You’re going to have to forgive me from the get go on this
one. As you’ve probably guessed I’ve recently had a bit of an obsession with
Enrique Vila-Matas and when I read his recent work “The Illogic Of Kassel” I
came across a section that I thought totally relevant to the poetic work “Diorama”
by Rocío Cerón.
I dreamed of fields of grass
where beatniks were grazing, fields that split into more fields and then into
killing fields like a sprawling nightmare. And then I dreamed (in the part of
the night closest to me waking and, therefore, to my cheerful morning mood)
that somebody stole my shoes in those fields and told me that the common
revered model of the “great man” was the opposite of poetry and the irreducible
individuality of being unique. This view was the opposite of the poetry of the
unique existence (ephemeral, unrepeatable), which did not need to be written,
but only – and above all – to be lived. This second part of the dream, with its
agreeable observations on the poetry of individuality, must have influenced my
excellent mood the following morning, which was indeed the norm.
Onto “Diorama”, the winner of this year’s Best Translated Book
Award for Poetry, and the excellent “Translator’s Note” at the opening of the
collection:
Translating Rocío Cerón’s Diorama was at first baffling. As an
experienced translator and as a less than conventional poet myself, I know
better than to seek clarity or narrative or concrete structure in experimental
poetry. Nonetheless, it is precisely this sort of legibility that readers often
demand of translated work, which can result in selection bias; difficult,
experimental, or what Cole Swenson calls “immanent” poetry is often left
untranslated in favor of the more familiar and legible. It is essentially
impressionistic, stubbornly elusive, and at times outright hallucinatory.
This book is presented in two sections, the English
translation and the original Spanish versions. This may seem an odd approach,
but when you learn that Rocío Cerón’s “enveloping, fierce live performances”
mean you would gain a lot by trying the lines aloud for themselves “attentive
not only to sound and rhythm but to the play and gripping of the words in the
mouth.” “This is a work that demands to be spoken and heard”. Not only that, Cerón
accompanies her works “with carefully orchestrated multimedia presentations that
include still images, text, and film”.
Opening with ‘Pinhole, 13 ways to inhabit a corner” we have:
I
Ostriches in flight – there are women whose words are ash trees.
Shadow stitch together harbors of air. In the midst of the stampede, a hand
rests on the arc of a kneecap. Cigar and smoke. Rosy cypress sleep. The scent
reaches far beyond the border. From the bureau – power, smile destroyed/ocher
temptation, strophic enjambed body. Vestibule.
For comparison’s sake here is the same section in Spanish
I
Huyen avestruces – hay mujeres cuyas palabras son fresnos.
Sombras hilvanan puertos de aire. Entre la estampida reposa la mano sobre el
talud de una rodilla. Habano y humo. Rojizo ciprés el sueño. El olor sigue más
allá del borde. Desde el buró – poder, sonríe, destruida/tiento ocre, cuerpo
estrófico en el quicio. Vestíbulo.
As we can already see the rhythm, tempo, sound and structure
is very similar indeed. As an experiment I put the Spanish text through the
Google translate tool – this is the output:
I
Huyen ostriches - there are women whose words are ash.
Shadows weave air ports. Among the stampede hand rests on the slope of a knee.
Cigar and smoke. Red cypress sleep. The smell continues beyond the edge. Since
the bureau - power, smiles, destroyed / ocher touch, strophic body in the
doorway. Lobby.
A simple comparison (albeit a lazy one using Google) but already
after five lines of poetry I can see a significant difference. ‘Rosy” or ‘red’?
‘Arc of a kneecap’ or ‘slope of a knee’? ‘Far beyond the border’ or ‘continues
beyond the edge’? And sorry a 'vestibule' is a 'vestibule'...it's not a 'lobby'!!! Each and every comparison showing the deft poetic, linguistic,
rhythmic touch added by translator Anna Rosenwong.
This is not a simple work to read, as our translator points
out, it is best read aloud. However it drags you along building towards a
mighty crescendo, making the “live performance” frenzy a reality as we move
from a ‘Pinhole’ to a ‘Flyover’ through the longer poems ‘A Hundred And Twelve’ ending with ‘Sonata Mandala To The Penumbra Bird’.
Only running to seventy five pages, there is a lot packed into this short work
(including a photo).
Poetry not my forte on this blog, but I purchased this book
based on the Best Translated Book Award win and the comments on the Three
Percent website:
David Shook, the co-founder and
editorial director of Phoneme Media “congratulates translator Anna Rosenwong
for her masterful translation of Rocío Cerón’s Diorama, our first
book of poetry and one of the most fascinating and important books to have been
published in Mexico this century. Phoneme Media is incredibly grateful for the
support of the BTBA’s judges and organizers, to Three Percent and its
indefatigable director Chad Post, to our fellow shortlisted publishing houses,
translators, and authors, and to our readers around the world. Congratulations,
Anna and Rocío, on receiving this much deserved award!”
The opening “Translator’s Note” is a must read as it details
the religious, cultural experiences, it leads you to avenues you didn’t know
existed, and even the “smells” referenced. I must admit it was a very enjoyable
read, one to be taken slowly and absorbed, a work that doesn’t need to be
written it needs “to be lived”.
