Poem/Translation: Claudia Roquette-Pinto

Arquivo Portugal Telecom

Next fall the Brazilian poet Claudia Roquette-Pinto is scheduled to visit the university for a bilingual reading and conversation with the Poetry and Poetics Workshop and Colloquium.  Roquette-Pinto (1963-), a native of Rio de Janeiro, is also a translator and the co-founder and former editor of the literary journal Verve (1986-1991). At the age of 17 she lived for 7 months in San Francisco, where she studied English and American Studies at San Francisco State University, then went on to receive a degree in literary translation at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro in 1987, and she has translated a number of her own poems into English.  She has published five books of poetry in Portuguese, beginning with os dios gagos (author's edition, 1991) on through 2005's Margem de manobra (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Aeroplano); selections of her first three works have appeared in English translation in the collection Shadow Zone (Los Angeles: Seeing Eye Books, 1999).

Roquette-Pinto's poetry has also appeared in bilingual anthologies such as The PIP Anthology of World Poetry of the 20th Century, Volume 3: Nothing the Sun Could Not Explain—20 Contemporary Brazilian Poets (Los Angeles: Sun & Moon Press/Green Integer, 1997/2003); in Outras Praias*/13 Poetas Brasileiras Emergentes - Other Shores/13 Emerging Brazilian Poets, Ed. Ricardo Corona:  São Paulo: Editora Iluminuras, 1998; and in "Lies About the Truth: An Anthology of Brazilian Poetry," edited by Régis Bonvicino in collaboration with Tarso M. de Mélo, in New American Writing, no. 18 (2000).  If you're curious to see more of her work online, click on her name, which I've hyperlinked above, and it'll take you directly to her website, which is in Portuguese.

I thought I'd try my hand at translating one of her poems from Outras Praias*/13 Poetas Brasileiras Emergentes - Other Shores/13 Emerging Brazilian Poets, "Space-Writing," inspired by a Man Ray photo. In this poem as in her others in the volume, Roquette-Pinto's Portuguese is precise and playful, seemingly light and yet layered in ways that are hard to bring fully into English. For example, the "desa / tino" in the original splits the word for "madness" but to a Portuguese reader could almost seem to be saying, "of that / sense" (though grammatically it would properly be "desse / tino") while also echoing the different and English cognate word "destino." Also in this particular poem certain rhymes recur that I could not bring into English, though I tried to find similar consonances (the "s's", for example), while exploiting English's own resources in terms of rhyme and meter.  That led to a few syntactic reversals, as at the end. Translator Charles Perrone's version of them is somewhat different; for example, he ends with "rapture/of the sealant." It's fine, but I didn't like the music, so instead, I tried to maintain something I think is closer to the original, while still sounding mellifluous (and yet, harsh in the way the flat "a" and "r's" respond to each other).  Any thoughts you have, don't hesitate to let me know!

SPACE-WRITING
(sobre foto de Man Ray)

para escrever no espaço: o
arco do braço mais
ágil que o sobressalto
das idéias em fuga (tinem
os cascos)
o traço
que as mãos no encalço (desa
tino de asas) precursam:
circunvoluções do
improviso na moldura
findo o lapso resta
em claro (i
tinerário de medusas)
a escrita que perdura para o
espasmo  o "olho armado" o
rapto
do obturador


SPACE WRITING
(on a photo by Man Ray)

to write in space: the
arc of the arm more
adroit than the startling
of ideas in flight (hooves
clopping)
the trace
that hands on heel (mad-
fluttering of wings) crisscross:
circumvolutions of
improvisations in the frame
after the lapse remains
clear (i
tinerary of medusas)
writing that lasts for the
spasm   the "armed eye" the
shutter's
rapture

Copyright © Claudia Roquette-Pinto, from Outras Praias*/13 Poetas Brasileiras Emergentes - Other Shores/13 Emerging Brazilian Poets, Ed. Ricardo Corona:  São Paulo: Editora Iluminuras, 1998. Translation, Copyright © John Keene. All rights reserved.