Bilingual Poetry: Working Notes

A point of arrival

2004-04-27T09:55:00.000-07:00

Here is where I have gotten this semester in my rambling odyssey:

- I have been experimenting with writing in spanish or in a mixture of spanish and english in my own poetry

- I have translated some hybrid spanish/english poems into english and spanish.

- I've shared a lot of bilingual poetry, and my translations of it, with some spanish-speaking AND english-speaking monolingual poets. There are now a lot of curious people who want to read more of it and who felt inspired by Victor Hernandez Cruz, Jose Montoya, Leticia Hernandez and Luisa Valenzuela.

- I started writing some book reviews of these poets and I found people who would like to publish them.

- I've read quite a lot of poetry, some boring, some very exciting. The horizons of What is it possible to do with language widen for me as a poet. Now: What is it possible to do with languages.

All those things are far from my goal in the beginning of generating some sort of academic theory. But they are good, happening things!

what could possibly be more fun

2004-04-22T13:05:00.000-07:00

What could possibly be more fun than translating that poem? I mean other than having written it. But as translation goes that was a happy fascinating romp. I get a silly "beavis and butthead" pleasure out of slang dictionaries because a dictionary is so very formal and the ideas are so funny and crude. anway this is a cool feminist poem. I took a little liberty with the end. (THAT WAS A HUGE PUN, as you will see) Decided to leave "coger" and "pendejo" and "Ay" in spanish, and had a great time thinking about about 20 different ways to translate "alocada libertina" keeping in mind that a libertina if a noun can mean a freed slave woman. ("slut" might be way too strong but I will check with the poet and different people) I left the parts that were spanish in italics. Ideally one woudl publish this facing with the original and then the english. or the english coudl be a footnote, whatever. I mean the whole point of the poem is that it goes back and forth between the 2 languages but in the interests of making a cheat sheet for the gringos here is my best effort that I think is a good job and reasonably witty.

Shameless

In this country
it's easier for me to talk of things
forbidden
like your ass, mine, and other dirty words
things unmentionable
because they can activate a spell
and freeze you in your tracks
so it's just that
what one says and writes
could turn real
Ay mama how scary
to hear my voice
ringing out so loud between these stone walls

in English it's not so loud somehow
no one understands what I say anyway
it's not the same to say coger as it is to say fuck
fuck doesn't sound so 'low'
like it's playful, joking
asshole sounds better than pendejo
don't you think?

and there are so, so many shocking words
in my tongue
words that frighten
words that hurt or are uncomfortable
that I don't dare say
in english the words are sorta quilted, padded,
plump, made muffled,
besides, it's not me who's saying them
it's the other one
the foreigner
the radical free love slut
not the good girl from Mexico
she doesn't understand about anything crude
(or she keeps quiet about it)
and doesn't know what they do -
man and woman -
naked in a bed
how shocking
Heaven forbid - Lord help us -

In English words are far away,
disguised,
and yet, at the very same time, so 'diarrhea of the mouth'!

for example

2004-04-22T06:44:00.000-07:00

A good example of what I'm talking about with canonization. The anthology that just came out - "Californi@ Poets from the G0ld Rush to the present". Why start there? Starting at 1850 sends a message right away. Looking at who and what is included in the anthology also makes everything rather clear. and I will make subsequent and competing anthologies, you can bet your boots.

poem to think about

2004-04-21T11:49:00.000-07:00

Sinvergüenza

En este pais
me es más fácil hablar de cosas
prohibidas
like tu culo, el mío, and other conchinadas
cosas que no se mencionan
because they can activate a spell
and freeze you on your tracks
así nomás
lo que uno dice y escribe
puede volverse realidad
Ay mamá qué miedo
oír mi voz
resuena tan fuerte entre estas paredes de piedra

in English it's not so loud somehow
nadie entiende lo que digo anyway
no es lo mismo decir coger que fuck
fuck no suena tan 'pior'
como que es de juguete
asshole suena mejor que pendejo
?no crees?

y hay tantas, tantas palabras espantosas
en mi lengua
palabras que asustan
palabras que duelen o incomodan
que no me atrevo
en inglés las palabras están como acolchonadas
regordetas, traen mofle,
además, it's not me who's saying them
it's the other one
the foreigner
the alocada libertina
no la niña buena de México
ella no sabe ni una grosería
(o se las calla)
y no saben que hacen
hombre y mujer
desnudos en una cama
qué barbaridad
Dios nos libre y nos ampare

in English words are far away,
disguised,
and yet, a la mera hora, so destapadas!

by Liliana Valenzuela from Mujer Frontera, Mujer Malinche, 2003.

I wrote to L.V,. and asked if I could quote her poetryin a review which I am sure i can get published in one of a couple of places and offered/asked to translate some of her poetry.

***

very cool - several hours later. L.V. wrote back and said yes let's do that and was super nice and enthusiastic. I really want to translate "bocas palabras"!

not much progress

2004-04-21T10:51:00.000-07:00

I read quite a lot but didn't take great notes and have not done what I thought I would do. I am going to at least try writing something on Liliana Valenzuela and on Leticia Hernandez (separate essays, one for each). Horribly i can't find the Razor Edge book - it is lost somewhere in my vast disorganized library - so i might just write on 2 poems of hers that i have xeroxed. I also want to talk a bunch about Valenzuela's "Sin vergüenza".

But mostly what happened this semester is that I read quite a lot and wrote poetry. The structuralist essay hasn't been written (yet?) and I've only written one Wikipedia entry that was kind of lame. I am also writing a general book review style essay on In/Formation in which I talk about its poems and Montoya and in passing will also mention a lot of other writers. Maybe that will be useful to make more people curious and make them read those writers.

The question of "why is this important to you, to poetry, etc" was a hard one and threw me for a loop. short answer is, "I know some spanish, like translating, like boundary crossing." As a poet it is useful and mentally freeing for me to translate or to read other languages. It shakes me out of linguistic or mental ruts --- ruts in the structure of language or the meanings of words.

for me personally I like the feeling of dislocation I get when I have to try to think in 2 languages. I love translating and specifically require translations to have both languages together - I believe strongly that when translations are published it is very important to have the original language next to the translation if at all possible. That way information is maximized and anyone who can read the original to any extent can look at it and think about it and think about the choices of translation. Mixing languages without too much worry about what happens next or who is listening seems brave, bold and important.

For me to write poetry partly in spanish will result in spanglish that is amateurish but that is no reason not to try any more than a recent immigrant to the u.s. shouldn't try writing poetry in english. Also when I am reading a lot of poetry in spanish and studying grammar, etc. though I am not fluent I am partly thinking in spanish and so it naturally comes out in poetry that I'm writing. this hopefully not arrogating any sort of cultural identity to myself (as I have seen people do) (Though I have my own personal issues with growing up being exposed to a lot of spanish but not being fluent)

I also believe that it is important to translate poems into various languages - to be a bridge between cultures. Sometimes english translators act as if they are doing some latin american poet a huge favor by translating them and possibly this is to some extent true that if as a poet one breaks into an english speaking and book buying audience you become more famous and maybe even make some money as the u.s. is a huge powerful empire. this can be very obnoxious though as if one is not really important as a poet until known in the u.s. and this seems a horribly imperialist thing to think. to what extent for example neruda becomes a u.s. commodity - it is very strange - with just love poems emphasized and not his way cooler political poems so that what "neruda" means to your average U.S. gringo poet is that whole exoticized latin stereotype as some sort of placeholder or signifier for primeval tropical passion... this, I especially hate... I don't want to participate in that sort of thing...

The Aztlan stuff and 70s chicano movement poetry is important to me as history that I don't want forgotten or worse completely unknown to, say, kids growing up in my neighborhood whether they are white or latino/chicano it seems important to me somehow and neglected. I asked Prof. M. "why is montoya not in the norton anthology for example" because it does make me feel outraged and he just sort of threw up his hands and said "why? we've been asking that question for 30 years..." as if to say, why do you want to canonize the non canonical? I don't necessarily I guess, but a little bit of that seems like a good thing (though it does seem to end up in tokenism - but does that make it utterly pointless? maybe not.) So yes I do want to engage in a little canonizing but one insight I have is that To know anything about something, it is necessary to look in both canonical and non-canonical sources. The disjunction between the two REVEALS SOMETHING and that something can be: racism, patriarchy, capitalism, or possibly just hegemony in general. For me to know about José Montoya it is actually necessary for me to know that he is NOT in the norton anthology and what IS in there, and then to know something of the context of chicano poetry/ latino poetry. For me to "know" about Liliana Valenzuela it is not enough (for me, at least) to "know" her text and read it. I want to know also, that i've looked in the Aztlan anthology and the Flor y Canto ones and thought about this: where are the women? Which women are in there? What are they saying? What is there to be said or written by women that hasn't been? Where does Valenzuela "fit" in there?

pobre viejo

2004-03-09T01:12:00.000-08:00

"Buenos dias, don Walt!" I called. "I have been
waiting for you. I knew you would one day leap
across the Mississippi!
Leap from Manhattas! Leap over Brooklyn Bridge!
Leap over slavery!
Leap over the technocrats!
Leap over atomic waste!
Leap over the violence! Madonna!
Dead end rappers!
Peter Jennings and ungodly nightly news!
Leap over your own sex! Leap to embrace la gente
de Nuevo México! Leap to miracles!

I always know that. I always dreamed that.

[excerpt from Walt Whitman Strides the Llano of New Mexico, Rudolfo anaya]

texto y contexto

2004-03-08T23:52:00.000-08:00

Now I see one reason why prof. Murguia made an exasperated noise when I mentioned "Literatura Chicana: 1965-1995" and said "oh no, read "Literatura Chicana, texto y contexto". Oh so very much better. I'm glad they both exist and I will finish reading the 1965-1995, but T. y C. blows it right out of the water.

The introduction explains everything I have been struggling to express lately. And succinctly and clearly and un-boringly. I should have started reading here in January!

WHY IS THIS BOOK NOT IN PRINT!? I will go nuts with this, thinking of all the awful books published and re-published and literary agents who spend their lives looking for good things and not having the sense to know good things. I know why, and even the book itself knows why. Still, I have to shout it.

"It is impossible to separate the fulfillment of a people's artistic and esthetic sensibility from the question of their access to power in ecomonic and political terms, as well as to education and social justice. the scarcity of chicano literature is primarily the result of an exclusionist and intolerant American society that has maintained a purist and static view of literature. The basis for what is literarily valid and thereby publishable has been the degree of conformity to pre-established literary, ideological and linguistic norms - norms which reflected the interests of the groups in power." (p. xxvi of the introduction) <--- I will forward this to the Sanjo Nonprofit that has been so frustrating [boldface emphasis is mine]

"Chicano writers were faced with two alternatives, neither of which was adequate:
1. if they adhered to Mexican models in order to publish in Mexico, their writing would have to be directed to a Mexican readership; therefore they could not reflect the Chicano experience.

2. If they wanted to write and be published in the United States, they would have to relinquish the Spanish language and the attendant conceptual and philosophic orientation in language..."

The contexto is so good- the idea of "chicano literary heritage".

I only wish for an index, and a fatter book.

moco pome

2004-03-08T13:12:00.000-08:00

As I fell asleep last night I could not get the goofy "moco pome" out of my head.

A MOCO POME

And if you see
A moco on my
Bigote -

Don't suffer
My shame and
Don't punish
Me with silence...

Tell me about it!

So silly but actually, generally applicable to everything, not just boogers, and an admirable sentiment. If I'm being an idiot... Tell me about it! (that's why I have comments eh?)

I think part of the funniness is the "POME" part where you want to go "po-me" at first not realizing that we have switched languages to an odd spelling of "poem".

coalitions

2004-03-07T09:55:00.000-08:00

I forgot to say this. It was kinda cool to see Gómez-Peña in a crinoline and red high heels performing with the queerest of the queer the other night at 848. I don't care if he is actually a Real Pervert or was just dressing up in a costume, and in fact if he is not a Real Pervert it's actually even better and braver to come do that and that's what coalitions are about. It nice to see hybridity and postmodernism put its macho where its mouth is.

The mechanical conductor/Hitler elocutionary declamacion cyber-arm was quite oddly disturbing.

"Forgive?"

2004-03-07T09:07:00.000-08:00

So brilliant and masterful & such perfect fluid limpid grace of language and leaping (right there in the middle between "Wouldn't one's" and "Alas, a sealed-forever heart!" holy mother of god there is a golden moment of poetry!

pues que dificil a ser politico y apasionado pero no didactic, What a stripping. "My heart laid bare" claro que he read or lived Rimbaud. living in the moment of uncertainty.

There are ways in which gaba readings of El Louie sentimentalize in the worst way and how it is easy for us/them to hear. it gets coopted very easily. I have seen it in action. Louie being buried over and over! I am glad he is not dead but it's painful to see the "hmmmm" moment of his humdrumization and burial and exhumation as the myth and oh the barrio/ghetto but do you palo alto poets ever cross the lines of your own highway? The "hmmmm!" and the nod and little smile AS IF SOMETHING ESSENTIAL HAD BEEN UNDERSTOOD. It's not FOR usthem that way. No. This is not that.

I'm not the man... but I am The Man... and this applies to forgiving the rapists as well as anything else (better gendering/un-gendering poem than any "mayan princess" blowhardia)

I hope this is Fair Use:

Forgive?

In the cold compassion
Of my bosom
Habrá perdón
For
My destructors?

To find warmth
In
A
Corazón
Hard-frozen -

When the thaws of
Primaveras have
Come and have gone
   Sería imposible -

Wouldn't one's
Uneasy adversary
   think the same
   heridas that
   expose the heart
   of the heart
   would...

Surely welcome
El calor de los
Rayos - rays of
Warmth, however
Sparse?
   Wouldn't he?

Indeed, si el acero
Which pierces deja
Una funda que repela
El calor

   ...sealing hurts
   forevever. Y las
   recompensas se vuelven
   las red-hot scars

That defy the time-healing-time
That fails, and so, and so,
The mind inherits
the burden of
Grotesque
Absurdities
Del pasado.

Thus,
A
Mind is not,
Alas, a sealed-forever heart!

La mente, al contrario,
Is an omniscient,
Indigenous,
Unyielding thing
That
   Knows!

And remembers!

Where does it find
Compassion to forget long
Enough to

Forgive?

-- José Montoya, 1971 from In Formation: 20 Years of Joda

Busting open language and logic is necessary

also note the movement between formal and informal english (as I am less good on formal vs informal spanish i can't always tell but I feel it sometimes)
in other poems you get english dialects, hick, brit, etc...

ThE CRYPTOGRAPhA's traitorous footnotes anotaciones

montoya notes

2004-03-07T07:58:00.000-08:00

I have to say... "Pobre Viejo Walt Whitman" is a great poem. I have read it 50 times and am still having that "huh? I'll read it again" moment. Every time I read it again, in this enjoyable circularity, I feel a deeper intuitive understanding. It is unsettling in the best way.

It is rare for a poem by one poet about another to achieve this level of depth, vision, and un-boringness. I feel sure that no one else on the planet has said what Montoya has said about Whitman. I am trying to jump blind into the stone footsteps of a dinosaur following printed dance instructions, a chart with shoeprint footsteps, and my feet don't fit and my eyes are in a different place, how can I imagine what color the dinosaur is? What, what, what? Thank you!

Commenting up 20 years of Joda and noting translations for myself like insane gaba cryptographer, laughable, but, here I am with "dictionary of chicano spanish" in hand and then figuring out other things - often simple things that throw me for a loop. "hechen" and I'm like huh? again, instantly guessing echar from context with a slangy "h" but wondering if it's a play on hecho, created constructed made. I think yes.

Y qué nos queda, hermanitos?

To look out at a gravel path

Esperando al contratista.
Ahí viene el troque, hechen
Los sacos!

beginning wikipedia edits and investigation

2004-03-07T07:55:00.000-08:00

Already the Wikipedia is being so helpful.

Bilingualism useful terminology I will now go back and apply to stuff i was trying to say earlier

non-convergent discourse this often happens when people are trying to talk to each other in 2 languages

another funny etymology

2004-03-04T15:36:00.000-08:00

I just had a "Beavis and Butthead" moment while reading the preface to In Formation. Montoya mentions that if you mispronounce joda with an english J sound it sounds like "chora", "barrio slang for phallus". I realized maybe this is the etymology of the word "choad".

heh heh heh.

Yes, I am easily amused... like Beavis...

paz and montoya

2004-03-04T15:07:00.000-08:00

In high school I had a giant poster of Octavio Paz on my wall.... like a rock star...

I have a funny image in my mind now. a diptych. one side is that photo of Paz and the word CHINGA and other side is a photo of Montoya and the word JODA superimposed

If it were a triptych what would the third panel be?

neighbor

2004-03-04T11:17:00.000-08:00

I realized last night that earlier my neighbor had used some variant the word "blichear" as we were talking about doing our hair. (mine is purple, hers has red streaks). I was wondering about how these words are made. For instance I said "blogear" the other day. Why blogear and not blogar or blogir? It just FELT right. I guess -ar verbs are the most common. But why did I want to make it -ear? I am not sure.

I will look online and see what other people say. I am not sure what verb people use (or what "bitácoras" means. will investigate.) For sure people say "el blog" and "unos bloggers" and "emailear". Pues este aparece bastante &uuacute;til: diccionario del cyberspanglish

I also hear "el Web" said around here (in the public library usually) - not "el Red" much less "la Telaraña Mundial".

Just got my Dictionary of Chicano Spanish. This independent study class is tempting me to madness with the used book buying online. Only $5.00 for a fabulous dictionary! $6.00 for "Action: The Nuyorican Poets Cafe Theater Festival" which turns out to be a 500 page hardback book with an interesting color cover. What a bargain.

background reading

2004-03-02T22:46:00.000-08:00

Meanwhile I am reading this book "Literatura Chicana 1965-1995" and Francisco H. Vásquez talking about the "Black Legend"; he calls it the "historical curriculum" of anti-Spanish, anti-Catholic statements, that can be traced to the sixteenth century." (p. 20) Well blow me down because I was just reading Hakluyt's voyages for the bazillionth time and was noticing Hakluyt's setup of the england/spain tension, protestant/catholic etc. Sebastian Cabot sounded so reasonable and good in the precepts he set forth and from then on, the English merchants try to echo those sentiments but then they burn some town or drake goes gallivanting across the world burning and killing and pirating in the name of war, protestantism, queen and country and other english joining in the sudden free for all grab for Africa enslaving people at a fairly high rate... I noticed an interesting voyage in around 1560-something where the English merchants were lured in to the coast of what i think was the Dominican Republic by some caribs or arawaks or whoever, guys waving gold around as if they wanted to trade, but it was bait so they could kill them and burn their sailing ship. Because they were already living in mountain refuges as guerrillas on their own island. Anyway. It stood out as very odd to me, the holier than thou rhetoric of the English, when they were doing the same things as the spanish were. No inquisition -- capitalism was their inquisition. That is the connection to Vásquez's article "Chicanology: A Postmodern Analysis of Meshicano Discourse" which has a lovely chart of Feudalism vs. Capitalism. I love this sort of chart though it is easy to pick holes in it (like J. Bruce Novoa's)

"...power is tolerable only on the condition that it masks a substantial part of itself. Its success is proportional to its ability to conceal itself." (p. 21)

What FHV ends up saying about "chicanology" as a tool of domination -- ie the idea of "chicanoness" or "hispanicness" or whatever -- yeah that is very familiar to me from the moment in the late 80s where I realized that anyone talking about "the gay community" was not my buddy, since there WAS no "gay community" that thought one was and had a particular position and particular needs. Possibly there were a lot of gay communities with varying degrees of shared goals. But somoene saying "the interesting thing about the gay community is blah blah blah" or "What the gay community wants" -- no. They were using that gayology as a tool of power - like orientalism. Anyway I get that that is what V&asquez is saying. Although the concept of the "whateverness" is useful, and can be good, and identity politics can be useful, it actually (I fear) can be even more useful to "the dominant culture" or whoever is in power already. In the war of myths... who is more likely to be heard... there must be counter myths to counter the dominant ones...

This is rambling. But...

later on the idea of "Fellowships of Discourse" (p. 32) "Their function is to preserve, reproduce, or circulate discourse according to strict regulations and within a closed community." and he cites examples of closed or restricted circles of discourse. I wondered as I read it, possibly this is the source of some of my discomfort, as I eavesdrop in the parking lot on some guys talking, or at the playground on some moms, who don't figure I know what they are saying, and now as I think about writing something in academic discourse world about poetry not particularly directed to me, (except, maybe it is, who knows? And I am a poet too and so feel the right to cross whatever boundaries) I might be an unwelcome spy in the house of Aztlán...

I think in my encounters with the sanjo non-profit organization, I have been seeing some of those pitfalls awaiting me that Gómez-Peña talks about - impresario etc.

All this processing - rather boring for anyone else - but it seems very necessary that I keep it in mind as I try to write my somewhat lame encyclopedia article on Montoya which I will start for real tomorrow morning. I think for one thing, the article - I have written some preliminary outlines and stared at them in dismay, very bored with them - I think as it will go in the english and the spanish versions of the Wikipedia, I must make a stab at writing it in spanglish and declare why I am doing it, and that it is important to do it that way! How dull to write something like this (I am not a reporter) or this (I am not a museum curator) I think I will stand beside Laureano Albán as an encyclopedista (?how to spell it?) poet... JODA is right and claro the spanish wikipediaists will ream me and rewrite it ... that's okay... because the english wikiistas will let me get away with murder of 3 languages at once...I bet you 5 bucks that is how it goes down.

translating something into spanglish

2004-03-02T20:08:00.000-08:00

I have been wondering about the process in my head sometimes and what it would be like to translate something from either spanish or english into spanglish. I mean, when I talk it, it comes out different from when someone chicano talks it or someone from guatemala. But we can still understand each other. I think what is happening when I talk spanglish, I am going through a process like this:

1) generate verbal thought in english
2) translate as much as I can of it into spanish
3) start saying it

what comes out in my spanglish, yes, it is "bad spanish" and often based on english grammatical structures because of my ignorance. The spanglish that Ilan Stavans talks about is Englishy worlds put into Spanish grammatical structures. It seems similar to the difference between people in Japan adopting and adapting English words, I don't know, chokkura, or something, for chocolate. That happens amazingly rapidly and fluctuates very fast especially in youth and cybercultures. Versus the sort of Japanese-style English you see on Sanrio notepaper, "winkipinki is happy with the nice flowers in her warmy palace." What? heh heh. I think my Spanglish sounds like that Sanrio English. they are very different linguistically. (since I am not a linguist I am going to have a hard time talking about this very well.)

Applied to poetry, both ways can be beautiful word jazz.

Anyway back to translating into Spanglish. I thought of trying it but didn't do it. Now I just read that Stavans translated the first chapter of Don Quixote into spanglish and people in his classes were doing stuff like translating the declaration of independence and the constitution and stuff. "Yo plegio alianza a la bandera de los Unaited Esteits de América..." "We la gente de los Unaited Esteits, pa'formar una unión más perfecta, establisheamos la justicia, aseguramos tranquilidá doméstica, provideamos pa'la defensa común, provemos el welfér, y aseguramos el blessin de la libertad de nosotros mismos y nuestra posterity, ordenando y establisheando esta Constitución de los Unaited Esteits de América." (student who did this was unnamed but I think it is brilliant and lovely)

I had not noticed people around here doing the pa' thing but I do it I think from listening to venezuelan music all the time. possibly it is a new york thing. Actually probably a caribbean thing

Now one thing about those bits I just typed. I feel perfectly comfortable or at home reading them. In bilingual poetry what I tend to like is that fluidity. Not the style of poetry that is all in english but then has spanish bits set off to one side in italics.

razor edges

2004-03-01T14:49:00.000-08:00

Reading "Razor Edges of My Tongue" by Leticia Hernández-Linares. "Cars that go boom". Also "Sweat". "Spangliku". I like the zine-ness of the inside covers. I have nothing coherent to say about the poetry, yet.

Oh this is handy. Full text of a bunch of poems from Calaca Press. They have some mp3s for free. Their cds are good! Buy them, o imaginary readers of this blog! and the books too.

Meztli Chingona by Olga Angelina Garcia Echeverria... I dig it...

looking for pacheco

2004-02-29T21:59:00.000-08:00

I have to try to find some more poems by Javier Pacheco... someone help me out here. I have only some in the Floricanto books.

"What you are now witnessing is open to your.....
Any conclusions regardingt what it was you heard will be open to your own.....
Who I am is open to your personal (file under personnel) .....
what you see involves the ..... of perception;
Es más, el montón de tu desgarga será causado por forma de tu .....
El modo en que tratas a la gente está manifestado en tu.....
Tu modo de pensar, la base de tu existencia se gira por tu propia.....
El concepto de tu lugar en este universo nació en tu .....

You are now listening to the fool
the man who did a cakewalk
snuffed a lady's perfumed hatbox
and spent late hours at the drool school,
haciendo parodias en mi troka vacía
cantando a pájaros libres, que ni caso me hacen.

You are now experiencing the duality,
lo que pasa cuando las dos voces te hablan
and you keep changing the dial,
buscando the right tune, spontaneous reality,
la tesis sobre los platitudes de chic versus anolítica,
de voces que te hablan:
ambiciones de Europa, squared to the root of el Indígena,
divided by the land, multiplied a thousand times by the spirit."

(excerpt from "Interpretation", p. 70 Flor Y Canto II)

Again music for our metaphor and the odd language of bureacracy and authority in 2 languages. Flipping through channels on the radio also an interesting metaphor for what is going on. A choice of realities and what history historia you will listen to or read.

"We are now free to decide if we will accept our present term in material form,
under the direction of God, Buddha, Tizoc, Kennedy, or Many Fernandez......
On an earthy basis, we shall ponder the question of whether we also wish
constant direction and supervision from our mortal saviors,
tijeras, Clavez, Corchy, Alambrista, Abe, Licaldo, or Emiliano Zapata (Jr),
"

Okay... here I am getting it that those are playful name puns on (I know who the tijeras one is but can't call it to mind right away... later...) chavez, corky the boxer/writer guy, alurista... and who? jokes in other language and other culture and history! well at least I am vaguely aware there is a joke even if I don't really get it.

I run into this a lot as a translator. In fact it is partly that sensation of missing a joke that first got me into translation when I was a kid, as I listened to Los Melodicos or Alberto Beltran and vaguely realized there were off color jokes in there pretty much any time they were singing about farm animals.

site with the text of some poems

2004-02-29T21:37:00.000-08:00

handy online text of some poems and other good stuff. Mostly Montoya and Salinas... Including El Louie (1969)

notes from meeting

2004-02-26T16:20:00.000-08:00

Read:

Literatura Chicana Texto y contexto ed. Joseph sommers and Tomas Ibarra and antonio Castañeda
Roberto Vargas
Aztlán by Luís Valdez and Stan Snyder
Nuyorican poets: Nuyoricans (big anthology)
Victor Hernández Cruz (Snaps, Mainland, Tropicalization)
Pedro Pietri (Puerto Rican Obituary)
Miguel Piñro - playwright mostly known as, but great poetry, look for it
Miguel Algarín - editor of good stuff, look for it
Leticia Hernandez - local - tues. mar. 9th Intersection for the Arts 1pm(?)

K. Weber - fellow grad student does translation, contact her

Jimmy Santiago Baca. how did I leave him off my list? Why does my list focus around chicano mvment of the 70s? Well. Because when I look for "bilingual poetry" on web or "poetry chicano latino" etc. in library catalog, that is what I get. And I don't think I looked up nuyoricans anywhere though I have heard of them - It didn't occur to me. And in all the poetry scenes i have found in the last 2 years - no one has heard of anyone and in fact, see my giant rants on the Non Profit Not To Be Named and its complete ignorance of "how to find a latino poet" despite being IN S@N JOSE. heh heh And me, interested, and also asking everyone I know and don't know, including cold-calling and visiting office hours of various profs, no one could give me any names except for Renato telling me to look up José Montoya and the floricanto poets. nor was i able to find any poetry reeadings that were bilingual nor did anyone tell me about the intersection for the arts. It also took me 3 years living here to find out about the Center for Art in Translation, even though I was looking and asking for something, anything, to do with translation and started my own translation reading group in order to fill the void. So yeah. if that answers any questions about why and how? and why no one knows? it is hard to find, or see, anything, from my suburban gringalandia... In fact in comp. lit dept. OR poetry ctr. SF OR creative writing dept, no one I talked with ever mentioned the existence of the ethnic studies or La Raza depts!!!

translating one foreignness into another

2004-02-24T22:54:00.000-08:00

I was thinking about some more translator's tricks. When I translated Luis Sepulveda Calbucura's "Las mujeres de mi generación" into English there were some lines where he was ranting, listing various terms for women, slang terms, and in my skull-cracking dictionary raiding I found them all and realized they are from various countries and a lot of them had their origin in Lonfardo. They weren't exactly in the DRAE!!! But I thought, who is reading? Who is Sepulveda writing for and what is the effect? Him in exile and all. I should ask around, but my feeling was that a person from one latin american country might not know all those slang terms for "girlie" or "hottie". So I translated some of the "spanish" words that were lonfardo-inspired latin american spanish into more u.s. american spanish words like Ruca, Cholita, etc. (Of course, not in the DRAE either! those esnobs!) They aren't particularly my language or my words but what the heck. It felt right to put them in. Figuring, some readers of the poem in my english version would get it if they are chicano or latino background, and some won't. I felt that I was taking a bold liberty and of course I enjoyed that feeling.

I have had commentary from non-spanish speakers at poetry readings about some of my de Ibarbourou translations too - that I will leave words like "piragua" instead of translating it as "canoe" or "boat" or "dugout canoe" or something. This is clearly the "foreignizing vs. domesticating" issue. And here I didn't feel like "piragua" was any more exotic a word for de Ibarbourou than "canoe" would be for an english speaking US-ian.

One other thing with translating de Ibarbourou particularly - I know I'm not always preserving the right tone - the degree of high-falutin' literariness. Sometimes by accident, and sometimes on purpose.

another thought

2004-02-24T19:11:00.000-08:00

I think it was Bruce-Novoa who was quoting some other paper, a linguistics paper, that classified types of code switching. I should look this up and use it. It could be one of the "filters" to look through. single word back and forth? phrases? clauses?etc.

random notes

2004-02-24T13:44:00.000-08:00

notes on Luis Valdes's "Pensamiento Serpentino" from Flor y Canto II 1975

*what some actual mayan, or non mayan "indio" would think of this, I have suspicion not necessarily liking being exoticised, mithologized, subsumed,he does mention non-maya: "Azteca, Toteca, Maya or Yaqui" Nahuatl too.
Mixing of mayan phrases in capital letters
p. 20 Place name lists begin to emphasize the indioness of the names.
p. 23 fictional etymology. flexiblity. "re-ligion" "RE-LIGARE" the crossing of languages here has resulted in an idea. the idea of the "false cognate" but I think that "falseness" is false - it is fruitful. the "false cognate" creates something new, some new idea and new word.
p. 24 re-writing of history. alternative history. fictional history. catachrestic mythologizing. comes out very strong here:

Jesus Christ spoke
in a strange
and holy language, saying:

"HELI LAMAH ZABAC TANI"

which was misinterpreted
long ago as

"MY GOD, MY GOD, WHY HAST
THOU FORSAKEN ME?"

becvause the translators
did not recognize
the strange phrase
which was

in

MAYA-YUCATECO

and meant

"AHORA ME SUMERGIÓ EN LA
ALBORADA DE TU PRESENCIA"

p. 52 Flor y Canto II
I love the poem "Nacimiento' by Viviana Aparicio Chamberlain

It strikes me that Bruce-Novoa's structures don't apply very well to the work by women poets

Alurista

tends toward similarities with what i think of as the more academic or intellectual mexican poets like Huerta Writing the bulk in spanish A poet's poet and a virtuoso I warm to him extremely.

more from fiesta

2004-02-16T23:23:00.000-08:00

just as poetry I am enjoying a poem by Aleida Rodríguez - a very sweet poem by Leonard Adame (Juana de Ibarbourou would like it!), Ricardo Vásquez, especially Alurista "Nuestro Barrio", pleasantly non-expository (my pet peeve) Tino Villanueva with many footnotes, long crazy-ass shining brilliance from Gregorio Barrios.

I am happy for the translations and the footnotes. I don't get a lot of the poems when I first read them. I figure some out from context and then look up words.

now i notice a thing I could talk about. for example in Alurista's poem "En El Barrio" we have things like this:

en el barrio
- en las tardes de fuego
when the dusk prowls
      en la calle desierta
pues los jefes y jefas
      trabajan
      - often late hours
after school
      we play canicas
in the playground
      abandoned and dark
sin luces
      hasta la noche
we play canicas
      until we grow
to make borlote
and walk the streets
con luces
paved - with buildings
altos como el fuego
      - el que corre en mis venas

Well, I had meant to just quote a few lines but I typed the whole poem because i liked it so much. A few quick notes before i go to sleep. I get it all except the words canicas and borlote but i get the idea that canicas is some kids' game and borlote is more questionable fun of some kind like maybe drinking or whatever, something the teenagers would do. but I think an english speaker with much less spanish than I have could still "get" this poem. why? we have some repetition that is not exact repetition in the "dragontales" sense. alurista is not repeating "en las tardes de fuego" "on late afternoons at fiery sunset" or whatever. but if you don't get the tardes de fuego, you still get "when the dusk prowls" right afterwards to give you the sense of time. the fuego is also I think echoed in the word "abandon" and the feeling of ominousness and the words "walk the streets". It reminds me of the technique of translation that I have been calling "echoing". I found when translating some poems that I could not manage to work all the echoes, all the possible meanings, double meanings, implications, of a single word in spanish, fit into the place in the poem it should be in. I will provide an example of this later but am too tired to look it up now.

But I can remember the words "dura cuenca" and thinking about the geographic basin and then something about it being like a skull or helmet and hoofs were also involved. The poem had a lot of death imagery and dryness and I think I worked in the "skull" meaning a few lines later, where it did not exist in the original Spanish version. So, rather than lose multiple meanings inherent in one word or phrase, I tried to echo the possible meanings somewhere else in the poem. Maybe real translators have a technical term for this. I will check. I also did this in a few places in translating "Fusion" by J. de Ibarbourou. So that when people read it they say "why do you have this word here, it's not in the original." and I then explain.

The point was that here is a link between translation and a technique used in bilingual poetry to make the poem accessible to more than one linguistic category of audience.

And it's a great poem.

I wonder if I am going to end up talking about what and why I consider good vs. bad poems here. Probably here on the blog, because I think about it a lot. But in any sort of final paper I would rather just focus on the "good" whatever I decide that to be. But shouldn't I define what I mean by good, or why I am choosing the poems I choose to talk about?

For example what if a 90% spanish speaker reads this - do they like it? does it work on those levels? for this poem yes I think so.

I might try typing up only the english or only the spanish and see what 2 different poems come of it.

I also feel the urge to read some of these to hapless english-only poets at poetry readings and see their reactions.

translating both ways

2004-02-16T23:13:00.000-08:00

I am reading "Fiesta en Aztlán" and came across "La Jefita" by José Montoya. Written bilingually but then translated on following pages into English. So that

A maternal reply mingled with
The hissing of the hot planchas
Y los frijoles de la hoya
Boiling musically dando segunda
A los ruidos nocturnos and
The snores of the old man

Lulling sounds y los perros

becomes in a translation into English by Toni Empringham:

A maternal reply mingled with
The hissing of the hot iron
And the beans in the pot
Boiling musically seconding
The nocturnal sounds and
The snores of the old man

Lulling sounds and the dogs

It would be interesting to translate it all into Spanish too. If you are going to bridge one way then also build the bridge the other way.

linking projects

2004-02-15T00:51:00.000-08:00

Not that direct of a link, but I can't help but think of my other project on Monique Wittig as I read Gómez Peña.

I will repeat again for myself:

"The artists and writers who inhabit the Fourth World have a very important role: to elaborate the new set of myths, metaphors, and symbols that will locate us within all of these fluctuating cartographies."

And am thinking of Wittig's myths and histories and symbols in Les Guèrilléres and with Sande Zeig in Lesbian Peoples: Material for a Dictionary.

Reversals, fiction, myth. How I felt on reading Egalia's Daughters. Rewriting of histories.

I am also thinking of my love of Laureano Albán's Enciclopedia de Maravillas. Its similiarities in the dual language edition to "Lesbian Peoples" rewriting symbology by creating authoritative encyclopediac definitions in poetry. Poetry, leaping, illogic, fiction, as legitimate source material for an encyclopedia or a dictionary. The possible truths or could have beens in "Lesbian Peoples" and the cheerfully sly personal jokes. The feeling that "real" history is this false or this subjective as well.

I am departing from the idea of bilingualness in the poetry, but these seem like useful connections for the other project.

New World Border

2004-02-14T08:27:00.000-08:00

I am really enjoying The New World Border by Guillermo Gómez-Peña.

Right away on page one the word "Gringoñol" in the introduction to "Freefalling toward a borderless future" made me laugh and simultaneously feel at home and feel uncomfortable. Then the essay gave me some more new words for identity and geography. Nuyo Rico. Cuba York. Mexamerica. Canochis. Chicanadians, Waspbacks, Gringotlanis, Anglomalans. Right on! Where am I? I'm not sure but in some (not too painful) colonialist purgatory or limbo.

"Here/there, the indigenous and the immigrant share the same space but are foreigners to each other. Here/there we are all potential border-crossers and cultural exiles. We have all been uprooted to different degrees, and for different reasons, but not everyone is aware of it. Here/there, homelessness, border culture, and deterritorialization are the dominant experience, not just fancy academic theories. "

Yo Guillermo! I am a duck swimming around happily in your pond made of mixy uppy words and languages. Tell it! I love a straight talking manifesto.

I oppose the sinister cartography of the New World Order with the conceptual map of the New World Border - a great trans- and intercontinental border zone, a place in which no centers remain. It's all margins, meaning there are no "others", or better said, the only true "others" are those who resist fusion, mestizaje, and cross-cultural dialogue. In this utopian cartography, hybridity is the dominant culture; Spanglish, Franglé, and Gringoñol are linguas francas; and monoculture is a culture of resistance practiced by a stubborn or scared minority.

I also oppose the old colonial dichotomy of First World/Third World with the more pertinent notion of the Fourth World - a conceptual place where the indigenous peoples meet with the diasporic communities. In the Fourth World, there is very little place for static identities, fixed nationalities, "pure" languages, or sacred cultural traditions. The members of the Fourth World live between and across various cultures, communities, and countries. And our identitites are constantly being reshaped by this kaleidoscopic experience. The artists and writers who inhabit the Fourth World have a very important role: to elaborate the new set of myths, metaphors, and symbols that will locate us within all of these fluctuating cartographies.

I typed all this in because I think the Fourth World will be a good term for me. The poems I am looking at often inhabit that Fourth World. To get to the Fourth World, "beyond science fiction", it is necessary to be hybrid, to be dislocated. The mixing of languages for the 100%-er of either side can be a good dislocator.

Holy cow. As I keep reading I am developing a giant crush on Gomez-Peña. Everything he is saying is what i have been railing at the SJ poetry center about all year and also what I like about translation. Hybridity, simulteneity, cross-cultural diplomacy, conscious border crossing while not destroying the borders, ie not making everything happy bland multiculti cultural globalization pablum.

hmmm

2004-02-11T16:01:00.000-08:00

test

good reference

2004-02-11T01:21:00.000-08:00

'Code-switching occurs commonly amongst bilinguals and may take a number of different forms, including alteration of sentences, phrases from both languages succeeding each other and switching in a long narrative. In normal conversations between two bilinguals code-switching consists of 84% single word switches, 10% phrase switches and 6% clause switches (Cook, V. 1991)'.

Annotated bibliography

2004-02-10T07:54:00.000-08:00

I've already deviated from my plan by not keeping the annotated bibliography. Bad me!

Here is the space where I will start keeping it. Later today or tomorrow morning.

another technique used by a writer/speaker

2004-02-10T07:23:00.000-08:00

modifying language used to make it easier to understand - simple vocabulary, avoid idiomatic expressions, use cognates, "attempted transparency". SPANISH AND ENGLISH IN THE 21ST CENTURY, Christopher J. Pountain, section 2

I am enjoying reading this paper. Pountain talks about the benefits of extending spanish through borrowing and extending grammatical possibilities. (ie verbs like emailearse) That's great. But what are the benefits of code switching? The Poetics of Code Switching. Maybe it is code switching I need to be looking at more closely. because it is insistant that both languages be used simultaneously and it doesn't adhere to one grammar or the other. for example I've heard poems where a person writes the whole poem in English and just substitutes a Spanish word here and there but the overall structure is grammatically (lexically?) English. (find a good example of this) Montoya goes beyond this as do a lot of the other writers I'm skimming - Raúl Salinas etc.

I think at this point I need to stop reading linguistics papers for a few days and rip quickly through an anthology. I need more examples in my head than Montoya.

It is working well to think about this early every morning even though I am too busy buying a new house and getting ready to move for the next week or so to really focus.

calque

2004-02-09T23:38:00.000-08:00

definition of calque and a definition from the Wikipedia.

a good article on spanglish and calques. " Although “a normal feature of bilingualism,” (Crystal 115) the loanwords, code-switching, and calques typical to the varieties of Spanglish threaten both the English and Spanish languages, with purists on both sides condemning the budding dialect."

Music

2004-02-08T09:36:00.000-08:00

Cypress Hill
Kid Frost
Molotov (hilarious. "frijolero" gringo accent is cracking me up! )

I wish to find some women? where are they hiding, hiphopistas? anyone have suggestions? I surfed about and looked through some compilation CDs but found no women. they must be there, I have faith!

Creoles and pidgins

2004-02-08T08:38:00.000-08:00

Hoping to get a little background in linguistics... maybe to find some useful terminology... I'm reading Pidgins and Creoles by Loreto Todd. He talks about dialects, in which a language (English is the main example) has been influenced by another language; pidgins, in which the grammar of English and other languages have come into contact and been restructured; and creoles, which I think are defined as evolving from pidgins, from people who grow up with the pidgin as their first language.

Todd asserts that the process of pidginization takes place all the time anytime two people who don't speak each other's languages come into contact - 'people who have elementary communication needs but possess only a vestigial grasp of each others' languages". so far he has not talked much about power or dominant cultures etc. "But the creation of a pidgin and its elaboration into either an extended pidgin or a creole, while not uncommon, is much rarer than the actual process of pidginization itself. The emergence of such a language as a permanent form is not merely the result of lanugages coming into contact and influencing each other; rather it is the birth of a new language, one with the potential to develop and spread or to disappear if the need for the communication which brought it into existence should cease to be operative" (11).

"the need for the communication" that is the interesting part. Where does the need come from? What is being "exchanged"? (in a poetry reading? In a book? in a cypress hill hip-hop album?)

"Describing the Haitian situation in 1939 Ferguson coined the term diglossia to describe the special form of bilingualism where two varieties of the one language exist in the same speech community, one of the languages having high status and the other low" (Todd, 26). P. 27 Todd goes on to talk about the change in this percieved status: "Young, and especially educated, creole speakers are realising that there is no intrinsic stigma attached to speaking a creaole, and that to deny their linguistic heritage is to interfere with their cultural heritage and to block, if not to dam, the flow of their self-expression." Keep in mind this book was written in 1974.

Theories of pidgin development.
1. early and rather obnoxious "baby talk" theories.
2. The nautical jargon theory. Early sailors english, spanish and portugues spread a core pidgin world-wide.
3. the monogenetic/relexification theory (deriving from 15th century portuguese pidgin, "Sabir", earlier crusaders)
all assuming a "dominant language"
4. Todd's synthesis of all these explanations, I'll summarize it later

Chapter 4 - development from pidgin to creole.

I keep trying to think about the history of California/Mexico. The dominant language being spanish for so long.

My neighborhood is unofficially called "little michoacan".

My conversation with Rafael yesterday where I suddenly realized that his avoiding speaking spanish with me was not because my spanish was so awful, but because he is from yucatan and he is Mayan and spanish is not his first language either. Wow, that makes me feel dumb! I was feeling really embarrassed that he kept talking in english. English is actually easier for him than Spanish. This is probably true of a lot of people in my neighborhood. I wish I could tell from accents but I can't. I remember reading some statistic of what percentage of mexican citizens primarily speak a non-spanish language ... but it was very, very high and "minority" was not quite the correct word, whatever the number was. What this means for Spanish and for Spanglish I have no idea and it all seems a bit beyond me. I could keep it in mind. It's another reason that the "puro castiliano" people bug the hell out of me, they so obviously seem wrong-headed just like or maybe even worse than the "white" US-ians who start spouting off about "learn english dammit"

Useful comments

2004-02-04T13:31:00.000-08:00

Jo was kind enough to listen to me talk about all this at the cafe and she sent me some great comments.

Thinking about translation. One thing: is there an assumed slippage in your thought between language and culture? You might want to address that since they are not always synonymous or contiguous.

I think it is perhaps throught thinking through this linkage between culture and language that you might be able to come up with a way to talk about the construct of a "legitimate" creator of bi-ligual poetry vs an "illegitimate" poet who is simply poaching on the coolness factor of throwing in multiculturalism.

Seems to me culture and language intersect interestingly: transmittor of cultural identity, cemetor of bonds especially when language is spoken in a place where another language is predominant.

In some ways it is language that allows culture to exist, perhaps even creates culture though its speakers' ability to express certain thoughts and not certain others.

It creates the possible range of interaction between speakers and shuts down the terrain outside the range by its exclusion of signifiers. (especially idiomatic phrases, here. we can say "you suck" but it might not have the same vector in, say, swahili)

And yet language breaks free of culture in that it can be spoken by those outside of the culture. As you pointed out, can be "enjoyed" by those who don't even understand the meaning of the words.

language changes, expands and contracts, is inadequate to its mating to culture. (Tere is always more to be said than there are words to say it, so people must make up new words.) Like the word "tere," for instance.

As descriptions and maps of relationships, language and culture are separate from each other, though it would be hard to talk about one without the other.

I do want to talk about the idea of a legitimate/illegitimate creator of bilingual poetry. I was at a poetry reading recently with a poet, Brenda, who is learning Spanish and who has been writing poetry in spanish or in 2 or three languages at once. A guy from Spain was also there and he was a bit superior about her bad spanish. Yes, her spanish was often incorrect and especially it was written in the grammatical structure of english, but I argued with Mr. Castiliano Puro de Madrid, I don't remember his name at all, that part of Spanglish is exactly that, that chicano spanglish is valid, and if gringos are talking and writing spanglish, all to the good. My spanish is better than hers, but still really, really bad, but sometimes I write bits of poetry in Spanish or spanglish because I'm thinking in spanglish and so, how else to express it? Because she is (sort of) part of the dominant culture, it's supposedly bogus that she tries to write in spanish as a cultural tourist. But in many ways she is NOT part of the dominant culture except by speaking the language fluently. I strongly suspect that Mr. Madrid would not have made fun of a Guatemalan woman who wrote a poem in ungrammatical English and read it out loud with a strong accent, so why jump all over Brenda's case? I understand why, but I probably don't agree.

function

2004-02-04T13:07:00.001-08:00

moving into spanish during moments of

- emotional emphasis
- humor
- obscenity
- slang
- sadness
- exasperation w/dominant culture
- conversations
- to convey familiarity. to convey intimacy. (cultural intimacy) (a sense of neighborhood-ness)
- just because that's the way people talk and think, obviously

stories

2004-02-04T13:07:00.000-08:00

Montoya sometimes writes narrative poems. There are several narratives going on, then. Several stories possible at once. Sometimes the narrative is written to be 3+ stories in one narrative poem, depending on how much you understand/what kind of listener you are. the gringones hear one story, the homies hear a different story, the 100/0s hear another and each misses the other 2 stories.

the way the lyrical experience is different if it's not primarily a narrative poem

Think about this!

A few techniques of mingling languages

2004-02-04T12:54:00.000-08:00

Repetition in parallel. The "Dragon Tales" technique. For the 100%ers on either side. As Quetzal would say, "Hello, my friends, mis amigos. Bienvenidos, welcome, to Dragonland."

Cognates. "taken over by those nice republicanos" all our postulated listeners except maybe Category 7 get that one. "What became of the berets and revolution y las marchas and all that yelling..." (Montoya 95)

commonly shared words: place names. food. can function as "exoticism" but also as the establishing of identity or intimacy?

Context.

"All those programs that we started in the barrio.... "Now that high rise in the barrio..." Any 1 or 2 category reader who is reasonably intelligent should be able to get that "barrio" means neighborhood.

i think "context" could be broken down into different categories but I will have to think about this and come up with more examples.

It occurs to me

2004-02-04T12:52:00.000-08:00

It occurs to me that Jose Montoya and Greg Hall would be great reading together.

wow, that would be great synergy!

categories of readers

2004-02-04T12:50:00.000-08:00

Postulated readers/listeners. (reader response theory? read something of it and say something coherent)

There is a continuous spectrum of listeners/readers and their levels of language understanding.

consider an english only poem. its listeners can have various levels of understnandingo f the language used. vocabulary, the actual words used. (thnk of an example and quote it) literary "vocabulary", understanding references to ideas, quotes. Cultural references, class background. All this comes into play in reading, hearing, and understanding a poem.

spanish/english poem all the same issues apply but there are more complicatoins. just addressing the bilingualness of the reader/listener we get a spectrum like this:

1. the gringones. 0/100 percenters. English only or english mostly, might know what "barrio" or "salsa" means.

2. the gringuitas 25/75 percenters. I put myself in this category. In the middle. English native speaker, enough spanish to get along.

3. the Homies, 50/50s. Bilingue all the way.

4. the ?? need an amusing name. 75/25. spanish primary, gets along in english.

5. the ?? ditto 100/0. native spanish speaker, no english or very little.

6. ? non native to either spanish or english, have 1 or both as a secondary language

7. ? Extranjeros Don't know any of either language. (how I listen to, say, some guy singing Kabir in Hindi and I still enjoy it) Listening to a language as MUSIC not as meaning. The pleasures, benefits and DANGERS of this. Thinking you "get something".

This spectrum doesn't take into account the different flavors or levels of spanish and english. For example a wealthy educated person from spain might not get a lot of the words in Montoya or might just consider it barbarous bastardized Non-spanish.

Methodology: I like making these categories and labels. I have to make some sort of structuralist thing to start with so that I have some language to talk about this stuff in.

joda

2004-02-04T12:44:00.000-08:00

The hilariousness of the cover of Montoya's book and the title in its fancy wedding script "In Formation: 20 years of Joda".

"Joda" the funniness of that - the insouciance. playing around, goofing, screwing around, screwing with your head, fucking around, messing around, screwiness, screwball. No way to translate! silly fucked-ness? being screwed up? fucking-around-itude. what's up? not much just messing around. just screwing around having fun. Possibly "mind-fuck" would be a good translation but it seems slightly less strongly rude in spanish

plan for the day

2004-02-04T09:55:00.000-08:00

I'll read José Montoya and maybe also read Borderlands/La Frontera and take some notes.

One essay for Wikipedia will for sure be on Montoya.

reading bilingual poetry

2004-01-31T09:49:00.000-08:00

I am not 100% bilingual but as I often translate poetry from Spanish to English I approach a bilingual poem as a translator. I want to look up all the words or ask people what they mean. That's why I have some reference books and links to slang dictionaries - some of the poems I am reading have plenty of "Caló" or street slang (sometimes obscene or at least a bit rude). There are americanismos that I'm just not going to find in the Diccionario de la lengua española of the Spanish Royal Academy.

So one issue that immediately comes up: The poets are not writing to be de-coded, I think, but I'm trying anyway because that's what I like to do. If a poet is fully bilingual (and this concept is probably a lot weirder: what does "fully bilingual" actually mean?) then they can move back and forth freely between languages. A fully bilingual listener/reader will "get" the full effect of the poem. A person who only or mostly knows Spanish will experience the poem differently; what is that like? A person who doesn't know Spanish or knows very little "gets" some thing different. I am seeing these experiences as a sort of spectrum.

I have found when I read poems in Spanish or bilingual poetry at a public reading for an audience of non-Spanish speakers, they thank me for the experience, seeming to have enjoyed it in part as a kind of exoticism or enjoyment of the unknown. At times this seems positive to me; they are open to a poetic experience without needing to understand; they'll talk of the "music" of the Spanish or "letting it wash over" their consciousness in an experience akin to someone who knows nothing about music theory listening to jazz. "There is some meaning here, and though I don't understand it, I feel respect for what it might be."

At other times I think of this phenomenon in a more negative light. The English-only listener gets to feel "liberal and multicultural" or "open-minded" but does not really gain much understanding of another culture or language. They like to project an idea of exoticism on the non-understood language. This is similar to the problem of "intellectual tourism" brought up by... (one of the essays in Comparative Literature in a Multicultural Age - who was it? Look this up and write down the quote.)

What is going on for the non-English speaking Spanish listener/reader I don't know, but should ask.

Some people commented in a class of mine last semester how it was difficult or impossible to enjoy such poetry if neither English nor Spanish was the reader's first language. I'm probably not going to focus on that as it complicates things, but I'll keep it in mind.

Renato Rosaldo, who first introduced me to the poetry of José Montoya, talked a little bit with me about the idea of writing bilingual poetry with the idea firmly in mind that these three audiences (or what I think of as a continuous spectrum of listener language ability) might be listening at once. That idea fascinated me and led me to devise this course of study.

I think it is important that the bilingual poems are not written for the dominant culture's ear. ie it is not the duty of the bilingual poet to "be the bridge" or the diplomat between cultures who explains everything and makes it easy and palatable.

Some links that might be useful

2004-01-31T09:43:00.000-08:00

Some articles on Spanglish, future of Spanish, Chicano Studies

I think I might need this Book of Caló by H. Polkinhorn

And Open Signs: Language and Society on the US-Mexico Border looks useful too (look in library).

Proposed syllabus

2004-01-31T09:15:00.000-08:00

Theory and Criticism of Bilingual Poetry
Independent Study CWL 899
San Francisco State University
Advisor: Prof. Alejandro Murguia
January - May 2004

I will read a lot of poetry that uses both Spanish and English, and will attempt to describe commonalities, classify techniques used, and talk about various philosophies of writing bilingual poetry and responses of listeners/readers. I have not found very much theory that discusses these issues, but will try to build on writing about chicano/a writing and translation theory.

I will create:
- An annotated bibliography of bilingual poets and their poetry that I've read.
- I will also keep a public weblog of working notes and ideas. Anyone can read it and comment on it.
- Several short articles on specific poets and their work. These will be published in the Wikipedia, an international online encyclopedia.
- I'd like to write these articles in English and translate them into Spanish. They will be published in both languages. I'll write at least 6 of them.
- I'll write a long paper 15-20 pp that will express some general ideas and principles.

The anarchic and collaborative nature of Wikipedia means that the articles I submit can be edited or rewritten by anyone who cares to do so. Since the articles as I write them will be ephemeral, I will turn in written copies, and will archive my original articles on the weblog.

Reading list

Theory:
Theories of Translation ed. Rainer Schulte and John Biguenet (essays)
Translation Course by Bruce Osimo (online textbook, linguistic focus)
Borderlands/La Frontera
This Bridge Called My Back (maybe)

Poetry:
Un Trip Through the Mind Jail y Otras Poemas by Raul Salinas
Fiesta in Aztlan: Anthology of Chicano Poetry
Contemporary Chicano Poetry: An Anthology
Flor y Canto I and II
Literatura Chicana 1965-1995: An Anthology in Spanish, English, and Calo
Three Times a Woman: Chicana Poetry (esp. Maria Herera-Sobek)
Various chapbooks by Liliana Valenzuela
In Formacion by Jose Montoya

Other:
New World Border by Guillermo Gomez-Pena
Codex Espangliensis
Possible music (Cypress Hill? Others? Need suggestions)
Interviews (? Brenda Simmons, Francisco Alarcon, Liliana, guy from conference, other)

Jan 30 - Start annotated bibliography.
Feb. 6 -
Feb 13 -
Feb 20 - 1 short article due
Feb 27 - 1 short article due
Mar 5 -
Mar 12 - 1 short article due
Mar 19
Mar 26 - 1 short article due
Apr 2
Apr 9 - Early draft of final paper due
Apr 16
Apr 23 - Final annotated bibliography due
Apr 30 - 1 short article due
May 7
May 14 - draft of final paper
May 17 - final paper due

Sink or swim!

2004-01-31T09:13:00.000-08:00

I have no idea where this will go and it seems like it's possibly an overly ambitious project. But it is exciting to me so I'm going to give it a good try.

I would welcome any comments or suggestions!