HAY(NA)KU TRANSLATION...S!

Argel Corpus is one of the translators working to translate the entire The First Hay(na)ku Anthology into Spanish (yay!). Here's what Argel (viz Ernesto) has to say about the translation project:

today i began to translate some poems of this anthology and my first impression is that the work that i thought easy is going to be harder. to translate poetry is, in more than one sense, to write poetry: one has to re-write a poem in another language. // one of the challenges of translating hay(na)kus is its structure which seems to be easy and banal but when translating such poems one faces the same problems as if translating a sestina. In addition to this, there is the rhythm which does not only depend on accents or on the natural rhythm of any language but on the peculiar way of arranging the “stanzas”: first line, one word; second line, two words; third line, three words. this way of organizing lines and words has a deep impact on the rhythm, which must be preserved. // all in all, i have to admit that i am enjoying myself while doing it.

Speaking of hay(na)ku...I inserted extra nails on my shoe tips to write flamenco hay(na)ku. And also to say, that that dream (from prior post) becomes transparent, I realized, with my latest poem at the Beach House.

Interesting (to me) how, as a poet, I began to focus on the slippery muse through the prose poem form. It took the hay(na)ku for me to clarify my understanding of the line-break.