One of the perhaps few good things about being ignorant is that it prepares me for many happy discoveries every day. I was completely unacquainted with Vera Pavlova and her work until a few days ago when I came across an article by Mike Melia on the always-worth-a-look-and-a-listen PBS Art Beat blog. There you can find links to her website (can find one here, too) and to some of her poems that have appeared in Tin House and The New Yorker, a few accompanied by audio of the poet herself reciting the pieces. I particularly liked the video interview with Pavlova and recommend it. Follow the link, I cannot embed it here.
In the interview she recounts how she began her artistic life studying music and originally planned to become a composer. These designs were swept away by a new and better one ushered in with the birth of her first child. For, as she explains in the video, she first began writing poetry in the maternity ward and was born into her new life, in which “I turned out to be a poet”, at the same time as she was bringing her daughter into this world.
I find her (true not metaphorical) story of being born as a poet at the same time as she gave birth to her daughter to be truly captivating. Labor pains and lyrical pangs.
And for personal reasons I am also quite charmed by the idea that her translator (and interpreter in the interview) is her husband, Steven Seymour. You see, I make my living as a translator, but certainly of nothing as enthralling, enriching or exhilarating as poetry (nor as maddening or baffling either). I translate legal and financial documents from Spanish to English (now working on an analysis of the tax law implications of transfer pricing rules as they apply to the Spanish operations of a major international insurance group — has a poetic ring to it, don’t you think?). It is boring, but I am not complaining; it pays the bills and I am all too well aware that dedicating oneself to translating poetry requires two indispensable conditions: talent and another source of income.
Vera Pavlova and Steven Seymour (I assume ATA cap is from the American Translators Association). Photo from her website.
Anyway, back to the interview… Pavlova recalls that there are numerous instances of poets married to poets, but none, as far as she knows, of a female poet and husband translator. Through interpreter-husband Seymour, she explains that “this gives many advantages to the translator”, because “he gets to translate poems that we’ve lived through together”. Indeed, she explains that the upcoming collection of verse (If There is Something to Desire: One Hundred Poems) is “our first child together”.In another post I will try to explore my feelings and thoughts about the utter impossibility and pressing need to translate poetry, but for now I will leave you with some of Pavlova’s poems, accompanied by photos I have downloaded from the almost too good to be true Onexposure photography website.
First, the title poem to the upcoming book …
If there is something to desire,
there will be something to regret.
If there is something to regret,
there will be something to recall.
If there is something to recall,
there was nothing to regret.
If there was nothing to regret,
there was nothing to desire
A beast in winter
A beast in winter,
a plant in spring,
an insect in summer,
a bird in autumn.
The rest of the time I am a woman.
Against the current of blood
Against the current of blood
passion struggles to spawn;
against the current of speech
the world breaks the oar;
against the current of thought
the sails of dreams glide;
dog-paddling like a child, I swim
against the current of tears.
I am in love, hence free to live
I am in love, hence free to live
by heart, to ad-lib as I caress.
A soul is light when full,
heavy when vacuous.
My soul is light. She is not afraid
to dance the agony alone,
for I was born wearing your shirt,
will come from the dead with that shirt on
Untitled (as far as I know)
We are rich: we have nothing to lose.
We are old: we have nowhere to rush.
We shall fluff the pillows of the past,
poke the embers of the days to come,
talk about what means the most,
as the indolent daylight fades.
We shall lay to rest our undying dead:
I shall bury you, you will bury me.
Photography. Photo of Vera Pavlova is from her website.
The photos accompanying the poems are all from the Onexposure site (in order):
- I lean against the wind by Radu Voinea
- Wild horses by kamenf
- The end of another day by Ursula I Abresch
- Fallen by slavinai
- Untitled by Tsvetomir Stanivoev
