One reason Campos is such a pleasure to translate is the combination of linguistic playfulness and rhythmic voice. One small example:
Prefiro porisso o nada de ser apenas esse ser nada.
where the word ser [to be/being] is used as verb and noun:
I therefore prefer the nothing of being only that being nothing.
which surprises the reader with that grammatical tilt, and yet maintains an eminently speakable rhythm.
Margaret Jull Costa on "Salute to Walt Whitman" |
|
|
How Whitman Used Portraits to Curate the Self
"Whitman told Horace Traubel, the poet’s close friend and earliest biographer, that '[y]es – that was an actual moth, the picture is substantially literal.' Likewise, he told historian William Roscoe Thayer: 'I’ve always had the knack of attracting birds and butterflies and other wild critters.' Of course, historians now know that the butterfly was, in fact, a cutout, which currently resides at the Library of Congress. So what was Whitman doing? Why would he lie?"
via THE CONVERSATION |
|
|
What Sparks Poetry:
Eleanor Goodman on Translation
"For Zheng, and for me, the function of poetry, its innate raison d’être, is to mourn. And in mourning, to point a finger. Look! the poet cries, Look! Look at everything that’s been lost, that we are in the process of losing, that we are throwing away out of ignorance and fear and laziness and greed, the habits we’ve formed over a lifetime and cannot loosen our grasp on even if it kills us.” |
|
|
|
|
|
|
