美国国家公共电台 NPR Can Poetry Be Translated?

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MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Now, it's time to talk poetry. April is Poetry Month. And on this program, we like to go big on poetry by going small, which is to say we invite your original submissions² of tweet-length poems. Each week, a different professional poet is selecting some of the submissions on Twitter to share with our audience.

And this week, our poet curator is Aaron Coleman. He is an award-winning literary³ translator. He's taught poetry to young people both in the U.S. and abroad. He's a graduate of the creative writing program at Washington University in St. Louis, and he still lives there. And he's with us now from St. Louis Public Radio.

Aaron Coleman, welcome. Thank you so much for joining us.

AARON COLEMAN: It's great to be here, Michel. Thank you.

MARTIN: So you've been looking through the hashtag #nprpoetry on Twitter. And this week has a special twist. You are also looking for poems in Spanish, which is awesome⁴ because you are bilingual and you are a translator. So why don't you just get us going? Tell us some of the poems that caught your eye.

COLEMAN: Yeah, sure. You know, I actually wanted to point out one by Catherine Holsholf (ph). I'll read it in Spanish first, and then I'll read my translation, which was a little tricky⁵.

Here it is. (Speaking in Spanish). And I translated that as I am the wind pushing you. I spend my days drawing waves and goodbyes. Songs between window blinds and white cement.

And you know, I just thought that was really beautiful and simple. And I loved that little opening, metaphor⁶ of calling herself the wind. And then there's these little tricky things that happened, too because tiempo - paso el tiempo in Spanish - is both time and weather. So we know we don't have that sort of opportunity for metaphor in English, so I had - I did days instead of time in order to get it weather and also the passage of time.

MARTIN: I love that. So this is one of the things I wanted to talk with you about. And I want to talk a little bit more about how we translate poetry or how you translate poetry. First of all, let me play you - for you, a submission¹ that we received from Laurel Katchatag from Alaska. Here it is.

LAUREL KATCHATAG: Dreams of dried salmon⁷, hearing eggs, black mukduk, fresh dukduk, wild ukfix, 3,000 miles away, just an inukback in the city.

COLEMAN: Wow.

MARTIN: I know, right? I think it's fair to say that some of the words in this poem are unfamiliar⁸ to most of us. Does it matter in order to appreciate the poem?

COLEMAN: You know, that's the thing about poetry. It's as much a thing of words as it is a thing of sound. And so when we - at least when I encounter that - and that's my first time hearing it - I'm sort of blown away by the rhythm and the momentum⁹ that she gets from mixing together two languages. And mixing together languages is the reality for many people.

MARTIN: You know, the poet Robert Frost once said poetry is what gets lost in translation. So humbling¹⁰ (laughter).

COLEMAN: Oh, yes. (Laughter) Right, right.

MARTIN: Is it ever really possible to translate poetry from one language into another? Do you just have to accept that the thing itself, in translation, is going to be a different thing?

COLEMAN: Yeah, I think it's the latter that you point out there. I mean, I think we all want to have translation work as a process of reproduction, but it's really a process of transformation¹¹. And so when I approach translation, even knowing that it can't quite be what it is in the original language, hopefully it can be a creative, productive¹² failure. Maybe it can be something that opens up a new way for us to see what can happen in English and what can happen in Spanish, for me - or whatever the original language is. So yeah, I really think that translation is about transformation, and it's also about approaching that creatively.

MARTIN: That is poet and translator Aaron Coleman. He's based in St. Louis. Last month, he released his first full-length book of poetry. It's called "Threat Come Close." Aaron Coleman, thank you so much for speaking with us.

COLEMAN: Oh, thank you so much, Michel. It was a pleasure.

MARTIN: And remember, April is not over yet, so we are still accepting submissions to Twitter with the hashtag #NPRPoetry. And if I may, remember, this is not a contest. It is a community project. The point is not to win or to lose or even to get your poem on the air. We want to create a space where listeners can share their poems and read the work of others, so please take a deep breath and get writing.