Learning Spanish is one of the
many important things to do when
there is never enough time.

Clearly, Babel Fish is not much
of a translator, but who is when
it comes to poetry?

Here is a brief passage from
a much longer post that needs real
translating desperately:
from e.n.s.a.m.b.l.e. (Herberto Yepez) {click here}

I cannot let write like who cannot leave the alcoholism. I have tried the love and the academy, the Gestalt psycotherapy and the Tecate beer, the aphorism and zen, the photography and the bicycle, but nothing. I always return, I add more text to a work that it wanted to consist of one joint done of pure pieces of silence. But I cannot. Whenever I write a word comes an intermediate silence, it is certain, but soon other words come, too many. If somebody observes and listens to well this text it can give account of this. But also extrañ can be given account of something enough: in all text there are many words but also much silence, many empty syllables, syllables of silence that they avoid that all the language becomes a single word and, simultaneously, that silence is a secret triumph. But that triumph is not mine, because whenever I want to write an empty syllable leaves a word to me. To write is a lost battle. #
*************************************************************************
The most recent issue of the magazine
*Verse*, devoted to prose, contains an
interview with Charles North {click here} and {click here}
in which he says:
"...I agree that the American poetry scene is dominated
by "false reputations." Why this is the case is probably
a combination of things: the Establishment is in the
business of award-giving, critics (there are exceptions
of course) seem more comfortable with already
established names, the most interesting poetry
by and large (and I don't think I am saying anything
particulary radical) is published by small, and sometimes
very small, presses--again, it's the unhealthy ideas
in the air that seem to be received with no resistance.
I don't believe populism is the only way to go, though
I know it's unfashionable in some circles to say that.
By the way, Ashbery's book *Other Traditions* (his
Norton lectures at Harvard) deals with negelected poets
like the wonderful David Schubert and John Wheelright.
The big anthoogies used by the colleges-ironically
Norton is one of the chief culprits- are part of the problem.
Did you know they dropped Schuyler from the second
edition of their *Anthology of Modern Poetry*? You need
to look at anthologies like Sun & Moon's *From The Other
Side of the Century* to get a sense of what some of the
"other traditions" are and how exciting they are."