Self-Portrait in Quotes

This is a self-portrait of me as a reader, using as brushstrokes and colors passages from what I am reading that have moved me enough to write them down.

from Gout: The Patrician Malady

But why a book about gout? Is that not (one anticipates the objections) a rather trifling the condition? Perhaps comic, a topic tailor-made for the belles lettres of a bygone age but not for sober medical history. Nowadays gout provokes enormous condescension of slimline political correctness. Wasn't it, surely, a disease of the ancien regime and the Old World? Didn't the idle and licentious bring it on their own heads, or rather feet, by outrageous overindulgence, while they shrugged off responsibility by the solemn palaver of dignifying their condition as 'the gout,' as if it were some boon companion or noble foe to whom it was a great 'honour' to fall martyr? He and his physician' were very well satisfied with the proceedings of the Gout', Edward Gibbon explained to his step-mother: 'he had behaved like a fair and honourable Enemy'. Recycling that stock simile, the Revd Sydney Smith quipped that gout was 'the only enemy that I do not wish to have at my feet'. By means of this grim rigamarole, gout's sting was drawn, just as, in Shakespeare's time, one had to jest with death. 'I enjoy all the dignity of lameness,' bantered the gouty Samuel Johnson, making a virtue of necessity. 'I receive ladies and dismiss them sitting. Painful pre-eminence.'

Gout thus yields medical anecdotes and biographical insights. Does it offer more? We believe so [....] For one thing, the glaring neglect of gout draws attention to biases in medical history. Scholars have chiefly studied lethal, epidemic diseases: plagues and smallpox, yellow fever and typhoid fever, tuberculosis and AIDS. Such afflictions invite cathartic involvement: we share the horror, we pity the victims. But this concentration on killer epidemics arguably creates an imbalance that needs redressing. For the diseases causing most pain have not been apocalyptic: sickness has typically been less like the Holocaust than an interminable succession of stumbles and muggings—but no less agonizing for that. Historical pathology mainly consists of chronic conditions, attacking the musculoskeletal system, the respiratory system, the nervous system, and of course the brain—not in themselves fatl but incurable, typically debilitating, sometimes crippling and inordinately painful.

Gout falls into the category of non-infectious, non-lethal ailments. Though widely associated with the olden days—Christmas-card scenes peopled by ruddy-faced Mr Pickwicks drinking toasts—in truth gout is very much still with us; it continues to threaten males in the developed world, and globally it is spreading.

–Roy Porter and G. S. Rousseau

///

Form's Moon

See, I might return—

the truck's gassed, the map flat and likely
accurate—to where I'm dead to me

to you. This is autumn, say—it's late October,

mid-November. By then the road'll be choked
with leaves and other ruins, the trees with smoke

and ghosts of harm or not. (I've kept records

of these facts, these other shores.)
My song will make a veil, and yours

a mouthful of mirror. Seconds before we sing, I'll find I'm reading

the wading pool's dismal
little slaps to mean trouble. You'll punch an animal,

any animal. I'll touch a small bell.

The moon, itself a bell
of light, will make everything

loud. But what good is form's moon

if half a song won't fit the room? Come the platitudes, love.
Come whatever doesn't move.

–Graham Foust

///

Property Lines

I breathe beneath the blanket, this space is mine,
and mine the sigh when we are alone together,
I mark it so there is no mistake, mark the excitement
of valleys and canyons rippling along our sheets.
I exercise the right to mark my space. I walk downstairs,
this space is mine, a scent, a trace, my palm in the air
above the banisters, I watch you in the garden, this space
is mine, how you stretch and, for the last time today,
dig the soil under some wilted peonies.
Simple chores deceive me, I want to adjust my senses
to the wavelength of a song slipping through a window
in too short a breath, this space is my own, or so I say,
in love with modest shapes, clean and quiet and smaller
than your desire which knows no limit, pressing on
as messengers who long to get to where they must.
This space is mine, I am at home in the gaps between words,
in trills of falling, falling hair I twist around my body,
in this house, it is mine, this dream, it is mine,
this face that talks back to the mirror,
like a rip in all things that should be there
so a beam of light will keep streaming in,
light in this space that is no longer mine
covering you and me, you and me.

–Ales Debeljak, translated from the Slovenian by Andrew Zawacki and the author

///

Reclining on a Cushion

An early August morning that belongs to me,
like the mulberry that lives for the silkworm
forced to finish its commission
without haste, without mistrust.
I recognized you, don't worry.
Iodine and gold among low hills
of a Sunday approaching noon
which resembles, suspiciously, the contours
of your body. A warm rain fuzzes every
inch of skin, or so I think, and takes responsibility
for a fertile harvest; desire asks
a single question of us all. Don't worry,
I recognized you. So it is pointless to answer,
as there is no point in poignant tremors
while I watch you sleep. Countries and cities
throb beneath your eyelids, the main square
filling up as I am filled with your moans,
and I am finally called by my own name:
it is enough for me to know
to road goes on without end.

–Ales Debeljak, translated from the Slovenian by Andrew Zawacki and the author

///

The Illiterate

I am astonished at their mouthful names—
Lakinishia, Fumilayo, Chevellanie, Delayo—
their ragged rebellions and lip-glossed pouts,
and all those pants drooped as drapery.
I rejoice when they kiss my face, whisper wet
and urgent in my ear, make me their obsession
because I have brought them poetry.

They shout me raw, bruise my wrists with pulling,
and brashly claim me as mama as they
cradle my head in their little laps,
waiting for new words to grow in my mouth.

You.
You.
You.
Angry, jubilant, weeping poets—we are all
saviors, reluctant hosannas in the limelight,
but you knew they, didn't you? Then let us
bless this sixth grade class—40 nappy heads,
40 cracking voices, and all of them
raise their hands when I ask. They have all seen
the Reaper, grim in his heavy robe,
pushing the button for the dead project elevator,
begging for a break at the corner pawn shop,
cackling wildly in the back pew of the Baptist church.

I ask the death question and forty fists
punch the air, me!, me! And O'Neal,
matchstick crack child, watched his mother's
body become a claw, and 9-year-old Tiko Jefferson,
barely big enough to lift the gun, fired a bullet
into his own throat after Mama bended his back
with a lead pipe. Tamika cried into a sofa pillow
when Daddy blasted Mama into the north wall
of their cluttered one-room apartment,
Donya's cousin gone in a drive-by. Dark window,
click, click, gone, says Donya, her tiny finger
a barrel, the thumb a hammer. I am shocked
by their losses—and yet when I read a poem
about my own hard-eyed teenager, Jeffrey asks

It cannot be comprehended,
my 18-year-old still pushing and pulling
his own breath. And those 40 faces pity me,
knowing that I will soon be as they are,
numb to our bloodied histories,
favoring the Reaper with a thumbs-up and a wink,
hearing the question and shouting me, me,
Miss Smith, I know somebody dead!

Can poetry hurt us? they ask me before
snuggling inside my words to sleep.
I love you, Nicole says, Nicole wearing my face,
pimples peppering her nose, and she is as black
as angels are. Nicole's braids clipped, their ends
kissed with match flame to seal them,
and can you teach me to write a poem about my mother?
I mean, you write about your daddy and he dead,
can you teach me to remember my mama?

A teacher tells me this is the first time Nicole
has admitted that her mother is gone,
murdered by slim silver needles and a stranger
rifling through her blood, the virus pushing
her skeleton through for Nicole to see.
And now this child with rusty knees
and mismatched shoes sees poetry as her scream
and asks me for the words to build her mother again.
Replacing the voice.
Stitching on the lost flesh.

So poets,
as we pick up our pens,
as we flirt and sin and rejoice behind microphones—
remember Nicole.
She knows that we are here now,
and she is an empty vessel waiting to be filled.

A cliff face. Another. And still a third.
Who was so skilled to carve this craggy scene:

the cavern's red door, the ridge's narrow cleft,
the black knoll bearded with little mosses?

A twisting pine bough plunges in the wind,
showering a willow's leaves with glistening drops.

Gentlemen, lords, who could refuse, though weary
and shaky in his knees, to mount once more?

In his magnificent work After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation (1975), George Steiner points out that translation, among other things, is a work of self-denial, demanding that the translator serve the original rather than imposing himself or herself on it. But he also points out that all translation, like all reading and even all listening, is a work of editing, a work of interpretation, determined by subjective and contextual factors. If the poet is a Maker and Creator, which indeed is the basic meaning of the word, then the translator is ideally a highly skilled craftsman. And we know that in ancient times, in both Eastern and Western civilization, craftsmen were slaves. Self-denial is one of the cardinal virtues of slaves. But as the task of translation also involves editing and interpreting, the translator must also serve as actor. The translator must imitate the author of the original work and his translation must be a likeness of the original work. The translator must never strive to surpass the author, although the literary qualities of a translation occasionally and for various reasons may appear to be superior to those of the original work. A skilled translator who masters the language into which he translates (normally his mother tongue) is bound to use to his best advantage such prosodic, euphonic, and musical effects as his language places at his disposal. In doing so, he may add to his translation features that are not present in the original work. Paradoxically, the more skilled the translator and the more acutely his ear is tuned to prosodic and musical features, the further his translation may deviate from the original text. A famous Swedish poet and man of letters of the 19th century once said, "Beautiful translations are like beautiful women, that is to say, they are not always the most faithful ones."

–N. G. D. Malmqvist, "On The Role of the Translator," Translation Review #70.

No man could ever understand what it's like to put a hand down between your boyfriend's legs and stick your fingers into his hot wet cunt, and feel his hand similarly searching its way into yours. It's a subtle competition; one of us is going to have to let go and roll over, to give in to the white noise building up in our cocks. I think this time it's going to be me. Almost reluctantly I pull out of him and arch up, giving him more leeway into me. Two fingers, then three, then four, then he's in past the knuckles and out from under me, and I'm screaming my way through a driving fuck. His hands are tiny, with long skinny fingers, a legacy of when he was a girl. My cunt is tighter than his, even though I've given birth, but it was twenty years ago and I didn't let too many single-gendered people fuck me very often.

Love, how I'd love to slip down to the pond,
bathe with you close by on the bank.
Just for you I'd wear my new Memphis swimsuit,
made of sheer linen, fit for a queen—
Come see how it looks in the water!

Couldn't I coax you to wade in with me?
                                              Let the cool creep slowly around us?
Then I'd dive deep down
                                              and come up for you dripping,
Let you fill your eyes
                                              with the little red fish that I'd catch.

And I'd say, standing there tall in the shallows:
Look at my fish, love,
how it lies in my hand,
How my fingers caress it,
slip down its sides…

But then I'd say softer,
                                              eyes bright with your seeing:
                                                                                A gift, love. No words.
                                              Come closer and
                                                                                look, it's all me.

my girl's tall with hard long eyes
as she stands,with her long hard hands keeping
silence on her dress,good for sleeping
is her long hard body filled with surprise
like a white shocking wire,when she smiles
a hard long smile it sometimes makes
gaily go clean through me tickling aches,
and the weak noise of her eyes easily files
my impatience to an edge—my girl's tall
and taut,with thin legs just like a vine
that's spent all of its life on a garden-wall,
and is going to die. When we grimly go to bed
with these legs she begins to heave and twine
about me,and to kiss my face and head.

it may not always be; and i say
that if your lips, which i have loved, should touch
another's, and your dear strong fingers clutch
his heart, as mine in time not far away;
if on another's face your sweet hair lay
in such a silence as i know, or such
great writhing words as, uttering overmuch,
stand helplessly before the spirit at bay;

if this should be, i say if this should be—
you of my heart, send me a little word;
that i may go unto him, and take his hands,
saying, Accept all happiness from me.
Then shall i turn my face, and hear one bird
sing terribly afar in the lost lands.

That wave hurtling along
at the speed of its own homelessness
is frantically searching its memory
for information that might help it survive
intact, but because it finds nothing except a habit
of smoothness, a long-term acquaintance
with the sky (that placid parallel existence
clearly about to be disrupted),
the wave concludes that this must be
its very first time.
It resolves for the sake of its tribe
to be brave, even though it’s nothing
but a quivering heap of bubbles
competing with each other to be
smallest, propelled in loops back & forth
as it tries vainly to unclench itself
within a space so narrow
& at a pace so languid
it has time to compose
an original song entitled
I Am a Pilgrim & a Stranger
just before it overbalances, crests,
& breaks at the precise instant when,
pondering whether it would be more terrifying
to imagine oneself as helpless,
propelled by forces utterly beyond control,
or as glaringly bright,
a wall of muscled glory
descending upon a quaking world,
it concludes that the answer is
yes.

In the children's record of the Happy Prince,
before each gold flake is peeled from the Prince's body,
the voice orders, Turn the Page, Turn the Page,
supposing that children do not know when to turn,
and may live at one line for many years,
sliding and bouncing boisterously along the words,
breaking the closed letters for a warm place to sleep.
Turn the Page, Turn the Page. By the time time the Happy Prince has lost his eyes,
and his melted heart is given to the poor,
and his body taken from the market-place and burned,
there is no need to order, Turn the Page,
for the children have grown up, and know when to turn,
and knowing when, will never again know where.