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Anthology rec; poems by Dahlia Ravikovitch and Wislawa Szymborska
Poetry month is hard, you guys! I always want to post too many things and end up posting none. Not this year! Although I totally spent 20 minutes debating whether to post one or several, in one post or several, because I am decisive like that. Anyway, JD McClatchy's Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry is my faaaaavorite, and there's a lot of stuff in there that American readers probably aren't familiar with (almost everything had to translated, for one thing; McClatchy had a whole Thing about exposing the audience to the less readily available and so disqualified poets from Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the US). That book is where I'll be getting most of what I post and you should totally check out the book itself. I am obviously only going to go to the trouble of typing up my favorites, most of which are from Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, but there're also awesome sections for Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean.
A Dress of Fire, by Dahlia Ravikovitch (translated from the Hebrew by Chana Bloch and Ariel Bloch)
You know, she said, they made you
a dress of fire.
Remember how Jason's wife burned in her dress?
It was Medea, she said, Medea did that to her.
You've got to be careful, she said,
they made you a dress that glows
like an ember, that burns like coals.
Are you going to wear it, she said, don't wear it.
It's not the wind that whistling, it's the poison
seeping in.
You're not even a princess, what can you do to Medea?
Can't you tell one sound from another, she said,
it's not the wind whistling.
Remember, I told her, that time when I was six?
They shampooed my hair and I went out into the street.
The smell of shampoo trailed after me like a cloud.
Then I got sick from the wind and the rain.
I didn't know a thing about reading Greek tragedies,
but the smell of perfume spread
and I was very sick.
Now I can see it's an unnatural perfume.
What will happen to you now, she said,
they made you a burning dress.
They made me a burning dress, I said. I know.
So why are standing there, she said,
you've got to be careful.
You know what a burning dress is, don't you?
I know, I said, but I don't know
how to be careful.
The smell of that perfume confuses me.
I said to her, No one has to agree with me,
I don't believe in Greek tragedies.
But the dress, she said, the dress is on fire.
What are you saying, I shouted,
what are saying?
I'm not wearing a dress at all,
what's burning is me.
The Women of Rubens, by Wislawa Szymborska (translated from the Polish by Magnus J. Krynski & Robert A. Maguire)
Giantesses, female fauna,
naked as the rumbling of barrels.
They sprawl in trampled beds,
sleep with mouths agape for crowing.
Their eyes have fled into the depths
and penetrate to the very core of glands
from which yeast seeps into the blood.
Daughters of the Baroque. Dough rises in kneading-troughs,
baths are asteam, wines glow ruby,
piglets of cloud gallop across the sky,
trumpets neigh an alert of the flesh.
O meloned, O excessive ones,
doubled by the flinging off of shifts,
trebled by the violence of posture,
you lavish dishes of love!
Their slender sisters had risen earlier,
before dawn broke in the picture.
No one noticed how, single file, they
had moved to the canvas's unpainted side.
Exiles of style. Their ribs all showing,
their feet and hands of birdlike nature.
Trying to take wing on bony shoulder blades.
The thirteenth century would have given them a golden background,
the twentieth - a silver screen.
The seventeenth had nothing for the flat of chest.
For even the sky is convex,
convex the angels and convex the god -
mustachioed Phoebus who on a sweaty
mount rides into the seething alcove.
A Dress of Fire, by Dahlia Ravikovitch (translated from the Hebrew by Chana Bloch and Ariel Bloch)
You know, she said, they made you
a dress of fire.
Remember how Jason's wife burned in her dress?
It was Medea, she said, Medea did that to her.
You've got to be careful, she said,
they made you a dress that glows
like an ember, that burns like coals.
Are you going to wear it, she said, don't wear it.
It's not the wind that whistling, it's the poison
seeping in.
You're not even a princess, what can you do to Medea?
Can't you tell one sound from another, she said,
it's not the wind whistling.
Remember, I told her, that time when I was six?
They shampooed my hair and I went out into the street.
The smell of shampoo trailed after me like a cloud.
Then I got sick from the wind and the rain.
I didn't know a thing about reading Greek tragedies,
but the smell of perfume spread
and I was very sick.
Now I can see it's an unnatural perfume.
What will happen to you now, she said,
they made you a burning dress.
They made me a burning dress, I said. I know.
So why are standing there, she said,
you've got to be careful.
You know what a burning dress is, don't you?
I know, I said, but I don't know
how to be careful.
The smell of that perfume confuses me.
I said to her, No one has to agree with me,
I don't believe in Greek tragedies.
But the dress, she said, the dress is on fire.
What are you saying, I shouted,
what are saying?
I'm not wearing a dress at all,
what's burning is me.
The Women of Rubens, by Wislawa Szymborska (translated from the Polish by Magnus J. Krynski & Robert A. Maguire)
Giantesses, female fauna,
naked as the rumbling of barrels.
They sprawl in trampled beds,
sleep with mouths agape for crowing.
Their eyes have fled into the depths
and penetrate to the very core of glands
from which yeast seeps into the blood.
Daughters of the Baroque. Dough rises in kneading-troughs,
baths are asteam, wines glow ruby,
piglets of cloud gallop across the sky,
trumpets neigh an alert of the flesh.
O meloned, O excessive ones,
doubled by the flinging off of shifts,
trebled by the violence of posture,
you lavish dishes of love!
Their slender sisters had risen earlier,
before dawn broke in the picture.
No one noticed how, single file, they
had moved to the canvas's unpainted side.
Exiles of style. Their ribs all showing,
their feet and hands of birdlike nature.
Trying to take wing on bony shoulder blades.
The thirteenth century would have given them a golden background,
the twentieth - a silver screen.
The seventeenth had nothing for the flat of chest.
For even the sky is convex,
convex the angels and convex the god -
mustachioed Phoebus who on a sweaty
mount rides into the seething alcove.