Letter to Valerio Magrelli, Via Condotti, Roma

Letter to  Valerio Magrelli 

Via Condotti, Roma

I write to you while watching the film, Kaos, by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani. Finally after months, I was able to track it down and inexplicably in the dialogue, I was compelled to write to you, how your poems shed light—even in an alien tongue. 

Was it because the playwright visited his dead mama where the ghosts still have stories to tell through the fingers of pots? That made me think of your poems. You, a contemporary, or was it because I had been missing Mary Bianchi, my grandmother's best friend?

How in the afternoons she would grate cheese into a large jar, offer us  spongecake and sherry, or raviolis, while they gossiped. Her large hands could kill a rabbit or a chicken quicker than the eye could see, that same hand that patted my cheek each afternoon, coming home from school. 

She walked like a queen. The exact curl of her hands, my grandmother would demonstrate thus. Thous she had lived in America most of her life, Mary always thought of Italy as home. We drank her her wine and ate her chickens and ravioli, and became part of her clan, my family, my mother, aunts and uncles. 

The poets talk about exile, death is always an exile. All writing is a translation, this I know. In the movie Kaos, in the epilogue, Colloquio con la madre, the character Luigi (also the the author) confesses to conversing with his dead mother. He tells of the story of going to Malta one last time because something always eluded him, that yearning, that unnamed memory always goading poets onward into exile. 

Or was it because of the cable that Martin Mooij had sent us in February was delayed, it was his last Poetry International. Would we come? And will you be there, and may I hear the words again in their own native tongue?

April (11-18?)

He had written a poem about archaeology that I loved. I've a letter from him somewhere. He must've told me to see the film.

Valerio Magrelli

Poetry International journal, a spontaneous combustion of translation

14. June. The Monday evening Reading schedule included Roberto Juarroz, Anne Vetger, Gonzalo Mitlán, Leo Vroman… I missed Yehuda Amichai and Homero Aradjis, two poets I actually wanted to meet, but I wound up doing some spontaneous translations with two poets I met in the hospitality café. Sometimes you just have to go with the flow.

Since I wasn’t feeling up to snuff, I missed two events today, plus the beginning of the evening show. I’m not networking the way I should. I just don’t feel like chasing the stars for photos, to give them my poems, etc. it’s exhausting work, and I’m not up for it. (Not that I have anything to give—but poetry, in myriad tomgues, is the only true currency).

My poetry partner in crime, editor Herman Berlandt also never showed up for the evening event. So I was a little worried about him, but they assured me he was OK, and he was seen earlier today with a young man who must be Ton. 

A Dutch-Argentinian couple sitting at the table next to me and I spontaneously translated a Dutch poem someone left at the table. First he translated it into English and then Andrea helped with the Spanish, because his Spanish was about on par with mine. Still, it was fun to do. This is why I missed the Amichai and Aradjis reading. They won’t read again. I am bummed.  Somehow the process of translation helped to restore my nascent social skills. 

Roberto Juarroz’s work seems fine, but my mind took its own time shifting into Spanish. So I understood the words, but not the poetic sensibilities. I didn’t go to the Bal de Festival because I was feeling funky and that antisocial streak still prevails. Oh well. When it descends like a wet blanket, there’s not much I can do. Pre-party panic syndrome. Sign of a true introvert.

I met a woman from England who bought copy of Soviet Poetry Since Glasnost from me, a Helena Hinn. from England. I took down her address and she said she would send some poems nlater. It seems I am madly collecting poets addresses that the front and the back of my journal is beginning to read like a who’s who in poetry.

As it turns out, a poet I met, Victor Manuel Mendola not only knew John Oliver Simon in Mexico, but he has a copy of our chapbook, Falling to Sea Level. He asked if I was the woman of John. And I answered, no longer. We were not sure if we met at Elsa Crosses’ house in Mexico City. It certainly is possible. 

He’s done many translations of poets that I like including Valerio Magrelli, and Tomaž Reizwicž. I gave him one of our poetry tabloids on Saturday and he said that he’ll give me a book on Wednesday. Poetic reciprocity in action. God, how I love the insane babble of many audacious tongues.

(Revised for clarity—added some connective tissue, but mostly swapped paragraphs)

(PI archives.)

• Letter to Valerio Magrelli, Via Condotti, Roma