Since there are only a few days left in March, and I still want to get a poem in for this month, I'm going to assign myself something a little simpler than February's crazy crossways poem of doom.
A while back, I read a post about homophonic translations on one of my favorite weblogs, languagehat.com. A homophonic translation begins with a poem in a foreign language, preferably one which you cannot read but can pronounce. Listen to yourself read the poem (or even better, record yourself reading the poem, then listen to it), and write down the sounds you hear in the English. For example, if you're translating a French text, the word "blanc" would probably translate to "blank" in English. (Go here for the original post I read for more examples an explanation...the comments are especially aweseome).
Then, at a conference I recently attended, Davis Schneiderman brought up homophonic translations. The Gods seemed to be conspiring to get me to write a homophonic translation. So, I'm going to for March.
I have a few ideas in mind for particular poems or poets I could work from, but I'll be doing some more research tomorrow. Feel free to post any non-English poems in the comments for others to use and translate.
3.26.2007
I know. March is almost over, and there hasn't been a word posted by me since early February. I apologize.
I knew that in starting this project that it would be a challange. Continuing to write and think about any long-term project can be difficult to start, and in particular, the twelve months that I've chosen will include some of the most time-consuming and important events of my life thus far: I am in the process of purchasing a house and finding a job in a new state, and in September, I'll be getting married. This month, you caught me on vacation in Vegas, taking a rest before the big sprint through the rest of this year. I won't promise that there won't be more, but I've made a committment to keep up this project, to keep up this pace of writing, and I intend to follow through on it.
That said, back to the poetry. The Quilt Poem proved to be a ridiculously difficult piece to put together, and despite the fact that I don't feel like I completely achieved the effect I was going for with this piece, it was incredibly satisfying to work on. The best way I found to work on that piece was to write as many separate and linked haiku on a similar theme that I could. From there, I could pick and choose the sixteen that I thought fit the best together in order to fashion the poem. I printed out those sixteen haiku (and others, so I could substitute and play around), but them out, so that each haiku was its own piece.
At first, I just threw the pieces down, scrambled them up, and set them in a random arrangement to see how the separate pieces hung together to create a whole. The initial effect was pretty cool on first read, but as I moved thorugh the piece, I could see spaces where the first stanza would work better in the middle, where a particular line could use tweaking, and where an entirely new stanza would work better.
Getting the poem to read well from all angles was a different matter. Front to back was fine, but up, down, across, and over were pretty difficult, and I still don't feel like it's a complete success. Though, that could just be due to the fact that I've read the poem from every angle to the point where I'm sick of it. And that's the biggest problem with this form: I worked so hard on it that I just had to say it was done, rather than actually feeling like it was done. I'm sure I'll be able to come back to it and refine things later, which works for me.
Let's call February a success.
I knew that in starting this project that it would be a challange. Continuing to write and think about any long-term project can be difficult to start, and in particular, the twelve months that I've chosen will include some of the most time-consuming and important events of my life thus far: I am in the process of purchasing a house and finding a job in a new state, and in September, I'll be getting married. This month, you caught me on vacation in Vegas, taking a rest before the big sprint through the rest of this year. I won't promise that there won't be more, but I've made a committment to keep up this project, to keep up this pace of writing, and I intend to follow through on it.
That said, back to the poetry. The Quilt Poem proved to be a ridiculously difficult piece to put together, and despite the fact that I don't feel like I completely achieved the effect I was going for with this piece, it was incredibly satisfying to work on. The best way I found to work on that piece was to write as many separate and linked haiku on a similar theme that I could. From there, I could pick and choose the sixteen that I thought fit the best together in order to fashion the poem. I printed out those sixteen haiku (and others, so I could substitute and play around), but them out, so that each haiku was its own piece.
At first, I just threw the pieces down, scrambled them up, and set them in a random arrangement to see how the separate pieces hung together to create a whole. The initial effect was pretty cool on first read, but as I moved thorugh the piece, I could see spaces where the first stanza would work better in the middle, where a particular line could use tweaking, and where an entirely new stanza would work better.
Getting the poem to read well from all angles was a different matter. Front to back was fine, but up, down, across, and over were pretty difficult, and I still don't feel like it's a complete success. Though, that could just be due to the fact that I've read the poem from every angle to the point where I'm sick of it. And that's the biggest problem with this form: I worked so hard on it that I just had to say it was done, rather than actually feeling like it was done. I'm sure I'll be able to come back to it and refine things later, which works for me.
Let's call February a success.
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