Heres my latest interview with a contributor to The Liberal Media Made Me Do It, Kathryn Kopple. 1. You have a very busy intellectual life. Poetry seems to be only one small part of it. Tell us a little about the various kinds of writing you do. Well, let me take the long way around in answering your question. My intellectual multifariousness stems from having spent many years studying in countries outside of the United States. I was sixteen when I first left the old mill town where I grew up and lived for a year in Brazil. After returning to the States, I was a different person, and that person went on to travel, learn Spanish and Portuguese, and do her doctorate in Latin American literature. I suppose I am, at heart, a nomad—a wanderer. Words have always provided me with a vehicle for travel, and of all the manifestations of language, its expressive potential—and despite my restlessness—poetry has been a constant companion. For decades, I channeled my passion for verse into translation, working with Roberto Echavarren, Marosa di Giorgio, Ernesto Grossman, and other poets. My English version of Marosa di Giorgio’s La liebre de marzo (The March Hare) was, to my delight, published last year by Hammer & Anvil Books. Translation appeals to me because I have the impression of being presented with a puzzle that must be solved on various levels: cultural, stylistic and semantic. What I am describing is best articulated by Jorge Luis Borges in the essay “The Homeric Versions.” He writes: “No problem is as consubstantial to literature and its modest mystery as the one posed by translation. The forgetfulness induced by vanity, the fear of confessing mental processes that may be divined as dangerously commonplace, the endeavor to maintain, central and intact, an incalculable reserve of obscurity; all watch over the various forms of direct writing. Translation, in contrast, seems destined to illustrate aesthetic debate.” Put that way, the person who dares to enter the maelstrom must be very brave or very foolish. An excellent translator himself, Borges wishes us to realize that poetic works cannot survive in a vacuum. Otherwise, they would exist as one of Leibniz’s monads: hermetic, without “windows or doors,” and defeating all efforts at interpretation. 2. What are your major inspirations as a writer? Do you find yourself frequently responding to prompts, like calls to submission of the sort I handed you when I asked you for a poem inspired by NPR or PBS? Have you written other poems about stories from that source? Translation prepared me to write poetry by putting me through constant revision. It enlarged my metaphorical vocabulary, made me aware of the elasticity of syntax, and immersed me in the long and heterogeneous lineage of words. As a translator, you must be open to experimentation—and the results are not always pretty. You can make a mess of things (which is why Umberto Eco called translation “the art of failure”). However, I found that it is necessary to fail in order to produce creatively. I became an expert in failure, so I could gain confidence as a writer. I learned not to fear those first ungainly drafts. I stopped judging myself and focused on the work. Wrestling all those years with poems in a language that was not my mother tongue was my greatest ally. Patience became—and still is—my muse. 3. If I asked you to sum up your major concerns or obsessions as a writer, what would you say they are? What do they have in common? Dialogue. Again, I will use translation as an example. It is a way of interacting (communicating) with literature and history—as well the world of which these disciplines are a part. “Limulus Polyphemus,” the poem that appears in the anthology, is the result of one of my pet obsessions. Come Memorial Day, for the past four years, our family has made the trip to Delaware to see the horseshoe crabs at play. Some may find these spiders of the sea (as I think of them) bizarre looking, if not repulsive. I feel only affection for them, and hope that, since they have survived this long, environmentalists will do whatever possible to assure their continued survival. As a fan of Science Friday, This American Life, Talk of the Nation, I thought the poem would be a good fit for the anthology—as a story on the horseshoe crabs was featured on Talk of the Nation. Public Radio offers us many opportunities to commit ourselves to further education. Creativity is a way of processing that education. 4. What projects are you working on now? I’m always working on something. I’m not certain what the future holds for me as a writer, but I am convinced that art and the humanities deserve a prominent place in our society, not only for my personal satisfaction but for future generations. And that is why I keep at it. Kathryn A. Kopple is a specialist in Latin American literature (NYU, Ph.D.) Her poetry and prose can be found in the 2012 Fall Issue of The Threepenny Review, Construction Lit Mag, Philadelphia Stories, Sleet, The Hummingbird Review, Danse Macabre, Metropolis, Contemporary Haibun Online, Haydens Ferry Review blog, Lakeview International Journal of Literature and Art, Bellevue Literary Review (Fragile Environments Issue, 2014), among other publications. Translations, scholarly work, and reviews can be found in Buñuel: 100 Years: Its Dangerous to Look Inside (MoMA), Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, World Literature Today, Agni Online, Exact Change Year Book, The XUL Reader, 5+5, The Four Quarters Magazine, Metropolis, Seneca Review, Sonora Review, These Are Not Sweet Girls, The Oxford Book of Latin American Poetry, The March Hare by Marosa di Giorgio (trans. Kathryn A. Kopple). Disorder in the Court: Acting-Out Injustice in Inherit the Wind is forthcoming in Hablar Derecho, an international anthology on law and literature edited by CIDE, DF. She is a regular contributor to Unusual Historicals, a blog devoted to historical fiction. She is also the author of Little Velásquez (Mirth Press, 2012), a novel set in 15th century Spain. She is currently an editor of Danse Macabre, an online literary magazine.
Posted on: Sat, 14 Jun 2014 17:11:00 +0000
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