Search Results for: What is LIfe
Arte Poética by Vicente Huidobro
Poem by Vicente Huidobro
Music by Iván Lizama, performed by Ensamble Transiente – Música Experimental Latinoamericana (see YouTube for personnel)
| Arte poética
Que el verso sea como una llave Inventa mundos nuevos y cuida tu palabra; Estamos en el ciclo de los nervios. Por qué cantáis la rosa, ¡oh Poetas! Sólo para nosotros El Poeta es un pequeño Dios. |
Let poetry become a key Invent new worlds and guard your word; We dwell in a circle of nerves. Poets! Why eulogize the rose? Everything under the sun The Poet is a little God. |
My attempt at a translation. The last line became the slogan of the literary movement Huidobro founded, Creacionismo (“Creationism”).
Incision by Jillian Weise
Poem by Jillian Weise, from An Amputee’s Guide to Sex
Animation by John Roberts
From the publisher’s description:
The Amputee’s Guide to Sex is an authentic exploration of disability and sexuality. Tired of seeing “cripples” appear as asexual characters in all forms of media, Weise took on a subject close to home: her own disability. This does not mean that these poems “happened” to Weise in real life. While based on the experience of an above-the-knee amputee, the poems have a life of their own.
Nazim Hikmet Oratorio by Fazil Say
Updated 15 May 2016 with a new video. The text below refers to earlier YouTube uploads of portions of the work.
Nazim Hikmet Oratoryosu, by Fazil Say (at piano)
Poetry by Nazim Hikmet
Bilkent Symphony Orchestra and State Polyphonic Choir, conducted by Ibrahim Yazici
Vocals in “My Country” by Kansu E. Tanca (child) and Genco Erkal; reading in “Traitor” by Zuhal Olcay
To appreciate the first section, it probably helps to know that Hikmet spent most of his adult life in exile. In fact, his citizenship was only just restored, posthumously, 46 years after his death.
One more section of the oratorio with English subtitles seems worth sharing, despite the fact that the video ends abruptly. The subtitles here are in captioning that must be turned on via the arrow-shaped icon on the bottom right corner of the video.
[dead link]
The poem is Yasamaya Dair, “On Living,” and the translation here is by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk. Poetry doesn’t get much more life-affirming than this — at least, not without turning into very bad poetry. I love that Nazim puts grief at the center of it, as the source or motive for our determination to live fully.
La Bailarina (The Dancer) by Gabriela Mistral
http://youtu.be/Q7n3Ki73D1Q
Poem by Gabriela Mistral — full text here; excerpts used in the poem below
Animation by ultapopdsgn
La Bailarina
The Dancer
La bailarina ahor est danzando
la danza del perder cuanto tenia
The dancer now is dancing
the dance of losing it all
Se solto de su casta y de su carne
She loosed herself from caste and flesh
desnuda de todo y de si misma
stripped of everything and of herself
sigue danzando sin saberse ajena
she dances on, not knowing she is changed
unica y torbellino, vil y pura
alone, a whirlwind, foul and pure
(Ursula K. Guin, trans.)
An interesting attempt to convey the mood of a work with just a few fragments of text, given out of order, and a rapid, pop music-video-style succession of images. I like it!
Since this is Women’s History Month (in the U.S., at any rate), I thought this would be a good time to recall that Pablo Neruda was not the first Chilean poet to win the Nobel Prize. I’m not sure which are the best English translations, but the volume I own seems pretty good: Gabriela Mistral: A Reader, tr. by Maria Giachetti and ed. by Marjorie Agosin. Its only drawback is that it does not include the original Spanish. The translation used above comes from a more recent book — Selected Poems of Gabriala Mistral, tr. by Ursala K. LeGuin, which I haven’t seen.
Though never well known in North America, Mistral remains a beloved figure in Latin America. She appeals strongly to conservatives and leftists alike, who tend to project their own values onto the clear and deceptively simple surfaces of her poems, much as readers do here with Emily Dickinson. Unlike Dickinson, Mistral was very active on the world stage, and her mix of progressive activism and traditional Catholic religiosity makes her supremely dificult to pigeonhole. According to Petri Liukkonen,
In 2001 Mistral’s sexual inclinations arose fierce debate in Chile. Yuri Labarca’s film, La Pasajera, written by Francisco Casas, dealt with her relationship to Doris Dana, her American secretary. Mistral’s devoted readers considered the film outrageous and said that her true, traditional views of life and love were present in her works. However, an independent woman, Mistral has also been presented as a feminist icon. The absence of male friendship and her life as an unmarried woman has contributed to her image of a defender of all racial minorities and “the mixed-race mother of the nation”.
As for me, I am of course fondest of her nature poetry.
