"topazes riding the droplets"
Heine, Graves, Sheck, Neruda, Brock-Broido
Heinrich Heine (trans. from German by Peter Branscombe):
Robert Graves:
Laurie Sheck:
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Pablo Neruda (trans. from Spanish by Ben Belitt):
Lucie Brock-Broido:
I listen to the poem. First I hear the provocation and the name, and the trouble, the trouble in mind. But then what I listen to is not what provoked the poem, not what named the poem, not what I originally insisted that the poem was going to be about. The poem has to have its own circulatory system, and I begin again. When I’m “composing” it, I can say anything, no one’s looking. I can be overwrought, underfed, I can be anything. It’s in the editing of it that I allow the poem to tell me what its particular truth will be. Even if that truth is Autobiographically Incorrect.
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