NOBEL IDIOTS

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Once again, the Nobel Prize for Literature has gone to an idiot.

How many years in a row now is it that the Swedish Academy has lauded idiots with this ultimate honor.

Here's some idiot in the NYTimes:
"Should Ms. Oates and Mr. Roth, Mr. Pynchon and Mr. DeLillo never win a Nobel, however, they will be in exalted company. Among those who never won the Nobel Prize: James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Leo Tolstoy and Marcel Proust."

The Times idiot doesn't mention a single poet: natch.

Pound, Frost, Stevens, WC Williams, Auden, Bishop, Larkin: just to list past poets writing in English who should have won Nobels and didn't.

What a disgrace that the prize has not gone to living poets like Ashbery, Bonnefoy, Tanikawa et al (make your own list) . . .

The latest idiot:—Helga Muller: well, if they wanted to give it to a woman writer in her middle years of age, it should have been the great Carol Ann Duffy—

but Duffy is a poet, and poets only get the Nobel on those odd-once-every-decade-or-two occasions

when the idiots at the SwedAcad can't agree on which idiot to choose,

so it seems . . .

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I'm using the word "idiot" in its original meaning, from ancient Greece.

To quote a sentence in the Wordsworth Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (p. 561)—from its definition of "idiot":
'The Greeks have the expressions,

"a priest or an idiot" (layman),

"a poet or an idiot" (prose-writer).'


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when I was young I used to mail inscribed copies of my books to poets I admired, until i started finding those profusely-signed copies in used bookstores and realized that of course those famous poets disposed of the books i sent them as quick-riddancely as all the other junk freebies they received . . .

at which point i decided to cut out the middleman:

i still inscribed my books to famous poets but rather than mail the books to those famous poets, i would instead simply leave the books inscribed to them on the shelves of secondhand bookstores or in Goodwill bookbins,

and if you look on abebooks today you'll see booksellers hawking those copies inscribed to famous poets

at ridiculous prices, prices based not on the merit of my books or me, but based on their "association" with those famous poets . . .

anybody who buys my dead tree volumes from abebooks is a sucker anyway when they can read and or download all my work for free at Lulu.com via the link on this blog!

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But there was one famous poet i really did continue to mail inscribed books to:

James Tate . . .

—until, that is, one of his ex-students confided to me what Tate did with the books I sent him—

(and they deserved the fate he dealt them:)

he used them as door-stops—that's right,

he would wedge them in under the door of his office at UMass Amherst,

(He liked to kick at 'em as he went in and out)

and he would point them out to his students, saying isn't that a good way to recycle wastepaper?

Plus it had the added pedagogical benefit of acting as a lesson warning to those students:

'See where you'll be if you don't do what I tell you to do!

You wanna be a failure, you wanna end up like that, that knottwad?'

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p.s.

some of those books on abebooks i may have actually mailed to those famous poets who then jettisoned them to the used books store etcet,

because although i resolved with native hue to stop sending out such inscribed books, the reality heft of the new book in my hand sometimes sicklied me o'er with cowardly hope that famous poet A or X might, might this time be receptive to my obsequiously offered tome . . .

so some of those association-books may be "authentic", but which is and which ain't is anybody's guess . . .

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from today's Harriet blog at the PoFound:

Rebecca Wolff

Name That Goon

It took me about two seconds to name the unexpected speaking voice of poet/critic/professor Joshua Clover as I flicked past the NPR station. I flicked back. He was being interviewed because today he’s going on strike! Or at least walking out. We wish him well.

09.24.09

...

I don't read my horoscope every day, but happened to notice today's: "Your offbeat sense of humor isn't always totally appreciated . . . "

so I didn't Harriet my immediate response to the above,

which was to make a few jokes:

Couldn't UCal make up for the budget cuts by jacking up the price of all the poetry books published by UCal Press?

Clover's "The Totality for Kids" for example could be raised from 45 dollars to 145 dollars!

The extra revenue would surely solve their cash shortfall . . .

It's interesting that UCal Professor Clover's book of verse is published by UCal Press . . . is that part of his contract, do you think? Talk about sweetheart deals.

(Many incarcerates of California's educational system probably couldn't locate their state on a US map, so I doubt they would understand the meaning of the word, "nepotism.")

....
Speaking of raising the price of poetry books,

Stanford University Press is about to publish the Collected Poems of Larry Eigner,

which will cost you 150 dollars if you want a copy—

I wouldn't pay 1.50 for it myself, but—

Eigner is another one of those avantpoos whose books nobody but a niche wanted to read when he was alive,

who is now purportedly rescued from his (well-deserved) obscurity by the usual elitist scammers—

students at Stanford are presumably happy to fork over the dough to pay the costs of this extravagant Eigner boondoggle . . .

Universities which lavish their money on wasteful prodigalities like this Eigner book, deserve to have their funding slashed—
....

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this is impressive:

http://www.kickingwind.com/readings.html

....

in the last ten/fifteen years, I've been invited to give/have given maybe four readings . . .

with my persona non grata status in the Pobiz, I guess it's amazing I got even four invitations!

...

actually, when I was younger I did receive invitations to read my poetry, and I did readings—

but then Poetry Magazine reported that I was afraid to give readings—

yes, before Poetry Magazine stated that I was afraid to give readings,

I was actually invited to give readings of my poetry,

but then of course after Poetry Magazine asserted that I was afraid to give readings,

all such invitations dried up . . .

which is not surprising, really:

I mean, when you know that Poetry Magazine has declared that I am "terrified" (the word they used)

of giving poetry readings,

then it's not too likely that you or anyone else

will invite me

to give a poetry reading,

is it?

The sponsors and organizers of poetry readings all know that I am afraid to read my work in public—they all know it because it said so right there in Poetry Magazine, so it must be true—

ergo it's no wonder they never invited me.

....



....

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


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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


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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


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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.


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"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.


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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.


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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.


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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.






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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.


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