There may in fact be a fruitful discussion here,
but not so much about this or that term but
translation. In a different poem anything to do
with fluff would be fine, and any of the terms in
play cover the phenomenon (which is not always
the case). Here the problem is not detracting
from the mood of the whole, and to my ear
"feathered out" seems artificial and anything
with fluff in it sounds to my ear like Disney.
Puff and its sequelae are only marginally better, but seem the best I've got.
This is why translators grow crazy. Obsessive
compulsiveness is not my best mode. Today I took
two hours getting to a library with a decent
Hebrew-English dictionary to determine whether
the hebrew word Kozer had transliterated into
Spanish as jomet would properly be transliterated
into English as homet. The selected poems that
I'm in the last stages (please god) of cleaning
up is 200 pages long. So this is insanity. Homet,
by the way, is correct. It means lizard.
Mark
At 06:11 PM 3/13/2006, you wrote:
>Why not either:
>'feathered out against the cold"
>Or
>"fluffed out against the cold"
>pr
>"...pushed up against the cold."
>
>Yet, I been noticing in this cold spell, pushed out, the feathers do look
>"fluffy".
>
>Stephen
>
>
>
>
> > Yep, I do know what a fluffer is. Can also be a bloke in the boys own
> > area of porn. There actually was a gay film called The Fluffer. Didn't
> > keep my interest, but there you go.
> >
> > But I was meaning 'ruffle' as in feathers. As in birds, not persons
> > being annoyed. I did see it somewhere refer just to birds doing the
> > ruffle, fluff kind of feathery thing.
> >
> > Anyway ,,,
> >
> > Perhaps it could also be 'its feathers fluffed up against the cold'.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Jill
> >
> >
> >
> > On Tuesday, March 14, 2006, at 08:43 AM, Mark Weiss wrote:
> >
> >> No, that was fluff. A fluff girl is a fixture of porno movie sets.
> >> It's her job the keep the male actors alert between takes.
> >>
> >> Ruffled feathers refer to annoyance.
> >>
> >> My problem was that all of the possibilities I could think of sounded
> >> so silly, and there's no silliness to the image in the poem. And I
> >> wanted something brief, as in the spanish the entire parenthetical
> >> expression is the word hinchada. Alas.
> >>
> >> Here it is. It's by José Kozer.
> >>
> >>
> >> THE TREE OF LIFE
> >>
> >> The Greater Antilles began to appear at the sound of a pigeon¹s flight.
> >>
> >> The flight fashioned the contours of an island of the Greater
> >> Antilles; the island
> >> now of hurricanes, guásima trees, the mother tongue
> >> finally done with naming those things at their hearts
> >> unsoundable.
> >>
> >> How else could one explain that the act of sealing the window would
> >> transpose
> >> from semi-darkness to a trackless light the snow covering
> >> the length and width of the nation, let the raven be left
> >> alone in the midst of the squall, the light renders violet
> >> (within it) the fruit at the foot of the raven (its feathers
> >> puffed out against the cold), hunger only hunger could
> >> convince it to pick the skin from some animal, tossing it
> >> side to side across its shadow.
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________________
> > Jill Jones
> >
> > Latest books:
> > Broken/Open. Available from Salt Publishing
> > http://www.saltpublishing.com/books/smp/1844710416.htm
> >
> > Where the Sea Burns. Wagtail Series. Picaro Press
> > PO Box 853, Warners Bay, NSW, 2282. [log in to unmask]
> >
> > Struggle and radiance: ten commentaries (Wild Honey Press)
> > http://www.wildhoneypress.com
> >
> > web site: http://homepages.ihug.com.au/~jpjones
> > blog1: Ruby Street http://rubystreet.blogspot.com/
> > blog2: Latitudes http://itudes.blogspot.com/
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