TRANSLATION POETICS (#10)

A lovely publisher has given me an open-ended offer to publish my hay(na)ku drawings online. Thank you, Publisher-Peep.

I replied that I have to think more about that possibility. I drew the hay(na)ku against the pages of a Tiny Book (as I happened to be working on them at the time the idea surfaced). But what this means is that integral -- or so it seems -- to the form of the drawings are their placement on book pages. What this means:

--some of the drawings play with, disrupt, subvert the edges of the page. They float off, fall from, and/or metaphorically extend the edge of the page.

So I'm not sure how the drawings would translate to a flat-screen online reproduction.

And yet, the impossibility of such translation....has never prevented translators from, um, translating!

And so, rather than say No (or No, Thank you), the challenge now is to think instead about how the translation might occur. And this path, too, is something I learned from Poetry: the poet says what is impossible to articulate; the poet translates the untranslateable.

As I was just saying to another Poet this morning who wanted my feedback on a brilliant concept he'd concocted, "Fortitude is precious."

*****

Speaking of hay(na)ku,

"THE HAY(NA)KU IS FRIENDSHIP"

as Ernesto illustrates HERE. I love that about the hay(na)ku -- how it can compel others to respond by also de facto writing a poem because they want to play a la the children's rhyme Isa, Dalawa, Tatlo, Ang Tata'y Mo Ay Kalbo... (Trans.: One, Two, Three, Your Dad is Bald...").

hence Your Invitation Here. Let's Play!