Have no doubt the translation business is here to stay and this supplment of
Contemporary Dutch Poets has a resonance
in life that is echoed in the poem ..
Now
/the poem
happens now
in the body of it this
happens it breathes and it
runs and if you
speak to it it speaks ...
A kind of stanza form that jumps about a bit with a four line - line break and then
one line ... this is a sticky introduction with /Now/ as its a popular enough
title here in this country and indeed my own poem /London Underground/is
published in Poetry Now ... in an anthology title Southern Poets: UK:
Therein are other wonderful phrases poetically inclining towards the ultimate
score in
writing 100 per cent ... in writing and achievement .. the ultimate first!
/everything the voice says there is always the drop
and there is the face full of blood there is turbulence and
final breath there is on the floor the destroyed one/
a bloody end I might add which highlights the notion of violent epistles in life ... the eye for an eye strategy and leaves out the pacifist notion of peace loving and forgiveness ..
I do love the feeling of the poem as as separate entity rather like a bike or a car ... its externalised ... in the line
/and the poem lays its floor on
that of reality and begins/
it is everything
there is, and its form opens out
and it lets go and happens/
the poem has its own material existence it talks to you and it is activated .. I love that aspect of its rhetoric ... great stuff .... in this slimmish green book of poems/Dutch/English ... keep on reading excellent poetry ...