Homero Aridjis: Poems

[Leseratte]

Homero Aridjis — Autorretrato a los 80 Años

AUTORRETRATO A LOS OCHENTA AÑOS

medium.com

Homero Aridjis – México – Poesía ibero-americana – Poesía mexicana - www.antoniomiranda.com.br

Página web do poeta brasileiro Antonio Miranda, repositório da obra literária poesia romance ensaio de Antonio Miranda do Brasil, artigos científicos e livros do professor Antonio Miranda da Universidade de Brasília sobre biblioteconomia e ciência da informação, poesia brasileira e...

www.antoniomiranda.com.br

Poesía y literatura en español / Spanish poetry and literature

Poesía y literatura en español y otros idiomas desde sus inicios hasta hoy en día

www.palabravirtual.com

 

[Ludus]

Homero Aridjis — Autorretrato a los 80 Años

AUTORRETRATO A LOS OCHENTA AÑOS

medium.com

Homero Aridjis – México – Poesía ibero-americana – Poesía mexicana - www.antoniomiranda.com.br

Página web do poeta brasileiro Antonio Miranda, repositório da obra literária poesia romance ensaio de Antonio Miranda do Brasil, artigos científicos e livros do professor Antonio Miranda da Universidade de Brasília sobre biblioteconomia e ciência da informação, poesia brasileira e...

www.antoniomiranda.com.br

Poesía y literatura en español / Spanish poetry and literature

Poesía y literatura en español y otros idiomas desde sus inicios hasta hoy en día

www.palabravirtual.com

Oh boy that first poem is ghastly.

And it's an example of how his international translators defend him of himself. His second verse is translated as "in the year of plague and populists", which makes him sound vaguely progressive to the American ear, but the original, "en el año de la plaga y de la plebe gobernante", can be literally translated as "in the year of the plague and the plebs in power" or "the governing plebs", which sounds, at least to me, very classist.

 

[Leseratte]

To me it referred to the quality of the governing classes, I didn´t notice it, but you are right, Ludus. He should have used a different description.

 

[Ludus]

To me it referred to the quality of the governing classes, I didn´t notice it, but you are right, Ludus. He should have used a different description.

Yeah, that's exactly the problem. Regarding the "plebs" in power as a disaster comparable to the pandemic is... at least questionable. There's a lot to critique of the actual Mexican government, but associating it with the "plebs" just for being vaguely left leaning and implying it's a bad thing is pretty disgusting.

 

[Ludus]

(also the poem is pretty derivative and bland)

 

[Ludus]

ÚLTIMO DÍA DEL AÑO EN LA IGLESIA HELADA

Es la última noche del año,
mi padre y yo vamos a la iglesia helada
a dar gracias a Dios por habernos dado vida y nada.

Él y yo nos quedamos parados a la entrada
delante de la estatua de la virgen desolada.
El mundo acaba.

Los rebozos de las mujeres huelen a tela mojada.
Unas cuantas luces están prendidas.
El resto en la penumbra nada.

Nadie celebra nada. Sólo la melancolía recorre

la nave de la iglesia helada.

And oh gosh, that rhyme pattern is astonishingly bad. Sounds like what someone who has no idea what poetry is would say is a poem. Seriously, I work as an editor in a creative writing blog managed by a university, in which we read and work with poetry written by 17 year olds. Even in that blog I wouldn't publish that.

 

[Leseratte]

Ludus,
I put up this poems as a kind of sample, because his Nobel possibilities were discussed here. I don't know him, I don't even know, if these poems are representative of his writings. I didn't like him but refrained from giving my opinion.
Thanks for taking the trouble to read him and to express your opinion in an objective way.

 

[Ludus]

Ludus,
I put up this poems as a kind of sample, because his Nobel possibilities were discussed here. I don't know him, I don't even know, if these poems are representative of his writings. I didn't like him but refrained from giving my opinion.
Thanks for taking the trouble to read him and to express your opinion in an objective way.

Thank you for sharing the poems, Les. Unfortunately most of this poems belong to the later books written by Aridjis, when his poetry got into a critical ditch. I would reccomend strongly that if you want to read him, start with his first books, the older the poems the better. I would specially reccomend the poems in his book "Antes del reino" (Before the Kingdom). Here you can find a selection in Spanish, I couldn't find anything in translation. Maybe if I have some spare time I can translate a bit for yall:

Poesía y literatura en español / Spanish poetry and literature

Poesía y literatura en español y otros idiomas desde sus inicios hasta hoy en día

www.palabravirtual.com

 

[Ludus]

I've discovered that Aridjis sometimes reads better in translation. This poems are not really that good in the original Spanish, but Jerome Rothenberg made a very well crafted rendition of them in his English translation:

Homero Aridjis: Poems of the Double

Translation from Spanish by Jerome Rothenberg 1 I grabbed my face and brought it to the mirror Searched my eyes but did not know them Observ...

poemsandpoetics.blogspot.com

These poems belong to "El ojo de la ballena", 2001. I can see the urge of his translators for fixing his shortcomings.

Also I would reccomend this article written by Aridjis himself about his relationship with Tomas Tranströmer (i do believe that he might be the best translator of Tranströmer into Spanish):

A Tale of Two Poets: Aridjis and Tranströmer

This is the tale of an intercontinental friendship between two poets, one from a land where the sun sometimes shines at midnight, the other from a country where centuries ago human sacrifice was thought to keep the sun moving across the sky. My earliest acquaintance with Tomas Tranströmer’s poetr

criticalflame.org

 

[Bartleby]

Thank you for sharing the poems, Les. Unfortunately most of this poems belong to the later books written by Aridjis, when his poetry got into a critical ditch. I would reccomend strongly that if you want to read him, start with his first books, the older the poems the better. I would specially reccomend the poems in his book "Antes del reino" (Before the Kingdom). Here you can find a selection in Spanish, I couldn't find anything in translation. Maybe if I have some spare time I can translate a bit for yall:

Poesía y literatura en español / Spanish poetry and literature

Poesía y literatura en español y otros idiomas desde sus inicios hasta hoy en día

www.palabravirtual.com

Thanks for the recommendation. Here you take take a peak at some of the translations from the anthology Eyes to See Otherwise. Before the Kingdom can be read in the sample. I'll put it here:



It's quite good indeed. And I understand your frustration with his later work, especially since your first language is Spanish (right?). I myself have developed some quibbles with Lobo Antunes' sentimentalism as of late =/

 

[Ludus]

It's quite good indeed. And I understand your frustration with his later work, especially since your first language is Spanish (right?). I myself have developed some quibbles with Lobo Antunes' sentimentalism as of late =/

Indeed, quite good. And in Spanish it's even better, the music of his verse is incredibly pleasing. The first book in that collection and Before the Kingdom have some kind of mystic feel to it, similar to the Song of Songs in the Bible. Ajedrez-Navegaciones (Chess-Navigations) is a mixed bag, but that's because Aridjis was experimenting with new forms of verse and rhythm and sometimes this explorations don't arrive to satisfactory results, but in some other poems he gets to a very surreal feel and imagery that I find very compelling. Let's remember that he published his first collection when he was 20, Before the Kingdom when he was 23 and Chess-Navigations when he was 29.

 

[Ludus]

Thanks for the recommendation. Here you take take a peak at some of the translations from the anthology Eyes to See Otherwise. Before the Kingdom can be read in the sample.

It's so sad that there's so little of Before the Kingdom in this collection! Why would they include only a few poems of his best work!

I was thinking about translating one of my favorite poems of his myself, but turns out WS Merwin already did:

Renovation – such a jazzy line.net

 

[Leseratte]

Thank you for sharing the poems, Les. Unfortunately most of this poems belong to the later books written by Aridjis, when his poetry got into a critical ditch. I would reccomend strongly that if you want to read him, start with his first books, the older the poems the better. I would specially reccomend the poems in his book "Antes del reino" (Before the Kingdom). Here you can find a selection in Spanish, I couldn't find anything in translation. Maybe if I have some spare time I can translate a bit for yall:

Poesía y literatura en español / Spanish poetry and literature

Poesía y literatura en español y otros idiomas desde sus inicios hasta hoy en día

www.palabravirtual.com

That poem is simple beautiful, Ludus! It's curious though, that his first poems are his best. Usually it's the opposite.

 

[Leseratte]

It's so sad that there's so little of Before the Kingdom in this collection! Why would they include only a few poems of his best work!

I was thinking about translating one of my favorite poems of his myself, but turns out WS Merwin already did:

Renovation – such a jazzy line.net

I'll see if there are more of these earlier poems in Spanish in the net. They get different in English even if the translation is good.

 

[Leseratte]

I hope this is the good Aridjis:

https://www.uexternado.edu.co/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/72-MirandolaDormirHomeroAridjis.pdf

 

[Ludus]

I hope this is the good Aridjis:

https://www.uexternado.edu.co/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/72-MirandolaDormirHomeroAridjis.pdf

Most of it, yes. It has a generous amount of early poems and a mixed bag of new ones.

 

[Ludus]

Just finished reading The Child Poet in the Spanish original. It's close to a memoir, but not exactly that. It's a poetic retelling of the author's childhood... or at least that's what it was until page 100, then the book turns into a meandering narration about completely different things. It's a pretty unfocused book made out of poetic vignettes, some of them amazing, some uneventful.

 

[Ben Jackson]

I did read some poems of Aridjis online, though I haven't read any of his poetic volumes yet. I really liked it. Some of the poems has this sensuousness that recalls his countryman Octavio Paz, though Paz is better. Hope to read more from him.