Etel Adnan, TIME; translated by Sarah Riggs

the sun came out at night

to go for a stroll and the divine crossed

the room. the windows

opened

writing comes from a dialogue

with time; it’s made

of a mirror in which thought

is stripped and no longer knows

itself

in Palermo men are as

strictly trained as horses; or

else they have the shining violence of

flowers (“At 2 p.m. in the Afternoon”)

The latest poetry title by Etel Adnan to appear in English translation is TIME (New York NY: Nightboat Books, 2019), translated from the French by Sarah Riggs. TIME is constructed out of six extended lyric sequences—“October 27, 2003,” “Friday, March 25^th at 4pm,” “At 2 p.m. in the Afternoon,” Return from London,” “No Sky” and “Ballbeck”—each of which are clearly situated, whether in a particular time or place (or both), tethered to the ground so the abstract of her lyric thinking won’t float away completely. The poems are situated very specifically, but are open enough to include everything; rooted in place, as she writes in the first sequence: “those who cannot leave / discover the geography / of the body. there are also airfields / and harbors on the surface of our souls.” Adnan’s sequences explore violence, culture, power and memory, composing small abstract moments that accumulate in a way that echoes for anyone even faintly familiar with contemporary French writing, but in a way that also reminds me of the work of the late Canadian poet D.G. Jones, another poet who stretched out the sequence from accumulated small abstracts (and a poet who was also influenced by French writing, although through his translations of the work of the late Quebec poet Anne Hébert, a writer born a decade earlier than Adnan).

it’s more bearable to think of

death than of love

Greek thought explored

all things the way it

explored the islands

when men no longer have

power over women, over whom

will they have it? (“At 2 p.m. in the Afternoon”)

In her “Translator’s Note,” Brooklyn, New York poet and translator Sarah Riggs writes “I recall Cole Swensen saying how to translate means you feel the other under your own skin. And, I would add, under and into your own writing.” She begins her note:

The postcard is a medium Etel Adnan loves, and often when translating this work I felt echoes of the circumstances in which it began. On October 27, 2003, Etel received a postcard at her home in Paris from her friend, Khaled Najar, the Tunisian poet and publisher of Tawbad Editions. Spontaneously she wrote the first of the poem sequences in this book, each poem a breath or two, thinking of Khaled. In this way the poems act like a correspondence, a poetry of the postcard, from one Arab writer to another.

The translator occupies the recto-verso position of not being able to be fully on both side, having to choose one language while thinking deeply of the other language, and of a third address which is the person or people “out there.” As a poet and translator of poetry in French, I found myself in the autumn of 2005 at a café in Paris reading Le 27 Octobre 2003, and wanting to translate it. So I asked Etel if she was going to write/translate it also in English. Etel responded very simply and enthusiastically as is her way, “I’d rather you did it.”

At first it felt like pouring water from one pitcher to another, to translate these poems, so clear and lucid and succinctly chosen was each word. One short poem on each page, with Khaled’s facing page translation in Arabic, gave me lots of room to ruminate on which words to choose. Part of the passion of translating a first draft as I scrawl it into the book in pencil is partly that I can be anywhere. It had the pleasure of the postcard—writing vicariously to Khaled, writing as if you are Etel, writing to you who are readers in English; so many sides, positions, and dimensions. I was on a rooftop in Morocco when I first translated the little volume of No Sky, and can remember the cloud formations of that day.

There is a lot happening in these meditative postcards, from bombs dropping in Beruit to a return to Greece, sculptures or stripmining in California, composing a sequence of lyric sketches aware of and very concerned with how easily humanity turns against itself and its own interests, from the larger issues of planetary survival, to the intimate matters of how one person treats another. “this morning I killed a fly,” she writes, in “No Sky,” “had I been a State / I would have destroyed a city [.]” Yet her poems are filled with such a wonder and an openness, one that shows a wisdom, and, despite everything, an optimism and heart.

What is interesting, also, is that this translation also counts as the first publication of these sequences as a unit, making one wonder who made the choice for putting such together as a full-length collection and in what order. The acknowledgements at the opening of the collection offer that the first five sections were each originally published in French by Tawbad, in 2008, 2007, 2010, 2010 and 2008. At the end of her note, Riggs offers that “Etel and I together named the book,” although that doesn’t entirely answer the question.

Notes on (some) books I haven’t had time to properly discuss:

I’m remarkably behind, in ways you can’t even imagine. Here are some scattered notes of reviews begun but never fully fleshed out. And yet, these are all books I thought were interesting. Must I wait until Aoife begins school in another, what, three or four years? (Answer: probably).

The Essential D.G. Jones, selected by Jim Johnstone: I’ve known that The Essential D.G. Jones (The Porcupine’s Quill, Inc., 2016) was in the works for some time, and was pleased to know of it, although I’d hoped that there might have been another books’ worth of material that Jones was sitting on. I’d been months gently prodding him to allow me to produce another chapbook (after the one we did in 2002); despite the fact that he occasionally sent me unpublished poems in the mail that he would allow me to produce in a variety of venues (including dusie and Touch the Donkey), it was the only part of my letters he wouldn’t respond to. I envy Johnstone’s ability to work on such a project, even if not the fact that this becomes a “last collection” for the late poet [see my obituary for him here]. Jones truly was one of our finest lyric poets and as Johnstone writes in his introduction: “The Essential D.G. Jones is the first volume of selected poetry to span the poet’s entire career.”

Suddenly

a flock, a body, the birds

moving, moving the air, moving

the bank behind the house, the snow

sieved by sun and rain, the

seeds, the fallout from trees, hedge

a feeder

            nervous, a percentage of feathers

lift off, sheer off, a percentage

arrive, others remain, picking their

way, a jittery wave of scavengers, cleaners

over the snow

the body of spring emerges

the body of winter emerges

the body of spring, engages

feathers and debris

Ben Estes, Illustrated Games of Patience: Massachusetts poet Ben Estes’ first full-length poetry collection, Illustrated Games of Patience (The Song Cave, 2015), is a sharp and witty combination of straight lyric and prose poem. There was a subtlety here that I liked, that drew me back into this collection even after I’d put the book down.

A Rainbow Sign

I just don’t think that

this is what it’s supposed to feel like,

shaking my big one to break the stream

and make a pool for moving my tools,

for they weigh only half as much

when moved under water.

I emerged in the morning, covered in blood and fine acid sand

and decided to remain partially submerged a little while longer.

Itching for more exercise,

and cooled not by water but by air,

I spent the afternoon collecting sea shells,

and found each one heavily carved

with the numbers of pretty village girls

offering to take tourists to the ultimate level.

A spring and summer service they offer.

I meant to call one, with a headline ready on my lips,

but a gull would dive down wheeling and screaming

each time I tried to dial.

One can fool the animals,

but must forgive this wild, beautiful country.

D.G. Jones (January 1, 1929 - March 6, 2016)

The poet, editor and translator D.G. (Douglas Gordon) Jones has died. A resident of Quebec’s eastern townships, he was one of the few English-language poets of his generation visibly influenced by some of the Quebec poets that came before him, notably the late Anne Hebert, and more recently, influenced by more contemporary poets such as Steve McCaffery, Erin Moure and Stephanie Bolster, making him one of the rare Canadian poets that straddled with ease the line between modernism and post-modernism.

The author of the selected/collected poems The Stream Exposed with All its Stones (Montreal QC: Vehicule Press/Signal Editions, 2010) [see my review of such here], his earlier collections include Frost on the Sun (Contact Press, 1957), The Sun is Axeman (University of Toronto Press, 1961), Phrases From Orpheus (Oxford University Press, 1967), the Governor General’s Award-winning Under the Thunder the Flowers Light up the Earth (Coach House Press, 1977), A Throw of Particles (General Publishing, 1983), Balthazar and Other Poems (Coach House, 1988), The Floating Garden (Coach House, 1995), Wild Asterisks in Cloud (Empyreal Press, 1997) and Grounding Sight (Empyreal Press, 1999). An ‘essential poems’ volume has been in the works for some time, edited by Jim Johnstone for The Porcupine’s Quill, Inc.

See brief biographies for Jones at The Canadian Encyclopedia and Wikipedia. In 2007, he had a short selection of poems appear online at Jacket Magazine.

Donald Winkler (who also provided the photo, above), via facebook, provided this note received via the Translator’s Association:

The distinguished poet, D. G. Jones died peacefully on March 6th, 2016 after a short bout with pneumonia. A University of Sherbrooke professor emeritus, he was also a literary critic and translator. Twice, he received a Governor General's literary award and in 2008, he was made an “Officer of the Order of Canada” for his contributions to Canadian Literature.

He is survived by his wife Monique, his four children Stephen, Skyler, Tory and North, his stepson Nicolas, and his ten grandchildren. A private funeral service will be held.

In his latter years, Mr. Jones became a prolific and passionate computer artist, generating compelling works that were a unique combination of his artistic vision and poetry. This summer his family is planning a retrospective of his computer art in his beloved town of North Hatley, Quebec.

In his memory, contributions to the North Hatley Library would be appreciated (165 Main Street, North Hatley, QC, JOB 2C0).

His work has been a big influence on mine over the years, specifically my paper hotel (Broken Jaw Press, 2002), which included many of Jones’ cadences, predominantly lifted and adapted from my increasingly-tattered copy of Under the Thunder the Flowers Light up the Earth; a book that accompanied me on at least one if not two reading tours.

for cybele creery & jonathon wilcke (after jones

one mans apartment is anothers

home, we live in the house,

    not the hallway, the neighbour

tells her two young girls

a calendar

    is not a chessboard, a country

not a destination in itself

some say,

    or admit, its the choice

we lack

& whether sound has a colour,

or music, a presentable

    shape,

                how the text

& picture, overlay

blesst w/ a good ear

    can still be guided

by voices

pornographers & poets enjoy

large views

Later on, I composed a short piece triggered by his admission that he wasn’t going to attempt to write again until he’d prepared for the winter, directly lifting a line from one of his short letters, a poem that fell into my poetry collection name          , an errant (Stride, 2006):

for doug jones

the poems will come, he says, once

the wood gets cut

he captures the hard, thin

enterprise

            & leans

by the backdoor

when the trees look like bones

a seasonal thing, what

pertains to the breath

not an accident of birth

once it can be seen, it can

finally be transcribed

I had been fortunate enough to produce a small chapbook of his poetry, standard pose (above/ground press, 2002), a chapbook we reprinted in Ground rules: the best of the second decade of above/ground press 2003-2013 (Chaudiere Books, 2013). Given he’d been sending me the occasional poem or two for the past half decade or so, I’d been attempting to convince him to allow me to produce a second chapbook; those queries were the only parts of my letters he never responded to. Despite that, I’d managed to include a new poem in the “Tuesday poem” series, and further new poems in two different issues of the small poetry journal Touch the Donkey: two poems in #3 (October 2014) and a single poem in #6 (July 2015). He declined to be interviewed.

Slim Chances

the Mexican billionaire, or maybe

multibillionaire, Carlos Slim

has sold his majority holdings in some telecom

company

                  I was surprised

having just read his name

in Thomas Picketty’s book on Capitalism

in the 21^st Century – no doubt

he’d discovered the gent in

reading Forbes magazine

– no doubt because

his government could not accuse him then of

monopolizing communications

– Picketty no doubt would include him

on a list of capitalists who should be

taxed quite highly

to reduce the inequality between the

upper & lower classes in

contemporary society –

I wouldn’t be surprised if Slim, reading Picketty,

just smiled . (Touch the Donkey #6)

I shall miss his occasional quick notes and accompanying poems and computer graphics; I shall miss his generosity.

Jennifer Kronovet, Awayward

THEY PLANTED

a wall of trees

to protect us

from the desert—

protect the same

thoughts again

and again from leaving.

Clattering forge

of the place-mind:

today today.

Girls cry publicly

to penetrate

the specific.

Community air

creates an event:

his hat!

Leaving is not the word.

We lost leaving last

winter. (Hid it.)

Here is without the desert-

stance: earth so

flat I’m a person.

Every so often a book strikes with a force that I have to catch my breath, a feeling I had when I first opened Jennifer Kronovet’s first poetry collection, Awayward (Rochester NY: BOA Editions, 2009). Admittedly, I might be a few years behind on this one (unrelatedly: this is the first poetry collection the baby has heard read aloud to her, during our weekdays at home), but there is something about the precision and cadence of her work that is reminiscent of the poetry of D.G. Jones, or even the precision and explorations of dark and light in Sarah Manguso’s poems. Produced as the winner of the 2008 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize, as selected by Jean Valentine, Awayward includes a short “Foreword” by the judge that includes:

            The poetry invites you in. When I came across Jennifer Kronovet’s manuscript, I thought of Rilke who says we do not want to live in an interpreted world. Her poetry does not interpret, but lightly touches the right brain, the part of us that can enjoy without necessarily understanding, without, as Keats says, “any irritable reaching after fact and reason.” The kind of poetry that you would not need to paraphrase or defend, but that will change you.

            Another wonderful quality of Kronovet’s poetry is that it is interesting: without having plot, or even a fixed persona, it has suspense. And complexity, and humor.

While I’m pleased that Valentine chose this manuscript for the prize, her introduction doesn’t give Kronovet’s work nearly enough credit, almost as though she doesn’t entirely understand what it is that Kronovet’s is doing. Awayward is a book of densely-packed lyrics that bounce from point to point through inquiry over narrative, and reference travel, speak of ideas of being and identity, struggle with comprehension, and question even those things that make the most sense. This is a book of precision, wisdoms both deliberate and accidental, and deep clarity. While everything that Valentine writes about Kronovet’s Awayward might be true, the suggestion that her poems don’t need to be understood to be enjoyed is a bit confusing (and possibly, even, missing the point entirely). Kronovet’s directness makes the work entirely approachable, and “understanding” is as much a matter of approach and style as a red herring. How can one claim not to understand? I’m looking forward to what she publishes next. And, I hope: soon.

TOGETHER

HERE, AT EIGHTEEN ONE MUST CHOOSE to have a bed for dreaming in or a bed for making love in. You think that this would be an easy choice. The sun has set but there is light that makes the country classically itself. If this were before, you would have longed for someone unknown to you. But this person is here, telling you about the first time he realized someone might not like him. She was a nun, and he was a child.

The first years without dreams, you don’t know if you’ve slept. And then you know you have. And then you know you haven’t.

One summer you purposefully stay awake together to imagine the forest inhabited by animals drawn by everyone in the country. You choose your words to make it more real, irritated by slips into the easily known. Be specific about how the deer run. How much of it is graceful and how much of it the violent jerk of fear, or of thoughtlessness.