Translation and the Laureateship

W. S. Merwin / Image courtesy of inkywretch

As I learned last week (perhaps belatedly) from the Poetry Foundation’s podcast Poetry Off the Shelf, W.S. Merwin has been named as the next U.S. Poet Laureate. He’ll take up the post this fall. At one point in the interview portion of the podcast, Merwin says that poetry is something we should naturally enjoy reading and hearing:

I really believe … that everybody really loves poetry. And if they don’t think they do, it’s because something has happened to deprive them of it. I think that just as children love to draw and to dance and to sing and do all those things, they also love poetry.

I hope he’s right. In fact, that hope is what keeps me teaching and translating poetry. And students who take my poetry courses often tell me they are pleasantly surprised that studying poetry isn’t as painful as they expected it would be. So there’s reason to be hopeful.

American readers of Russian poetry also know Merwin through the translations of Osip Mandelstam that he produced in the early 1970s with Clarence Brown. Like most Russian poets, even those writing nowadays, Mandelstam wrote formal poetry, but Brown and Merwin translated his poems into free verse. As a translator myself, I probably wouldn’t have made the same choice, but I don’t see it as an error. On the contrary, their versions of Mandelstam are marvelous. Brown and Merwin’s free verse (and I suspect we can credit Merwin alone with the sound of the poems) comes alive in English in a completely singular way. As an example, consider the last few lines of Mandelstam’s  1915 poem “Insomnia. Homer. Taut sails…” («Бессонница...»), whose literal meaning would be something like this:

… And behold, Homer is silent,

and the Black Sea, orating, groans

and with a terrible din approaches the headboard.

(… И вот, Гомер молчит, / И море черное, витийствуя, шумит / И с тяжким грохотом подxодит к изголовью.)

A Stream without a Main Current? On Russian Poetry after Brodsky

Joseph Brodsky / Image courtesy of magictoken

Had Joseph Brodsky not died in 1996, he would have been 70 years old this past Monday. The Russian-speaking Internet is abuzz with opinions about the Nobel laureate’s birthday and what it means for his body of work. Many commentators focus on the tragedy of his untimely death—a death particularly painful to Russian readers because Brodsky is almost universally recognized as a genius who breathed a new kind of life into the Russian language. How ironic, then, that he ultimately became U.S. Poet Laureate! (Brodsky was exiled from the Soviet Union in 1972, after which he taught at American universities for over twenty years, beginning with my alma mater, the University of Michigan.)

Brodsky’s friend and fellow poet Anatoly Naiman, writing in Kommersant, argues that “observing—much less celebrating—the 70th birthday of a person who died at 55 is, generally speaking, absurd. That several of his peers who were close to him in his youth are alive confirms without a doubt that he certainly could have been alive now. And that he left us means that it was not written in the book of fate, or written at his birth, or wherever such things are written, that he would reach seventy. For such figures after death another kind of counting takes over in the calendar: the next date is set at 100, then 150, 200.” If there is a bright side to any of this, Naiman continues, it is that Brodsky the person—as opposed to Brodsky the poet—hasn’t yet been forgotten: “Today’s date is simply an occasion to reminisce about him while there are still those who can remember.”

Another Leningrad poet and contemporary of Brodsky’s, Yevgeny Rein, writes in Literaturnaya Gazeta that Brodsky left a gaping hole in literature that has yet to be filled: “And now, fourteen years after his death, in Russian poetry there invariably continues to be felt a certain emptiness. Poetry seems to have persisted, but it has come to look like a stream on whose bed rush a few dozen rivulets. This stream no longer has a main current, so swimming out into deep waters is impossible.”

No Russian Doppelgänger for Ryan?

Yesterday, Washington City Paper ran an "Exit Interview" with outgoing U.S. Poet Laureate Kay Ryan, whose book of new and selected poems, The Best of It, has been steadily blowing my mind. Ryan is a master technician of language and imagery. Her interview got me thinking: why doesn't Russia have its own poet laureate? (At the peak of his popularity, Yevtushenko may have been the closest thing.) Does Russia lack a laureateship because the role of the poet there has traditionally been defined in opposition to the state? Not that American poets are lining up to write another "Praise Song for the Day." Not even Ryan.

When the Washington City Paper interviewer asked Ryan what plans she had for the near future, she replied, "I plan to do a lot more bicycle riding. I got a beautiful new bike and am looking forward to riding it more. I also want to do more woolgathering—idle rumination, daydreaming—which is absolutely essential for poetry, and which I can do on the bicycle."