The Smelting Process

Poetics, Polemics and Translation

Alejandra Pizarnik – The Desire of the Word 05/26/2010

Alejandra Pizarnik – The Desire of the Word THE DESIRE OF THE WORD The night, again the night, the masterful sapience of the dark, the warm touch of death, an instant of ecstasy for me, heiress of all prohibited gardens. Steps & voices on the shaded side of the garden. Laughter coming from inside the walls. Don’t go believing they’re alive. Don’t go [...] /episode/index/show/smp/id/953335

Alejandra Pizarnik – Fragments to Dominate the Silence 05/24/2010

Alejandra Pizarnik – Fragments to Dominate the Silence I The forces of language are the lonely, desolate, ladies, who sing through my voice which I hear in the distance. & distant, in the black sand, a girl lies down, dense with ancestral music. Where the true death? I’ve wanted to illuminate myself in the light of my lack of light. The branches die [...] /episode/index/show/smp/id/953336

Alejandra Pizarnik – Ways of the Mirror 05/22/2010

Alejandra Pizarnik – Ways of the Mirror I & above all to gaze with innocence. As if nothing were to happen, which is true. II But it’s you I want to gaze at til your face recedes from my fear like a bird on the sharp edge of the night. III Like a girl in the pink chalk on a very old [...] /episode/index/show/smp/id/953337

Jorge Eielson – Dark Night of the Body (bilingual) 05/20/2010

Jorge Eielson – Dark Night of the Body (bilingual) In 1955, Jorge Eduardo Eielson published Dark Night of the Body (Rome). [1] Chronologically, this comes after Mutatis Mutandis and before De Materia Verbalis. There are noticeable organic connections between these works, which help shed light on Eielson's poetic production as a whole. First, as one critic has noted, Dark Night of the Body picks [...] /episode/index/show/smp/id/875238

Alejandra Pizarnik – Curses 05/19/2010

Alejandra Pizarnik – Curses & the ladies dressed in red for my pain & with my pain inhaled in my breath, crouching like fetuses of scorpions in the innermost side of my nape, the mothers in red suck from me the only warmth I emit with my heart which I could barely ever beat, from me who always had [...] /episode/index/show/smp/id/953338

Alejandra PIzarnik – The Word of the Desire 05/17/2010

Alejandra PIzarnik – The Word of the Desire THE WORD OF THE DESIRE This spectral texture of the darkness, this melody of bones, this breath of diverse silences, this going down feet first, this dark, dark gallery, this sinking without sinking. What am I saying? It’s dark & I want to go in. I don’t know what else to say. (I don’t want [...] /episode/index/show/smp/id/953339

César Vallejo – The Image and Its Syrtes 05/14/2010

César Vallejo – The Image and Its Syrtes THE IMAGE AND ITS SYRTES In an image of Guyau’s, life is represented by a mad virgin, the delusional bride of a groom who does not exist and for whom she, each aurora, joyfully waits, at each twilight she weeps because she has not seen him arrive. In this image, life, life itself, disappears and [...] /episode/index/show/smp/id/953340

Jorge Eielson #06 – De Materia Verbalis (complete) 04/28/2010

Jorge Eielson #06 – De Materia Verbalis (complete) Composed between 1957 & 1958, De Materia Verbalis comes after Mutatis Mutandis (1954) & dark night of the body (1955). If we think about it in a painter’s terms, it represnts the third leaf of a triptych. As in the previous two leaves, the imagery is ultra-mundane, hence the blond-haired doll narrator’s sister dresses, his [...] /episode/index/show/smp/id/953341

Jorge Eielson - De Materia Verbalis (complete) 04/28/2010

Jorge Eielson - De Materia Verbalis (complete) Composed between 1957 & 1958, De Materia Verbalis comes after Mutatis Mutandis (1954) & dark night of the body (1955). If we think about it in a painter’s terms, it represnts the third leaf of a triptych. As in the previous two leaves, the imagery is ultra-mundane, hence the blond-haired doll narrator’s sister dresses, his brother on a bike & that grandmother asleep in a chair. Therefore, one immediate question the poetry forces us to ask is what we make of this simplicity? What does it say about Eielson’s stance toward poetic technique? & how does this form relate to what we see in the earlier works––Room in Rome (1952) & The Blood & Wine of Paul (1953)? /episode/index/show/smp/id/797790

Jorge Eielson #05 – Mutatis Mutandis (complete) 04/13/2010

Jorge Eielson #05 – Mutatis Mutandis (complete) Soon after expatriating to Italy, Peruvian poet Jorge Eduardo Eielson produced the short 10-poem collection Mutatis Mutandis (1954)1. There are evident links between the aesthetic of this work & that of dark night of the body. The title is in Latin & can be interpreted "this change, provided all other variables remain constant." What's so [...] /episode/index/show/smp/id/759061

Roncagliolo’s Time to Learn 04/02/2010

Roncagliolo’s Time to Learn Not long ago, Renzo Roncalgiolo successfully defended his PhD dissertation: Time to Learn Mathematics in Public and Private Schools:Understanding Difference in Aspects of the Implemented Curriculum in the Dominican Republic. By clicking on the title, you can view an excerpt from an early draft of the Introduction & Chapter 1 (PDF), & hopefully it will [...] /episode/index/show/smp/id/953342

César Vallejo – Against the Professional Secret 03/30/2010

César Vallejo – Against the Professional Secret The first work of Vallejo to receive the title “Against the Professional Secret” was an essay published in the magazine Variedades (num. 1001, Lima, 7 May 1927) & included in Artículos y crónicas completos. edited by Jorge Puccinelli (PUCP: Lima, 2002). The essay bears the guise of a literary review of the collection Absences by [...] /episode/index/show/smp/id/953343

Jorge Eielson #04 – Mutatis Mutandis 1-3 03/10/2010

Jorge Eielson #04 – Mutatis Mutandis 1-3 In 1954, Jorge Eduardo Eielson published Mutatis Mutandis (Rome), a short collection of 10 poems which commenced a formative & formidable time period in the poet's life. The title is drawn from the Latin & can be interpreted as "this change, provided all other variables remain constant." These three translations are early drafts from a [...] /episode/index/show/smp/id/750393

Laudes to Deirdre Clemente 02/26/2010

Laudes to Deirdre Clemente Congratulations are in order for Deirdre Clemente, fashion writer & historian, who has just completed her PhD at Carnegie Mellon with her dissertation That Casual Effect Everyone is Trying to Acheive: The Cultural Significance of Collegiate Clothing. I was fortunate enough to help out with some of the research & editing of the manuscript. Here's [...] /episode/index/show/smp/id/953344

Tree(s) of Diana – Translating Pizarnik 02/04/2010

Tree(s) of Diana – Translating Pizarnik PIzarnik's 1962 publication, Árbol de Diana (Tree of Diana), printed in Paris & prefaced by none other than Octavio Paz, is probably her greatest poetic achievement. The cohesiveness & freshness of the form, coupled with the consistency of the thematic content–a continuous search for identity & purpose–mark the collection with the seal of a mature [...] /episode/index/show/smp/id/953345

Joseph Mulligan #01 – Achievements of Boredom 01/29/2010

Joseph Mulligan #01 – Achievements of Boredom This is first of three sections from The Geometry of Leisure, my latest collection of poetry. It was written in Pittsburgh between 2007-2009. A few poems that I had written in Lima between 2003-2006 were edited down and added to the collection. I am in debt to Renzo Roncagliolo who convinced me that certain words [...] /episode/index/show/smp/id/953346

Tour Through a Minefield: 01/23/2010

Tour Through a Minefield: Translating César Vallejo’s Trilce Translation is an oscillatory process: a swaying back & forth between multiple possibilities; an ongoing deliberation over decisions wrought with contingencies. It’s also an illuminating process, since the translator, like a grip-hand who mans the spotlight for a drama big or small, can & must decide which elements of the poem [...] /episode/index/show/smp/id/953347

Jorge Eielson #03 – mutilated body 12/04/2009

Jorge Eielson #03 – mutilated body In this poem from dark night of the body, the Peruvian poet, Jorge Eielson takes his exploration of the physiological to a deeper level, a level of dissection without disgust, without moral sentiments of any kind. The poet counts extremities "as were they cherries or grapes". One problem that arises in the translation of this [...] /episode/index/show/smp/id/666059

Fernando Pessoa #07 – Demogorgon 12/02/2009

Fernando Pessoa #07 – Demogorgon It seems intuitive that truth ought to be sought after by any person, no matter the degree of seriousness, the frequency, the method. We believe in truth. We believe in everyday truths & hold people accountable for them. In fact, while the truth can set you free, it can also lock you up or even [...] /episode/index/show/smp/id/665124

Now Available in the iTunes Store 12/01/2009

Now Available in the iTunes Store The Smelting Process Podcast is now available in the iTunes Store! You can find The Smelting Process Podcast under the Literature category of Audio Podcasts, by searching for "The Smelting Process" or by clicking here (will launch iTunes application). If you don't have iTunes & are interested in using it to listen to The Smelting [...] /episode/index/show/smp/id/953348

Jorge Eielson #02 – melancholic body 11/30/2009

Jorge Eielson #02 – melancholic body The Peruvian poet, Jorge Eduardo Eielson, explores the double-meaning of the "body" in his collection "dark night of the body". In this context, it must be understood anatomically & textually alike: it is the human body that is the body of work, or the body-as-text. Eielson's anatomical language– a list of body organs –is closely [...] /episode/index/show/smp/id/664197

Jorge Eielson #01 – prior body 11/27/2009

Jorge Eielson #01 – prior body Jorge Eduardo Eielson is one of Peru's most unrecognized poets & artists, which is greatly do to the fact that he expatriated to Italy early in his life, only to return twice. The poem "prior body" comes from a short collection called "noches oscura del cuerpo" (dark night of the body), published in Rome, 1955. [...] /episode/index/show/smp/id/663724

Carlos Drummond #01 – The Middle of the Road 11/25/2009

Carlos Drummond #01 – The Middle of the Road The poetry of Brazilian poet, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, saw several transformations throughout its development, with the publication of 31 books in the poets lifetime. This poem was originally published in 1928 in the magazine Antropofagia. The simplicity of the language adds to the focus of the observation of the "stone", which is not only [...] /episode/index/show/smp/id/663723

Fernando Pessoa #6 – The Chess Game 11/23/2009

Fernando Pessoa #6 – The Chess Game Under the heteronym, Ricardo Reis, the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa wrote poetry altogether different from that which he wrote at the hand of Álvaro de Campos, whose poems have been presented previously on this blog & podcast. Reis has come to be known as the "sad Epicurian". This means that, accordingly to the principals of [...] /episode/index/show/smp/id/663544

César Vallejo – Individual and Society 11/20/2009

César Vallejo – Individual and Society Also from Against the Professional Secret, Vallejo here places us in one of his favorite scenes: before the tribunal. This allows the Peruvian poet to explore the ideas of justice, guilt, innocence & responsibility through numerous perspectives. Indeed, his three month incarceration in Peru was clearly a big part of his proclivity to take up [...] /episode/index/show/smp/id/659384

Oliverio Girondo #06 – Exvoto 11/19/2009

Oliverio Girondo #06 – Exvoto Girondo published his first collection of poetry in 1922 (the same year that brought us other cutting edge works, such as Finnegans's Wake, The Waste Land, Trilce, The Enormous Room, Paulicéia Desvairada, The Marine Cemetery, etc). In this poem, "Exvoto"– the Latin derivation meaning "offering" –Girondo satyrizes the "chicas de Flores", Flores being an affluent [...] /episode/index/show/smp/id/659381

Oliverio Girondo #06 – Flog Me! 11/13/2009

Oliverio Girondo #06 – Flog Me! In this poem from Persuasion of the Days, Girondo takes up the theme of perversity by demanding that he be flogged, precisely because he deserves it. It is curious that his "defense" is a series of acts which he never took part in, and for this, he deserves the punishment. The attitude of the poem [...] /episode/index/show/smp/id/653064

Oliverio Girondo #05 – Unending Astonishment 11/11/2009

Oliverio Girondo #05 – Unending Astonishment The sense of deficiency comes through this poem in the poet's declaration of the ineluctable. Coming from Persuasion of the Days, Girondo here uses the dog as an emblem of man; a dog which cannot be described, which is one of a kind &, ultimately, which makes him want to "break a chair". There is [...] /episode/index/show/smp/id/653063

Oliverio Girondo #04 – It’s The Drool 11/09/2009

Oliverio Girondo #04 – It’s The Drool This poem as well comes from Persuasion of the Days– one of Girondo's later works –& it is representative, in form & content, of that collection. There is an unmistakable feeling of nausea that emanates from these lines; not just a feeling of extreme disgust, but also that of groundlessness, which comes through the word [...] /episode/index/show/smp/id/651813

Oliverio Girondo #03 – Wait 11/06/2009

Oliverio Girondo #03 – Wait Another poem from Girondo's collection, Persuasion of the Days, here we find a sort of ode to procrastination. The presence of a somewhat physiological vocabulary calls to our attention & directs us toward the concrete. The length syntactical phrasing is characteristic of Girondo in Persuasion..., where he manages to create lists of clauses that serve [...] /episode/index/show/smp/id/651812

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