dumbfoundry

Do you alter poems after you've read them in public?

Yes, sometimes. I think it's helpful to read in front of an audience because, for some reason, the poems sound different that way. You feel them differently. Even though I always hear things very well, or so I think: I hear things as if they're being read aloud. But something different happens when you're in a group of people. [...]

Will you tell me about the process of translating the Osip Mandelstam poem, "394"?

I'm trying to remember when we did that. I was at MacDowell--the MacDowell Colony is an artists' colony in New Hampshire, and I've been there a lot. I'm very grateful to them. It's a beautiful place--where [grinning] they treat you like a movie star--they cook for you, change your bed, and you meet all sorts of other interesting people. You have [whispers] time. And space and quiet. It's beautiful.

So I had time there, and I'd met this woman named Anne Frydman who wasn't a native Russian speaker but she was a Russian scholar, and a poet. And she and I had agreed to do a Mandelstam poem together. We had somehow picked this one, "394"--it had no title. She was a perfectionist, and I was probably pretty close to one, though not really quite where she was with that. I would have been content to do things, one thing anyway, that wasn't quite kosher. She wasn't. It was before the days of email, and we were sending each other mail back and forth. She wasn't at MacDowell.

That would've been too easy.

[little laugh] Too easy, yes.

This entry was posted by Ivy on Friday, January 14, 2005 at 2:43 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.