...

*
appreciation/transversion: "L'Horreur" by
Andrée Beidas


*
I could find only 14 google cites for her, all of which seem to be a listing of her two (her only two?) books . . . Which seems odd, given the bio note below. (Abebooks has nothing.)


This poem is on page 120 of "Poetry by French Women," edited and translated by Evalyn P. Gill, published in 1980 by Green River Press:


L'HORREUR


L'horreur
n'est pas une mer
dont chaque courbe de vague
serait le dos d'un monstre
ni même un ciel d'orage
qui pleurerait du sang
L'horreur
c'est ce visage
parfois
grimaçant de désir


*
Gill's enface trans. adds a stanza break (assuming the above was printed correct):


HORROR


Horror
is not an ocean
where each wave's curve
would be the back of a monster
nor even a stormy sky
raining blood


Horror
is this face
now and then
grimacing with desire


*
from the "Notes on Contributors" (p. 140):


Andrée Beidas, born in Beyrouth of Lebanese ancestry, is an actress and T. V. star, as well as a poet. She lived in London a year while acting in the Royal Opera. Her poems, which show a sense of the dramatic, are collected in Pages d'insomnie and Et Franchir le reveil.


*
"L'Horreur" is one of the two poems by Beidas in this anthol, which features 33 poets, including 3 who have had book-selections published in English translation: Vénus Khoury, Joyce Mansour, and Andrée Chedid.


*
Some of my efforts at transversion:


THE HORROR


Horror
is not the seashore,
the beach
where each


wave breaks
like a monster
with two backs—


Nor a stormy sky
that rains one's veins dry
with lightning fire—


Horror is a face
displaced, here,
by its grimace
of desire.




/
Horror is a face
above me placed,
fixed in its grimace
of desire.


*
I worked from Gill's trans., and from the original—


the wave's monstrous back made me think of Shakespeare's image for sexual intercourse: "the beast with two backs",


which perhaps Beidas was referencing . . .


My version reverses her ending (her climax) by making that grimacing face the Other's (the lover above me)


rather than the speaker's own: Horror is this face, she says,


this face I see in the mirror as I makeup for a performance—


or does that interpretation rely too much on her bio—


Gill's only comment on Beidas is in the bio note, which says that her poems "show a sense of the dramatic"—


as I remember it, I read the bio note before I went to her poems with curiosity as to what "an actress and T.V. star" would be writing about—


Horror is this face which now and then (parfois) grimaces with desire,


in desire,


on those (stormlike?) occasions when desire occurs—


My version may mirror her mirror.


*
Horror
is not the seashore
where each wave


breaks
beastbacked
like a monster—


Nor even the sky,
where a storm rave
rains its blood dry—


Horror
is a face
out of place


here,
in this grimace
of desire.


*


/
Horror is this
face, its grimace
of desire.


/
Horror is this face
in my mirror,
etched in its grimace
of desire.


/
Horror
is this mirror
here, my face


in this grimace
of desire.


/
Horror
is my mirror,
where desire


paints its grimace
on this face.


/


Horror
is a face
displaced


here,
by its grimace
of desire.


/


Horror
is a face
I occasionally


see,
this grimace
of desire.


/


Horror
is a face
I occasionally


paint as me,
titled "Grimace
of Desire."


/
THE HORROR


Horror
is not the seashore,
the beach
where each


wave's contour
breaks
like a monster
with two backs—


Nor is it shown higher,
in a stormy sky,
where the rain's out-racing / erasing
its blood veins dry—


Horror is a face
above me placed,
grimacing
with desire.






/




Nor is it shown higher,
in a stormy sky,
rain and fire / rain and bloodfire
every blood vein dry— / lightning's vein dry
/ where the lightning's fire
rains each blood vein dry—


Horror is a face
above me placed,
set in its grimace / fixed in its grimace
of desire.






*


The "final" version, as it appears in my collection of Transversions:


After: "L'Horreur" by Andrée Beidas


Horror
is not the seashore,
the beach
where each


wave breaks
like a monster
with two backs:


or a stormy sky
that rains one's veins dry
with lightning fire—


Horror is my face
displaced
by this grimace
of desire.






Note:
I worked from the original French poem, and from
Evalyn P. Gill's English version.


*
*
*

*
this was posted on Edward Byrne's blog yesterday:

As we recall today the events of September 11, 2001, I thought the following poem by Stanley Plumly would be appropriate to bring again to readers’ attention. “’The Morning America Changed’” first appeared in the Fall/Winter 2002-2003 issue (Volume IV, Number 1) of Valparaiso Poetry Review, and it was later published in Plumly’s excellent 2007 collection of poems, Old Heart (W.W. Norton). Although eight years have now passed since the terrible incidents of that infamous day, Stanley Plumly’s fine poem still resonates with its intimacy and immediacy, and its lines remind me once more of the intense rush of emotional reactions caused by those images seen on television screens all around the world.


“THE MORNING AMERICA CHANGED”

Happened in the afternoon at Villa Serbelloni. 

We’d closed up shop on the work for the day 

and decided to make the long descent down 

the elegant stone switchback path into Bellagio 

for coffee and biscotti. It was still Tuesday 

and a quarter to three and a good quarter hour 

to the exit gate or if you stopped to look 

at the snow on the Alps or at “the deepest 

lake in all of Italy” or looked both ways 

at once—as we say crossing a street—five, 

ten minutes longer. This day was longer 

because it was especially, if redundantly, 

beautiful, with the snow shining and the lake 

shining and the big white boats shining 

with tourists from Tremezzo and Varenna. 

And the herring gulls and swallows at different 

layers, shining like mica in the mountain rock. 

And the terra cotta tiles of the village roofs 

almost shining, almost close enough to touch. 

Judith was already in the pasticceria 

and I was looking skyward on Via Garibaldi, 

the one-way traffic lane circling the town, 

when I heard the rain in the distance breaking 

and then her voice through the window calling 

and then on the tiny screen inside 

pillars of fire pouring darkly into clouds. 



—Stanley Plumly 
 


Posted by Edward Byrne at Friday, September 11, 2009

...

**

to me, the only thing that "resonates" about this poem is how bad it is . . .

frankly I find it disgusting—it's not just that the plotting of it is a direct steal from O'Hara's The Day Lady Died,

which I find offensive—

a list of things I hate about this poem would include every line:

"Villa Serbolloni"— what the fuck is the Villa Serbolloni? whose "villa" is it? is it Plumly's? does he own it? is he renting it? is it a hotel, or what?

"We’d closed up shop on the work for the day"— who the fuck is "we"?

Me, Stanley Plumly, and who else?

and what on earth is this line saying, literally I mean—

what work? "we" are working on what?—

("closed up shop"—what does "closed up shop" mean? is this cliche phrase meant to foreshadow the "shop" at the end of the poem:

"Judith was already in the pasticceria"

(and who the fuck is "Judith"?))

.....

these incomprehensible first two lines

are followed by utterly boring and banal descriptive blather—

oh yeah that "stone switchback path" down which we make "the long descent" from our swanky "villa"

is just so elegant, don'tcha know—

jesus yuck.

O'Hara's digressive aporia in the Holiday poem are at least well written/intriguing/interesting, and filled with evocative suspense depending/suspending from the ominous title,

but Plumly's inconsequential trivia is just maddeningly pointless: its "poignancy" is calculated derivative and a worn-out literary device . . .

...

depressing to me that Edward Byrne finds merit in this trite verse . . .

Byrne's book "Along the Dark Shore" is a book I admire and have reread at since its publication—

Ashbery contributed a foreward to it, in which he aptly praises the "particulars" of Byrne's poems . . .

**

contrast Plumly's specious, dishonest smarminess

with a poem by a real poet—this one by Robert Pinsky:

9/11

We adore images, we like the spectacle
Of speed and size, the working of prodigious
Systems. So on television we watched

The terrible spectacle, repetitiously gazing
Until we were sick not only of the sight
Of our prodigious systems turned against us

But of the very systems of our watching.
The date became a word, an anniversary
That we inscribed with meanings–who keep so few,

More likely to name an airport for an actor
Or athlete than “First of May” or “Fourth of July.”
In the movies we dream up, our captured heroes

Tell the interrogator their commanding officer’s name
Is Colonel Donald Duck–he writes it down, code
Of a lowbrow memory so assured it’s nearly

Aristocratic. Some say the doomed firefighters
Before they hurried into the doomed towers wrote
Their Social Security numbers on their forearms.

Easy to imagine them kidding about it a little,
As if they were filling out some workday form.
Will Rogers was a Cherokee, a survivor

Of expropriation. A roper, a card. For some,
A hero. He had turned sixteen the year
That Frederick Douglass died. Douglass was twelve

When Emily Dickinson was born. Is even Donald
Half-forgotten?–Who are the Americans, not
A people by blood or religion? As it turned out,

The donated blood not needed, except as meaning.
And on the other side that morning the guy
Who shaved off all his body hair and screamed

The name of God with his boxcutter in his hand.
O Americans–as Marianne Moore would say,
Whence is our courage? Is what holds us together

A gluttonous dreamy thriving? Whence our being?
In the dark roots of our music, impudent and profound?–
Or in the Eighteenth Century clarities

And mystic Masonic totems of the Founders:
The Eye of the Pyramid watching over us,
Hexagram of Stars protecting the Eagle’s head

From terror of pox, from plague and radiation.
And if they blow up the Statue of Liberty–
Then the survivors might likely in grief, terror

And excess build a dozen more, or produce
A catchy song about it, its meaning as beyond
Meaning as those symbols, or Ray Charles singing “America

The Beautiful.” Alabaster cities, amber waves,
Purple majesty. The back-up singers in sequins
And high heels for a performance–or in the studio

In sneakers and headphones, engineers at soundboards,
Musicians, all concentrating, faces as grave
With purpose as the harbor Statue herself.

......