The Blackest Ink

Alberto Blanco, star poet, sent me "a little gift" by e-mail: a Spanish translation of "The Blackest Ink," one of my poems just out in the new issue of The Bitter Oleander. Thanks, Alberto! It's so thrilling see a piece reborn in another language, even if my Spanish is incredibly rusty. Here are both versions:

The Blackest Ink

Hair still wrapped in a towel,
I rush to my notebook,
urgent words overflowing.

As I write, a drop of water
falls into the stream
of still-damp cursive.

The miniature puddle
swirls with orchid and blue:
a delicate oil slick.

This morning
even my blackest ink
bleeds secret rainbows.

-- Christine Boyka Kluge

La tinta más negra

Con el pelo todavía envuelto en la toalla,

corro hacia mi cuaderno de notas,

las palabras urgentes se desbordan.

Y mientras escribo, una gota de agua

se precipita en la corriente

de letras cursivas todavía frescas.

En el charco en miniatura

se forma un remolino orquídea y azul:

una delicada marea negra.

Esta mañana

hasta mi tinta más negra

sangra arcoiris secretos.

-- Christine Boyka Kluge
Translated by Alberto Blanco

The poem is reprinted here with permission from The Bitter Oleander. The translation is printed with permission from Alberto Blanco. To read a post about one of Alberto's poems from his book, A Cage of Transparent Words, click here: "Life by Halves." The photograph of the coleus leaf was taken 8/18/08 in Rhinebeck, NY.

Brittle Snap

When I first read “Life by Halves," a poem by Mexican poet Alberto Blanco, the ending gave me a corresponding brittle snap in the heart. On this rainy day, here it is, from his bilingual collection, A Cage of Transparent Words:

LIFE BY HALVES

We were in such a rush and it was raining …
a few rays of light filtered through
the dark branches of the trees.

The rusted chain was cold
and the padlock weighed like a heart
in the middle of the night.

You stuck the key into the lock
and began to force it.

A few minutes later
– and after a brittle snap –
you showed me the broken key.

The small stupidities
that seem to happen without warning
concentrated in a gesture of impatience.

Such is life:
a house locked up with chains,
one half of the key in our hand,
the other half in our chest.

– Alberto Blanco
– Translated by Elise Miller

A Cage of Transparent Words was published in 2007 by The Bitter Oleander Press. The pieces appear in both the original Spanish and, on facing pages, in English translations by Judith Infante, Joan Lindgren, Elise Miller, Edgardo Moctezuma, Gustavo V. Segade, Anthony Seidman, John Oliver Siimon, and Kathleen Snodgrass.

W.S. Merwin wrote one of the blurbs:

Alberto Blanco’s poems, over several decades, have revealed with precision and delicacy an original imaginative landscape, in language and imagery that are at once intimate, spacious, and rooted in the rich ground of Mexican poetry. There should certainly be a bilingual selection that represents his full range.

“Life by Halves” is reprinted here with the permission of Alberto Blanco and Bitter Oleander Press. I was honored to have my book, Stirring the Mirror, come out from BOP the same year as Alberto’s.

The photograph of a key that belonged to my grandmother was taken 10/26/08.

Pod People and Poets House

All this week Poets House is holding its annual showcase of new poetry books in the Willa Cather Room of the Jefferson Market Library on Sixth Avenue at W. 10th Street, NYC. The organization's goal is to showcase every book of verse published in the U.S. in the past year. There are more than two thousand titles available for viewing through April 19th. My publisher, Bitter Oleander Press, has sent along A Cage of Transparent Words by Alberto Blanco, Gold Carp Jack Fruit Mirrors by George Kalamaras, and Stirring the Mirror, my new collection of prose poetry and flash fiction.

See the previous post for information about tomorrow's reading at Mount Saint Mary College in Newburgh, NY.

The pod people pictured above are made from -- you guessed it -- pods, a strange pine cone, and vintage prints sealed with acrylic varnish.