Poetry New York

Erik Podhora

Reviewing Leonard Schwartz & Erin Moure/Pen Press @ McNally Bookstore

May 1^st, 2008

The reading was set to begin at 7PM in the café portion of the McNally Bookstore on Prince (between Lafayette and Mulberry). I was sitting behind the chairs that were set for the readers, amongst the crowd that lingered over their lattés for the duration of the reading. There was a man with a big camera that was stringing cables all over the floor and bumping into the crowd while maintained a grimace on his face. A small group had assembled and taken their seats by 7:15. But it wasn’t until 7:35 that Mercedes Roffé started speaking not into the microphone.

She began in Spanish. Her native tongue masked her nervousness for a minute, but as she began to speak in English we could hear her voice waver. Clearly this event was very important to her and her small press. She introduced Pen Press and talked about the work it does with with poets from South America, North America and Europe. But, I couldn’t make out every word of what Mercedes was saying in the introduction partly because I wasn’t in tune with her speech and partly because the traffic noise was amplified by the rain on the street. So here is an excerpt from the event introduction on paper,

“Pen Press is a New York-based small press founded in 1998 with the goal of “promoting contemporary Latin American and Spanish poetry, and poets of other languages in Spanish translation.” On this occasion, its editorial director, Mercedes Roffé, will present the series, and two renowned English-language poets from its translation catalog: Montreal poet Erín Moure, and New York poet Leonard Schwartz (now visiting from Evergreen State College, WA), who will read from their work.”

I believe Erin’s first poem was called “my first story of Latin.” She introduced it as an “anti-war poem.” Erin read it in English, but I was unclear as to whether Erin translated her own work or her work was translated into Spanish by Marta López-Luaces. At any rate, Erin and Marta alternated reading in English and Spanish. For me, it was interesting to hear the poem’s rhythms and rhymes completely change from English into Spanish. Furthermore, hearing the poem read by the author in English and then by Marta in Spanish I could understand why people say English language is conducive to “meaning” and Spanish and French languages are conducive to music. Erin’s words were slower and more disconnected than Marta’s. But, that is easy for me to say because my comprehension of Spanish is limited, so I focus on attending to the music of the Spanish language (which was very easy to do while listening to Marta’s elegant accent).

Erin’s poetry was full of reflections on language. “I don’t know the slang for anything here…I only speak Latin.” We were put into a foreign place listening to these poems. There were familiar dialects, unfamiliar ones, unrecognizable ones and unfamiliar content in familiar tones.

Mercedes introduced Leonard. Previously unknown to me, Leonard has lectured and read at Universities and festivals in China, Turkey, France, Belgium, Portugal, Russia, Argentina and Peru. In 1997 he received the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in poetry. He took with the microphone and thanked Mercedes for the introduction. He used a touch of humor by saying,

“Ever since I have been back from Buenos Aires I have been telling everybody to move there.” Made in the spirit of humor, the statement also happens to be true. It started the reading on a light note.

Leonard read from Gnostic Blessing. His reading was animated and relatively loud compared to the two readers before him. His reading did not put me in the same kind of foreign place that Erin’s poetry did. Instead, I was grounded in myself and my own perception of the images and concepts presented in the poem. In fact I lingered so long I failed to record many of the key phrases that inspired the introspection. One phrase that caught my ear was,

“The World demands explanation but is inexplicable.”

The phrase is indicative of Leonard’s play with dialectic truths. In terms of a call to action; Leonard’s poetics seem to be aimed at a reform achieved through a spiritual awakening. There was no call for a “revolution,” in a colloquial kind of way. But the place that one is put, deeply seated within oneself did inspire the kind of awareness that might produce “change” through consideration, careful deliberation and action.

Leonard’s poems seemed to be composed of fragments at some level. But, I would hesitate to label it “fragmented poetry.” This is probably because of the strong vocal presence that carried the audience from the beginning to the end. Leonard also chose to read through longer sections of his poems rather than the section by section kind of interaction Erin used.

For me, hearing Mercedes reading the Spanish translation of Gnostic Blessing was a different experience than listening to Marta read; mostly because Mercedes has a much softer voice. I never thought I would describe Leonard’s presence as “dominating.” But, listening to him trade position at the microphone with Mercedes, I did feel that his vocal presence was rather... engrossing? Words and sounds were strung together much more naturally the way in which Mercedes read the text for me than the English reading by Leonard. One can hear the tiny pauses as Leonard reads in between words, but the spaces between words seemed much closer to me as it was read in Spanish.

I suppose that here might be the proper place to put my reflection on the bilingual aspect of this reading. For me, as an English speaker, I feel like I have been trained to concentrate on the meanings and implications of words rather than the sounds of the words. It is possible that I recognize the words before they are finished being enunciated through all of their syllables. In this case, all this discussion about “spacing” and “pauses” is not an accurate description of the actual speech that occurred in the reading. So, all that remains is my highly-subjective and interpretative experience with the language. My talk about the accents and flowing language of the Spanish-speaking readers might just be an object of my fascination and untrained ear. I come to Spanish as a child, listening for anything I can understand or mimic. I have no sense of the cultural and social context from which the words arise in Spanish. All that is left is sounds and the most literal translation.

The experience of hearing the poems read in a familiar language and a foreign language was a unique and challenging experience for me. When the language in the air was something I was familiar with, I found myself trying to derive “meaning” in order to “understand” the poem. Listening to Spanish I naturally tried to do the same thing, but my elementary comprehension prevented me from getting into “meaning.” But the language was still there. As I listened to the Spanish translations I grasped for anything, everything. What I came with was an experience with sounds, music and word recognition. I never attempted to put any sort of meaning on the poetry that was read in Spanish.

Paying attention to the sounds and words was a full-time job. I realized that I simply skipped over the appreciation of the musicality of the poems as they were read in English; I was so caught up in the act of “understanding.”