Poetry's Trans . . .

So I’ve been playing around with the idea

of how poets make poems.

How some, that I call transcribers,

try to take a snapshot of the moment.

How others - translators -

try to extrapolate the essence of the moment.

And how still others - transformers -

try to springboard beyond the moment.

These three non-hierarchical elements -

transcription, translation, transformation -

engage to different degrees

when poets make poems.

Tim Burton's Corpse Bride

From my Proust's New Eyes

Albertine Simonet is Marcel’s mistress . . .

Marcel is the narrator of Marcel Proust’s

seven-volume À la recherche du temps perdu . . .

In Search of Lost Time . . .

Marcel is Proust . . .

Marcel is obsessed with Albertine . . .

He wishes to possess her . . . to own her . . .

Albertine appears in three of the seven volumes . . .

Her name occurs 2,363 times . . . on 807 pages . . .

Albertine is first seen pushing her bicycle

on a beach . . . skirts billowing . . .

Marcel will return again and again to this image . . . 

Albertine is asleep in 19 percent of the novel . . .

Asleep, she becomes a plant . . .

her hair like crinkly black violets . . .

Proust uses plants as metaphors

for female sexual desire . . .

In The Albertine Workout the poet Anne Carson

notes that plants expose their genitalia . . .

Marcel observes that sometimes in her sleep

Albertine throws off her kimono and lies naked . . .

Hence, Proust’s fascination with sleep . . .

Fade to black . . .

Screen Dump 875

And the question: What now? . . .

This re-enactment . . . to what end? . . .

Of course, the interruption

chirping throughout the fugue state

unsettles . . . as night cosplays

fueled by excitement, with you

unhitched and fascinating,

rereading chapters on enchantment,

within which the unwary

are  about to be entranced . . .

Several have been told

to ignore the commonplace

go over the thrill, before scarring

traps their rambunctiousness . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 874

This idea of ritual cleansing . . .

rehearsals sputtering on

about mathematical equivalence

as two theories

developed independently

tapdance along the parapet

with much to say

given the tugging fortnight

already vehement . . .

Look, it could be worse . . .

The extras have been duly noted . . .

You were told . . . and told again . . .

Throwing a tizzy will register disapproval

among the misled, pale and flummoxed . . .

Yet another instance of serial-whistling . . .

Antonio Palmerini