.
just asking
is this
a poem
or simply
some prose
chopped up
small?
and if I send
it to you
by email
and your filter
declares it
to be spam
is that
a valid criticism?
.
Translation
Poets interpret
what they see and hear
and what they suspect went on
which they didn't see or hear
(or not quite)
and what they think
they would see and hear
in a past time
or even a future
They interpret
their own feelings
and the feelings they wish they'd had
and occasionally
the feelings of others
But like all interpreters
they can only use
the vocabulary
they know
the grammar
they have been taught
and they may sometimes
miss the meaning
entirely
.
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60 comments:
une question en passant
est-ce ici
un poème
ou simplement
de la prose
découpée
très fin ?
et si je
vous l'envoie
par e-mail
et que votre filtre
le classe
dans le courrier indésirable
cette critique
est-elle recevable?
.
Traduction
Les poètes interprètent
ce qu'ils entendent et voient
et les événements qu'ils soupçonnent
sans les avoir vus ni entendus
(ou pas vraiment)
et ce qu'ils pensent
qu'ils pourraient voir et entendre
dans un temps révolu
ou même dans l'avenir
Ils interprètent
leurs propres sentiments
et ceux qu'ils auraient voulu avoir
et parfois
les sentiments des autres
Mais comme tous les interprètes
Ils n'ont d'autres outils que
leur vocabulaire
familier
la grammaire
qu'on leur a enseignée
et il leur arrive parfois
de passer complètement
à côté du sens
It's quite strange to read this just before bedtime after watching Question Time where all concepts of questions and answers are thrown into a surreal mix.
Bizarrely I found myself drawn into the arguments of Michael Gove.
Merci pour la traduction, M. le Traducteur! They read quite well in French, the little pomes. But trust the French to call spam Undesirable Correspondence:)
Mimi, I had to give up watching Question Time, there was always at least one speaker who made me want to spit.
I could have called it le spam
But it doesn't sound like ham
and would have deprived me of a rhyme.
In one's childhood there were no spam filters, as a result of which one was fed so much Spam that now one must be probed repeatedly with owl pellets.
"they can only use
the vocabulary they know"
-Yes.
stimulating piece Zeph, almost provacative! :)
I think some poets see in the dark (some even look there) and hear things in the silences - interpretation then might be directly traduction as you suggest which may imply that the 'words they know' are 'the words that work best' which sort of leads to impressionism does it not? Expressing reflections in language is always running things through a (spam?) filter of sorts no?
great to see the French translation Offie, I'm sure this would be a very popular service among many Others (well, me certainly) please keep it up! (A busmans holiday I know, take care of the pythons first of course)
my own take on this never got finished in time but here it is for what it's worth:
Poetry taxes
Lexicographers not
Yet those who insist on
Exposing the tricks of
The Divine Mysteron
Persist in
Defying definition
But here goes
Poets: swimmers
In the viscous indigo ink
Of metaphysicians.
When feeding Spam to Frenchmen
The comment's often heard
Name of a name and sacred blue!
What's this espece de merde?
But actually, they like it;
Just as they do love Cliff
But Froggies really can't admit
To loving a rosbif.
(Poetry was the Guardian Poster Poems subject for this week) I liked the idea that it's a poem because I say it is, but then if the filter says it's spam, well, who's right?
And all art is translation, no? Translating something from inside the artist's head into a solid form. Or something in the world perceived by the artist in one form, then inside the head and then outside in another form, so three languages! So always limited by/filtered through the artist's knowledge and ability.
The fact that decades ago I studied modern languages probably has something to do with this poem:)
I like yours Filo, I like the viscous indigo ink.
I still think Grace Andreacchi's was something special:
In the quiet of the sea
The words are waiting
Slippery as fish
Zeph--
These have been forcing the old head to work (ack!). The kind of poems that make one think, then. There are those who don't like that kind of poem (well, it does hurt to think). Am not quite one of those. So why not jump in and try.
One poem asks, the other proposes. A question poem and a proposition poem. A well posed question and an interesting proposition.
The first one almost answers its own question in its first part by being just gnomic and thinglike enough to prove itself a poem, then reopens the issue all over again by becoming more anecdotal and topical (thus more proselike) in its second part.
The second one reminds that poetry is an art based on metaphor, from the Greek meta/phorein, to carry across: an art based on carrying something across from one area (call it the subjective or imaginative or poetic) to another (call it the objective or literal or prosaic); all poems then being in this sense acts of translation.
(And as Filo, betraying an understandable poet's envy--moi aussi, Filo!-- suggests, you have already lucked out in this respect, Zeph, by having such an accomplished translator at your service; obviously that diet of vermin and knock-off froggy Pondley Vetch is doing wonders for Offie's verbal powers.)
So thanks for the... thoughts. And I do intend to go on thinking about these. After all, that's what all that grayish cerebral pondley-vetchmatter is allegedly for, non?
BTW Offie & Filo--In case you haven't lately reeled over to Zeph's infinitely cool off-license Art & Animal House (aka The Annexe), be warned that next time you do, you'll find there a post on two deliriously beautiful movies, selected on the exhilarating inspiration of your serene and consoling words...
Speaking of poesy as we are, these are two supremely poetic flicks.
(Also let it be known that no traces of Pondley Vetch contamination have yet been found at The Annexe--though our Toxic Team is even now donning HazMat suits for a careful inspection tour.)
Monsieur Mishari,
Is it true, good sir, that your real name is Blunden-Pease and that you have been lurking here?
http://pseudscorner.blogspot.com/2009/01/report-from-our-cricket-correspondent.html
moi je suis poet
au fond du bistro
my life is a basket
full of pakalolo
poetry when it's good
sounds like music
if I am in the mood
mais je suis poet
au fond du bistro
et rien d'autre a faire
que d'aimer pakalolo
Ah, monsieur Guitou, vous avez ce qu'on appelle le double-posting, permettez-moi de le faire disparaitre...
...And speaking of poetic postings by Zephirine, nobody should miss her Further to...Raccoons over at The Annexe...natural poetry that. Beyond the ken of BillyMillsWorld.
Ah yes, natural poets, those raccoons.
And fond of spam.
Thank you for your thoughtful comments, BTP. I'm pleased to have written something gnomic!
I guess the first verse could be either, but by presenting it as a poem I ask for a certain way of reading it, considering each phrase as it falls... but it could still be just a piece of prose with pretensions:)
Well, the first one answers it's own question, doesn't it.
I have some thoughts on the second, about how "interpret" means so much more than "translate", allowing room for all manner of deconstructions, reconstructions, etc., but I am now running late and will have to come back later and try to say this in a way that makes sense.
I've never actually eaten spam, am I missing anything good?
munni: no.
It tastes kind of slithery, one believes originally most of it came from pigs but hard to tell.
I like the way it's called 'luncheon meat', though, remnant of a bygone day:)
Zeph: thanks, that's about what I thought. I'm sort of mostly vegetarian, but the kind of vegetarian who tries things if they look interesting, and thinks it doesn't count if I take bites off other people's plates.
Lots of British people have a little area of scar tissue in their memory, called School Meals. Spam is in there, along with cold beetroot, butterbeans and lumpy mashed potato.
Munni--
Zeph's spot on about the slitheriness.
Having been forced to eat the stuff regularly all through the early 1940s, I can tell you that even the memory still sends shudders of disgust through my mammalian soul.
The name is an amalgam of "spice" and "ham", two of its principal ingredients. It also contains pork shoulders, sugar, salt, starch and sodium nitrite. You're thinking, "Yuck!" And that isn't the half of it.
I grew up in a slaughterhouse city through which the malodorous aroma of slaughtered animals wafted, of a summer's night on a soft south wind, like the stink of Hell Itself. In such a reeking caldron was born the hideous product of which we speak.
The butcher kings of J. Hormel & Co. invented the stuff in 1937, probably driven by a desire not to waste any of the byproducts of their hideous mass animal murder.
A contest was held to give the stuff a name. The winner got a $100 prize. Almost as good as Big Blogger.
Through World War II it was fed as rations to US soldiers, and also distributed as (extremely dubious, given its entirely unhealthy ingredient package) "humanitarian aid", everywhere the American liberators went. Yet another gift to the world.
Spam consumed in the Americas and Australia is still manufactured in the US. Factories in Denmark, the Philippines and South Korea purvey this exquisite delicacy to the rest of the world.
Bon appetit!
So, in short, the same epithet could apply and we can translate spam as "le jambon indésirable"?
Thanks you all for helping me solve a crucial translation conundrumation.
In Paul Theroux's The Happy Isles of Oceania, he writes of the obesity and consequent heart disease etc. that's reached epidemic proportions in the various Pacific island groups he visited.
Since WW2, the local diet has gone from lots of fresh seafood, veg, fresh pork, coconut products etc. to erm..Spam, mostly. And Coke and Cheetos (for UK readers, an especially nasty snack food-like substance, powdered with a layer of virulent radioactive-yellow chees-like powder popular in the US).
My local cafe, (Whitechapel,London)
still serves Spam fritters--slices of Spam in batter. I tried them once. They were unspeakable.
many thanks for the history of spam y'all, you may just have elevated OS into a world authority on the slithery one (great choice of word Z! How proud you must be to be the host of Spam Central). There have been many Great spams of course; Jaap Spam (the central defender), Steeleye Spam and er...
as to further adventures in Translation v Interpretation v Expression v Filtration v Aesthetics ... I'm tempted to say that it's all Greek to me, but I won't.
"All art is translation" Zeph, does this exclude (and I'm not arguing with you) All art is expression or All art is impression or even All art is reflection?
BtheP, envious? Moi? Absolutement, I've seen your hip pick of the flicks but I just haven't had time to savour them, hope the tide will stop awhile for me to catch up with all these froody threads and even to tickle the palette with fritters at Mishes place
Chapeau G de Cuisine, your verse is a just dessert and certainly amused my bouche
o and munni, I'm the other sort of vegetarion who eats everyting and then feels guilty about that which had a face
File, 'all art is translation' includes all those other -ions because I'm considering the act of moving a piece of art from inside one's head into the outside world to be translation: what you produce will always be a version of what you invented in your mind, translated into the physical form and genre of your choice.
But having said that, it's such a general statement that practically everything else one does becomes a translation too, so how useful it is may be in doubt:)
As I've said before, they didn't teach me philosophy at school. Nor have I repaired that ignorance at any time since, sigh. And most of my writing has been done for people who think Philosophy is a new bar in Shoreditch.
yep, got that Zeph, isn't it also known as the Sunglasses effect? And woo, I'm very glad to hear there's a new bar in Shoreditch, do they stock Absinthe friends?
No, but Thanotology in Bermondsey does.
zeph,
excuse me, I know that philosophy it's not a new bar but a T-shirts company-
or may be the story about filou looking for offside
when: file lose offie?
ah anonymous, i have your email adress flashing on my screen, gotcha!
lousy puns are a poetic injustice , punished under the pseuds code of conduct. Shame!
I am crying, big tears, it's not guitou's pun but the onions I am dicing,
How easily happiness begins by
dicing onions;A lump of sweet butteretc..etc...you may find this William Matthews poem on my blog Guy's gourmet, feel free to visit.
"file lose offie" Guitou, that's one of your worst puns yet!
Have you really got a blog or are you just jealous of Bluedaddy and his cooking? I tried to get him to post recipes in the Annnexe but he wants to do his own thing... fry his own onions...
Zeph,
Having been confined to the pleasant briar-patch or Horsemonger Lane Prison of The Annexe for my double-posting on the Raccoon Thread, I wonder if I will be allowed a small donjon stove upon which to fry up some onions to go with my Spam and Pondley Vetch?
By the way, it's good to have that other convicted double-poster Guitou in there with me for the company--how is it that favourite old standard of his goes, "It's such a lovely place..."?
BTP, there's a fully-fitted virtual kitchen in the Annexe, though Gaston will have gone off duty now. But please don't drop fried onions on the seats in the cinema, it's hell to get the marks out of silk velvet:)
So, what you're really saying is that the translator is the ultimate artist? Thought so.
I'll get my flip flops.
My lord, can't you lit types ever stop nattering on about your precious wee transcreations, when what we folk are here for is the Spam? That's right the Spam. Spam, Spam, Spam. None of your computer bilge or your critical disquisitions thank you very much! Got past all that in the fifth form didn't we! Free at last, no moderator can put a cap on us. We've stood under the sperm trees and drunk of the heady elixir of freedom, swilled a Pondley Vetch, aye have we not. All the world over people just wanna be free. (Heard that one on the Shield, good innit?)
Now let us get right down to it mates. No bovver, your tiresome Paul Thorough or whatsits. Been to Samoa haven't we and seen the natives doing their Spam. Rolling it right up and smoking it quick as you please! Doing the tuna on the sand in a grass skirt and giving a good shout of "F**k!" as the impulse seizes them. Aye, have we not seen it. Spam bloody hell!
Let's get honest here. The appeal of Spam to Samoans is due to its well-known quality of approximating the taste of a human body. Right mate, long pig they call it and no mistake. You global village types with your noses mounted on Macchu Picchu, what would you know of a real folk tradition? Let's call a spade a spade and dig with it. Ethnography is a science, me lovelies. There's a long tradition of eating human flesh in the South Seas. Nothing to be ashamed. Translate that, lads!
Or did you think the Spam marketers didn't know? Didja think it were the interesting oblong metal can appealing to those 400 pound meateaters for its resemblance to an art object? Call it a bomb in a can of cannibal canape? O and your Damien Tell Me Where It Hurts will have his factory assemble a f**ksimile and Sasquatchi will slap a twenty million quid pricetag on it, won't he just? I'll take a Spam sandwich under a sperm tree over a sauteed pregnant gannet any day of this Millennium. And I'll be remembering my ancestors as its rolls its slithery way down my gullet. Mine or somebody's.
Let's forget the critapology and get down to the anthropology. Let's get down to the anthropophagy. Let's forget the socioeconomics. Don't tell me those Ocean folk swill the stuff because they're on the shorts. Mind you who'd need shorts when the weather favours a grass skirt. Not a bit of it, they eat the stuff because it reminds them of Granddad. In the stomach, in the veins, in the genes, it's all the same, mate. One big happy family. Condition humaine, for you froggies in the house.
But don't trust me. Here's a bit of testimony from one of the lads down the local:
"I bought a tin and popped it open, fully expecting to be bowled over by who knows what awful aroma. Didn't happen. The smell was … surprisingly mild. Moreover, the stuff was edible, if salty. Granted, I ate Circus Peanuts without ill effects, and I've had a couple of airline meals that I considered tasty, so maybe I just have a high threshold of disgust. Still, when I see the reaction some people have to this stuff — come on, folks, get a grip. Our ancestors ate meat they'd just killed with a rock. And we ate our ancestors. What's so bad about Spam then?"
But as you're forever on about poetry over here--remembering that silly ass Richard Ingrams' immortal or should I say hermortal words, "People are either Pseuds or Bores unless I happen to like them, in which case they can do no wrong"--let me leave you with a Spam verse or two. The sort of thing you lot are always on about over here, the old tum-te-tum-te-tum. Roll up these lines, my precious wee femimen, and smoke em at your next singalong under the sperm trees--er, poetry-in-translation blogfest.
Pink tender morsel
Glistening with salty gel
What the hell is it?
Oh and before I forget, the perfect gift for that favourite bird of yours. No, I don't mean that cute little palm tern. Stick to your own species, mate. Spam-can earrings — check 'em out at http://www.spamgift.com/).
hi zeph,,did i pick a special day to visit or this place always as lunatic as this thread,,i dont know many names but a lot of the voices seem to have echoes,,
certainly cornyed the markit in beefs about spam,,the good thing about spam is at least its not tripe
Good one, Des (scarlet pumpernickel)...
Sel confession: double posting is an addictionI I must self confess I am an addict ,I am joining
the DP Anonymous-
punning is a malediction, a mental disease named
punnus malus delirium, it can't be treated by medicine or psychotherapy-I could try eating spam and throwing up,but then I would be irreverent about the british cooking, working on the cross-chanel relations to grow more and more poIsonous. This is why I'll try the tripes a la mode de Caen since we are told it's worst.
-
Steady on, Guitou.
Multivalent, I don't know you, but I assure you that occasionally we are all quite sane here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-j3HGeENqEo&feature=related
("Scratches bulging cranium, eyes pop out")
...And for a moment there my ancient syphilitic brain was feeling right at home...
mishari, I don't think scarlet pimpernel is Des Swords. I may be wrong.
People, one name each please. Sock puppets not welcome.
multivalent (3potato4, yes? nice to see you)
No it isn't usually this lunatic. Usually it's a mildly eccentric but pretty cool sort of place, mostly because I work very hard to keep it that way.
Sorry, zeph...but the resemblance is uncanny.
Folks
We're happy to see new people, but this isn't the Guardian blog or any other big public webspace. This is a small quiet cafe with a regular set of customers who have their own style.
I'm moderating comments for a while. Please only post with one version of your pseudonym and don't use more than one identity, or it won't get through.
munni,
everything used to be nice, quiet and peaceful in the morning here.Then came this wild bunch with dissassorted thoughts, making so much noise, I spilled my coffee over file's and zeph's poems and I'm getting all warmed up ready to have a fit, but i cant see their faces-In "Sunset Boulevard" playing a fading silent movie star, Gloria Swanson, scorning the modern talking pictures says:"We had faces in my day"
Well we don't have faces, only our pseuds but we know each other well enough to recognize when there are some phonies gutless guys hidding behind pre-fabbed names to bring their petty art of braggadocio into Zeph's thread-We are going to call Ingrid to get rid of those mockers.
That scarlet pimpernel chappess - well what she said [I'm being really pc conscious here cos really it could only be some chap being so rubbish] well, nearly put me off this site. Don't get the comments/rant, because the beginning seems mean. Actually, most of the rant seems mean and yet wonderfully lacking in irony or wit.
There is no mention of The Larch - which with so much emphasis on Spam would be the next logical step for anyone brought up on Classic British Humour.
I think this poster might be Antipodean.
one of the feature of Zeph's Caf has been the warm, balmy, gentle breeze that blows through it.
myself, I welcome all-comers but if their sails get all puffed-up they probably won't fit under the palm trees here and had probably better hit the wide open seas where they can play with the sharks and tsunami's to their hearts content (which can be fun right? but we all have to chill sometimes...
i have noted your comment on only one name and will in future only use 3p4,,the multivalenttuber was a
minor anomaly but perhaps bad timing since you apparently have a bad case of foot in mouth head up ass sock puppet,,the reason they are hard to pin down is there is two (or more) using each other for camoflage,,i have been following them for a while (da da da doom)
and have a pretty good idea about some of the posts,,i promise not to make waves on your blog,,although i think you already 'know' that i am a White hat and not a Black hat (bad guy),,
ps it is IMPOSSIBLE for me to post
without double commas,,(i have tried) so i am totally unable to hide ,,plus all those capital letters ,,such hard work,,
3p4
(ex dropinbucket,,lost password,, this note for anyone who saw my previous monicker and the double comma eccentricity)
That last comment was from 3potato4, otherwise multivalenttuber - not sure why you came up as anon, 3p4:)
I'd welcome any info you have on vandals, send to email address above. It's not that I want to be too prissy about the site, but people post their carefully-composed work here, some are new writers and it takes courage, it isn't fair to have the comments section full of mayhem.
The double commas are, well, different:)
I was in a double coma once. I blame the Absinthe. And Guitou.
welcome 3tuber4, always enjoyed your poems and posts at GU, hope you'll find time to put one up here
sfunny I always imagined you in an umbrella hat (white of course, more suitable to BC non?) feel sure Other pseuds will appreciate your creative brilliance too
thank you file for your gift of respect,,its very valuable,,
when the muse doth enthuse i will
be pleased to share,,
Oh dear, I'm new around here and I hope that you don't mind me joining in, as I notice there has been some consternation amongst these comments about new people coming in and not respecting others. I must say that I'm amazed by all the brilliant work on here and I would never be abusive about anyone.
Anyway I just wanted to say that I really liked the "translation" poem. I've just recently started writing poetry again and I've been through really depressing moments of thinking that I'll never be a good poet because I don't have a very wide vocabulary. It's reassuring to hear such a good poet as yourself, Zeph, saying that ultimately all a poet can do is to use the language they know. I've realised that I cannot chase the "clever" words I don't know, I wouldn't be able to control them and wield them effectively if they weren't "my" words, but more importantly I realise that I need to take more notice of the words that I do use and whether they really do give the meaning that I want them to.
Anyway, as for spam, anyone remember Bacon Grill? It's a far superior processed meat product...
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