De Amerikaanse dichteres Julia Mae Spicher Kasdorf werd geboren op 6 december 1962 in Lewistown, Pennsylvania. Zie ook alle tags voor Julia Kasdorf op dit blog.
English 213: Introduction to Poetry Writing
Metaphor is made of two parts, I tell them
because I must say something: vehicle and tenor,
and we should know the names of things we do by instinct,
though I only half believe this. Not that kind of vehicle,
not that kind of tenor, and yet their poems must move,
must sing. It’s confusing and hard. Aristotle said
genius sees resemblance in difference. A car is not
a metaphor, is a machine made of countless metal parts
that keep us mindful of oil, coolant, a milk jug in the trunk
in which to dilute it, mindful of all the ways a day can turn-
pulling into Bloomsburg State, for instance, steam blowing
from under the hood, I asked a student for the lecture hall,
campus clock gonging the hour of my talk, but he said,
“Look, something really bad is happening to your car.”
I have watched water run off my radiator
as freely as the waters of birth. I have peered
into the boxy chambers of my master cylinder, drained
of brake fluid, dark and divided as the human heart.
Unable to start some mornings, I have loosened a wing nut,
lifted the air filter, and jabbed a pencil stub
into my butterfly valve, clenched like a catch in the throat.
So when half the audience walked out of that reading
to attend a memorial service for some boys, killed
in a frat house fire, I did what any of us would do:
paused until the room grew still, then continued.
In towns like that, mechanics take only cash,
but the folks who remained bought enough books
to cover the cost of radiator hose, plus labor,
that transaction as sweet and pure as the motion
of any of our lubricious, invisible parts.
Ondergronds
In die jaren werden bloemblaadjes van hun stengels geplukt.
In het begin versplinterden kasruiten
door de omhoogstaande knoppen van chrysanten;
aardepotten werden in scherven vermalen.
Bloemen op openbare pleinen
werden ondergeploegd om rapen,
radijsjes en kool te kweken voor de massa.
Zaden werden oud en machteloos in hun verpakkingen;
bollen verschrompelden en stierven in donkere kelders.
Bonsai’s stonden onder theetafels
in stille stadsappartementen
terwijl boeren slechts een slordige rij
goudsbloemen langs de lemen muren van hun huis riskeerden.
Misschien bleven de vaste planten bestaan,
hun wortels onwetend van de wet —
stengels, die zich door de aarde heen strekken
om vertrapt te worden — of stiekem bewaard,
bloemblaadjes in boeken gedrukt als iconen van vislijm.
Vertaald door Frans Roumen
Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 6e december ook mijn blog van 6 december 2023 en ook mijn blog van 6 december 2018 en ook mijn blog van 6 december 2017