WEBVTT

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Thanks a lot.

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That was great.

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Simple question-- the last name
of the Bolivian poet Jaime?

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Sáenz, S-Á-E-N-Z, Jaime Sáenz.

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Thank you.

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Yeah.

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And now I'm remembering
those things

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I wanted to say in
the beginning too.

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Like, one of the
things, I wanted

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to thank Tyler because I
just really like his spirit.

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I met him when he
was a grad student.

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And he's, like, he's naked.

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He's just, like, so purely
there and present and honest.

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I really-- what a
great person to be.

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[APPLAUSE]

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Hi Forrest.

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Can you say a little
bit-- you kind of alluded

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to it-- but about your practice,
getting ready, studying up

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on the author before
you do a translation?

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Like, you talked about
seeing Neruda's library.

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Maybe you can speak about
it in terms of Neruda

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or terms of anyone
who translated.

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Yeah, well, I think it's--

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one of the things I'm
really interested in,

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in my own poetry,
is the relationship

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of different places, landscapes,
cityscapes, to language,

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how it affects our
perception and how

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that perceptual
relationship to our space

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affects how we use words, and
even the kinds of metaphors,

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for instance, that we might use.

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So, for me, it's really
important to go to the place

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where a poet is.

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So I first tried translating
Sáenz with Kent Johnson before

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going to Bolivia.

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But it was only when
we went to Bolivia

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that we understood his work
and saw this landscape,

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and it began to make sense
to us, and talked to people.

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And then, also,
you pick up nuances

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of language that you don't
have in books, from the locale.

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So a part of studying
for a translation

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is, if you possibly can,
going to the place where

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the poet was.

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I have a question
now, back here.

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Hello.

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So I'm wondering about that
process of co-translation

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with Kent and/or
with Keith Waldrop

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and/or any other
partners you've had,

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what that process
looks like, and if it's

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the same across those two, or
et cetera, just to describe it.

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Yeah, Keith and I both
separately co-translated poems

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with Xue Di.

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So Keith and I weren't
working together,

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though I would have been
proud to work with Keith.

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The only person I've
really co-translated with,

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I did two books with Kent
Johnson of this same visionary

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Bolivian poet Jaime Sáenz.

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And it was a
terrific experience.

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I really love the way that
collaboration and translation

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humble the ego.

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That working with
someone, you give up--

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and that, in even
translating, I think

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of it as a spiritual activity
that you have to disappear.

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You have to get out of your
ego, and out of your head,

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and out of the rhythms that
you make your poetry with.

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So far out of them
that that space can

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fill with someone else's mind.

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The music that was in someone
else's mind, who may not even

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exist anymore.

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That's a spiritual openness.

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And then you come back with
everything that you have.

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But my experience
working with Kent,

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who has a bit of a
reputation as a hothead,

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was absolutely terrific.

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And we worked really
well together.

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So I'm really
interested in the way

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that translation kind
of exists in the mind

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as a series of
possibilities, and then,

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to get it onto the page, you
have to make decisions, right?

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And I feel like some
translators I've

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talked to have resisted
that moment of decision

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for as long as possible,
And some translators

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get there a little bit faster.

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Could you talk about what
the moment of decision,

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as a translator,
is like for you?

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The best answer to
that question would

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be to show you books
that I've published

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of translations that I've
corrected and [INAUDIBLE]..

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But also, it's a
really good question.

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The most recent
project that I had,

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which I have to warn you about
in case you go over there,

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because I see some
piles of them,

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is a Japanese poet named Gozo
Yoshimasu, Yoshimasu Gozo.

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And his work has been considered
the most untranslatable work

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that there could be.

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He writes in three different
kinds of Japanese script.

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He's making visual rhymes
between Chinese characters

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and Japanese characters.

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And the sounds that--

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the visual sign often
can be pronounced

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in two different ways.

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He's playing with
rhymes like that.

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He's also very influenced
by Okinawan shamanism,

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and goes to places of trauma,
like Fukushima most recently,

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and sets up a space
and listens for ghosts.

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And in his work, it takes
everything into account.

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Anyone who speaks to him,
he gives an honorific to.

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Mr. Sakinora said to me,
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

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The honorable dog
of Mr. Sakinora

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was walking along beside us.

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It's this incredible generosity
that makes an almost impossible

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poetry to read on the page.

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And I'd looked at-- there
were earlier translations

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of his work, from the
'60s, that were terrible,

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that were just
semantic translations.

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So just what he was
saying semantically,

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which isn't at all
what makes poetry.

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So I thought the best
way to go at poetry

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like this would be
to find these hotshot

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younger Japanese
translators, which

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we have now, who have been
raised up in postmodernism

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and might be able to
approach his work from lots

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of different directions.

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And so I edited a book, asking a
number of different translators

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to translate them.

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And each of them approaches in
a very different way, recovering

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some things, losing some things.

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But the combination of
having all those translators

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gives the largest, I think,
effect of Gozo's work.

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These lost works of Neruda,
how do you answer claims

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that, since they were so
obscure, that they may not

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have been his best
work, or that he

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felt they were his best work?

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How do you square that?

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You're the one that has
to square it, you know?

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I thought exactly that.

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And then I looked at the work.

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And you heard it.

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It's, like-- it's Neruda.

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And he wrote so much, and
he was traveling so much.

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I don't know if you've
seen the new Neruda film.

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It's actually not so bad.

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It's pretty good.

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I liked it.

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But he's traveling
all over the world.

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He's writing wherever he goes.

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And he's got things
that he stuffs

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in notebooks and everywhere,
and they get lost.

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But some of it is
clearly not finished.

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The first poem I read
ends with a comma.

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And some of it is
finished and is strong.

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But you're the--
we're the judge, yeah.

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Great, well, let's all judge.

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Thank you, Forrest.

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[APPLAUSE]

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Joshua mentioned it
in the introduction,

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but I was intrigued by
what you said about putting

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your own writing on hold.

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And during the translation, you
acquire a different vocabulary

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and adopt a fresh set of
syntactical and rhythmical

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strategies, which
I found intriguing.

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Was there something you
could say about that,

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from different languages
that you're translating

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in your unique [INAUDIBLE].

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Yes, absolutely.

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And that's what I think
the beauty of translation

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is, that if we don't have
other languages translated

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into English, carrying with
them those elements that

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are novel to English--

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syntactical, rhythmic,
ideational, and imagistic--

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then a language dies.

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And it's translation that
keeps our language changing

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and alive.

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And you know, one might
connect that to immigration.

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[APPLAUSE]

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