Friday, August 06, 2010

The Poem and Its Secret

I was on vacation last week when my translation of Durs Grünbein's essay "The Poem and Its Secret" was the Poetry Daily prose feature for the week. You can find the essay here, and you can buy the book, Bars of Atlantis, through the link there, too!

1 comment:

j cline said...

Such fluency. Reminds me of Ralph Manheim. Here's something I wrote a while ago.

Ralph Manheim

This Babel buster
Now lives in the texts
Of many others –

Having levered the spaces -
Cleared the betweens -
Exorcised the differences -

He has placed within reach,
As folded paper-flowers
Plucked easily in stores and libraries

Now I can untie the tongues -
And revealed is the simultaneous
Everydayness of the human race

So separated by the texture of culture
Clothed in the stiff veneer
Of language, ethnicity and nation

John Cline
October 1994

[I now can untie tongues
Revealing the everydayness of everyone
The simultaneous sameness of the human race]
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