Comments on: Sun-drenched translation

By: Christopher Bakken

Christopher Bakken — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 12:49:12 +0000

Alicia:
Very provocative notions here! And thanks for mentioning the Patrikios book: he is very much a poet of the physical world, a poet of eros more than abstraction.
You’ve just unearthed a lot of questions about recent and contemporary Greek poetry:
Who do the wonderful female poets of Greece (figures like Dimoula and Anghelaki-Rooke) look to as their immediate forebears? Aren’t they in some ways inventing the terms of womens’ poetry for themselves? I wonder if that in any way connects to the concretness and physicality of their work.
I contrast that with the tradition of women’s poetry in our country, where someone like May Swenson can trace her lineage back through Elizabeth Bishop , through H.D., toward Dickinson. Of course questions of “tradition” are admittedly very complicated when we’re talking about Greece, since the swath of history and culture involved is just so massive. I suppose there’s always Sappho back there, but what an incomplete and distant foundation she would be….
It interests me that the post-war male poets inherit the elliptical and abstract tendencies of the American Modernists (the Seferis and Eliot connection being the most obvious example of that…) so powerfully, while perhaps Greek women poets don’t.
Does feminism, which comes rather late in Greece (well, I suppose it would be possible to argue that it hasn’t even arrived yet), figure into the equation?
Not that you set out to answer all those questions in your blog, koukla, but thanks for such a provocative series of paragraphs…and for printing Katerina’s strong poem here.
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By: Tom Jardine

Tom Jardine — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 22:27:32 +0000

Alicia,
I understand about the all, and the exceptions, but there are patterns, and there is something to what you are saying. No one likes sweeping generalizations, and there is one right in this sentence!
It amazes me how many poems seem to purposely avoid describing anything, and instead must abstract it out to death. I read so many poems that seem to intentionally say nothing–is this so in other languages? Too many poems are sounding just like poems.
Wish I could read other languages but, of course, I don’t do so good with this here English.
Keep up the good work. Very interesting.
Tom
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By: Alicia (AE)

Alicia (AE) — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 13:24:11 +0000

Tom, thanks for commenting.
I don’t mean to suggest that all women are “easier” to translate, or that all women poets are more physical, but that it does seem to be the case for a certain generation of Greek writers that the women come across better in English. Maybe it is just a generation of exceptionally strong women writers, of Greek women coming into their own. They seem on the whole to be less absorbed in abstractions or a (by now) mannered Aegean surrealism or style (sun, sea, stone, mystical epiphany). It’s the sort of sweeping statement I might make on a blog but not in an essay, as Steve points out, since I myself can think of so many exceptions as to defeat my own argument! It’s more of a hunch. A peg, perhaps, for talking a little about Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke.
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By: Tom Jardine

Tom Jardine — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 02:19:49 +0000

Alica,
For many years I have noted differences, from the grand pontificating statement to the questioning wonder. As the artist ages the creativity becomes more a letting of the feminine out to be free, away from dogmatic piffle. As men age, they become more loving and understanding, but women are often that way all along.
I know very little about translating, but I agree with the premise, women being easier to translate — aren’t women more sensual — or is that the right word?
All my life I have had no men friends. They seem so silly, and if I start talking with them they start one upmanship into worthless intellectual battles, and I can still be drawn into a battle. My friends have been women. Women have taught me life, not men. Women seem so much more expansive, and men seem so limiting. Each expressed in their poetry as well.
All my favorite living poets are women. Frankly, many men poets don’t seem sensitive.
This must somehow relate to translating poets.
Tom
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