Geoffrey, in one of your interviews,
you talked about capturing the spirit of a translation,
as opposed to just doing a literal one for one
translation.
Could you describe that little a process
and the choices you have to make to capture that spirit?
Sure, I'll try.
I mean, I think, for me, there are
two kind of distinct kinds of translations of poetry.
And they both have, they both can be really valuable.
And they both have an important place.
One kind is the kind of translation
that seems to be a guide to the original poem.
That presumes that you're going to be,
that you maybe have a little bit of knowledge of the original.
And you're using the translation to try
to enhance your knowledge of the original poem.
And some of my favorite translations are that kind.
One of my favorite translations of Dante
is the Singleton translation, which is a prose translation.
It doesn't even pretend that it's
making a verse out of the Divine Comedy.
It just gives you a prose next to Dante's poetry
to say, literally, what the lines mean.
And that's really helpful if you have some Italian, because then
you can use it as a guide.
And you can go back and forth, and you
can have your own knowledge of the original enhanced.
But you would never want to read Singleton
without the original just on its own,
because it has no literary value.
It doesn't generate a literary experience
or an aesthetic experience.
It's just prose.
And so the second kind of translation
is the translation that tries to recreate a literary experience.
It tries to create a text in English that
has, as close as possible, similar kinds of effects
on the reader, as the original text has
on its original readers in its own language.
So I think of those as being really two different projects,
and I do the second kind.
And I read both kinds, but I the only
do is the second kind, because that's,
for me, that's the most rewarding,
is to try to make a new poem.
It really is, that works as a poem in English.
Then it has effects on readers in English
that are hopefully somewhat similar to the effects
that the original poem had.
So in trying to make that kind of translation
I really have to think of the poem more globally,
because you have to take certain kinds of liberties on a phrase
by phrase or a line by line basis.
You take certain kind of liberties
to make it a poem in English.
In some cases, like with the Pascoli poems
I'm trying to also rhyme the poems.
And so that involves certain kinds
of moving things around, or taking some liberties.
But the larger thing that I try to keep in mind
is what is the spirit of the poem?
What is the effect that this has on me?
What is it about, essentially?
And that's the thing I try to be faithful to.
And so take whatever liberties I take
are in the service of that larger thing.
Whereas if I were just worrying about it kind of word
by word or phrase by phrase I would approach it differently.
I mean, I still, again, I still want my translations
to reflect the literal meaning of the original as much
as possible.
And I think they're pretty good at that, as well.
But that's not the only thing I'm thinking about.
So I think we're kind of deaf to our mother tongue.
And my knowledge of French has helped me understand English,
but I just can't hear English.
And I'm really curious to know what
your experience of Italian--
what do you think about English?
And what do you think about the way the mind works, since you
know both languages intimately?
Sure, yeah.
I mean, I think one of the things that translation does do
is it makes you much more conscious
about your own language.
And you learn things about your own language as you translate.
And you learn, for example, that English
can't do this thing quite the way
that this Italian writer did it.
I have to figure out a different way to do it,
because of some quality of English that maybe I'd
never really thought of before.
So I think people who spent a lot of time translating one
of the rewards is you learn all this stuff
about your own language.
And so that's really important to me.
I think that's why so many poets translate, too.
Particularly, I mean, I guess a lot of them a lot
of American poets maybe don't translate.
It's not as common for American poets to be translated.
But in Italy, for example, almost every Italian poet
that I know also translates other languages--
French, or English, or German, or something.
It's really a part.
And I think that's true of a lot of European poetries
and a lot of poetries around the world,
more so than in the States.
We tend to be a little more isolationist linguistically.
And so, for me, that's an important part of it,
is the way the relationship--
the way it teaches me things about my own language.
OK, but how does English sound?
I mean, Italian is beautiful.
[LAUGHS]
And there's a lot of music in ah, ah, ah at the end where--
Sure.
What does English sound like?
Well, I don't know exactly how to say that.
One thing I will say is that for me a big part of the interest,
and the texture, and the music in English
comes from the play of-- to get kind
of technical, the play between Latinate words
and Anglo-Saxon words.
And obviously, Italian is a Latinate English language.
And most languages don't have--
I mean, we have essentially two separate vocabularies.
There's so many things that we have
two words for-- a Latinate word and an Anglo-Saxon word.
And because English is like this bastard child of Norman French
and Anglo-Saxon, and sort of melted, melded together,
and it really enriched the language.
And it left us with all these resources in these options.
And one of the dangers that I was mentioning
in Eileen's class the other day, for a translator
of Italian poetry, is that you have
to be careful not to just always use
the English cognate for whatever Italian word
the Italian writer is using-- because then you'll end up
with a kind of English that's overly Latinate,
and that sounds more cerebral and intellectual.
And the Anglo-Saxon words are the kind
of gritty, down-to-Earth words that actually maybe
have, in general, more poetic force in English.
And so I think a lot about that.
But there's also an interplay between them.
Like Stevens is so great with the Latinate words.
And he uses all these wonderful polysyllables.
But then he'll bounce them off these Anglo-Saxon.
So a lot of the music in English, I think,
comes from the sparks that fly between those two
sets of words.
I have a question for you.
Thank you.
Yes, I'm wondering if you always rhyme your poems
or if you write in forms sometimes?
And if you always rhyme them, why?
Well, no.
I don't always rhyme them.
I don't think all of these that I read tonight rhyme.
Some of them did, but, I mean, I love rhyme in English.
And I think it's under-used in contemporary poetry probably.
I think there was a massive turn away from rhyme and form
in the late '50s, and '60s, and '70s.
And that generated a new energy in American poetry
that had lots of wonderful effects.
But there was also, I think, some things lost in that,
some possibilities lost.
And I think we have all these possibilities that
include free verse and formal, rhymed verse.
And I try to use all of those things.
A number of my poems are in free verse
and don't have any rhyme or meter.
But a lot of them also do.
And it's, I think it also has to do with just a lot with--
it's very idiosyncratic and individual.
My brain just seems to enjoy those kinds of patterns
and making those kinds of patterns,
and wrestling with those kinds of patterns as I write.
And some people's brains really don't enjoy that.
[LAUGHS]
And so I think it's just-- so I think it's largely personal.
I mean, I can come up with theoretical justifications
for why I do things.
And lots of people do that.
But ultimately, I think it comes down to what kind of poems
you like to ride, and what kind of poems you like to read.
And I think rhyme is-- even having two small kids,
you see at an early age how much pleasure rhyme gives, right?
Or, just Dr. Seuss, or all kinds of wordplay--
funny sounds, or repeated rhythms.
Nursery rhymes have these rhythms,
and they give such pleasure.
And then at a certain point, you're
told-- sometimes in a high school English class
or something-- that poetry is not supposed to rhyme anymore.
And so you're supposed to stop that if you're
going to be a serious poet.
And that's not really true.
I've had a lot of students who were just told,
at some point, that they weren't supposed
to write that way anymore.
And despite the fact that Seamus Heaney rhymes,
Elizabeth Bishop rhymes, Derek Walcott rhymes--
all these great poets, contemporary poets rhyme--
I mean there are also lots of great contemporary poets
who don't rhyme.
But it's certainly a viable tool and option still,
despite what some people are told it is.
[LAUGHTER]
One more question.
Sam.
So in your anthology of those 75 poets,
who was the most difficult to translate, and why?
That's a good question.
And I should add that I didn't translate all the poets.
There's a bunch of other translators that I've included.
So I translated some of them, the ones that I'm particularly
drawn to, or maybe poets where I couldn't find good existing
translations.
But I also used a bunch of other translators.
So I can only speak about the ones that I translated.
And boy, they all have--
Pascoli I find very difficult, but very rewarding, too--
because, in part, because he does
always was writing before modernism.
So they're all rhymed and metered.
For me, a lot of the pleasures of those poems
are connected to the formal qualities of them.
And so it's important to me to bring those across.
Whereas the one in Patrizia Cavalli that I read,
second after Pascoli, she also actually uses
some rhyme and some meter.
But she uses it in a much more irregular,
casual way that's easier to--
it's not as strict.
And so it's easier to translate, I guess,
and to get similar effects.
But Pascoli is difficult. And so I always
feel particularly satisfied when I
managed to make one of his poems work in English.
Or, when I feel it works in English
I feel satisfied, because a number of his poems
I've tried to translate and they just haven't worked.
And I have given up on them.
So he's one of them.
And I guess, there are other poets that I just would never
try to translate, as they seem too difficult like Amelia
Rosselli, who's a wonderful, experimental poet of the 1960s
and '70s.
x I can't get my head around the idea of translating her,
because she's so difficult for various reasons
that I won't go into.
But there are some other people who
have done wonderful jobs translating her.
OK.
I'm sorry.
We need to wrap up, because we have not yet
fed Geoffrey today.
[LAUGHTER]
We have to do that.
Before-- I mean, can you say again
the name of your second book that's coming out,
and where it's coming from?
It's probably called Voices Bright Flags,
but there's some conversation about that timeline.
It's coming out in November from a press called Waywiser Press.
I should also mention about the Patrizia Cavalli
that there was just a selected poems of Patrizia Cavalli
that came out from Farrar, Strauss last fall.
And it includes a number of my translations,
but also a number of other translators like Mark Strand,
and Jorie Graham, and Gini Alhadeff,
who is the editor of the collection.
And that's a wonderful book.
I don't know if you guys have it here yet, or not but--
We'll check.
--you probably do.
[LAUGHTER]
It's been such a delight to have you.
Everyone, let's give Geoffrey--
Thank you, guys.
--another round of applause.
[APPLAUSE]