On Poetry and Culture Shock

Because at this time of the year we all have New Year resolutions, here you have a little beauty by Noah Grossman, who published a few poems in Cornell University’s literary magazines. This one is taken from a 2004 issue of Rainy Day, the undergrads-only literary magazine. One of the things I love about it is that I can’t figure out if it is being defeatist or sarcastic. It is also extraordinarily hard to translate.

TO DO
lower standards
split infinitives
forget manners
be more submissive

skip my vegetables
read in the dark
say never
call my ex and apologize
for being reasonable.

^^^^^

Ya que en esta época del año todo el mundo hace buenos propósitos, aquí tenéis una pequeña belleza de Noah Grossman, que ha publicado unos cuantos poemas  en las revistas literarias de la Universidad de Cornell; así fue como lo conocí. Éste lo he sacado de Rainy Day, la revista que sólo publica a estudiantes de licenciatura. Una de las cosas que más me gustan de este poema es que no se sabe si es derrotista o sarcástico. También es extraordinariamente difícil de traducir.  

POR HACER
Bajar expectativas
Hablar malamente
Perder las formas
Ser más cortado

Dejar la verdura
Leer a oscuras
Decir "nunca jamás"
llamar a mi ex y disculparme
por ser razonable.

In Spain, Christmas gifts are traditionally given on January 6th. The Three Wise Men, not Santa Claus, bring them. Some time ago I  spoke about list poems; they are a good way of writing poetry when you think you can’t write, for lack of inspiration or anything else. The previous entry is a list poem I like a lot. This is my Christmas 2005-06 letter to the Three Wise Men.

Secret Wish List

A pink car.
Pink hair, extensions, a beauty salon voucher
including manicure.
Jeff Buckley’s second studio album*
and tickets to a Martyn Bennet concert*.
A plane ticket to Glasgow.
Or maybe New york instead.
No, to Glasgow.
Inspiration to finish everything I’ve started writing.
A Powerbook.
An ipod, with every single audiobook by Neil Gaiman,
and read by Ian McKellen.
A nicer accent when I speak in English.
Lots of rain,
and one thunderstorm.

* That might be hard, as they’re both dead.

Y tu mirá
se me clava en los ojos
como la voz de Lole.

No os preocupéis, no me he vuelto Neosurrealista de repente (al menos eso espero). Este haiku no se puede adaptar de verdad al inglés porque está demasiado relacionado con la cultura española. ¿cómo le explico a un extranjero quién es Lole?

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

And your gaze
pierces my eyes
like Lole’s voice.

Don’t worry, I haven’t suddenly become a Neosurreal poet (I hope and pray). This haiku cannot be properly adapted into English because it is too culturally bound. Lole was a flamenco singer, popular when I was a wee child, and her most famous song said “And your gaze pierces my eyes like a sword”. A normal way of saying “stare” in Spanish is “to stab/pierce with your eyes” so the image is not as absurd and violent as you think.

I like to study the process of language birth and death. Languages die when people don’t use them anymore to talk to their babies; only children learning a language keep it alive.

There are three main reasons why languages can disappear: One, if Culture A which speaks Language A kills or enslaves all native speakers of Language B. Two, if Culture A invades Land B and people in Land B need to use Language A to deal with their new bosses, with their new government, etc. Three, when people in Land B think that by learning Language A they will prosper and have more opportunities in life because people in Land A are richer or more numerous than them. In all three cases, the B People first become bilingual for a few generations, and then their children prefer one language to the other until Language B dies. The professor who taught me this process said once that when there is only one person who speaks a language, there is actually two: there is the last speaker, and God, when the last speaker prays. Coming from a country with several different minority languages, and after having lived with hardly any chances to use my native language for a whole year, I think I understand how it feels to think in a language that no one else understands!

Anyway, that was a bit of an oblique introduction to Yehuda Amichai. He composed in Hebrew and my translation into English isn’t credited. I’m just going to put together a few bits and pieces that I like from a very long poem by him.

Tombstones crumble, they say words tumble, words fade away,
The tongues that spoke them turn to dust,
Languages die as people do,
Some languages rise again,
Gods change up in heaven, gods get replaced,
Prayers are here to stay.
*
I declare with perfect faith
That prayer preceded God.
Prayer created God,
God created human beings,
Human beings create prayers
That create the God that creates human beings.
*
After Auschwitz, no theology:
The numbers on the forearms
Of the inmates of extermination
Are the telephone numbers of God,
Numbers that do not answer
And are now disconnected, one by one.

Las lápidas se parten, dicen que los planetas mueren, las palabras se olvidan,
Las lenguas que las dijeron vuelven al polvo,
Los idiomas se mueren, igual que la gente,
Algunos idiomas resucitan,
Los dioses cambian, allá en el cielo, los dioses se sustituyen,
Las oraciones llegan y se quedan.
*
Declaro con fe perfecta
Que rezar fue antes que Dios.
Rezar creó a Dios,
Dios creó a los seres humanos,
Los seres humanos crearon la oración
Que creó al dios que crea seres humanos.
*
Después de Auschwitz, no hay teología.
Los números en los antebrazos
de los presos del exterminio
son los números de teléfono de Dios,
Números que nadie contesta
Y que ahora se desconectan, de uno en uno.

After fooling around for a week with the idea, I'm not sure this catches the sensuality of the situation. The Spanish version comes first because it is the original one.

Los hombros de la violonchelista,
Curvas blancas.
No recuerdo la música.

The chellist's shoulders,
White curves.
I don't remember the music.

I just saw this in the news: In Chile, it is compulsory to vote in the presidential elections! Another shocking thing: Chileans abroad cannot vote. I haven't found a source to tell me if there is regional absentee vote.

Isn't compulsory vote a contradiction in terms? If we are free to vote, shouldn't we be free not to?  

Jose Angel has been as kind as to leave me this haiku in the comments. He doesn't mention an author so I assume it is his. The translation into Spanish is, as usual, mine. It reminds me a lot of Leonard Cohen's Chelsea Hotel

At long last we made love-
Somehow it seems like a fake memory, but
There was a lovely tune on your radio.

Por fin  hicimos el amor-
Parece que fuese un recuerdo inventado, pero
sonaba una canción preciosa en tu radio.

I love the Spanish writer (columnist, novelist) Elvira Lindo. now that she is living in New York City she so often tells in her columns things that remind me so much of my own reactions to Americans.

This little fragment  from her latest column is originally about political journalism, but it applies very well to many other things!

Sé de un profesor de redacción periodística tan extravagamente sensato que escurre los periódicos ante sus alumnos como si fueran estropajos y sacude los aparatos de radio para que se vacíen de adjetivos. Es lo que hace el artista cuando madura, decir lo que quiere de la forma más simple.

I know of a professor in a Journalism school who is so extravagantly sensible that he squeezes newspapers in front of his students as if they were cleaning rags and he shakes radios to thrwo out the adjectives.  That's what artists do when they mature: they say what they mean in the simplest possible manner.

Wilson Pickett, the singer of soul classics like In The Midnight Hour, has just died. January 30th is the first anniversary of Martyn Bennett 's death. Wilson Pickett was the sort of artist whose work everyone knows, but whose name is only known by his few dedicated fans. Martyn Bennett, on the other hand, was too brilliant and original for his own good and never got the success he deserved.  I knew he was diagnosed with a nasty type of cancer in the year 2000, and I suspected he was depressed, and we had emailed occasionally in the three vyears or so before his death. I'm still mourning him in the same way other people mourn family members or "real" rock stars.

A hospital is not a library.
A needle’s not a pen.
We sit and wait as your blood is replaced by ghosts.
As I think of your inky hair,
Most beautiful when sweaty,
Long wet tendrils falling over us.
Ink.
Ink’s the key.
I used black ink to write poems about you,
As you mocked me (people use computers these days,
You know).
Your body is still waging war on itself,
And not
all
the
hospitals
in
the
world
will
HELP.

So,
I’ll write poems about you
until the future gives up and makes you immortal.

Un hospital no es una biblioteca.
Una aguja no es una pluma.
Nos sentamos a esperar mientras los fantasmas sustituyen tu sangre.
Y pienso en tu pelo entintado,
Precioso cuando sudabas,
Largos tirabuzones húmedos sobre los dos.
Tinta.
La tinta es la clave.
Tinta china para componer poemas sobre ti,
Y te burlabas (eso se puede hacer a ordenador,
Por si no lo sabías)
Tu cuerpo sufre un golpe de estado,
Y
ningún
hospital
del
mundo
entero
va
a
enviar
AYUDA.
Por eso,
voy a escribir poemas sobre ti
hasta que el futuro se rinda y te haga inmortal.

The town where i live is surrounded by suburbs that used to be villages. There's always a handful of old streets, with the traditional houses who don't like anything special, identical in all the villages, a small square or two with a few orange trees, and then row after row of new houses à la American Beauty in the places where the olive trees used to grow. For anyone living in a 30 kilometers (that's 20 miles) radius of Sevilla, the only difference between these villages turned neighbourhoods is how distant from town, or how well communicated, they are. They is absolutely nothing special, unique, even interesting about any of these villages.

Not for the locals, the people from the old houses.  The other day I went to the bank, and in the long queue I heard a few women chatting. The conversation started with one of them saying that locals who had moved to villages A, B and C a long time ago had just moved back to ours, and everyone agreed iin that they had been stupid to leave the village in the first place. They were talking about places that were two to ten kilometers away in the exact same tone that most people I know would say "La Guiri spent a year in the USA, and she just came back. Good for her, I can't understand why she went so far away in the first place". the conversation revolved around the same subject for twenty minutes: not about the advantages of our village, but about the perfect foolness of anyone who moved to a different place. It reminded me of a conversation I overhead a long time ago, also in my village.

-... and then Juan came to live here, because originally he is from Village B.
-Village B!? Why on earth did he come to live here then? 
-Because he married his girlfriend, and she was from our town.
-Ah, OK then.

It seemed to these people that the only reason why anyone would want to live more than two blocks away from their birthplace is to marry someone who lives a little bit (not too much) farther away.

What is it that makes people love home so much?

Spain and Scotland have a day each dedicated to clebrate the national writer: Cervantes, who invented the modern novel, and Robert Burns, who dignified and used creatively the Scottish language.

It says a lot about Scotland that, while Spaniards spend Book Day buying books, and we're supposed to give a book and a rose to the person we love most, the Scots give a party, eat local food and drink whisky. On the other hand, the Scots traditionally recite poetry after dinner tonight, insted of merely buying it.

I should live in Scotland, so that I can celebrate both holidays. Book Day is engraved in my genetic code and I must celebrate it wherever I am, but a Burns night  outside of Scotland wouldn't feel right.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH IS GLORIOUSLY ABSENT.

ANARKY IS INEVITABLE.

Grafittis on the walls near my dance school.  Originally in Spanish (in Spanish, anarquists call themselves anarkists).

I WANT TO SEE MY SON.

Graffiti on the ad of a realtor. Originally in Spanish.

Printed on the oversized handbag of a beggar.  

The world insists in shocking me. Those of you reading from outside Spain should know that people in Southern Spain are said to exaggerate a lot and that is considered a vaguely negative, humorous thing; the underlying thought is that people from more civilised, sophisticated countries, tell it like it is, or believe less is more. Spanish does not have a word to say "understatement".

I wonder is there is a word to say "understatement" in Swedish. The Swedes, in their wisdom, use the polite, discreet word that means "Hidden", instead of the blunter "illegal". That does not mean that unwanted foreigners are treated any better; if they go to the hospital, for example, the doctors are likely to call the police. There are 15,000 hidden people in Sweden. Out of these, 400 are children who have simply lost the will to live. These children one day refuse to do anything, get out of bed, eat. One such girl was on TV yesterday; she had a tube down her nose through which her mother injected a yellowish liquid food. If there is no place to go and the country you live in wants to kick you out, there aren't many options left but trying to see if you can let yourself die by sheer depression.

The small, understated word of the sophisticated, civilised, advanced Swedish society for this mass collective suicide is "apathetic children".

I confess I am posting this because I need to rant, and I am certainly shocked, although the connection with culture shock here is flimsy at best.

Yesterday I commited a stupid mistake: I went to an underwear shop that specialises in fashionable, cheap, very colourful and almost never "sexy" stuff. There are at least three different chains in Spain that do exactly that, and the shops are appearing like mushrooms after a rainy night. The thing is, I don't understand who buys in them. Who can fit into their bras? Certainly not me.

Let's see. For the information of readers who do not use bras, this is what you need to know: a bra size has a number, which means circumference in centimetres (in Spain) or inches (in the UK and USA), and a letter, which means how big the breasts are.  A is almost flat, the average woman uses a B, and so on.

First bra I see that I really like: cups A or B. Sizes: 70 to 85 (that is 28 to 34). Look here. The skinniest of East Europe supermodels are a size 85 (34). When I was twelve years old I had a 80. Who needs a 70 size bra? I'm not asking the right question. Who in bloody burning hell needs a 26/28 size bra? Seriously?

There was more fun awaiting me. I tried on bras of three different sizes and cups. It turned out that all sizes were too small: the back was more or less always the same, and the only front was wider and wider. It is as if the people who designed them forgot that bigger breasts tend to come attached to wider chests and stronger ribcages.

It is also as if we lived in a world in which suits came in assorted lenghts for taller or short men, but always with the same wide shoulders and narrow waist, to fit athletes. Or as if male underwear came with different sizes for genitals of different sizes, but with the back made to fit _only_ tight little buttocks. There are days in which, if I could ask for one wish only, I'd ask that the quality/pricing/sizes of clothes for men followed the tendencies of clothes for women and viceversa.