The public announcement has been made, and I am immensely gratified to be among the awardees of the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Translation, for my work on a Selected Poems of Mikhail Eremin (phonetic spelling Yeryomin). I would like to congratulate the other translators so recognized, including Rosa Alcala, Douglas Basford, Jennifer Croft, Cynthia Hogue, Jeffrey Yang, and Andrew Zawacki, the many editors without whom our work would be entirely invisible, and of course the poet himself, Mikhail Eremin. While in some respects this is a culmination of 30 years of work for me, in many, it is only the beginning (I hope it has not escaped notice that I have yet to find the time to produce a book). Two poems by Eremin in my translation, and the beginning of my introduction follow. Publication of individual poems in journals will begin next year. arts.gov/news/2014/nea-literary-translation-fellowships-named *** The seamstress is stitching on the sewing machine, Just like the rain does, the blue with the green, For the rain that is fractured by the windows Like the cat-tails by a rowboat trammeled. Beyond the window the thunder coughs, To the window cling drops of rain, Each one half-green And half-blue. 1957 *** Geodes with clusters of amethysts; are caves; Along their walls horses of ochre and cinnabar bulls; Like gaps in memory safe-keeping raw material for dreams; Like cosmic holes of superabundant substance – Innumerable discoveries yet to be made Of empty lattices in matrices of universe construction Until that last Creation (on the eight day?) of emptiness complete? 2005 The Museum of the Real: The “Philological” Poetry of Mikhail Eremin The tactful cactus by your window Surveys the prairie of your room The mobile spins to its collision Clara puts her head between her paws Theyve opened shops down West side Will all the cacti find a home But the key to the city Is in the sun that pins the branches to the sky Eight Line Poem by David Bowie (from Hunky Dory) Eremin is an unreconstructed minimalist. Poetry in essence consists precisely in the concentration of language: a small quantity of lines surrounded by a mass of empty space. Eremin elevates this concentration to a principle: as though it is not simply language but poetry itself that crystallizes into verse…. Most remarkable is that all of it has been written for one self, out of one’s own conception of the mother tongue. Eremin’s poetry may rightfully be called Futurist, in the sense that to this type of poetry the future belongs. (Joseph Brodsky) His whole life writing eight line poems, the ones that constitute his sole book, “Poems.” He was composing it for some forty years, and this truly an act of heroic self-discipline. The heroism consists in writing only that which is most essential, precisely as much as necessary and no more. Sadly, there are poets who suffer from an incontinency of verse, a terrible illness. The authentic drowns in a sea of the superfluous, of the unsatisfactory…. Eremin did not suffer from such verse mania…. constructing his intimate-most. Reading these eight-line poems, it often seems to me that I am looking out from a green shoot of grass, infinitely magnified. Latin and Greek words and Egyptian hieroglyphs coalesce on the page into a universal inscription, a portrait of nature herself. Typewritten pages of his poems circulated among many of my friends, but his name never sounded loudly. Such a quiet and, what’s more, truly significant poet. He has now published two books: in New York and in Moscow, essentially a single book. The one he has been writing his entire life. (Genrikh Sapgir)
Posted on: Tue, 12 Aug 2014 20:08:20 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015