tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5593764226213882767.post1089167776298615655..comments2024-02-22T15:48:50.427-08:00Comments on Poems and Poetics: Three Poems by Paul Celan from SnowpartJerome Rothenberghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14166931849293504537noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5593764226213882767.post-75701770942737837092013-03-18T08:35:07.230-07:002013-03-18T08:35:07.230-07:00These are heartbreaking poems and powerful transla...These are heartbreaking poems and powerful translations. It’s so nice for me to see Celan again after I’ve been reading his brothers Holderlin and Rilke. <br /><br />I read the last two lines of the first poem as “for what is said as much as / what is disclosed.”<br /><br />“Jelly-eyed beyond” for “gallertäugige Drüben” is magnificent, but I interpret the second poem a touch differently, speaking to how identity is taken by reflection and the reading of reflection, and the poem as signifier of the reading other solidifies that loss, something to the effect of:<br /><br />PLAYTIME: the windows, they too,<br />read you all that's secret<br />out of the spiral<br />and mirroring<br />the jelly-eyed beyond,<br /><br /><br />but<br />here too,<br />where you miss the color, a man swerves , unmuted,<br />where the number attempts to ape you,<br />clenches breath, itself, to you,<br /><br /><br />strengthening<br />the hour's hold on you,<br />you speak,<br />you stand,<br />the compared parable nests <br />again through the hardest<br />of voice<br />on substance.<br />WAShttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10403669322174979974noreply@blogger.com