Day 28: Translation

April 28, 2014/0 Comments/in Poetry, Writing /by Bethany

Here’s a thumbnail portrait of today’s process…

I tried to take seriously Chris Jarmick’s assignment for day 28, to “translate” a poem into English from a language I don’t know. I found a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and printed it out. I carried it around. I don’t know German, but I thought I could make out a few of the words. I opened my poetry book and copied out the poem in longhand. It’s a longish poem (“Erlkoenig” is the title, I think) and I thought I would copy only a stanza or two, but I ended up copying the whole thing. Then…for a long time…I stared at it. Then, I wrote this (please excuse the lack of cool accent marks):

Resisting Translation

The assignment is to translate a poem into English
from a language I don’t know–
and knowing so little of languages other than my own,
it seems an easy enough assignment.

“Translate,” in smart quotes, which must mean,
“not really translate,” though I can guess
that Nacht und Wind
means Night and Wind. (Is that cheating?)

Assignments, I tell my students, are about
getting out of our accountant, linear left brains
and into our creative, more imaginative
right brains, into what poets count our better half.

But aren’t I beyond assignments, beyond
all that sturm und drang, not to mention the Nacht
und Wind? No knave or knabe, not I.
And spat (which I looked up) has nothing to do with spitting,

not even a spitting wind. Mein Vater, my father,
let me off the hook of this difficulty,
let me mutter and growl in my own tongue,
write (whatever it might mean) birgst du so bang.

Day 24: The Clerihew

April 24, 2014/0 Comments/in Poetry, Writing /by Bethany

(image found on the Facebook page of The Plot Whisperer, Martha Alderson)

The clerihew was, as I recall, favored by my mentor, Nelson Bentley, perhaps because the full name of its progenitor was Edmund Clerihew Bentley. It is a four line poem with rhyming couplets, biographical at least in that it begins with someone’s name. The four lines are rhymed AA BB (two couplets) and are of varying lengths and meter (for comic effect). It can contain addition rhymed couplets. This example is said to be Edmund’s first attempt at the form:

Sir Humphrey Davy
Abominated gravy.
He lived in the odium
Of having discovered Sodium.

I resisted this assignment so mightily that I decided there must be a gift for me in doing it. Then, researching this topic, I discovered that July 10 (the birthday of my two older daughters) is National Clerihew Day.

So, a few rhymes from moi:

Alas, said Bethany Reid
I’ve written a terrible screed.
I hoped Poetry Month would make me profound–
Instead it makes my head pound.
I could just refuse,
but now the ink’s–used.
Consider this my apologia
For my April logorrhoea.

Days 22 & 23: Two Poems

April 23, 2014/6 Comments/in Poetry, Writing /by Bethany

Rebellion is good, right? Yesterday I lost a day of my life to a migraine (no exaggeration), and then I was quite busy most of today. But at 3:30, it was Writing Lab time and I sat down and wrote not one but TWO bad-poems. I did not refer to the prompts at POETRYisEVERYTHING, but that might be part of the process (the surprising process). Today, anyway. Please remember that “one-bad-poem” per day this month was my goal. (And, if you’re worried about me, yes I have made an appointment to see my GP and ask for new headache meds.)

Poem One
I’m driving to Writing Lab when a deer leaps
from the grass beside the freeway
into the brush, and beyond that I know
there’s a wall, so I slow down, fearful
for the deer, fearful for coming traffic.
I catch only a final glimpse of a tawny haunch
before it’s gone. I say “deer,” out loud,
and I point, even though I realize,
mid-gesture, that I don’t have a child in the car
with me, and in fact my youngest child,
were she here, would be plugged in
to her music, texting, too; she’d never hear me.
The deer has disappeared faster than my daughters’
childhoods. They were buckled into carseats,
they were small for so long,
and I know at the time it seemed long,
like a river that didn’t end, ever, just kept
unfurling, the ocean an endless distance away.
And now I’m merging from the highway
onto the freeway and I swing into the faster stream
of traffic and I can’t even remember
why I have to wipe my eyes.

Poem Two
A Stellars Jay pokes through the the pink blossoms
of a rhododendron, crooks his head
as if to ask me for a bauble or a seed.
It was late April when we decided
to move Mom from the farmhouse,
and that day, too, there were Stellar Jays
and pink rhodies, those gaudy
Mother’s Day blooms. We mowed the grass
and weeded the flower beds,
tasks that began to feel like the labors of Hercules,
Augean stables of flowerbeds.
“I’ve always done all of this work myself,
all my life,” Mom said, and we brought her a chair
so she could sit on the lawn and watch us,
“All this work.” Head crooked, an inquiring smile.

Day 21: Blessings for Parents

April 21, 2014/2 Comments/in Family Stories, Writing /by Bethany

Today’s assignment at POETRYisEVERYTHING is to write a parody of a well-known poem. I decided, instead, to write an imitation.

One can’t improve on the Beatitudes from Matthew, but they make for an interesting foundation, a kind of map to explore other kinds of blessings. (I remembered, as I worked on my imitation, that “to bless” means, etymologically, “to wound.”) I started writing with the intention of being light, and then it…sort of changed. I’ll let it compost in the drafts file and see if something else cooks up from it.

Beatitudes for Parents

Blessed are the parents of infants, sleep starved as mystics, endlessly rocking, for they shall see visions of all that is possible.

Blessed are the parents of toddlers for they shall learn the limits of earthly patience.

Blessed is any parent of an ailing child for they shall be exposed to their own limitations, they will learn the limits of their own too-permeable limits.

Blessed are the parents of seven-year-olds for they shall be called wise and, if truly wise, they will know how foolish and how brief wisdom can be.

Blessed are the parents of fourteen-year-olds, for, as in the days with toddlers, they will grow infinite patience and yet none will call them wise.

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Here’s a thumbnail portrait of today’s process…