Tag: gander

Citrus Freeze

Posted on by Meryl in Poetry

This phenomenon, of smudge pots or wind machines trying to keep fragile trees (or grape vines) from freezing, has always made me think how small and ineffectual humans are in the face of the natural world. We do our best to believe we have control, but…  I especially love how the poem ends…with a snap!

Citrus Freeze

To the north, along Orange Blossom Trail
thick breath of sludge fires.
Smoke rises all night, a spilled genie
who loves the freezing trees
but cannot save them.
Snow fine as blown spiders.
The news: nothing.
Large rats breed on the beach
driving smaller ones here.
Today both traps sit sprung.

Forrest Gander
from Rush to the Lake (Cambridge, Alice James Books, 1988).

Another Neruda translation?

Posted on by Meryl in Poetry

“It’s true, I’ve been caught in print several times saying, ‘The last thing we need is another Neruda translation.'” This sentence opens Forrest Gander’s introduction to Then Come Back: The Lost Neruda Poems, from Copper Canyon Press. He then goes onto explain how these late poems were discovered, and their quality convinced him to undertake the project of translating them. Here’s one from the book:

9

shoes“Don’t be vain,” someone had scrawled
on my wall.
I don’t recognize
the script or hand of
whoever left that line
in the kitchen, No one I invited, clearly.
He came in from the roof.
So who am I
Supposed to answer? The wind.
Listen to me, wind.
For many years
the vainest
have tossed in my face
their own vanities,
that is, they show me the door
I open at night, the book
I write,
the bed
that waits to receive me,
the house I build, Continue reading “Another Neruda translation?” →