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The Daily Poetry Show: Our Trespasses
The Dissident Student by
Fawzi Karim, Translated by Saadi Simawe and Melissa Brown
Translations are tricky things to assess since one never knows where
the poet ends and the translator(s) begins. But the poem that stands
before me goes awry somewhere in the first stanza. I like the
seasons and the fountains well enough, but “Dictating into my tired
mouth” is something that completely loses me. The best thing in the
second stanza is the “blue diamond” and that doesn’t glitter for
long. And I just think the rest is rather pedestrian, without any
attempt to turn its vernacular into something plain but uncommon.
[That was my initial 1 1/2 snap judgement. But on re-reading, the
ending has broken through this dense skull of mine. And suddenly I
see this with a different more open sight. It is more uncommon than
I originally thought.] |