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Category Archives: Translation

Questions – LXIII (after Neruda)

How is the translation of their languages agreed upon with the birds? How do I explain to the tortoise that I am even slower than he is? How should I quiz the flea about his championship statistics? Or address the carnations, in my appreciation of their fragrance?

I’ll play along (after Da Ponte)

You wanna dance, you little count? You wanna dance? If you really wanna dance then I’ll dig out the banjo. Why not? I’ll play along with you. If you wanna learn how I’ll even show you the moves: I could teach you a thing or two. I will, I will – I promise! But gently […]

Translator’s Note (after Khemiri, after Heti, after Valtat, after Coetzee, after Nooteboom, after Martin, after Kierkegaard)

What I would like to say by way of introduction to my essays on the art of writing, by A.B.C.D.E.F. Godthaab* (* Bear with me, please, while I endeavour to explain what is going on here.) . Twelve years ago, I wrote, with considerable emotional anguish, a long novel about a war against the languages. […]

Mortality 101 – or; Catullus at the graveside

‘I want to explain about the Catullus poem … Catullus wrote poem 101 for his brother who died in the Troad.’ – Anne Carson I have travelled, brother, over lands and oceans, to this field of bones to observe the rituals of the final hour, and mumble pointless words above your ashes. Misfortune took you […]

From my father’s marginalia on TS Eliot

‘What the devil does this mean?’ – TS Eliot, note in Edmund Husserl’s Logische Untersuchungen Pagan spring about to be replaced cf. feathers in Gerontion This a prayer – the old securities will collapse. No guarantee for children on acc. of his piety. Period between death and rebirth. Prefiguring of passion + cross. Calvary. Eliot […]

jus sayin’

jus soli jus sanguinis jus poetarum (jus sayin’)

Fragment (after Sappho)

no more for me the honey or the bee (i.e. thee)