Basile Morin, close-up {photograph} of swan feathers letting daylight by means of, by way of Wikimedia Commons. Licensed beneath CC BY-SA 4.0 DEED.
For our collection Making of a Poem, we’re asking poets and translators to dissect the poems they’ve revealed in our pages. Nadja Küchenmeister’s “feathers and planets,” translated by Aimee Chor, seems in our new Winter concern, no. 246. Right here, we requested each Küchenmeister and Chor to mirror on their work.
1.Nadja Küchenmeister
How did this poem begin for you? Was it with a picture, an concept, a phrase, or one thing else?
The poem started, because it typically does for me, with a picture (“sugar, stirred into cream”) and on the identical time a rhythmic set of sounds that, ideally, make a phrase into verse. I like tonal neighborhoods that aren’t instantly obvious however reasonably reveal themselves within the writing of a poem (in German, the phrases Einkaufsnetz [shopping bag] and Bett [bed] make a tonal connection, as do, extra distantly, Netz [net] and Fuchs [fox]—no less than to my ear). Nonetheless, these resonances, these rhymes, must emerge on their very own—I can not power them. They set up themselves on the idea of one thing that was already current within the poem. You may additionally say that one thing solely involves be as a result of one thing else got here into being earlier than it. That is true for photos and motifs and for sounds as effectively. On this sense, a poem all the time additionally creates itself, though after all I’m the one who offers it its order.
How did writing the primary draft really feel to you? Did it come simply, or was it tough to write down? (Are there onerous and straightforward poems?)
The ultimate poem I wrote for Im Glasberg (Within the glass mountain) was “feathers and planets.” It posed an issue for me as a result of for a very long time I had solely the beginning of a poem. There have been photos that wouldn’t fall into place, that stood disconnected alongside one another. It was an deserted poem. However I knew I nonetheless wanted a chunk for the e-book as a result of I used to be aiming for a sure symmetry. (The primary poem I had written for the e-book was “black laundry,” which additionally seems in The Paris Overview.) Finally I pulled the textual content that will develop into “feathers and planets” again out once more. When the “briefs within the sleeve of a winter coat” appeared, I knew I used to be secure, poetically talking, that the poem may work, though it’s nonetheless a reasonably small poem for me—maybe as a result of I needed to wrestle with it a lot?
With some poems, the pictures come up nearly as if in a dream—one phrase elicits the following, one sound results in the following (as occurred with “black laundry”), whereas with others, I really feel like I’m dragging myself from verse to verse with lead on my ft. And that’s not a foul factor. Nevertheless it shouldn’t present as soon as the poem is completed.
What was the problem of this specific poem?
The problem consisted of a dissatisfaction that’s onerous to clarify, that stated, You aren’t completed but. Generally I attempt to deceive myself—I simply need a poem to be carried out, now! Nevertheless it’s solely completed when it’s completed. Luckily, over time you get a superb sense for this. Simply placing photos and sounds alongside one another doesn’t make a poem. It all the time has to do with the shape. For this reason, for me, it’s by no means about engaged on the sensation however all the time about engaged on the language. The language is what creates an emotional heart, if one is profitable. It’s when a textual content has develop into greater than a set of photos and ideas {that a} poem begins.
When do you know this poem was completed? Had been you proper about that? Is it completed in spite of everything?
Sooner or later, a poem is completed. Or not. If it’s not completed, it’s not a poem, and I set it apart. I don’t make modifications in hindsight. I don’t nonetheless like all of my poems. However I’m uncomfortable with the considered poets reissuing volumes with poems which have been reedited, since this takes one thing away from the readers—a part of their historical past with this poem. It’s okay to see in a poem what the poet was not but able to at that time. The poem “feathers and planets” was completed at a sure level, which means that there was a form that I had labored to create out of a pile of recollections. What is probably decisive is that these recollections rework themselves in the middle of writing; they more and more develop into the recollections of a lyrical “I” that doesn’t seem as such on this poem. And but there’s a consciousness, recognizable all through the textual content, that remembers photos, that remembers. I imagine that after we are working with recollections, literature begins the place one begins to invent one’s personal life. It’s nonetheless your individual life, and on the identical time, it’s completely different.
2. Aimee Chor
What was the problem of this specific translation?
One problem of translating the poem was how a lot I adore it. The way in which that this translation means and sounds has a whole lot of me in it—I’m giving it to you in the best way that I acquired it. Whereas on the one hand that’s inevitable—and welcome—however I wonder if I’ve precisely conveyed the poem written by Nadja to the readers of the interpretation in English.
One other problem is that the English is in some methods very not like the German: Wäscheständer doesn’t sound like laundry rack, and quark is just not actually the identical factor as cream. However turning the poems into English creates new sonic and linguistic overlaps, each these I work at and the serendipities that I don’t plan and for which I’m grateful.
Did the interpretation in any other case come simply, or was it tough? Are there onerous and straightforward translations?
On their face, Nadja’s poems aren’t tough to translate. The language is just not particularly opaque or convoluted. I do discover some translations from German harder than others, no less than in terms of unpicking the which means of the German itself. However past that, translating any poetry is tough in a approach very completely different from writing poetry. The unique is all the time there, even after you let go of any easy concept of equivalence, and the translator is accountable to it, to do justice to it—that seems like an moral demand as a result of it’s, I believe. I used to be lucky that the poem comes from a e-book that’s fairly coherent, and so translating a few of its poems taught me methods to translate others, which in flip taught me methods to revise the preliminary translations. The phrases and the rhythms of the interpretation have no less than as a lot to do with the opposite poems within the e-book as they do with the logic and circulate inner to this specific textual content. I’m glad that it stands by itself, nevertheless it’s unimaginable for me to learn it that approach.
When do you know this translation was completed?
I may revise a translation endlessly, I believe. Nevertheless it’s carried out when attempting new phrases or patterns doesn’t make it any higher, simply completely different or worse.
Nadja Küchenmeister’s most up-to-date e-book of poetry is Im Glasberg (Within the glass mountain). She is the winner of the 2022 Basel Poetry Prize.
Aimee Chor is a poet and translator.
