[Wgcp-whc] WG/CP--Rothenberg's "Writing Through"

[richard.deming at yale.edu]

Dear All,

The minutes from last Friday's discussion with Nathaniel Mackey are forthcoming
in the next few days.  In the interim, however, I wanted to remind everyone of
our next scheduled meeting: Fri. Oct 13, at 3 PM.  This will be a discussion
with the indefatigable Jerome Rothenberg--poet/translator/anthologist.  We will
be discussing his book Writing Through (Wesleyan UP, 2004).  I'll paste a brief
review from Rain Taxi below.  We'll also discuss how translation and editing
inform Rothenberg's writing of poems, and how his poetic practice informs his
other work.  Rothenberg will also be sharing with us a preview of the table of
contents for volume 3 of Poems for the Millenium.

We have brought a number of copies of Writing Through for group members.  Many
of the copies were distributed at our last session.  There are a few left,
however.  If anyone planning on attending this next session would like a copy
please back channel (richard.deming at yale.edu) and we'll set up a way of getting
the books to you.

Also, a version of the terrific preface to Writing Through can be found at
Cipher Journal, an online journal edited by our own Lucas Klein and devoted to
the translation arts.
http://www.cipherjournal.com/html/rothenberg_translation_composi.html


That's all for now,

Richard Deming,








Writing Through
Translations and Variations
Jerome Rothenberg
Wesleyan University Press ($24.95)
by Jen Besemer

I had thought for a long time of preparing a book of selected translations and
was faced again and again by the dilemma of where translations end and my other
writings begin.... I have had a need (I emphasize: a need) to translate and, by
translating, to connect with the work and the thought of other poets?a matter
of singular importance to me in what I have long taken to be my "project" and
the central activity of my life as a poet.
               ?Jerome Rothenberg

?Selected works? volumes are often challenging for their authors, as Jerome
Rothenberg suggests above, but for readers, especially those seeking a good
overview of a person's oeuvre, they can be extremely valuable. Writing Through,
which covers Rothenberg's masterful "translations and variations" of the works
of other poets, is an unusual collection, as is fitting for a poet of unusual
range. In a sense, these provide a much more intimate portrait of Jerome
Rothenberg than that offered by his original poems?whatever "original" might
mean for a poet whose process involves an active dialogue with otherness,
whether cultural or outside the conventional definition of poetry or language,
having little relation to the popular "hermetic" notion of poetic composition.

Focusing on translations allows readers to gain an appreciation of Jerome
Rothenberg as a poet, certainly, but also (and perhaps more intriguingly) as an
editor and above all, as a reader of poetry. (This word, "reader," is inadequate
especially when discussing Rothenberg's translations of non-written or
non-verbal poetry, so it must be understood here as meaning something more akin
to participant.) Writing Through is a great help to those who may be unfamiliar
with Rothenberg's large, exciting, translation-heavy anthologies, such as
Technicians of the Sacred and the two-volume Poems for the Millennium.

One particularly engaging aspect of Writing Through is the occasional commentary
introducing sections of work or illuminating individual poems. This is an area
in which we clearly see Rothenberg-as-reader, as he lets us inside his
translation process. Translation begins with the reading or experience of what
is being translated, of course; depending on one's relationship to the
language, the first translation any work receives is the private, "silent" one
taking place in the mind of the translator. In his commentaries, Rothenberg
gives us a glimpse into not only his process of choosing how to render his
translations, but also lets us in on the very private experience of a poet
encountering what would be, in many cases, life-changing poems. Poets speak
like lovers in discussing what other poets and poetries mean to them, because
love is the foundation of that meaning, in many ways. It may be mixed with
intellectual interpretation, philosophical coloring, or political concerns, but
underneath all of that is the original passion which demands that the poet form
the ongoing relationship to the work which is essential to the translation
process.

Consider the emphasized word in Rothenberg's "Pre-Face:" need. The most careful
and passionate translators of poets can only be other poets. Tristan Tzara
wrote, in the 1940s, of "poetic necessity," and this is the need that
Rothenberg identifies; for poet/translators the need may be magnified and
intensified by a kind of desperation or frustration at the unavailability of
beloved poets in one's home language. When the poetry in question is dynamic,
alive, and unconstrained by the narrativist pressures of the English language
(and the Cartesian obsession for the rational in European
literature)?specifically, in Rothenberg's ethnopoetic work?this
passionate/poetic necessity becomes even clearer.

The effectiveness of Rothenberg's translations derives in large part from the
sense of need which drove them. Without that need the result would have been
cold texts?reports, accounts, records?and not poems. Whether the poetic
ethnography is more accurate than the "objective" is a fine and fascinating
debate. However, Rothenberg prefers to focus on the poetry itself, and on its
making. His translation never cheats the reader out of the imaginative
experience, nor does it claim some faux-scientific distancing, and yet it is
respectful and an act of honoring in itself. More than that, it contains
information, often in great detail. Look at this section from the sequence "15
Flower World Variations," based on Yaqui Deer Dance songs:

o flower fawn
               about to come out playing
                              in this flower water
out there
               in the flower world
                              the patio of flowers
in the flower water
               playing
                              flower fawn
about to come out playing
               in this flower water

This "variation" preserves and carries forward the Yaqui love for the deer
honored in the Deer Dance, the sense of unity in the many worlds of the Yaqui
culture, and the feeling of the dance itself, in the cyclical repetitions of
phrases. But it is clearly not meant to be a narrative or observational record
of a dance ritual event. The event, the dance, makes itself felt through the
arrangement of the lines, choices of certain words, etc., all of which are
standard elements of poetic composition and entirely within the hands of the
poet.

Jerome Rothenberg is one of a very few contemporary U.S. poets who really
examine, explore, and explode the question, "What is poetry and what is it
for?" His answers are constantly evolving and always compelling. Writing
Through shares some of those answers, and leaves readers themselves asking good
questions. Through the work of poets like Rothenberg, poetry is immediate, ever
new, and necessary.