{"title":"Mark Leech","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"modern-poetry-in-translation-series-3-no10-the-big-green-issue","title":"Modern Poetry in Translation (Series 3 No.10) The Big Green Issue","description":"\u003ci\u003eMigration\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eat the very first stirring\u003cbr\u003emy airtight, upright\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003esarcophagus breaks \u003cbr\u003einto pieces,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eeach fragment starting to turn green\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eeven as it falls …\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMartii Hynynen, translated from the Finnish by Mike Horwood\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eModern Poetry in Translation Third Series, No. 10\u003c\/i\u003e is dedicated to the beauty, abundance and plight of Mother Earth. This autumn MPT will be truly internationalist. Work from all quarters, out of as many languages as possible, will demonstrate an obvious fact: on Planet Earth we sink or swim together. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe arguments will be polemical, saying the things that must be said, but also celebratory, so that we see, yet again, what it is we risk losing.  Poetry, translated and original, essays, anecdotes, photographs, and illustrations, all of the highest quality, show up wrong attitudes and the deeds they encourage; but also indicate how we might live better in the living world. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFounded by Ted Hughes and Daniel Weissbort in 1966 and now edited by David and Helen Constantine – based in Oxford; Modern Poetry in Translation is Britain’s most important poetry translation publication. \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eMPT publishes translations, original poems, reviews and short essays that address such characteristic signs of our times as exile, the movement of peoples, the search for asylum, and the speaking of languages outside their native home.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eContents:\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEditorial\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBewketu Seyoum, poems, translated by the author and Chris Beckett\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMartti Hynynen, five poems, translated by Mike Horwood\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOliver Reynolds, ‘Rosenegg’s Night’\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWaldo Williams, ‘Spring 1946’, translated by Jason Walford Davies\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePascale Petit, four poems\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRocco Scotellaro, poems, translated by Alen Prowle\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRobert Saxton, sonnets from Hesiod’s Calendar\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnna Lewis, ‘The Wash-house’, from the Mabinogion \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJoão de Jesus Paes Loureiro, two poems, translated by Stefan Tobler\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAntônio Moura, three poems, translated by Stefan Tobler\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMary-Ann Constantine, ‘Notre Dame de Port Blanc’, from the Breton ‘Itron Varia ar Porz-Gwenn’\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTerry Gifford, Ted Hughes, Translation and Ecopoetics\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePauline Stainer, six poems\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Nosbaum, ‘Cape Weavers’\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSiriol Troup, three  poems\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDante, Purgatory, Canto 11, 1-36, translated by Mark Leech\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWulf Kirsten, ‘village’, translated by Dennis Tomlinson\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWulf Kirsten, ‘Bleak Place’, translated by Stefan Tobler\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eElisha Porat, three poems, translated by Cindy Eisner\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnne Cluysenaar, two poems\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePedro Serrano, ‘Swallows’, translated by Anna Crowe\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnna Crowe, ‘The Mysterious Starling’\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNaomi Jaffa, Aldeburgh 2008\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYi Sha, five poems, translated by Simon Patton and Tao Naikan\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAntjie Krog, ‘the unhomely’\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFarzaneh Khojandi, two poems, translated by Jo Shapcott\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRose Scooler, ‘Mica Parade’, translated by Sibyl Ruth\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTomas Venclova, three poems, translated by Ellen Hinsey\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePhotos from Durham?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFranz Hodjak, six poems, translated by Peter Oram\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eZsuzsa Beney, five poems, translated by George Szirtes\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCesare Pavese, five poems, translated by David Douglas\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEugeniusz Tkaczyszyn-Dycki, five poems, translated by Bill Johnston\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJerzy Harasymowicz, four poems, translated by Maria Rewakowicz, with illustrations by Swava Harasymowicz\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEugene Dubnov, two poems, translated, with the author, by Vernon Scannell, Anne Ridler and John Heath-Stubbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eReviews\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCecilia Rossi, on translations of Pura López-Colomé, Dulce María Loynaz and Mercedes Roffé\u003cbr\u003ePaschalis Nikolaou on Richard Burns’s The Blue Butterfly\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBelinda Cooke on Sasha Dugdale’s Elena Shvarts\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDavid Constantine on Poems from Guantánamo and two Hafan Books\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJosephine Balmer, Further Reviews\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e Extracts \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e Rocco Scotellaro, Poems, Translated by Allen Prowle \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e   Rocco Scotellaro never saw his poems published.  In 1954, the year after his cruelly premature death from a heart attack at the age of thirty, E Fatto Giorno (Day Break), edited by his friend Carlo Levi, was published by Mondadori, and was awarded the Viareggio prize.  He was the gifted son of a very poor family from Lucania, a mountainous and impoverished region of the Italian mezzogiorno.  His parents made great sacrifices so that he could enrol at Rome University to study law, but the war and then the death of his father forced him to leave without completing his degree.  He was of that young generation which saw the post-war years as a real opportunity to establish a just and egalitarian society, and to improve the material lives of the poor.  At 23, he was elected as socialist mayor of his home town, Tricarico, and became actively engaged in the struggle for land reform.  Inevitably, this brought him into conflict with the landowners, many of whom had welcomed his election believing that this son of a shoemaker could be easily manipulated.  Victim of a political vendetta, he was imprisoned in Matera.  The charges of corruption were spurious and he was acquitted after two months.  He resigned as mayor and left for Portici, near Naples, where for some three years he studied at a research centre in agrarian economics.  It was in Portici that he died.\u003cbr\u003e   One hears in these poems a voice, or rather, voices that had scarcely reached the ears of any public, let alone one given to reading poems.  They narrate an archaic rural way of life dominated by the seasons, the harshness of place and weather, the need to feed one’s family, but the sense of timelessness is sometimes disrupted by poems which relate contemporary events, such as the political defeat of 18 April 1948, the discovery that the agrarian reform plan had handed the peasants largely uncultivable strips of rocky ground, the death of his brother-in-law in the Greek expedition, the retreat of campaigning field- hands from the bosses’ bully boys.  Scotellaro, political activist that he was, is no populist poet.  He lets us share his ambivalence towards a moment in history when the past and the possible future are in contention.  He was never able to commit himself utterly to an intellectual environment where reform and political change were debated; emotional ties to an ancestral past, whose limitations and inertia so frustrated him, frequently brought him back from the city.  The muleteer’s daughter was ultimately more difficult to leave than the city girlfriend.  His poetry is encamped in that border country where Raymond Williams also lived:  pitched between attraction and repulsion, affection and irritation.  The quarrel with others would have inspired, as Yeats claimed, a discourse of rhetoric, something Scotellaro no doubt kept for the hustings and public meetings.  It was out of the quarrel with himself that he wrote many of the most telling poems in E Fatto Giorno.\u003cbr\u003e                                                          \u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e The violets are children with bare feet \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe leaves are fresh on the almond trees,\u003cbr\u003espring water rains from stone walls;\u003cbr\u003etrotting lightly, the donkeys choose\u003cbr\u003ethe friendlier of the river’s banks;\u003cbr\u003ethe girls with the darkest eyes\u003cbr\u003eclamber on the squeaking cart, aloof.\u003cbr\u003eMarch is a baby, laughing already, in its swaddling clothes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd you can forget the winter,\u003cbr\u003ewho, bent by bundles of wood,\u003cbr\u003ehave told your beads,\u003cbr\u003emile after freezing mile,\u003cbr\u003eto roast your face by the fire. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNow ticks come back to the horses,\u003cbr\u003ein the stables flies stir the air,\u003cbr\u003eand children with bare feet\u003cbr\u003echarge upon clumps of violet.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e Already you can smell the apples on the air \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAlready you can smell the apples on the air\u003cbr\u003eand you can sleep the deepest sleep,\u003cbr\u003eno moth flies in \u003cbr\u003eto flutter round the lamp.\u003cbr\u003eBut I have never heard, in late October,\u003cbr\u003eso many unfamiliar voices\u003cbr\u003ereach me from the street;\u003cbr\u003emy father was strapping up my trunk,\u003cbr\u003emy sister repairing my clothes,\u003cbr\u003eand I was having to leave to study\u003cbr\u003ein a city which I did not know!\u003cbr\u003eI felt my spirit turn to milk\u003cbr\u003ewhen my friends spoke consoling words,\u003cbr\u003enot moving, lonely and shy, from their doors.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePerhaps now I ought to leave in silence,\u003cbr\u003ewithout a backward glance at anyone;\u003cbr\u003eI’ll seek some trade or other.\u003cbr\u003eHere, a rag flutters on its threads,\u003cbr\u003eand leaves from the apples scenting the air\u003cbr\u003eare settling on my head.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e Forlorn cuckoo, your call keeps us awake \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAll round the brown mountains\u003cbr\u003eyour colour has crept back,\u003cbr\u003eour old September friend.\u003cbr\u003eYou’ve settled in among us.\u003cbr\u003eWhen, fleeing the burnt stubble\u003cbr\u003eof our fields, castaway crickets\u003cbr\u003escreech at the doors,\u003cbr\u003eour women have heard you quite close.\u003cbr\u003eFrom the vaulted ceilings hang\u003cbr\u003estrings of dried figs and green tomatoes;\u003cbr\u003ethere’s a sack of hard wheat,\u003cbr\u003ea heap of felled almonds.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eForlorn cuckoo,\u003cbr\u003eyour call\u003cbr\u003ekeeps us awake:\u003cbr\u003eYes, we’ll trudge back along the paths \u003cbr\u003eand, tomorrow, get down to work,\u003cbr\u003ewhen water streams yellow again\u003cbr\u003eunder the furrows,\u003cbr\u003eand the wind billows\u003cbr\u003eour coats in the cupboards.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e To the muleteer’s daughter \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI cannot live beside you any longer,\u003cbr\u003esomething stifles my voice.\u003cbr\u003eYou are the muleteer’s daughter\u003cbr\u003eand you take away my breath.\u003cbr\u003eBecause below us, in the stable,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e Mark Leech\u003cbr\u003e‘Oil’\u003cbr\u003eA version of Dante, Purgatory canto xix, 1-36 \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDante’s dream encounter with the Siren is a sudden lurch in the otherwise upward progress of the Purgatorio. Standing alone, it captures the nightmarish quality of humankind’s addiction to its own destruction – yet at the same time offers some hope of escape. This version was written alongside similar re-imaginings of several Old English poems. Like many translations, it is an experiment in bringing the perspective and authority of a particular text directly to bear on a modern problem, and vice versa, while keeping the framework of the original vision intact.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e Oil \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen the day had given up the world\u003cbr\u003eto the hard moon, thrashed by Earth\u003cbr\u003eor Saturn, or some other punisher\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethe hour that prophets foretell the rising\u003cbr\u003eof great stars out east down roads\u003cbr\u003ethat flare with falling shells\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ea woman came staggering to me\u003cbr\u003eeye-pained, foot-bound, hands\u003cbr\u003eyellowed with a cancer.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy gaze upon her membraned flesh\u003cbr\u003ejerked her straight, as from a morgue\u003cbr\u003eher tongue slopping free\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eher body stiff like one about to fall.\u003cbr\u003eHer face washed in a flood of colour –\u003cbr\u003esome lust, or blood, had burst its banks.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSo her story was released, and she\u003cbr\u003ekeened a note that held me closer\u003cbr\u003ethan any prayer-built hope:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e‘I the Siren, sweet in my throat,\u003cbr\u003esweet on the sea, bring crude men\u003cbr\u003eto ruin, spilt on rocks and currents.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWandering Ulysses was trapped in my slick:\u003cbr\u003eany man who’s burned for me is caught – \u003cbr\u003eno engine can undo my grip.’\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAt her pause a lady, cold, stepped\u003cbr\u003ebetween us. Her icy breath thinned\u003cbr\u003ethe Siren’s spell to air, invisible.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e‘She’s got him! He’s bending to her lips!’\u003cbr\u003eMy guide was closing in, eyes fixed\u003cbr\u003eon her white shroud. He grabbed the Siren\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eand laid her open, the belly slack, \u003cbr\u003estinking, choking me, waking me\u003cbr\u003ewith poisoned air. My eyes fell\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eon my guide. ‘Three times I’ve called on you\u003cbr\u003eto wake!’ he said. ‘Now rise: this path\u003cbr\u003ewill take us on to lighter skies.’\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethe mules are restless, though asleep,\u003cbr\u003eand your father, snoring nearby,\u003cbr\u003ehas not yet clambered on his cart\u003cbr\u003eto beat away the stars with his whip.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e Anna Lewis\u003cbr\u003eThe Wash-house\u003cbr\u003ePoems from the Mabinogion \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNote\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis sequence is drawn from the story of Blodeuedd, found in the Mabinogion, the major collection of Medieval Welsh tales.  Blodeuedd is often thought to represent the natural world in human form; connections and tensions between humans and the natural environment run throughout the story.  The sequence is told from the imagined perspective of Blodeuedd’s maid.  Blodeuedd is created from wild flowers by magic, to be the bride for a young nobleman, but begins an affair with another man, who encourages her to kill her husband and appropriate his land.  Their attempt at murder fails when her husband transforms into an eagle, and flies out of sight.  Blodeuedd’s husband is later reinstated by his uncle, a magician, who then pursues Blodeuedd, and turns her into an owl as punishment for her disloyalty.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e 3 \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAutumn shakes into winter,\u003cbr\u003eand we all settle down to our snow-pace:\u003cbr\u003eslow hours under candle-light, patching and darning \u003cbr\u003ethe woollens, salting and curing small game.\u003cbr\u003eI don’t see so much of the girl – \u003cbr\u003eher husband away, she keeps her door bolted,\u003cbr\u003ewon’t meet my eye when we pass in the halls.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut we’ve had her pegged, in the wash-rooms and kitchens,\u003cbr\u003esince the first snowdrop came shouldering up through the frost;\u003cbr\u003esince the daffodils, all statuesque and deep blonde,\u003cbr\u003eand the plum trees, scattering petals\u003cbr\u003eover the still-rigid ground.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt gets no warmer, \u003cbr\u003esunlight shallow and brief on the field.\u003cbr\u003eHer door bangs at midnight, and again before dawn;\u003cbr\u003eshe sleeps later, talks faster, flagrant\u003cbr\u003eas the clematis limbering over her window.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e João de Jesus Paes Loureiro\u003cbr\u003eTwo poems\u003cbr\u003eTranslated by Stefan Tobler \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJoão de Jesus Paes Loureiro was born in a small town in Pará, in the eastern Amazon region, and is a poet and professor of aesthetics, the history of art and Amazonian culture at the Federal University of Pará (UFPA). His first collection Tarefa was published in 1964, just before the military coup that brought a dictatorship to Brazil. Tarefa was confiscated and Paes Loureiro imprisoned for months. A prolific poet, his collections include the trilogy Cantares Amazônicos which has been translated into German and Italian. The focus moves from the Amazon's indigenous culture and history in the first book Porantim (1979), via increasing rural and cultural devastation in Deslendário (1981) to a large Amazonian city, Belém, and the many dispossessed who end up there, in  Altar em Chamas (1982), the collection from which 'A Criminal Recipe' and 'Workers' are taken.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e A Criminal Recipe \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLet him be born.\u003cbr\u003eThe bed of poverty\u003cbr\u003e\t\tis a good measure . . .\u003cbr\u003eHe’ll grow up without milk\u003cbr\u003eand without greens.\u003cbr\u003eThe mud below the house’s stilts\u003cbr\u003e\t\tis bound to give him\u003cbr\u003ethe tides’ inheritance of worms.\u003cbr\u003eIt’s a good thing he’s got the samba groove.\u003cbr\u003eHe won’t have schools\u003cbr\u003e\t\t\tnor a childhood.\u003cbr\u003eAnd youth, would be better it didn’t blossom\u003cbr\u003ebecause the stem of his love\u003cbr\u003e\t\t\t        has been castrated.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe day on which he goes out\u003cbr\u003e\t\t\t          partner of the moon\u003cbr\u003e(revolver in his belt\u003cbr\u003e\t\t       and a decision in his eyes)\u003cbr\u003ehe’ll be meat, peppered with bullets.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e Zsuzsa Beney\u003cbr\u003eFive poems\u003cbr\u003eTranslated by George Szirtes \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eZsuzsa Beney, Hungarian poet, essayist and surgeon,  was born in Budapest in 1930. Her first book of poems, Tüzföld (Fire-earth) appeared in 1972 with an introduction by Sándor Weöres, one the greatest Hungarian poets of the century. She produced a book of essays the next year and the first of her two novels in 1974. Her 1993 book of essays, Szó és csend között, was published in the UK by Mare's Nest as Between Sound and Silence, translated by Mark Griffiths. The essays in it are mainly philosophical and mystical meditations following the death of her husband. Her poems are contemplative, often preoccupied by suffering and the borders of existence and non-existence. She continued as a surgeon to her seventieth birthday. She died in July 2006.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e The River\u003cbr\u003e(A folyó) \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThrough what sluices has it swept\u003cbr\u003ebefore it finally reached my home\u003cbr\u003eof clay soil and carved its crumbling bed?\u003cbr\u003eEternity humming from its dark source.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThe non-transparent water shows time\u003cbr\u003eonly its wrinkled silk surface.\u003cbr\u003eMirror images of sparkling light.\u003cbr\u003eWaves sliding one under the other.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eBroken tiles in the mirror,\u003cbr\u003ecracking, and still another glass,\u003cbr\u003ebetween was and will be, I became \/ I’ll not be,\u003cbr\u003erunning water’s burning catharsis.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e Dust\u003cbr\u003e(Por) \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThere’s nothing I hate more than dust\u003cbr\u003ein corners of the room, in understanding.\u003cbr\u003eBut I can no longer clean everything.\u003cbr\u003eI’ve strength enough for work, but not for cleanness.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eI live in half-light. Literally half-light.\u003cbr\u003eMy eyes no longer tolerate the sun.\u003cbr\u003eMy heart can’t manage all your empathies.\u003cbr\u003eI don’t look into death’s eyes unafraid.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eBecause there are no gates of death, just slow\u003cbr\u003egatherings of dust. Mud and dirt cover our lives.\u003cbr\u003eThey gather in the corners of our souls.\u003cbr\u003eWe can’t step into the light for fear of drowning.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e Into the spider’s web…\u003cbr\u003e(A pókhálóba…) \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eGod entangled in the spider’s web\u003cbr\u003ebecomes immobile, a dummy,\u003cbr\u003ewoven into easily-broken\u003cbr\u003eglittering threads of thought.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eHis trembling wings drop off, those lights,\u003cbr\u003ethose phosphorescences that reflect each other.\u003cbr\u003eHe sinks into the darkness of our twilight,\u003cbr\u003einto the harbours of despair.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eFor just one minute liberate yourself,\u003cbr\u003eerupt from our minds if only for a moment.\u003cbr\u003eLet it be you that leads us through the gates\u003cbr\u003eof death to the unknown far side of being.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Modern Poetry in Translation","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1040751056,"sku":"9780955906404","price":9.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_e91338ec-5aff-4156-9b4c-3c13882ce590.jpeg?v=1752237542"},{"product_id":"modern-poetry-in-translation-series-3-no7-love-and-war","title":"Modern Poetry in Translation (Series 3 No.7) Love and War","description":"\u003cem\u003eLove and War\u003c\/em\u003e contains translations and original poems on this modern and ancient topic. This volume demonstrates the wealth and variety of interpretations of the theme.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ca name=\"contents\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003eCover by Lucy Wilkinson.  Editorial by David and Helen Constantine.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eContents:\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\tAdonis, nine poems, translated by Peter Clark and Sarah Maguire\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\tJeff Nosbaum, ‘Pride of Ajax’\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\tYannis Ritsos, twenty-eight of the Monochords, translated by Paul Merchant\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\t\u003ca href=\"#e0\"\u003eGuillaume Apollinaire, seven poems, translated by Stephen Romer\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\tPushkin, The Captain’s Daughter, extracts translated by Robert Chandler\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\tVénus Khoury-Ghata, six poems from Interments, translated by Marilyn Hacker\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\tGilgamesh, an extract translated by Paul Batchelor\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\tFederico Garcia Lorca , ‘Song of the Civil Guard’, translated by Mark Leech\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\t\u003ca href=\"#e1\"\u003eOliver Reynolds, ‘Kolin’ and ‘Dusty Miller Breaks his Silence’(after Liliencron’s ‘Wer weiss wo’ and ‘Vergiss die Mühle nicht’)\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\tStephen Romer, four poems\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\t\u003ca href=\"#e2\"\u003eDu Fu, two poems, translated by Paul Harris\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\tCharles Dobzynski, ‘My Life as a Wall’, translated by Marilyn Hacker\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\tLucretius, ‘Aulis’, translated by Stephanie Norgate\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\t\u003ca href=\"#e3\"\u003eRobert Desnos, ten poems, translated by Timothy Adès\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\tAnzhelina Polonskaya, four poems, translated by Andrew Wachtel\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\t\u003ca href=\"#e4\"\u003eManuel Rivas, six poems, translated by Jonathan Dunne\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\tGiuseppe Belli, four sonnets, translated by Mike Stocks\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\tElsa Morante, Farewell, an extract translated by Cristina Viti\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\tAndrea Zanzotto, four poems, translated by Jo Catling and others\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\tElena Shvarts, nine poems, translated by Sasha Dugdale\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eReviews and Comments\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\tMichael Hamburger on Assia Wevill\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\tRobin Fulton on Robin Robertson’s Tranströmer\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\tSasha Dugdale on Emily Lygo’s Voltskaia\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\tCharlie Louth on Eavan Boland and the Bachmann-Henze correspondence\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\tBelinda Cooke on translations of Vittorio Sereni and Luciano Erba\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e•\tJosephine Balmer, Shorter Reviews\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003chr size=\"1\"\u003e\u003ca name=\"e0\" title=\"e0\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eGuillaume Apollinaire, seven poems, translated by Stephen Romer\u003c\/strong\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e                         \u003cbr\u003e\u003cem\u003eXxxii (extracts)  My Lou I shall sleep tonight…\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy Lou I shall sleep tonight in the trenches\u003cbr\u003eFreshly dug and waiting near our guns\u003cbr\u003eSome twelve kilometers away are the holes\u003cbr\u003eWhere I shall go down in my coat of horizon-blue\u003cbr\u003eBetween the whizzbangs and the casseroles\u003cbr\u003eTo take my place among our soldier-troglodytes\u003cbr\u003eThe train stopped at Mourmelon le Petit\u003cbr\u003eAnd I stepped down as happy as I climbed up\u003cbr\u003eSoon we shall leave for the battery but for now\u003cbr\u003eI’m among the soldiery and shells are whistling\u003cbr\u003eIn the grey north sky and no one thinks of dying…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e……………………………\t\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd thus we shall live on the frontline\u003cbr\u003eAnd I shall liken your arms to the necks of swans\u003cbr\u003eAnd sing your breasts belonging to a goddess\u003cbr\u003eAnd the lilac shall blossom… I shall sing your eyes\u003cbr\u003eWhere a choir of lissom cherubs is dancing\u003cbr\u003eThe lilac shall blossom in the serious spring!\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003chr size=\"1\"\u003e\u003ca name=\"e1\" title=\"e1\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOliver Reynolds, ‘Kolin’ and ‘Dusty Miller Breaks his Silence’(after Liliencron’s ‘Wer weiss wo’ and ‘Vergiss die Mühle nicht’)\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e               \u003cem\u003eKolin!\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\t (18.vi.1757)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSoldiers drown in their blood.\u003cbr\u003eWheeling smoke, hoof-churned mud\u003cbr\u003e\t and the sheen\u003cbr\u003eof a thousand spurs catches the sun.\u003cbr\u003eNo one’s springing to attention\u003cbr\u003e\t at Kolin.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e All the generals and squaddies\u003cbr\u003e who necked bullets like toddies\u003cbr\u003e\t now stand easy.\u003cbr\u003e Death having meant no harm\u003cbr\u003e by his jogging each arm\u003cbr\u003e\t now stands easy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e An oblong bump in the shirt\u003cbr\u003e of a corpse feeding on dirt\u003cbr\u003e\t looks like a book.\u003cbr\u003e An adjutant stooped as he grieved\u003cbr\u003e undid the pocket and retrieved\u003cbr\u003e           the Gospel of Luke.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eReturned with Prussian palaver\u003cbr\u003eto the high-ranking father\u003cbr\u003e\t fixed in his chair\u003cbr\u003eit now bears a spidery inscription.\u003cbr\u003eKolin. My son lost in action.\u003cbr\u003e\tWho knows where.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd you who now read that line\u003cbr\u003eare one with its writer: both decline\u003cbr\u003e           to see what’s there.\u003cbr\u003eFor each of us will be posted in turn\u003cbr\u003elost in action, to freeze or burn\u003cbr\u003e           who knows where.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003chr size=\"1\"\u003e\u003ca name=\"e2\" title=\"e2\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eDu Fu, two poems, translated by Paul Harris\u003c\/strong\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cem\u003eA Scene in Spring\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe state is torn apart, only the mountains and rivers remain.\u003cbr\u003eWeeds and trees run rampant in the city this spring.\u003cbr\u003eDo the flowers sense the times, that they, like me, should weep?\u003cbr\u003eDo the birds feel the emptiness, they seem so fearful?\u003cbr\u003eFor three months on end the garrison beacons have glimmered at night.\u003cbr\u003eA letter from home would be worth a heap of gold to me,\u003cbr\u003eAn old man waiting, whose remaining white hairs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003chr size=\"1\"\u003e\u003ca name=\"e3\" title=\"e3\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eRobert Desnos, ten poems, translated by Timothy Adès\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cem\u003eSong of the Glass of Wine\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen the train goes don’t wave your hand,\u003cbr\u003eYour handkerchief, your umbrella,\u003cbr\u003eBut fill a glass with wine,\u003cbr\u003eAnd throw, towards the train whose grab-rails are singing,\u003cbr\u003eThe wine’s long flame,\u003cbr\u003eThe wine’s bloody flame that is like your tongue,\u003cbr\u003eAnd shares with it\u003cbr\u003eThe palate and the couch\u003cbr\u003eOf your lips and your mouth.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003chr size=\"1\"\u003e\u003ca name=\"e4\" title=\"e4\"\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eManuel Rivas, six poems, translated by Jonathan Dunne\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cem\u003eBallad on the Western Beaches\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe ship settles on the shore\u003cbr\u003eand land birds nest on its mast.\u003cbr\u003eWith the compass I trace routes on maps of tillage,\u003cbr\u003ehurt by the sky’s anger on the seed’s weak ribs,\u003cbr\u003efearful of the flower’s drift before inhumane winds.\u003cbr\u003eThe ship sleeps on the shore,\u003cbr\u003ethe keel’s blue imagination covered in brush and rushes,\u003cbr\u003eand the figurehead has a strolling soul.\u003cbr\u003eIn the binnacle is kept the book of moons and the rains’ needle,\u003cbr\u003ea bottle of old snow liqueur.\u003cbr\u003eA skylark sings on a rusty harpoon,\u003cbr\u003ea blackbird’s sigh lashes the cables\u003cbr\u003eand crows on the rudder glimpse lesser death lying alongside.\u003cbr\u003eAll set, admiral, for the great journey.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Modern Poetry in Translation","offers":[{"title":"Book","offer_id":1040751556,"sku":"9780954536770","price":9.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/2_2_29d55b0a-dc86-4821-800d-d6dad869e2c0.jpeg?v=1752237541"}],"url":"https:\/\/inpressbooks.co.uk\/collections\/mark-leech\/mike-stocks.oembed","provider":"Inpress Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}