What Sparks Poetry a series of original essays that explores experiences and ideas that spark the writing of new poems. In our new series focused on Translation a group of poet-translators share a seminal experience in translation. Each Monday's delivery brings you the poem and an excerpt from the essay.  
Franco Buffoni
Translated from the Italian by Moira Egan
Who was the last to leaf through them
For what they were? Larkin might have asked
At the news that prayer books
Have become the breviaries
Of fingerprints.
Viruses pestilences tragedies and famines
Open up like a biological horizon
From medieval illuminated manuscripts.
The parchments written on buckskin and deerskin
Are excellent for studying the genetics of animal strains.
They tell a story of migration and human DNA,
Climate changes and viral infections.
Handled, embraced, kissed by thousands of people
Centuries after their creation,
Medieval books are a hard disk of monks and scribes,
Noblewomen, poets, and knights
Along with the nasal staphylococci aurei
And the propionibacteria from the acne eruptions
Of Abelard and Eleanor of Aquitaine.


Le eruzioni d’acne di Eleonora d’Aquitania

Chi è stato l’ultimo che li ha sfogliati
Per ciò che erano? Si chiederebbe Larkin
Alla notizia che i libri di preghiere
Sono diventati dei breviari
Di impronte digitali.
Virus pestilenze tragedie e carestie
S’aprono in biologico orizzonte
Dai codici miniati medievali.
Ottime per studiare la genetica dei ceppi animali
Le pergamene vergate su pelli di daino e di cervo
Raccontano una storia di migrazioni e umano Dna,
Mutamenti climatici e infezioni virali.
Maneggiati, abbracciati, baciati da migliaia di persone
A secoli dalla loro creazione
I libri medievali sono un hard disk di monaci e scrivani
Nobildonne poeti e cavalieri
Con gli staffilococchi aurei nasali
E i propionibacteria d’eruzioni d’acne
Di Abelardo ed Eleonora d’Aquitania.
from the book DIVINING DANTE / Recent Work Press
READ ABOUT TODAY'S POEM
Share Share
Tweet Tweet
Forward Forward
Cover image of the book, Diving Dante
What Sparks Poetry:
Moira Egan on Franco Buffoni's "The Acne Eruptions of Eleanor of Aquitaine"

"Handling, embracing, paying extremely close attention: these are, I think, ways to describe the kind of close reading that is necessary to translation. To me, translation is an act of affectionate close reading in the original language, and then, 'close writing,' to the best of my ability, in the target language. As translators, we know that reproducing a poem in another language is a sheer impossibility."
READ THIS WEEK'S ISSUE
Detail from a color photograph of a dramatic sunset behind clouds
"Alice Notley on Writing from Dreams"

"But just as interestingly, dreams make you be somewhere where you apparently aren’t, render you a character in a story that isn’t yours and that you believe, in fact destroy your identity except for the most central core of the “I,” since you are that self, the unnamed only I that remembers the dream. Daily detail melts, I remain."

via LITHUB
READ ALL TODAY'S HEADLINES
View in browser

You have received this email because you submitted your email address at www.poems.com. 
If you would like to unsubscribe please click here.

© 2022 Poetry Daily, Poetry Daily, MS 3E4, 4400 University Dr., Fairfax, VA 22030

Design by the Binding Agency