Fair enough.
Riffs grew out of the obsessive word-association games I was jotting down
in my notebooks while translating something like 30 poets virtually
simultaneously with the gun of deadlines pointed at my head. So, extreme
linguistic dislocation and delirium accompanied by the summoning, as
translation does, of submerged pieces of my vocabulary into consciousness.
As far as I know there are no names, except for John Hancock (signer of our
Declaration of Independence, whose signature is larger and more florid than
the others, so that, he said, George III's hangmen, if the revolution
failed, should have no trouble reading it. "John Hancock" is a US synonym
for name).
Numerous pieces of other languages. Vey in "vey / porized" is Yidish,
meaning "woe," but used more commonl;y for any minor mishap, as in the
phrase "oy vey" or "vey is mir."
blęme. French, "pale."
The long Spanish (more-or-less) section beginning "pastoso":
pasty [but here deerived from "pasto," pasture] / in the fields
[countryside] / there are platelets we have / plastic / pigeons fly from
the grass when folks in romantic boots walk / the women's heavy damp
skirts hang insects and snakes and empty nests made of flowers. / The
fields have nothing afterwards, afterwards / the river filled with things
abandoned by the water and gravity. How old are the girls floating in the
flood?
or something like that. Note that I confused the verb colgar=to hang with
recoger=to harvest.
veyihiyeh. Hebrew: and it will be, and it will happen.
ins Grüne / ins Grüne. German. The name and first phrase of a Schubert
song, repeated as in the song: in the green [i.e. in Springtime].
There are also lots of multilingual puns, for instance, "Coll / lated, with
milk..." where lated is a pun on the French and Italian words for milk.
At 10:53 AM 5/4/2003 +0100, you wrote:
>Hi Mark
>
>Excellent to see your work on the Wild Honey site -and hail to the mighty
>Randolph for doing another great service to the list!
>
>there is lots of work here and I havent had time to read it all, so I
>started with the most recent - the 'Riffs'. They are interesting and
>playful. I caught quite a few references to the names of people and
>wondered if each one started from a name, and I just hadnt caught them
>all.... I enjoyed the puns and sound shifts in them, and the slide into
>Spanish that you work in. Could you give a little gloss on that - it would
>help my reading? Lots of sound energy that is very satisfying. I enjoyed
>them.
>
>And some nice twists of humour in 'Notebook Entries' that made me chuckle.
>
>I shall definitely come back to this and read more
>
>Thanks Mark
>
>Liz
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