They're the two Latin names to refer--
well, two of several Latin names to refer to the Virgin.
It's found in an origin as well as house.
I believe [INAUDIBLE] sort of like going back to that mother,
and at the same time to my own mother, mothers in general--
motherhood I guess.
Just curious.
How many people speak some Spanish?
Oh, great.
Yeah.
Tucson, yeah.
[LAUGHTER]
I think she'll have a different kind of answer.
She's translated so many different people.
And I think it's varied with the people that she's worked with.
In translating this book, she pretty much left me on my own
I think to better teach me to be a patient translator.
So even sometimes when I made a mistake she would say, oh,
yeah, that's fine.
And then like three months later,
I'd say, wait, that wasn't fine.
And so I sort of worked on my own a lot.
And then more recently we started
to do things a little more in contact with each other.
And I think she's worked in different ways
with Seamus and--
Yes, well, each poet that one translates is a different trip.
So there's different risks and different abysses I guess.
So as a translator, because I have experienced poets that
have been with me the whole time,
like with a magnifying glass and in my fortunes
and my misfortunes and whatever I have done,
as well as people who have left me just
go on with the trip on my own--
I respect the place of the translator as a creator.
And I think that intervening too much
is not letting that person in peace
do whatever he is trying to do.
And the more freedom, the better the versions, at least
in my experience.
Does that answer [INAUDIBLE]?
Well, that's why I think translation is so important,
because it does bring different rhythms and images and ideas
and ranges of association into a language.
And English, which is so much the language of power,
it's sort of injecting it with some things
that it's usually injecting the rest of the world with.
Because translation is also always concerned
with the flow of power.
So I really like opening up the English language
with the different patterns that come out
of Latin American poetry.
Sometimes, more specifically in translating Pura's poetry,
you hear, Pura's poetry is so mellifluous.
And Spanish can be so fluid, more fluid
than I can make the English.
And sometimes, because the vowels
are so focused upon in her work, I can't catch that in vowels.
Sometimes, well, she'll have a run of these beautiful vowel
sounds.
I'll try to make an equivalent with consonants, because I
can't hit it in vowel sounds.
So you find ways of going for equivalences
in the different languages to try to make something
of an approximate power happen.
And that's always a pleasure.
It's not even accepted in Mexico City.
[LAUGHTER]
[INAUDIBLE] to tell you the truth.
No, it is accepted.
I'm just joking.
But Mexico City is, as you all know, a place where
everything is happening.
Very rarely you will find another city-- well
Guadalajara is being more and more
because they have now the book fair, the International Book
Fair.
So they're more interested in having
readings and things I guess.
But readings are not that common.
Poets publish a lot and find ways of publishing
through the government.
The government supports a lot of the poets.
They are part of this National-- the equivalent of the National
Endowment for the Arts.
And so the government gives money
for publishing of their books and other things.
And the books get to children's libraries and free libraries.
And it's around the country as much as it can be.
But readings are not popular.
And I get more acceptance of my poetry
from people that are not writing or people that are not--
it's always a miracle and a surprise
to get the acknowledgment of another poet in Mexico.
It's a very rare jewel.
I don't-- and men poets, it's difficult.
So when you get a compliment like the one
we got from Eliot Weinberger the other day, I mean,
that is really something.
So fortunately, I'm not writing poetry
that is directed towards acceptance or an audience.
But it is there, definitely.
Sometimes it's just something that happens, a gift, I mean,
when you really are satisfied with something.
And I guess the more you know a poet, the more his style.
And the more you have been struggling
or are in the deepest of pleasures with his style
and trying to find equivalences, the better the translations.
But sometimes it's just a question
of chance of something happening.
Of course, the more you work, the better.
I mean, not work enough to destroy the poem
and keep one word, but to work seriously enough.
And I take translation very seriously.
It's probably against myself, but I do take it seriously.
The ones that Bob Hass went to Mexico to-- for the launching
of one of the books of his that I had translated--
one of my teachers at the university, who had been my--
what I call my teacher with capital M, Maestro--
got near me and said, god, when he reads his poetry,
it's just as an everyday thing.
And when you read it, it's like it's the Bible or something--
really, really serious.
And that's language.
It's not my translation.
It's the god in language more than the god in poetry that
is expressing itself I guess.
I don't know if I understand your question--
Well, I know.
I--
--differently.
Perhaps I said something--
I mean--
Well, you're creating a new poem.
Oh, definitely.
So your skill for poetry is going
to affect your translation [INAUDIBLE]??
Yeah.
So I just wanted a response--
You don't-- you can't be frivolous in this.
If you have a poem that has a challenge in form,
you can't ignore that.
I mean, It will be very easy just
to do something that is clever and well done
because you already know, more or less, the tricks
of the trade or whatever.
But it's not that.
That's not the point.
Pura, tell them about the two-- the anthology
that came out where the first volume is translated
by scholars, and the second part is translated by the poet.
I mean, that's--
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
Every time I say this, I feel worse and worse.
Well, there was this fantastic enterprise carried out
by the National University of Mexico
of an anthology, a comprehensive anthology,
bilingual from Edgar Allan Poe to the Beats.
And then they decided to go on further.
So they made two volumes, one that was before the Beats
and one that had more modern contemporary poetry.
And the first one was done by academics.
And the second one was done by poets that are translators.
And the results are very, very different.
[INAUDIBLE]
Yeah.
Don't ask me what I prefer.
I think it's all a matter--
[LAUGHTER]
Thank you very much.
Thanks a lot.
[APPLAUSE]