[-empyre-] forward: publishing and translation (Jorge Luiz Antonio)

["Jim Andrews" <jim@vispo.com>]

Dear members of Empyre

    I'm trying to help with my collaboration since I am studying for many
years.
    Now I am quoting Jim's notes:

"For instance, how many publishers do you have who would touch a book of
poetry that wasn't a book of verse?"

    Books of different poetries are published in Brazil but for few
publishers, and, in most of all the cases, with author's own resources, or
suportted by one cultural institution. And the copies are few directed to
few people who enjoyed it.
    A visual poet from São Paulo, Franklin Valverde, for example, recently
published  a book "Burrocracia" (a composed word only possible, I think, in
Portuguese: Bureaucracy - buro -  plus fool - (burro) and made only 100
copies to be distributed to his friends. He uses the technique of making a
poetry with rubber stamp.
    The object-poem, for example, are made by the poet, supported by
himself, and are taken no more than 100 copies.
    In a general sense, publishers don't like to publish any kind of poetry
unless someone pays his/her own edition.
    And it can be extended to critical literary subjects, like doctoral
dissertations, master dissertations, or any similar literary studies, even
with finantial support by a resource center.


    Regina asked me to talk about the difficulty of translating poetry.
Well, it is quite difficult to translate verbal poetry, because we have to
deal with sound (rhymes, rhythms, metro, etc.). In many cases, poetry has a
hidden meaning in the arrangement of the words in its original language. It
is hard to find the same effect in other language.
    Some months ago, I tried to translate into English a poem by Mario de
Andrade, a Modernist great poet from São Paulo. It is free verse, but the
rhythm was quite difficult to mantain in English. After doing my best, I
asked Chris Daniels' help. Chris has a long and good experience in
translating from Portuguese into English and he gave me a help. The poem
became very good.
    There is another point to say: we must be a poet to translate poetry. It
is a very important question.
    Another example: I have a infopoetry which I made when I was E. M. de
Melo e Castro's student. This infopoetry is made of words and images, but in
my case, the words are clear, but a kind of pan:
    Um papel
    (do)
     passado a limpo
    It should be read, at least, in three ways: um papel do passado (or) um
papel passado a limpo (or) passado a limpo. How to translate it into
English, for I wanted to participate in Venice Bienial with a handmade book
and I did wish to include this poem?
    I tried many times, wrote different texts. After some days, I chose two
ways, and sent it to my web friend Chris Daniels. And I could finally came
to a good result:

    A past paper
    At final pass

    Best regards from Brazil

Jorge Luiz Antonio
Brazilian Digital Art and Poetry on the Web
http://www.vispo.com/misc/BrazilianDigitalPoetry.htm