of the language in poetry is not used in casual settings. It is more literature-based, often using flowery and archaic vocabulary and grammar. Reading the script is hard sometimes for a reader like me, not only due to the curvy shape of letters, but because Malayalam words can run on and be extremely long. Due to the concept of <em>sandhi</em>, where the forms of words can change when combined. For example: the word <span lang=“ml”>രാ മൻ</span> (<em>Raman</em>) combined with <span lang=“ml”>ആയി രി ക്കുക</span> (was/were) becomes <span lang=“ml”>രാ മാ യി രി ക്കുക</span> (<em>Raamaayirikkuka</em>), which can be hard to understand at first glance when reading. Being a bilingual speaker, it was easy for me to pick up on words being spoken that had <em>sandhi</em>, but reading them was a completely different animal. Many problems I had with translating involved <em>sandhi</em> and grammar, while others also included vocabulary and pacing of the verses. I didn’t have many dictionaries to go off of when I came across words I didn’t understand. Mainly I had some Malayalam apps, websites, and Hermann Gundert’s dictionary to help, along with the occasional correction from my parents, and my Malayalam professor at University of Texas at Austin when she looked over my full translation rough draft. My professor and classmates also debated the numerous ways to write the same concept in different ways to better form sentences that make sense in English. As a linguistics major, I’ve spent a significant amount of time studying syntax, sentence structure, and word order, and I really had to put my knowledge to use here. Many lines in the poem turned out to be part of the same sentence, so I was at first unsure of how to properly organize the structure of my translation. Now, I don’t think my translation is perfect and I can always work to make it better, but I think I put in the right effort to make it polished for understanding, and now have a better idea on how to translate Malayalam poetry than before. It’s funny how Malayalam has a high literacy rate in the state of Kerala, but it’s only one language of hundreds within India. I think it is a difficult language in which to write poetry and harder yet to respect poets’ efforts from the standpoint of a translator. Overall, this translation took over a month and was a harsh, grueling process, but I found it equally fulfilling. The poem’s meanings were very beautiful once I was able to attain a better essence of them.</p>","<p>Ottaplakkal Neelakandan Velu or “O.N.V.” Kurup, was a South Indian poet and lyricist who wrote primarily in Malayalam, the language of Kerala. He was born in 1931 and spent his childhood days in Chavara, Kollam, in Kerala. After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in economics, he went on to pursue a Masters in Arts in Malayalam literature at Travancore University. He later went on to become a lecturer at various colleges and the vice president of the Government Women’s college in Trivandrum as the head of the Malayalam department. He was also a visiting professor at Calicut University and one of the leading lyricists of the Malayalam film industry. His first poetry collection titled <em>Porutunna Soundaryam</em> was written in 1949. In 2007, he received the Jnanpith Award, the highest literary award in India. He was the fifth Jnanpith laureate from Kerala and the second Malayalam poet to win this award. Due to old age, he passed away at the age of eighty four and at the time of his cremation, eighty four singers representing the eighty four years of his life, led by the famous Malayalee singer K. J. Yesudas, paid homage to him by reciting his works. Many of his works have been translated into English, such as <em>Mayilpeeli</em> (<em>Peacock Feather</em>), and <em>Agni Shalabhangal</em> (<em>Fire Moths</em>). Many of his poems tend to be about nature and the meaning of life, and his poem “Bhumikkoru Charamageetham” (“A Dirge for the Earth”), composed by Devarajan, became an iconic environmental anthem. His poems are beloved by poetry and cinema lovers alike, making him an iconic figure in Kerala.</p>","<p>Sridevi Hariharan is a twenty two year-old undergraduate college student majoring in linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin. She was born and brought up in Houston, so English is her first language. However, she also grew up in a South Indian household where her family spoke Malayalam and Tamil which are spoken in the South Indian state of Kerala. As a child, she was taught the Malayalam alphabet and picked up on various phrases as well as verses of poetry incorporated into Malayalam songs, but never got the chance to learn Malayalam in a formal setting until she attended UT Austin, the only college in the US that teaches Malayalam courses. In the course, she learned how to read and write more complex stories and classic writings, and speak in not only a casual setting which she am extremely grateful for. Aside from Malayalam, she has also studied languages such as Japanese and French, and enjoys learning about different languages as a hobby.</p>
",,Malayalam,ml,assets/images/images_24/futile.png,photo by Katherine Rozsypalek,,,2024,submission,,0
that-original-marines-tshirt,Quella maglietta dell’Original Marines,That Original Marines Tshirt,Francesco Tomada,Anna Aresi,"Quella maglietta dell’Original Marines
che avevo messo nel sacco per la Caritas
l’ho vista oggi indosso a un rifugiato
era in mezzo ad un gruppo dove tutti
scherzavano e ridevano forte
e anche lui rideva

un altro me
però felice

serviva che venisse un ragazzo da lontano
attraversando illegalmente le frontiere
per mostrarmi
cosa posso diventare","That Original Marines t-shirt
that I put in the Caritas bag
I saw it on a refugee today
he was in a group where everyone
was joking and laughing loudly
and he was laughing too

another me
but happy

it took a guy from far away
who illegally crossed borders
to show me
what I can become","<p><em>Affrontare la gioia da soli (Facing Joy Alone)</em> is Francesco Tomada’s latest collection. This book, I believe, is meant to be enjoyed as a whole. Each poem is like a star in a constellation: you can look at one star and enjoy its beauty, but the bigger picture can be seen only when taking in the whole constellation. Each poem captures a moment, often seemingly insignificant, and together with all the other moments they make up a life and the search for meaning in it. Many texts also contain a revelation, a moment that illuminates the situation and propels further reflection and/or action. For these reasons, it was difficult to make a selection from the book. I feared that by plucking a few texts out of the whole, they would not be as meaningful and enjoyable. Eventually, I settled for these two, which well exemplify the spirit of <em>Facing Joy Alone</em>.</p>
<p>In “That Original Marines T-Shirt”, the poet sees himself mirrored in another: a refugee, an illegal outcast, is wearing the shirt that the poet donated to the Catholic charity Caritas. This person is in a group of people and looks happy, laughing and joking with his friends. He looks like the poet — wearing the poet’s old clothes — but is at the same time very different because of his happiness: “another me / but happy.” The poem closes, however, on an optimistic note, with the realization that this refugee is showing the poet who he can become.</p>
<p>“It Gets Dark Early” depicts a domestic scene that feels tired from the outset: what is left of dinner — dirty dishes and half-drunk bottles — represent what is left of the couple’s love, a lie compared to the promises they used to make to each other. A revelation (“we lied”) propels a realization (“the verb to love makes sense only in the present (tense)”) and an action that contains a seed of hope (“I reach my hand out”).</p>","<p>Francesco Tomada was born in Udine. He studied biology and biochemistry in Trieste and now lives in Gorizia, where he works as a high school teacher. His poems have appeared in several literary magazines in Italy and abroad and they’ve been translated into more than ten languages. His first book, <em>L’infanzia vista da qui (Childhood as Seen from Here</em>, 2005) won the Beppe Manfredi literary award for best Italian debut. He went on to author three more collections, the most recent of which is <em>Affrontare la gioia da soli (Facing Joy Alone</em>, 2021). In 2016, an anthology of Tomada’s poems was released in Bulgaria, with the title <em>Questo è il mio tempo</em> (<em>This is My Time</em>, translations by Aksinia Mihaylova and Emilia Mirazchiyska). In 2019, a bilingual book of poems, <em>Non si può imporre il colore di una rosa</em> (<em>You Can’t Force a Color on a Rose</em>) was published in Italy with Greek translations by Evangelia Polymou.</p>","<p>Anna Aresi is a US-based Italian translator and educator. She works with English, Italian, and Russian. She has translated into Italian poets such as Ewa Chrusciel, Forrest Gander, and Chen Chen, and into English poets such as Mariangela Gualtieri, Laura Corraducci, and Valerio Grutt. In 2021, she was among the winners of the All-Russia State Library for Foreign Literature & The Institute for Literary Translation “Writers of the Silver Age about War” translation contest, with a poem by Anna Akhmatova.</p>",,Italian,it,assets/images/images_24/tomada.png,photo by Ryan Hardy,,,2024,submission,,first
it-gets-dark-early,Viene buio presto,It Gets Dark Early,Francesco Tomada,Anna Aresi,"Il tavolo con i piatti sporchi della cena
una bottiglia di vino bevuta a metà
e io penso a quando giuravamo
di restare insieme per sempre
                           abbiamo mentito
                           l’eternità non esiste
amare è un verbo che ha senso soltanto al presente
così prima che tu possa sparecchiare
allungo la mano per stringere la tua
come i bambini che non vogliono dormire
                           perché hanno paura
                           di non svegliarsi più","Dinner’s dirty dishes on the table
a half-drunk bottle of wine
and I think of when we used to swear
to stay together forever
                          we lied
                          eternity does not exist
the verb “to love” makes sense only in the present 
and so before you can clean up
I reach my hand out to yours
like children who don’t want to sleep
                          for fear
                          of never waking up","<p><em>Affrontare la gioia da soli (Facing Joy Alone)</em> is Francesco Tomada’s latest collection. This book, I believe, is meant to be enjoyed as a whole. Each poem is like a star in a constellation: you can look at one star and enjoy its beauty, but the bigger picture can be seen only when taking in the whole constellation. Each poem captures a moment, often seemingly insignificant, and together with all the other moments they make up a life and the search for meaning in it. Many texts also contain a revelation, a moment that illuminates the situation and propels further reflection and/or action. For these reasons, it was difficult to make a selection from the book. I feared that by plucking a few texts out of the whole, they would not be as meaningful and enjoyable. Eventually, I settled for these two, which well exemplify the spirit of <em>Facing Joy Alone</em>.</p>
<p>In “That Original Marines T-Shirt”, the poet sees himself mirrored in another: a refugee, an illegal outcast, is wearing the shirt that the poet donated to the Catholic charity Caritas. This person is in a group of people and looks happy, laughing and joking with his friends. He looks like the poet — wearing the poet’s old clothes — but is at the same time very different because of his happiness: “another me / but happy.” The poem closes, however, on an optimistic note, with the realization that this refugee is showing the poet who he can become.</p>
<p>“It Gets Dark Early” depicts a domestic scene that feels tired from the outset: what is left of dinner — dirty dishes and half-drunk bottles — represent what is left of the couple’s love, a lie compared to the promises they used to make to each other. A revelation (“we lied”) propels a realization (“the verb to love makes sense only in the present (tense)”) and an action that contains a seed of hope (“I reach my hand out”).</p>","<p>Francesco Tomada was born in Udine. He studied biology and biochemistry in Trieste and now lives in Gorizia, where he works as a high school teacher. His poems have appeared in several literary magazines in Italy and abroad and they’ve been translated into more than ten languages. His first book, <em>L’infanzia vista da qui (Childhood as Seen from Here</em>, 2005) won the Beppe Manfredi literary award for best Italian debut. He went on to author three more collections, the most recent of which is <em>Affrontare la gioia da soli (Facing Joy Alone</em>, 2021). In 2016, an anthology of Tomada’s poems was released in Bulgaria, with the title <em>Questo è il mio tempo</em> (<em>This is My Time</em>, translations by Aksinia Mihaylova and Emilia Mirazchiyska). In 2019, a bilingual book of poems, <em>Non si può imporre il colore di una rosa</em> (<em>You Can’t Force a Color on a Rose</em>) was published in Italy with Greek translations by Evangelia Polymou.</p>","<p>Anna Aresi is a US-based Italian translator and educator. She works with English, Italian, and Russian. She has translated into Italian poets such as Ewa Chrusciel, Forrest Gander, and Chen Chen, and into English poets such as Mariangela Gualtieri, Laura Corraducci, and Valerio Grutt. In 2021, she was among the winners of the All-Russia State Library for Foreign Literature & The Institute for Literary Translation “Writers of the Silver Age about War” translation contest, with a poem by Anna Akhmatova.</p>",,Italian,it,assets/images/images_24/tomada.png,photo by Ryan Hardy,,,2024,submission,,last
excerpts-no-62-verses,№62 стихи,"Excerpts from the ""№62 verses"" cycle",Ekaterina Derysheva,Ryan Hardy; Andrew Janco; Olga Livshin; Asher Maria; Kevin M. F. Platt,"руины дыхания отстраивают город
в отладках архитектуры языка длящегося в темпоральности
наземных, серединных и подземных лесов

2023

<h1></h1>

луковицы волос на головах гор

множество {вершина1, вершина2, вершина3… вершинаN} с полутонами кожи и веснушками зарослей

горизонт разделяет витрувианское дерево
/_180° на каждую сторону

тень дрожания веток растёт по экспоненте отдаления эха

[отрицательное дерево
описывает квадрат]

2023

<h1></h1>

царапины на поверхности реки

потоки воды считывают файлы камней

мерцающие курсоры деревьев воспроизводят движение природы

интерфейс ручья существует в момент обращения к данным

{в файлах камней – отпечатки появления света}

данные отображаются одни за одним","ruins of breath build out the city
debugging language’s architecture, extended in temporality
from surface, median, and subterranean wood

2023

<h1></h1>

follicles on the heads of mountains

multitude {apex1, apex2, apex3… apexN} with
freckles of brushgrowth and halftones of skin

the horizon bisects the vitruvian pine
/_180° to each side

the shadow of branches' tremors is growing 
by the exponent of the echo’s retreat

[the negative tree
describes a square]

2023

<h1></h1>

scratches on a river surface

water flows read out stone files

the trees’ flickering cursors reproduce
 the movement of nature

the brook interface exists at the point of data access

{in the stone files: imprints of First Light}

the data load bit by bit

","<p>Our practice involved group collaboration between the five translators and the poet Kateryna Derysheva. We each chose initial translations to draft for the poems and then met to collectively finalize them alongside Kateryna. This process involved having Kateryna read the original poems in Russian and providing invaluable commentary on her word choice and intended images. Translators are listed in alphabetical order to reflect the collective nature of our work.</p>
<p>Kateryna Derisheva’s current poetic work is a form of research practice, oriented at once towards the poet’s own position in language, and towards the languages that surround her: everyday, technical, professional, etc. One may take, for example, her poem “[lake icing over]” (“[<span lang=""ru"">замерзающее озеро</span>]). In Kateryna’s account of work on this poem, it began with contemplation of “a metaphor that was chasing me— the image of a lake as the cornea of an eye” as well as the image of “a tree growing out of the pupil.” She proceeded with consultation of specialized writing on biology and of dictionaries. Associations with surveillance cameras and retractable lenses followed. Work continued through a series of additional ruminations on what the lake-cornea sees or does not see—snow, or a peculiar negative, reversed snow. Finally, work on the poem led to an additional set of associations relating to the process of recording an image on a bitmap. The end result is a chain of signification, linked together by grammar and a logic that is less that of a dream and closer to that of a poetic “dictionary of collocation”—an experimental exploration of the linguistically possible at the intersection of polyvocal linguistic practices.</p>","<p>Katerina Derysheva is poet in residence and at-risk scholar at the University of Pennsylvania during the spring semester of 2024, affiliated with the Department of Russian and East European Studies and the Program in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory. Derysheva is a Ukrainian poet from Kharkiv. She is co-founder and organizer of the kntxt literary project. Her poems and translations have been published in the journals: <em>Plume, Zerkalo, Tlen Literacki, Literatur in Bayern, Literaturportal Bayern, Visions, Volga, SoFloPoJo, The Colon, Literature, Articulation, New Coast, Arion, Homo legens, Kreshchatik</em>, and others. She is the author of the books <em>Starting Point</em> (2018), <em>There Will Be No Installation</em> (2023); co-author of the book <em>Earth Time</em> (Romania, 2020). Her poems appeared in the anthology <em>In the Hour of War: Poetry from Ukraine</em>, edited by Ilya Kaminsky and Carolyn Forche. She was long-listed for the Arkadiy Dragomoshchenko Prize (2019) and is laureate of the Europa Mai Prize (2022). Her poems and essays have been translated into 11 languages. She has held fellowships and residencies at Villa Concordia (Bamberg), LCB (Berlin), Next Page Foundation (Sofia), “La Factorie” (Normandy, 2023), Lübeck Gedok (2023), and Villa Sarkia (Sysmä, Finland, 2023).</p>","<p>Ryan Hardy is a translator, language educator, student organizer, and recent graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, where he focused on Russian and Eastern European Studies. He has held various writing and editing positions for the School of Russian and Asian Studies, Pomona College’s <em>Vestnik</em>, and <em>DoubleSpeak Magazine</em>. Ryan’s research interests lie at the intersections of historical memory, identity-based conflict, and countercultural movements in Central/Eastern Europe and Eurasia. Most recently, Ryan’s work has focused on collective memory of the Czechoslovak-founded Interhelpo labor cooperative in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Ryan translates across genres, ranging from poetry and prose to memoir and articles from Russian civil society.</p>
<p>Andrew Janco’s translations are published in <em>The New York Times, Ploughshares</em>, and other journals, and are included in the anthology <em>Words for War: New Poems from Ukraine</em>. With Olga Livshin, he is the co-translator of <em>A Man Only Needs a Room</em>, a volume of Vladimir Gandelsman's poetry (2022), and <em>Today Is a Different War</em> by Lyudmyla Khersonska (2023).</p>
<p>Olga Livshin grew up in Ukraine and Russia, and came to the US as a teenager. Her poetry, essays, translations and interviews appear in the <em>New York Times, Ploughshares, The Rumpus, the Kenyon Review</em>, and other journals. She is the author of <em>A Life Replaced: Poems with Translations from Anna Akhmatova and Vladimir Gandelsman</em> (Poets & Traitors Press, 2019). Livshin co-translated <em>Today is a Different War</em> by the Ukrainian poet Lyudmyla Khersonska (Arrowsmith Press, 2023) and <em>A Man Only Needs a Room</em> by the Russian-American poet Vladimir Gandelsman (New Meridian Arts, 2022). As a Consulting Poetry Editor for <em>Mukoli: A Journal for Peace</em>, she reviews poetry from marginalized, conflict-affected communities and collectives across the world. She holds a Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and in Literatures and taught at the university level for over a decade before focusing on teaching and practicing creative writing.</p>
<p>Asher Maria (he/they) is a first-year Ph.D. student in Comparative Literature & Literary Theory and 2023-2024 Vartan Gregorian Humanities Graduate Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. As a comparativist, Asher is primarily interested in decolonial research at the intersection of Baltic, Lusophone, and Slavic studies. His planned dissertation looks at how the literature of Lithuanian, Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian migrants in Brazil reflects these communities’ role in the development of Brazilian national identity. They also have a background in translating from Lithuanian and Russian.</p>
<p>Kevin M. F. Platt is a professor of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and graduate chair of the Program in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory. His scholarly work focuses on Russian and East European poetry, culture, and history. His translations of Russophone and Latvian poetry have appeared in <em>World Literature Today, Jacket2, Fence</em>, and other journals. He is the author or editor of several scholarly books, the most recent of which is <em>Border Conditions: Russian-Speaking Latvians Between World Orders</em> (2024). He has contributed to a number of volumes of poetry in translation, including <em>Hit Parade: The Orbita Group</em> (2015), for which he served as lead translator and editor. He also has organized the intermittent Russophone poetry translation symposium Your Language My Ear at the University of Pennsylvania and elsewhere.</p>",,Russian,ru,assets/images/images_24/no62.png,photo by Ryan Hardy,,,2024,submission,,0
to-the-master-of-a-garden,Au maître d'un jardin,To the master of a garden,Antoine-Vincent Arnault,Gabrielle Wang,"De ce chaume heureux possesseur, 
De bon cœur, hélas ! que j'envie 
Tes travaux, ta philosophie, 
Ta solitude et ton bonheur ! 

Pour prix des soins que tu leur donnes,
Tes arbustes reconnaissants
Et des printemps et des automnes
Te prodiguent les doux présents.

Ô trop heureux qui peut connaître
La jouissance de cueillir
Le fruit que ses soins font mûrir,
La fleur que ses soins ont fait naître !

Toujours la terre envers nos bras 
S'est acquittée avec usure. 
Qui veut s'éloigner des ingrats 
Se rapproche de la nature. 

Ne craindre et ne désirer rien, 
Etre aimé de l'objet qu'on aime, 
C'est bien là le bonheur suprême;
C'est le sort des dieux, c'est le tien. ","Of this grass content possessor,
Of  good heart, alas! How I fancy
Your labor, your philosophy,
Your solitude and your comfort!

For cost of care you give to them,
Your shrubbery appreciative
And with some springs and some autumns
Lavish you the pleasant donatives.

O too content who comprehends
The joy which harvest can breed
The fruit which his care has ripened,
The flower which his care conceived !

Always the earth beneath our arms
Which has with our use unfettered.
Those who wish to avoid ingrates
Become ever close with nature.

Apprehend and desire not,
Being loved by that which we love,
Is utter happiness–above;
Is the sort of gods, what you’ve got.","<p>Translating this poem was a delicate process. I often faced frustrations about how to best interpret and reflect decisions made by the author that were only grammatically correct in the French way–the way the words were intended. Quite literally mirroring meanings was necessary, for the subject-description order of words in French could be considered the direct opposite of English grammar. As a result, this mirroring often resulted in a loss of context and, consequently, accuracy of comprehension. A sense of suspense that could only be established in the original placement of phrases was also impossible to mimic with English while maintaining the laws of grammar. Thus, I intermittently broke various rules in my best efforts to preserve meaning, which may have resulted in a cacophony of mismatched grammar interpretations. I sincerely hope that my efforts to preserve meaning did not disturb the peaceful constancy in the parallel structures artfully posed by Antoine-Vincent Arnault at his time of writing. Reversing these phrases felt like upending all of Arnault’s careful deliberation, for poetry is inherently an art of precision and intention. As a migrated teenage admirer of French poetry, I often doubted that it was my place to take this beloved artist’s work into my young hands. Unqualified and equipped with the level of grammar enabled by a lifetime of geographical isolation, I frequently cringed at my elementary attempts to match the beauty of the original words. Furthermore, prioritizing meaning and intention meant rewriting the poem through the eyes of the original poet, thus sacrificing my own preferences in the process. In the end, this poem, line by line, is a series of one-sided compromises between the poet and myself, the translator.</p>
","<p>Born in Paris in 1766, Antoine-Vincent Arnault was a French poet and fabulist who specialized in Republican tragedies. He established his reputation with his first work: Marius d Minturnes, a tragedy play first performed on May 19, 1791 on le Theatre Francais in Paris.</p>
<p>As a sympathizer of the political group opposing the government during the Reign of Terror, Antoine-Vincent Arnault was forced to flee France until the political environment became less hostile. Regardless, he was arrested upon his return due to this allegiance. A lack of historical records makes it unclear how he evaded prison, but it is believed that fellow dramatists and changes in political climate likely assisted his liberation.</p>
<p>Arnault re-established his reputation after commission from Napoleon Bonaparte and nomination as secretary general of L’Institut Francais. He was a member of the Légion D'Honneur: the highest order of merit established by Napoleon in 1802 to restore honor after the Revolution. As a poet and playwright, Arnault capsulated difficult periods of the French Revolution with works that reflected French ideals of fraternity and liberty.</p>
<p>Although his arrest demonstrates ambiguity of his reception in France, Arnault made significant contributions to nationalism, greatly impacting the political landscape during his lifetime.</p>","<p>Gabrielle Wang os currently a junior in high school. As a daughter of Chinese and Canadian immigrants and a member of a French-speaking household, poetry and literature has consistently been her method of embracing and connecting her heritage to her new American culture. Growing up in a relatively small town, the library was her favorite weekly adventure. After moving multiple times, reading has unfailingly remained along with passions for science, cooking, hiking, and meeting new people!</p>",,French,fr,assets/images/images_24/masterofgarden.jpg,photo by Sanaa Patel,,,2024,submission,,0
spring-ten-haizi,春天， 十个海子,"Spring, Ten Haizi",Haizi,Fan Youfei,"春天，十个海子全都复活
在光明的景色中
嘲笑这一野蛮而悲伤的海子
你这么长久地沉睡到底是为了什么？

春天，十个海子低低地怒吼
围着你和我跳舞、唱歌
扯乱你的黑头发，骑上你飞奔而去，尘土飞扬
你被劈开的疼痛在大地弥漫

在春天，野蛮而复仇的海子
就剩这一个，最后一个
这是黑夜的儿子，沉浸于冬天，倾心死亡
不能自拔，热爱着空虚而寒冷的乡村

那里的谷物高高堆起，遮住了窗子
它们一半用于一家六口人的嘴，吃和胃
一半用于农业，他们自己繁殖
大风从东吹到西，从北刮到南，无视黑夜和黎明
你所说的曙光究竟是什么意思","Spring, ten Hai Zi are all resurrected.
In the landscape of light,
They laugh at this savage and sorrowful Hai Zi:
“You’ve been sleeping for so long – what exactly is it for?”

Spring, ten Hai Zi bellow deeply,
Dancing and singing around you and me.
They tear your dark hair, mount you and gallop away, kicking up the dirt.
The pain when you are chopped open permeates the earth.

In spring, this savage and vengeful Hai Zi
Is the only Hai Zi left, the last one left.
This is the son of the night who is immersed in winter, enamored with death.
He is burning with his love for this void and frigid village

Where grains pile up high and block out the window.
Half of the grains are used in the mouths, eating, and stomachs of a family of six.
The other half are used in agriculture, reproducing themselves.
The gale blows from east to west, from north to south, ignoring the dark and dawn.
The light of dawn you spoke of – what exactly does it mean.","<p>“Spring, Ten Hai Zi” is the last poem Hai Zi ever wrote. He was suffering from severe schizophrenia, with symptoms of hallucinations, and often had trouble sleeping at that time. Twelve days after finishing the poem, he lay on the tracks and let the train - the representation of modernity - end his life.</p>

<p>Hai Zi is known for his ability to put powerful, plain words into poetic form, and his language is known for its abstraction and obscurity. It is not that his language is sophisticated, but he often uses defamiliarization techniques to give simple imagery deeper cultural meanings while achieving linguistic simplicity. When translating the poem, I used alliteration to make the English translation more consistent. I also added subjects to unclear sentences and clarified the referents of pronouns to make the poem more understandable.</p>

<p>It is almost impossible to avoid compromises when I translated Hai Zi. In this poem, “Hai Zi (<span lang=“zh”>海子</span>),” the poet’s pen name, is the most difficult to translate. In Mandarin, there are three differently intoned pronunciations of “<span lang=“zh”>海子</span>”: third + neutral tone, which literally means “lakes in the Mongolian and Tibetan Highlands” in mandarin and also means the poet’s pen name; second (through tone sandhi) + full third tone, meaning “child of the sea”; and second (through tone sandhi) + neutral tone, meaning a personal name. Depending on its position in the sentence, Hai Zi’s name is commonly, if not invariably, pronounced in the second + neutral tone, which sounds the same as “<span lang=“zh”>孩子</span>”, the word for “child” in mandarin. For Sinophone readers, the first time they hear “ten Hai Zi,” they will easily hear “ten children.” The use of homophones is an essential point of the poem. Children represent nature, originality, possibility, and many things Hai Zi longs for. In addition, the imagery of “children being resurrected” is uncanny and eerily attractive. However, in my opinion, translating it as “ten children Hai Zi” will unnecessarily spoil the poetic beauty. In the original Chinese text, the two meanings are conveyed simultaneously within the same sound that creates a poetic ambiguity that cannot be translated fully.</p>","<p>Haizi (<span lang=“zh”>海子</span>) is the pen name of the Chinese poet Zha Haisheng (<span lang=“zh”>查海生</span>). He was born in 1964 and was raised in a farming village in Anhui Province. He was admitted to Beijing University at the age of fifteen and began writing poetry during college years. When he was twenty, he started teaching at China University of Political Science and Law. Between 1984 and 1989, he wrote about 200 poems and several epics, and he traveled to Inner Mongolia and the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. He died of suicide in March 1989 by letting himself run over by a train at Shanhaiguan, Great Wall. Haizi’s books published posthumously in China include <em>Earth</em> (1990), <em>Poems of Haizi</em> (1995), and <em>The Complete Poems of Haizi</em> (1999). He is now one of the most renowned and influential contemporary poets in China.</p>","<p>Fan Youfei is a third-year undergraduate at Nanjing University and was an international guest student at the University of Pennsylvania (23’). She majors in English literature and translation and is currently studying English, French and Old English. She is a poet, a theater lover, and she enjoys translating the beautiful works of her beloved writers.</p>",,Mandarin,zh,assets/images/images_24/springten.png,photo by Aiyana Nosizwe Mate,,,2024,submission,,0
riddle-7,Riddle 7,Riddle 7,The Exeter Book Riddles ,Ophelia Eryn Hostetter,"Mec on þissum dagum dēadne ofgeafum
fæder ond mōdor; ne wæs mē feorh þā gēn,
ealdor in innan. þā mec [ān] ongon,
wel-hold mēge, wēdum weccan,
heold ond freoþode, hleo-sceorpe wrāh
snārlīce swā hire āgen bearn,
oþþæt ic under scēate, swā mīn gesceapu wæron,
ungesibbum wearð ēacen gæste.
Mec sēo friþe mæg fedde siþþan,
oþþæt ic āweox, wīddor meahte
sīþas āsettan. Hēo hæfde swǣsra þȳ lǣs
suna ond dohtra, þȳ hēo swā dyde.","Days like this they leave me for dead,
mother and father both. 
What life was in me yet? 
	— What spirit within?

At some point, some woman
roused my life in her aprons,
such a gracious step-mother,
keeping me and preserving me,
snarled up in sweet snares —
just like her own children.

Until my nature was known
under her swaddling 
while I swelled with life 
amongst my unsiblings,
my sheltering step-mom 
schooling me all the while,
until I waxed into fullness,
able to rove my riddling 
along these wider ways.

Poor her, the more 
she lavished her love,
the fewer she had — her dear ones,
sons and daughters both.","<p>Nowhere else in the extant Old English corpus is the need for non-conforming, deviant, and Queer translation more urgently felt than in the “Exeter Book Riddles”. These voices repeatedly insist that they are “amazing” (<em>wundorlīcu</em>) and “fascinating” (<em>wrætlīc</em>), yet it is quite easy to fail to clock their extravagance in how they are usually rendered. My translations endeavor to re-estrange these poems, breaking down critical complacencies regarding them. I work to vibe with their voices — to follow the weird wendings of their language, to stay awake to their glitches and hiccups, and most of all to listen to their expressive capacities. Nonconforming identities, desires, and experiences are often awkward to state aloud and therefore are easily spoken over, and so the riddles often give voice to the voiceless, not only to objects or animals but also to those otherwise invisible socially.</p>
<p>The question of stranger and kinsfolk is central to “Riddle 7,” usually solved as “Cuckoo” — a macabre story of nature sometimes used as a warning against fostering another’s children (this is a sub-plot of <em>Beowulf</em>, for instance). Yet the text of this poem resists that interpretation: the manuscript reading <em>snārlīce swā</em> [literally “like a snare”; here perhaps, “deviously”] is conventionally emended to <em>swā ārlīce swā</em> [“as graciously as”], which casts the step-mother as noble victim of this interloper. My translation opens up further possibilities of interpretation by refusing to take sides and suggests other motivations for taking in children: hostage-taking; enslavement; even placement in a monastery.</p>
<p>Just above “Riddle 15” in the <em>Exeter Book</em>, the runic characters “Beorc” and “Lagu” can be found, possibly pointing to a solution containing the letters “B” and “L”. It was frequent to assume this poem was solved by “ballista” or “fortified town” — those letters, however, may be more convincingly read as <em>bēo-loca</em>: a “bees’ horde” or beehive. For this translation I chose a style derived from hip-hop verse, four beats per line, with an internal rhyme. In doing this, I open the possibility of a new voice in the poem: a poet grappling with their own potential for violence. Filled with sweetness, defended by the points of spears, this speaker bears a striking resemblance to the narrators created by Biggie Smalls or the Geto Boys.</p>
<p>The proximity of a riddle to its solution is often found reassuring, but what if there is none apparent? What if there’s no need for one? “Riddle 26” is one of just a few poems like this in the collection; its dazzle of rhyming, chiming sound-play has eluded scholars since the nineteenth century. Previous solutions seek to harness this aural profligacy to the process of craft — making beer or a manuscript book. But what if this wallowing in the fun actually goes nowhere? What if these pleasures are non-productive, self-contained, private — unnecessary to interpret?</p>","<p>The “Exeter Book Riddles” are found in an Old English miscellany produced between 950–1000 CE, now housed at Exeter Cathedral Library. Few of these riddles, if any, were produced by the same hand, and the idea of an “author” may not even be particularly relevant to its immediate audiences, making these crafty jewels difficult to contextualize in ways that modern scholarship finds reassuring. Unlike extant Anglo-Latin riddles, these poems do not include solutions, and many of the answers suggested by scholars are highly speculative and much-debated. Most likely the <em>Exeter Book</em> was produced in a monastery and many of its contents are religious in nature, making these determinedly material and quotidian expressions stand out even more. Other than that, it’s tough to tell what purpose they served or how they were meant to be used or enjoyed.</p>","<p>Ophelia Eryn Hostetter (they/them) is an Associate Professor at Rutgers University-Camden, specializing in Old and Middle English Literature. They are the host and translator of the <em>Old English Poetry Project</em>, which contains verse translations of about 29,000 lines of OE poetry (out of ~32,000 extant). Their latest project, <em>Old English Translation Beyond the Horizon</em>, explores how cultural and academic nostalgia in early English studies has throttled innovation and inclusivity in early English studies. Dr. Hostetter offers a way past this inertia by mobilizing Queer Translation tactics that open new possibilities for discovery in this archive by way of digital media studies, New Materialisms and affect theory, Queer, feminist and Trans studies, hip-hop poetics, and translation theory, as well as manuscript studies and linguistic study.</p>",,Old English,en,assets/images/images_24/riddles.png,photo by Ryan Hardy,riddle7_orig.mp3,riddle7_english.mp3,2024,submission,,first
riddle-15,Riddle 15,Riddle 15,The Exeter Book Riddles ,Ophelia Eryn Hostetter,"Ic eom mund-bora mīnre heorde,
eodor-wīrum fæst, innan gefylled
dryht-gestrēona. Dæg-tīdum oft
spǣte spere-brōgan; spēd biþ þȳ māre
fylle mīnre. Frēo þæt bihealdeð,
hū mē of hrīfe flēogað hylde-pīlas.
hwīlum ic sweartum swelgan onginne
brūnum beado-wǣpnum, bitrum ordum,
eglum āttor-sperum. Is mīn innað til,
womb-hord wlītig, wloncum dēore;
men gemūnan þæt mē þurh mūþ fareð.","I’m the bold soldier of what I’ve been holding,
wire-woven, hedged and fledged,
pledged to the game, crowned & inwound —
hours go down, spot me spitting
by the minute — spear-spite never quitting.
Speeding is the way that it goes,
growing swollen, overflowing what I savor.
how my belly bursts with battle-hurts,
Starts to swing when I start to swallow
this hollow dark, war-edges swart & sharp,
the bitterness of biters, terrible teeth of spiders.
Inside’s a pleasure, trickled up with treasure,
sweetness to measure & loved by the leisured —
fam can’t forget, can’t figure how it flows, 
what flecks flicker in famous flocks from my nose.","<p>Nowhere else in the extant Old English corpus is the need for non-conforming, deviant, and Queer translation more urgently felt than in the “Exeter Book Riddles”. These voices repeatedly insist that they are “amazing” (<em>wundorlīcu</em>) and “fascinating” (<em>wrætlīc</em>), yet it is quite easy to fail to clock their extravagance in how they are usually rendered. My translations endeavor to re-estrange these poems, breaking down critical complacencies regarding them. I work to vibe with their voices — to follow the weird wendings of their language, to stay awake to their glitches and hiccups, and most of all to listen to their expressive capacities. Nonconforming identities, desires, and experiences are often awkward to state aloud and therefore are easily spoken over, and so the riddles often give voice to the voiceless, not only to objects or animals but also to those otherwise invisible socially.</p>
<p>The question of stranger and kinsfolk is central to “Riddle 7,” usually solved as “Cuckoo” — a macabre story of nature sometimes used as a warning against fostering another’s children (this is a sub-plot of <em>Beowulf</em>, for instance). Yet the text of this poem resists that interpretation: the manuscript reading <em>snārlīce swā</em> [literally “like a snare”; here perhaps, “deviously”] is conventionally emended to <em>swā ārlīce swā</em> [“as graciously as”], which casts the step-mother as noble victim of this interloper. My translation opens up further possibilities of interpretation by refusing to take sides and suggests other motivations for taking in children: hostage-taking; enslavement; even placement in a monastery.</p>
<p>Just above “Riddle 15” in the <em>Exeter Book</em>, the runic characters “Beorc” and “Lagu” can be found, possibly pointing to a solution containing the letters “B” and “L”. It was frequent to assume this poem was solved by “ballista” or “fortified town” — those letters, however, may be more convincingly read as <em>bēo-loca</em>: a “bees’ horde” or beehive. For this translation I chose a style derived from hip-hop verse, four beats per line, with an internal rhyme. In doing this, I open the possibility of a new voice in the poem: a poet grappling with their own potential for violence. Filled with sweetness, defended by the points of spears, this speaker bears a striking resemblance to the narrators created by Biggie Smalls or the Geto Boys.</p>
<p>The proximity of a riddle to its solution is often found reassuring, but what if there is none apparent? What if there’s no need for one? “Riddle 26” is one of just a few poems like this in the collection; its dazzle of rhyming, chiming sound-play has eluded scholars since the nineteenth century. Previous solutions seek to harness this aural profligacy to the process of craft — making beer or a manuscript book. But what if this wallowing in the fun actually goes nowhere? What if these pleasures are non-productive, self-contained, private — unnecessary to interpret?</p>","<p>The “Exeter Book Riddles” are found in an Old English miscellany produced between 950–1000 CE, now housed at Exeter Cathedral Library. Few of these riddles, if any, were produced by the same hand, and the idea of an “author” may not even be particularly relevant to its immediate audiences, making these crafty jewels difficult to contextualize in ways that modern scholarship finds reassuring. Unlike extant Anglo-Latin riddles, these poems do not include solutions, and many of the answers suggested by scholars are highly speculative and much-debated. Most likely the <em>Exeter Book</em> was produced in a monastery and many of its contents are religious in nature, making these determinedly material and quotidian expressions stand out even more. Other than that, it’s tough to tell what purpose they served or how they were meant to be used or enjoyed.</p>","<p>Ophelia Eryn Hostetter (they/them) is an Associate Professor at Rutgers University-Camden, specializing in Old and Middle English Literature. They are the host and translator of the <em>Old English Poetry Project</em>, which contains verse translations of about 29,000 lines of OE poetry (out of ~32,000 extant). Their latest project, <em>Old English Translation Beyond the Horizon</em>, explores how cultural and academic nostalgia in early English studies has throttled innovation and inclusivity in early English studies. Dr. Hostetter offers a way past this inertia by mobilizing Queer Translation tactics that open new possibilities for discovery in this archive by way of digital media studies, New Materialisms and affect theory, Queer, feminist and Trans studies, hip-hop poetics, and translation theory, as well as manuscript studies and linguistic study.</p>",,Old English,en,assets/images/images_24/riddles.png,photo by Ryan Hardy,riddle15_orig.mp3,riddle15_english.mp3,2024,submission,,middle
riddle-26,Riddle 26,Riddle 26,The Exeter Book Riddles ,Ophelia Eryn Hostetter,"Biþ foldan dǣl fægre gegierwed
mid þȳ heardestan ond mid þȳ scearpestan
ond mid þȳ grymmestan gumena gestrēona,
corfen, sworfen, cyrred, þyrred,
bunden, wunden, blǣced, wǣced,
frætwed, geatwed, feorran lǣded
tō dūrum dryhta. Drēam bið in innan
cwicra wihta, clengeð, lengeð,
þāra þe ǣr lifgende longe hwīle
wilna brūceð ond nō wið-spriceð,
ond þonne æfter dēaþe  dēman onginneð,
meldan mislīce. Micel is tō hycganne
wīs-fæstum menn, hwæt sēo wiht sȳ.","Are certain folds of field
only to be furnished
to their fairness
by the most calloused
and by the coarsest
and by the cruelest
employments men may endeavor?
 
May she be ferried so far away
to the doors of majesty—
Riven, thriven, ruffled,
shuffled, bluffed, buffed to dry,
bundled, wreathed, sheathed,
woven, cloven, fluttering, shuddering —
all polished up and finished up.
           
Rapturous ecstasy ever
lies captured inside
for whatever breathes,
adhering and inhering,
for those enduring longest,
enjoying one’s pleasures —
no need to speak ill of it —
and after her death,
she reckons their account,
chattering a thousand ways.
 
It’s a lot to take in
for the wisdom-thick
what creature she might be.","<p>Nowhere else in the extant Old English corpus is the need for non-conforming, deviant, and Queer translation more urgently felt than in the “Exeter Book Riddles”. These voices repeatedly insist that they are “amazing” (<em>wundorlīcu</em>) and “fascinating” (<em>wrætlīc</em>), yet it is quite easy to fail to clock their extravagance in how they are usually rendered. My translations endeavor to re-estrange these poems, breaking down critical complacencies regarding them. I work to vibe with their voices — to follow the weird wendings of their language, to stay awake to their glitches and hiccups, and most of all to listen to their expressive capacities. Nonconforming identities, desires, and experiences are often awkward to state aloud and therefore are easily spoken over, and so the riddles often give voice to the voiceless, not only to objects or animals but also to those otherwise invisible socially.</p>
<p>The question of stranger and kinsfolk is central to “Riddle 7,” usually solved as “Cuckoo” — a macabre story of nature sometimes used as a warning against fostering another’s children (this is a sub-plot of <em>Beowulf</em>, for instance). Yet the text of this poem resists that interpretation: the manuscript reading <em>snārlīce swā</em> [literally “like a snare”; here perhaps, “deviously”] is conventionally emended to <em>swā ārlīce swā</em> [“as graciously as”], which casts the step-mother as noble victim of this interloper. My translation opens up further possibilities of interpretation by refusing to take sides and suggests other motivations for taking in children: hostage-taking; enslavement; even placement in a monastery.</p>
<p>Just above “Riddle 15” in the <em>Exeter Book</em>, the runic characters “Beorc” and “Lagu” can be found, possibly pointing to a solution containing the letters “B” and “L”. It was frequent to assume this poem was solved by “ballista” or “fortified town” — those letters, however, may be more convincingly read as <em>bēo-loca</em>: a “bees’ horde” or beehive. For this translation I chose a style derived from hip-hop verse, four beats per line, with an internal rhyme. In doing this, I open the possibility of a new voice in the poem: a poet grappling with their own potential for violence. Filled with sweetness, defended by the points of spears, this speaker bears a striking resemblance to the narrators created by Biggie Smalls or the Geto Boys.</p>
<p>The proximity of a riddle to its solution is often found reassuring, but what if there is none apparent? What if there’s no need for one? “Riddle 26” is one of just a few poems like this in the collection; its dazzle of rhyming, chiming sound-play has eluded scholars since the nineteenth century. Previous solutions seek to harness this aural profligacy to the process of craft — making beer or a manuscript book. But what if this wallowing in the fun actually goes nowhere? What if these pleasures are non-productive, self-contained, private — unnecessary to interpret?</p>","<p>The “Exeter Book Riddles” are found in an Old English miscellany produced between 950–1000 CE, now housed at Exeter Cathedral Library. Few of these riddles, if any, were produced by the same hand, and the idea of an “author” may not even be particularly relevant to its immediate audiences, making these crafty jewels difficult to contextualize in ways that modern scholarship finds reassuring. Unlike extant Anglo-Latin riddles, these poems do not include solutions, and many of the answers suggested by scholars are highly speculative and much-debated. Most likely the <em>Exeter Book</em> was produced in a monastery and many of its contents are religious in nature, making these determinedly material and quotidian expressions stand out even more. Other than that, it’s tough to tell what purpose they served or how they were meant to be used or enjoyed.</p>","<p>Ophelia Eryn Hostetter (they/them) is an Associate Professor at Rutgers University-Camden, specializing in Old and Middle English Literature. They are the host and translator of the <em>Old English Poetry Project</em>, which contains verse translations of about 29,000 lines of OE poetry (out of ~32,000 extant). Their latest project, <em>Old English Translation Beyond the Horizon</em>, explores how cultural and academic nostalgia in early English studies has throttled innovation and inclusivity in early English studies. Dr. Hostetter offers a way past this inertia by mobilizing Queer Translation tactics that open new possibilities for discovery in this archive by way of digital media studies, New Materialisms and affect theory, Queer, feminist and Trans studies, hip-hop poetics, and translation theory, as well as manuscript studies and linguistic study.</p>",,Old English,en,assets/images/images_24/riddles.png,photo by Ryan Hardy,riddle26_orig.mp3,riddle26_english.mp3,2024,submission,,last
shapes-of-dust,Le forme della polvere,The Shapes of Dust,Sebastiano Addamo,Alex Hoffmann,"Tutto ormai noto: l'amore
e lo scempio, le ferite, il pane
e i vermi sinuosi come rimorsi,
i treni senza meta volubili per la 
collina come lunatici, come soldati
perduti dietro il loro pallore.
Su e giù per corsie d'ospedali
fendere lo spazioso tempio
del crepuscolo senza luce
i paradigmi ossuti e l'oscura
mestizia della speranza.
Dal treno scendono gai cadaveri
con grida e bandiere ne cercano
altri sotto il cielo
rosso di rose rosse
nella festa di rose rosse
nella festa di tempie arrossate.
Sotto il vento rose tempie e bandiere
si tuffano tra l'erba bassa.
Si sognano genesi e parabole
in muti colloqui come preghiere.

E io per me.
Per me lascio i miei dèi inetti e testardi
brucio vecchie (e nuove) domande
mi ristendo sotto l'opaca quercia
della terra nella luna furiosa,
per ritrovar soltanto (ma è tutto)
un cane oscuro in cerca d'altri occhi.","All well known by now: love
and ruin, the wounds, the bread
and the sinuous worms like regrets,
the trains without destinations inconstant through 
the hill like lunatics, like soldiers
lost behind their pallor.
Up and down through hospital wards
to rend the spacious temple
of the lightless crepuscule 
the ossified paradigms and the dark
forlornness of hope.
From the train descend gay cadavers
With screams and flags they search
for more under the sky
red with rosy roses
in the fête of rosy roses
in the fête of rosied temples.
In the wind roses temples and flags
plunge into the low grass.
They dream of genesis and parables
in mute colloquies like prayers.

And I on my own. 
On my own I leave my inept and stubborn gods
burn old (and new) requests
I lie down under the dark oak
of the earth in the furious moon
to refind merely (but it’s everything)
a lowly dog in search of other eyes.","<p>It is my preference when translating poetry to stray as little as possible from the original text. I prefer to use a word like “crepuscule” instead of the more common “twilight,” for example, in order to remain in closer proximity to the Italian <em>crepusculo</em>. This task is made more difficult by a poet like Addamo, however, who often uses word play to evoke double meanings. The poet uses the adjective <em>oscuro</em> to describe the dog, for example, a word that contains many meanings — unknown or dark or even humble (one synonym for <em>oscuro</em> being <em>umile</em>, as in “humble origins”). I chose “lowly” because it has the potential to evoke a plurality of meanings, while also retaining a more tragic tenor and avoiding the comic effect of the alliterative “dark dog.” A more evasive double meaning occurs when Addamo uses the phrase <em>mestizia speranza</em>. This could be translated as “sad hope”, or “melancholy hope”, but “forlorn hope” turns out to be a phrase (originally Dutch) that refers to a group of soldiers deployed on a dangerous mission. I chose “forlorn” in order both to retain a potential second meaning and also to mirror the earlier image of the pale soldiers, an echo that seemed to fit well in this poem, which I read as a reflection of the poet’s own lost illusions in contrast with the mindless enthusiasm of the collective.</p>","<p>Addamo was a twentieth-century Sicilian writer and poet. The Italian playwright and critic Massimiliano Perrota once summed it up well: “Lover of synthesis and short forms, in his verses [Addamo] sang the bad mood, the bitterness, the fury of those who yearn for some kind of clarity, and end up finding only negative truths…”</p>",<p>Alexander Hoffman is a PhD candidate in comparative literature (with a specialization in Italian) at the Graduate Center in New York interested in the poetics of pessimism.</p>,<strong>15.</strong>,Italian,it,assets/images/images_24/shapesofdust.png,photo by Ryan Hardy,,,2024,submission,,0
rita-love-me,Rita... Love Me! (1969),Rita... Love Me! (1969),Mahmoud Darwish,Sharon Jacobs,"في كُلّ أُمسية، نُخَبِّيءُ في أثينا
قمراً و أغنيةً. وتؤوي ياسمينا
قالت لنا الشرفات:
لا منديلُهُ يأتي
ولا أشواقه تأتي
ولا الطرقات تحترف الحنينا.
نامي! هنا البوليس منتشرٌ
هنا البوليس، كالزيتون، منتشرٌ
طليقاً في أثينا

في الحلم، ينضمُّ الخيالُ إليكِ
تبتعدين عني.
و تخاصمين الأرض
تشتعلين كالشفق المغنّي
ويدايَ في الأغلال.
""سنتوري"" بعيد مثل جسمك
في مواويل المغنّي..
ريتا.. أحبّيني و موتي في أثينا
مثل عطر الياسمين
لتموت أشواق السجين ..

الحبُّ ممنوعٌ..
هنا الشرطيُّ و القدر العتيقْ
تتكسَّر الأصنام إن أعلنتَ حبك
العيون السود
قطّاعُ الطريق
يتربصون بكل عاشقة
أثينا.. يا أثينا.. أين مولاتي؟
_على السكّين ترقص
جسمها أرض قديمة
و لحزنها وجهان:
وجه يابس يرتدّ للماضي
ووجه غاص في ليل الجريمهْ

و الحبُّ ممنوع ،
هنا الشرطيّ، واليونان عاشقة يتيمهْ
في الحلم، ينضمُّ الخيال إليك ،
يرتدُّ المغني
عن كل نافذةٍ، ويرتفع الأصيلْ
عن جسمك المحروق بالأغلالِ
و الشهوات و الزمن البخيل.
نامي على حلمي. مذاقك لاذعُ
عيناك ضائعتان في صمتي
و جسمكِ حافل بالصيف و الموت الجميل .
في آخر الدنيا أضمُّك
حين تبتعدين ملء المستحيل .
ريتا.. أحبّيني ! و موتي في أثينا
مثل عطر الياسمين
لتموت أشواق السجين ..
منفايَ: فلاّحون معتقلون في لُغة الكآبهْ
منفايَ: سجّانون منفيون في صوتي..
و في نغم الربابهْ
منفاي: أعياد محنّطة.. و شمس في الكتابهْ
منفايَ: عاشقة تعلِّق ثوب عاشقها
على ذيل السحابهْ
منفايَ: كل خرائط الدنيا
و خاتمة الكآبهْ
في الحلم، شفّافٌ ذراعكِ
تحته شمس عتيقهْ
لا لون للموتى، و لكني أراهم
مثل أشجار الحديقهْ
يتنازعون عليك،
ضميهم بأذرعة الأساطير التي وضعت حقيقهْ
لأبرّر المنفى، و أسند جبهتي
و أتابع البحث الطويل
عن سرّ أجدادي، و أول جُثةٍ
كسرتْ حدود المستحيل.
في الحلم شفّاف ذراعك
تحته شمس عتيقهْ
و نسيتُ نفسي في خطى الإيقاع
ثلثي قابع في السجن
والثلثان في عشب الحديقهْ
ريتا.. أحبّيني! و موتي في أثينا
مثل عطر الياسمين
لتموت أشواق السجين ..
الحزن صار هوية اليونان،
و اليونان تبحث عن طفولتها
و لا تجد الطفولهْ
تنهار أعمدة الهياكل
أجمل الفرسان ينتحرون.
و العشّاق يفترقون
في أوج الأنوثة و الرجولهْ .
دعني و حزني أيّها الشرطيّ،
منتصف الطريق محطّتي ،
و حبيبتي أحلى قتيلهْ.
ماذا تقول؟
تريد جثَّتها؟
لماذا؟
كي تقَدِّمَها لمائدة الخليفهْ ؟
من قال إنك سيدي ؟
من قال إن الحبّ ممنوع ؟
و إن الآلههْ
في البرلمان ؟
و إن رقصتنا العنيفهْ
خطرٌ على ساعات راحتك القليلهْ؟!
الحزن صار هوية اليونان،
و اليونانُ تبحثُ عن طفولتها
و لا تجد الطفولة.
حتى الكآبة صادرتها شرطةُ اليونان
حتى دمعة العين الكحيلهْ.
في الحلم، تتّسعُ العيون السودُ
ترتجف السلاسلُ ..
يستقبل الليلُ..
تنطلق القصيدهْ
بخيالها الأرضيّ ،
يدفعها الخيال إلى الأمام.. إلى الأمام
بعنف أجنحة العقيدهْ
و أراك تبتعدين عني
آه.. تقتربين مني
نحو آلهة جديدهْ.
ويدايَ في الأغلال، لكني
أداعب دائماً أوتار سنتوري البعيدهْ
و أثير جسمك..
تولد اليونان..
تنتشر الأغاني ..
يسترجع الزيتون خضرته ..
يمر البرق في وطني علانيةً
و يكتشف الطفولة عاشقان..
ريتا.. أحبّيني !و موتي في أثينا
مثل عطر الياسمين
لتموت أحزان السجين.

في كُلِّ أُمسية, نُخَبَّيءُ في أثينا
قمراً وأغنية. ونؤوي ياسمينا
قالت لنا الشرفات:
لا منديلُةُ يأتي
ولا أشواقه يأتي
ولا الطرقات تحترف الحنتنا.
نا مي! هنا البوليس منتشرٌ
هنا البوليس, كالزيتن, منتشرٌ
طليقاً في أثينا

قي الحلم, ينضمُّ الخيالُ إليكِ
تبتعدين عني.
وتخاصمين الأرض 
تشتعلين كالشفق المغنّي
ويداي في الأغلال.
(سنتوري) بعيد مثل جسمك
في مواويل المغنّي ..
ريتا .. أحبّيني! وموتي في أثينا
مثل عطر الياسمين
لتموت  أشواق السجين ..

الحبُّ ممنوعٌ ..
هنا الشرطيُّ, والقدر العتيقْ.
تتكسَّر الأصنام إن أعلنتَ حبك
للعيون السود.
قطّاعُ الطريق
يتربصون بكل عاشقة
 أثنا .. يا أثنا .. أين مولاتي؟
- على السكّين ترقص
جسمها أرض قديمهْ
والزنها وجهان:
وجه يابس يرتدُّ للماضي
ووجه غاص في ليل الجريمهْ

والحب ممنوع,
هنا الشرطيُّ, واليونان عاشقة يتيمهْ
في الحلم, ينضم الخيال إليك,
يرتدُّ المغني
عن كل نافذةٍ. ويرتفع الأصيلْ 
عن جسمك المحروق بالأغلالِ
والشهواتِ والزمنِ البخيل.
بامي على حلمي. مذاقُك لاذعٌ.
عيناكِ ضائعتان في صمتي
وجسمك حافل بالصيق والموت الجميل.
في آخر الدنيا أضمُّكِ
حين تبتعدين ملء المستحيل.
ريتا .. أحبّيني! وموتي في أثينا
مثل عطر الياسمين
لتموت  أشواق السجين ..
منفايَ: فلاحون معتقلون في لُغة الكآبهْ.
منفايَ: سجانون منفيّون في صوتي ..
	وفي نغم الربابهْ
منفايَ: أعياد محنَّطة .. وشمس في الكآبهْ
منفايَ: عاشقة تعلِّق ثوب عاشقها
	على ذيل السحايهْ
منفايَ: كل خرائط الدنيا
وخاتمة الكآبهْ

في الحلم, شفافٌ ذراعكِ
تحتة شمس عتيقهْ
لا لون للموتى ولكني أراهم
مثل أشجارالحديقهْ
يتنازعون عليك, 
ضمّيهم بأذرعة الأساطير التي وضعت حقيقهْ
لأبرِّرالمنفى, وأسند جبهتي
وأتابع البحث الطويل
عن سرِّ أجدادي, وأوَّل جثة
كسرتْ حدود المستحيل.
في الحلم شفّافٌ ذراعك
تحتة شمس عتيقهْ
ونسيتُ نفسي في خطى الإيقاع
ثلثي قابع في السجن
والثلثان في عشب الحديقهْ
ريتا .. أحبّيني! وموتي في أثينا
مثل عطر الياسمين
لتموت  أشواق السجين ..

 الحزن صار هوية اليوبان,
واليوبانُ تبحثُ عن طفولتها
ولا تجد الطفولهْ
تنهار أعمدة الهياكل.
أجمل الفرسان ينتحرون.
والعشّاق يفترقون
في أوج الأنوثة والرجولةْ.
دعني وحزني أيها الشرطيّ,
منتصف الطريق محطَّتي,
وحسيتي أحلى قتيلهْ,
ماذا تقول؟
تريد جثَّتها؟
لما ذا؟
كي تقَدِّمَها لما ئدة الخليفهْ؟
من قال إنك سيدي
من قال إن الحبَّ ممنوع؟
وإنَّ الآلههْ
في البرالمنْ؟
وإن رقصتنا العنفهْ
خطرٌ على ساعات راحتك القليلهْ؟!
الحزن صار هوية اليونان،
واليونانُ تبحثُ عن طفولتها
ولا تجد الطفولهْ.
حتى الكآبة صادرتها شرطةُ اليونان
حتى دمعة العين الكحيلهْ.


في الحلم، تتَّسعُ العيون السودُ
ترتجف السلاسلُ ..
يستقيل الليلُ ..

تنطلق القصيدهْ
بخيالها الأرضيّ،
يدفعها الخيال إلى الأمام .. إلى الأمام
بعُنف أجنحة العقيدهْ
وأراكِ تبتعدين عني
آه .. تقتربين مني
نحو آلهة جديدهْ.
ويدايَ في الأغلال، لكني
أُداعب دائماً أوتار سنتوري البعيدهْ
وأُثير جسمك ..
تولد اليونان ..
تنتشر الأغاني.
يسترجع الزيتون خضرته ..
تمر البرق في وطبي علانيةً
ويكتشف الطفولة عاشقانِ ..
ريتا .. أحبّيني! وموتي في أثينا
مثل عطر الياسمين
لتموت أحزان السجين ..","Every evening, we conceal in Athens
A moon and a song. And we shelter a jasmine
The balconies said to us:
Neither will his handkerchief come
Nor his desires come
Nor the roads profess yearning.
Sleep! Here, the police are widespread
Here, the police, like the olive trees, are widespread
Set free in Athens
In dreams, fantasy conjoins with you
You draw away from me.
And sue the earth
You catch fire like the singer dusk
And my hands are in shackles.
Your body as far away as a santouri
In the singer's ballads...
Rita... love me! And die in Athens
Like the jasmine's fragrance
That the prisoner's desires might die...
Love is forbidden...
Here, the policeman and the antique decree
The idols would break, were you to declare your love
To the black eyes
The bandits

They lie in wait with every lover
Athens... O Athens... Where is my lady?
—On the knife she dances,
Her body an ancient land
And her grief has two faces:
A desiccated face falling back upon the past
And a face plunged into crime's night
And love is forbidden
Here, the policeman, and Greece, an orphaned lover
In dreams, fantasy conjoins with you,
The singer turns back
From every window, and the real you rises
From your body burned by shackles
And cravings and miserly time.
Sleep upon my dream. Your taste stings
Your eyes are lost in my silence
And your body is rich with summer and beautiful death
At the end of the world I conjoin with you
As you draw away in utter impossibility.
Rita... love me! And die in Athens
Like the jasmine's fragrance
That the prisoner's desires may die...
My exile: Peasants arrested in the language of melancholy
My exile: Jailers exiled in my voice...

And in the tone of the rebab
My exile: Mummified feasts... and a sun in the script
My exile: Lover hanging her lover's robe
Upon the cloud-tail
My exile: All the world's maps
And melancholy's conclusion

In dreams, your arm is transparent
Beneath it, an antique sun
The dead have no color, but I see them
Like the garden's trees
They compete over you,
Bring them together with the arms of the myths that settled truth
That I may justify exile, and lean my forehead
And follow the long search
For the secret of my ancestors, and the first corpse
To break the borders of the impossible.
In dreams, your arm is transparent
Beneath it, an antique sun
And I forgot myself in the rhythm's stride

One-third of me abandoned in jail
And two thirds in the garden grass
Rita... love me! And die in Athens
Like the jasmine's fragrance
That the prisoner's desires may die…

Grief has become Greece's identity
And Greece searches for her childhood
And does not find childhood
The columns of structures collapse
The handsomest knights commit suicide
And the lovers part
At the height of femininity and masculinity
Leave me with my grief, o policeman,
The middle of the road is my stop,
And my darling the sweetest casualty.
What do you say?
You want her corpse?
Why?
To present for the caliph's table?
Who said that you were my master
Who said that love is forbidden?
And that the gods
Are in parliament?
And that our violent dance
Puts at risk your brief hours of rest?
Grief has become Greece's identity,
And Greece searches for her childhood
And does not find childhood.
Even melancholy has the Greek police seized
Even the tear of the kohl-blackened eye

In dreams, the black eyes widen
The chains shudder...
The night rises to meet...
The poem breaks free
With its earthy fantasy
The fantasy pushes it forward... forward
With the violence of wings of faith
And I see you drawing away from me
Ah... towards me
Towards new gods.
And my hands are in shackles, but I
I forever caress the santouri's faraway strings
And I arouse your body...
Greece is born...
The songs spread...
The olive tree recovers its greenness...
Lightning passes through my homeland openly
And two lovers discover childhood…
Rita... love me! And die in Athens
Like the jasmine's fragrance
That the prisoner's sorrows may die...
","<p>I didn’t first encounter this poem as a literary translator, but rather through the Darwish-Rita love story. As a student of Arabic in Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine, I’ve often found myself in conversations about my own Jewishness, my changed relationship with Zionism and how learning Arabic helped me both to better understand my own religion and to connect with the most direct victims of the Zionist political project. In these conversations, people have often brought up Rita, how Palestine’s most revered poet loved a Jew, and I started seeing myself (for better or worse) in her character.</p>
<p>While on Covid lockdown in Athens, Greece, I decided to gather Darwish’s Rita poems as a personal project. The hardest one to come by was “Rita… love me!” The only English translation was published in a rare 1973 book. Reading the poem in Arabic, I was caught up in its hardened, oppressed, and oppressive setting; Darwish’s words reached me in a 21st-century Greece in which the pandemic had provided cover for police surveillance and brutality that particularly targeted Middle Eastern migrant bodies. The poem also resonated with my dissertation research, imagining solidarity—in this case, between Greece and Palestine—across experiences of disempowerment.</p>
<p>In translating “Rita… love me!” I tried to hew as closely as possible to the original Arabic. I chose to use a high, formal register of language in the translation. Darwish’s style is lyrical and direct. For the most part, I held to literal translations of the vocabulary and simple, direct syntax. Darwish’s imagery throughout the poem is vaguely Mediterranean, but since terms like kohl and caliph are widespread, I left these in the translation. Only the two stringed musical instruments—the <em>rebab</em> and the <em>santouri</em>—I put in italics to emphasize their specificity, since they are not so well known.</p>","<p>Often considered Palestine’s national poet, Mahmoud Darwish was born in 1941 in the village of al-Birwa, which was captured by the Israeli military in 1948 and depopulated. As displaced Palestinians inside Israel’s 1948 borders, Darwish’s family was classified as “present absentees” and prevented from returning to al-Birwa, their land expropriated by the state. For his poems and acts of resistance, Darwish was frequently imprisoned and placed under house arrest. He spent much of his adult life in exile, and he served on the executive committee of the Palestinian Liberation Organization from 1987 to 1993 before returning to Palestine in 1996. Darwish died in 2008 in Houston.</p>
<p>Darwish is known for the lyricism and emotionality of his resistance poems. One of his most celebrated poems, “Rita and the Rifle”—put to music by Lebanese composer Marcel Khalife in 1976—laments the poet’s real-life impossible romance with an Israeli Jewish dancer, whom Darwish met in the Communist Party. Darwish and “Rita” were together for two years; she later joined the IDF. Rita appears in five poems and two prose passages, oscillating between Darwish’s lover, object, and oppressor.</p>
<p>In “Rita… love me!” (1969), the pair are in hiding in Athens, Greece, facing the impossibility of their relationship and dreaming of freedom. Yet, the Athens of the poem bears little resemblance to the classical city of ancient lore. Instead, Darwish’s Greece is a place of captivity, surveillance, and fragmentation. At the time this poem was written, Greece was ruled by a military junta; in an early draft, Darwish titled it, “A poem not written by Mikis Theodorakis,” referencing that famous composer, communist, and resistance figure of 20th-century Greece. In its themes as well as its imagery, then, the Greek setting of “Rita… love me!” recalls Palestine, drawing parallels across the Mediterranean to connect left-wing struggles against oppressive state structures.</p>","<p>Sharon Jacobs is a PhD candidate investigating the European refugee solidarity movement in Athens, Greece between 2015 and 2019. Her project asks: What does it mean to produce new social and political collectivities in the world made in the wake of the 2015 “summer of migration”? Previous anthropological research has focused on U.S. linguistic nationalism as recently resettled Iraqi refugees experience and participate in it. Outside academia, she is a writer with work published in <em>National Geographic, The Washington Post</em>, and other outlets, and a contributing editor for the Society for Cultural Anthropology's AnthroPod.</p>
",,Arabic,ar,assets/images/images_24/rita.png,photo by Andrea Barajas,,,2024,submission,,0
this-is-the-pure-truth,Ésta es la pura verdad,This Is the Pure Truth,Robert Bolaño,Naomi Bernstein,"Me he criado al lado de puritanos revolucionarios
He sido criticado ayudado empujado por héroes
de la poesía lírica
y del balancín de la muerte.
Quiero decir que mi lirismo es DIFERENTE
(ya está todo expresado pero permitidme
añadir algo más). 
Nadar en los pantanos de la cursilería
es para mí como un Acapulco de sangre de pescado
una Disneylandia submarina
En donde soy en paz conmigo. 

Raro oficio gratuito          Ir perdiendo el pelo
y los dientes           Las antiguas maneras de ser educado
Extraña complacencia           (El poeta no desea ser más
que los otros)           Ni riqueza ni fama ni tan sólo
poesía           Tai vez ésta sea la única forma
de no tener miedo           Instalarse en el miedo
como quien vive dentro de la lentitud
Fantasmas que todos poseemos           Simplemente
aguardando a alguien o algo sobre las ruinas","I was raised alongside revolutionary puritans 
I have been criticized saved and shoved by heroes 
of lyric poetry 
and the rocking chair of death. 
I want to say that my lyricism is DIFFERENT 
(everything has been expressed already but permit me 
to add one more thing). 
To swim in the swamps of vulgarity 
is for me like an Acapulco of mercury 
an Acapulco of fish blood 
an underwater Disneyland 
where I am at peace with myself. 
Strange gratuitous trade           To go losing one’s hair
and one’s teeth           The old ways of becoming educated 
Strange complacency           (The poet does not desire to be more 
than others)           Neither in riches nor fame nor in poetry 
itself           Maybe this is the only form 
of not being afraid           To install oneself in the fear 
like those who live within slowness 
Ghosts that we all possess           Simply 
waiting for someone or something among the ruins
","<p>Aside from a few ambiguous words, the most difficult part about translating this poem was deciding whether it was one poem, or two. In his <em>Poesía Reunida</em>, the two sections sit on two consecutive pages, mirroring each other, and the second part has no title. The two parts have different spacing and punctuation patterns. They may very well be separate, but to me they seem inextricable, almost dialectical. I see them as a call and response — between the poet’s egoic inflation (a result perhaps of what Bolaño called “the shadow of ecstasy,” which according to him, even the worst and most “false” writers have glimpsed) and the “existential mediocrity” of his daily life.</p>","<p>Roberto Bolaño was a virtuosic writer who rose to prominence in the English speaking world only after his death in 2003. Through postmodern structures and flourishes, he often takes anonymous, aspiring writers as his subjects, elevating their quotidian struggles to the level of an epic. He was known to admire the life of the poet, “so excessive, so risky,” he once said. He described poetry as the gesture of an adolescent who bets what little he has on a mysterious and little known form, and “who generally loses the bet.”</p>",<p>Naomi Bernstein is a rootless cosmopolitan currently living and writing in New York.</p>,,Spanish,es,assets/images/images_24/puretruth.png,photo by Katherine Rozsypalek,,,2024,submission,,0
spring-in-a-wagon,Весна в вагоне,Spring in a Wagon,Marina Tsvetaeva,<em>DoubleSpeak</em> Staff,"<span lang=""ru""> 
Встают, встают за дымкой синей
Зелёные холмы.
В траве, как прежде, маргаритки,
И чьи-то глазки у калитки…
Но этой сказки героини
Апрельские — не мы!

Ты улыбнулась нам, Мария,
(Ты улыбалась снам!)
Твой лик, прозрачней анемоны,
Мы помним в пламени короны…
Но этой встречи феерия
Апрельская — не нам!
</span>

1911

<h1>La primavera en un carro<h1>
<h2>translated into Spanish by Ryan Hardy, Alisha Kumar, Sanaa Patel, and Leo Wagner<h2>

Suben, suben detrás de la neblina azul
Colinas verdes.
En el pasto, como antes, hay margaritas,
Y los ojos de alguien en la puerta de la acera…
Pero las heroínas abrileñas de este!
Cuento no somos nosotros.

Nos sonreíste, Maria,
(Sonreíste a los sueños!)
Tu faz de anémona transparente
Recordamos, en las llamas de una icorona…
Pero la fantasía abrileña de esta reunión
¡No es la nuestra!

1911

<h1>Jaro ve Voze<h1>
<h2>translated into Czech by Ryan Hardy, Katherine Rozsypalek, and Leo Wagner<h2>

Vstanou, vstanou za oparem modrým
Zelené kopce.
V trávě, jak dříve, sedmikrásky,
A něčí oči u branky…
Ale této pohádky dubnové
Hrdinky — nejsme my!

Ty ses na nás usmála, Marie,
(Usmála ses na sny!)
Tvůj líc, jako průsvitná sasanka,
Vzpomínáme v plamenech koruny… 
Ale tohle setkání
Dubnové fantazie není pro nás!

1911

<h1>J<span lang=""ar""> الربيع في عربة</span><h1>
<h2>translated into Arabic by Elias Ziyadeh<h2>

<span lang=""ar>
خلف الضباب الأزرق، تقف، تقف 
التلال الخضراء.
في الحشيش هناك أزهار الربيع، كما قبل،
وعيناه من قرب البوابة…
لكن في هذه القصة
لن نكون بطلات نيسان!

ابتسمت لنا يا ماريا!
(ابتسمت للأحلام)!
في نار التاج، نتذكر
وجهك، كشقائق النعمان الشفافة…
لكن في هذا اللقاء
 لن يكون لنا خيال نيسان!
</span>

1911

<h1>Frühling im Wagen</h1>
<h2>translated into German by Hannah Bradley and Ryan Hardy</h2>

Hinter den blauen Nebel, emporsteigen, emporsteigen
Grüne Hügel.
Im Gras gibt es Gänseblümchen wie vorher,
Und jemandes Augen neben der Zauntür…
Aber die April-Heldinnen
in diesem Märchen sind wir nicht!
 
Du hast uns angelächelt, Maria,
(Du hast Träume angelächelt)!
In der Flamme einer Krone, erinnern wir
Dein Antlitz, von einer klaren Anemone
Aber die Seligkeit von April
dieses Treffens ist nicht für uns!

1911","<h2>translated into English by Ryan Hardy</h2>

Behind the blue mist, rise, rise
Green hills.
In the grass there are daisies, like before,
And someone’s eyes by the fence’s door…
But this fairy tale’s 
April heroines aren’t us!

You smiled at us, Maria,
(You smiled at dreams)!
In a crown’s flames, we remember
your visage, a translucent anemone’s…
But this meeting’s
April fantasy isn’t for us!

1911

<h1>Le printemps dans un chariot</h1>
<h2>translated into French by Aiyana Nosizwe Mate, Leo Wagner, and Elias Ziyadeh</h2>

Montent, montent derrière de la brume bleue
Les collines vertes.
Dans l’herbe, comme avant, il y a des marguerites,
Et les yeux de quelqu’un dans la porte de la clôture…
Mais les héroïnes aprilines de ce conte
Ne sommes pas nous !

Tu nous a souri, Maria,
(Tu as souri aux rêves!)
Ton visage d’anémone transparente
Nous nous rappelons, dans les flammes d’une couronne…
Mais la féerie apriline de cette réunion
N’est pas pour nous !

1911

<h1><span lang=""zh"">马车里的春天</span></h1>
<h2>translated into Mandarin by Katherine Rozsypalek and Zijie ""Harry"" Zhu</h2>

<span lang=""zh"">
蓝雾背后，起来，起来 
绿色的山丘。 
草地上的雏菊，像从前那样， 
栅栏门边有人的眼睛… 
但这个童话里
四月女英雄不是我们！  

你朝我们微笑，玛丽亚， 
（你朝梦笑着）！ 
皇冠的焰火中，我们记得 
你的容颜，半透明的银莲… 
但这趟相遇里的 
四月幻想不属于我们！
</span>

1911

<h1><span lang=""ja"">春の馬車</span></h1>
<h2>translated into Japanese by Tsubasa Somasundaram Inada</h2>

<span lang=""ja"">
青い霧の向こうに、高く昇る
翡翠の丘
野原の中のヒナギクは、色褪せず
潜り戸の隙間には誰かの瞳。
でもこのおとぎ話の、
四月のヒロインは、僕らじゃない！
 
マリア、僕らを見て微笑んだよね
（夢の中で微笑んだ）！
燃え立つ王冠の内に浮かぶ、
あなたの面影、透き通ったアネモネ
しかしこの邂逅は、
四月の陽炎は、遥か遠くでなびいていた
</span>

1911",,"<p>Marina Tsvetaeva was a Russian poet born in Moscow. At the age of eighteen, she published her first collection of poems, Evening Album. Her early works explore topics including gender in construction of identity and the protection of individual right to self-expression. She wrote poems, verse plays, and prose pieces throughout her life, and is considered one of the most renowned poets of the twentieth century.</p>","<p><em>DoubleSpeak</em>’s staff is a group of poetry lovers and language aficionados. We hail from Chicago, IL; Baltimore, MD; Rockville, MD; Columbus, OH; Bronxville, NY; as well as Toronto, Ontario; Shanghai, China; Toyko, Japan; and Beirut, Lebanon. On Thursday nights, you can find us in the Kelly Writers House reading through beautiful poetry submissions. Whether we’re playing multilingual Scrabble or commenting on submissions in rhymed couplets, we’re drawn together by our shared passion for language and translation.</p>

<p>Thank you to all of our proofreaders in the <em>DoubleSpeak</em> community who made this group translation possible!</p>",,English,en,assets/images/images_24/springinawagon.jpg,photo by Tsubasa Somasundaram Inada,,,2024,submission,,0