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May 27, 2004

news are bad

This morning as I was sleepily making my way to work, a whistling man started shouting at me, “Don’t go to work, mademoiselle! Sit in the grass and read poetry!” I wasn’t sure I heard right, as it made so much sense. I let myself be engulfed in the metro station, place Gérald-Godin, and grabbed a newspaper. Then I understood. The man I saw was installing stalls for the Poetry Market, starting today. He was happy about it, and just felt like shouting. Well.

I haven’t heard anything else today that made so much sense. It has been hard to concentrate on work lately. I feel a bit under the water, new training abounds, and most time is spent on faking utter concentration, my “do not disturb” air. I need time off, soothing distractions. It’s Code Green. But in a few minutes it will be lunchtime, a breath of fresh air, a walk through La Baie, giving the evil eyes to the perfume ladies, walking straight to the bookshop section, an urgent need to peruse kitten calendars, browse Spirou comics. I warn you, I’m sorry, these are the times of Poetry Contagion.

Posted by nathalie at May 27, 2004 11:52 AM

Comments

about gérald godin (1938-1994) there is a few notes in english and a bizarre picture of him here : http://www.axess.com/users/jackr/godin.htm

now some interesting tidbits, as a way to procrastinate some more:

In a quintessentially French way, Godin the poet treats his language as a hobby, collecting words just as a numismatist does stamps, or making them run in circles like a verbal model train. These tricks make his work difficult to translate, a task Judith Cowan took on in Evenings at Loose Ends (Véhicule, 1991), a rendering of his next-to-last book. She has dealt with the fact that good poetry in French does not necessarily translate into the same in English. There are losses, for instance, palombe plombée, which becomes a dull “lead-riddled dove,” but there are also gains. The poem “Monsterious” benefits from differences between the English words “love” and “like,” which in French are both subsumed as “aimer”:

And I love them
because I do not like them
and I like them because it is you that I love
and sometimes I do not like you
because I love you

——

Posted by: nathalie on May 28, 2004 9:04 AM

in case anyone care, i must note the above comment was quoted from the linked article. as everyone and their friend chris knows, a numismatic collects coins. philatelists collects stamps:)

Posted by: nathalie on June 2, 2004 4:03 PM