It rustles through our sleep
Like silk, a delicate gust
Like throbbing blossoms
Opening over us.
And I’m led homewards
On your breath, carried
Through enchanted tales
And sagas long-buried.
And my briar-smile plays
With your primal deep range
And all the earth comes
To nestle in around them.
It rustles through our sleep
Like silk, a delicate gust—
The world-old dream
Blessing both of us.
— Else Lasker-Schüler (1869-1945)
translated by Amelia Gorman
Else Lasker-Schüler’s poetry features a glut of musical phrasing and playful made-up words, with the occasional pun and outright nonsense syllables. While it’s difficult to translate, it also feels like an invitation to be playful myself.
“Sphinx” uses some of the devices and ideas that Schüler turns to over and over again in her poetry. There’s the idea of the “Mondfrau” or moon woman, who also appears to provide similar artistic inspiration in one of her most famous poems, “Das Blaues Klavier.” There’s the tendency of flowers, vines, roots and all their parts to grow in ways they shouldn’t and spread across human life.
Here, she uses her gift of recognizing the power in the sounds of simple seeming words. She maintains an easily graspable but non-traditional rhyming pattern, but even then her rhymed sets of words are linked to each other with subtle sounds that the ear recognizes before it could fully describe them. I kept the same rhyme pattern and attempted to incorporate a lot of m and l sounds and assonance between non-rhyming words to capture this. This included using semantically related words instead of truer translations at times. For example, ‘Leinennähten’ directly translates to linen seams, but I used the word ‘thread’ to be able to rhyme with bed. Additionally, I added the word ‘distance’ in the last stanza to rhyme with ‘resistance’ despite no mention of the word distance, only a collection of far-away things. I added line breaks at slightly different parts of sentences than the original to create the ‘narcissus’/‘this’/‘kiss’ appoximate rhyme. Schüler’s rhymes are on stronger, more concrete words, while I had to compromise and use the word ‘this’ as one of my rhymes instead of ‘Küssen’ or ‘pillow.’
Editor’s Note: The translation here is quite different (but also good) http://www.poetryexplorer.net/poem.php?id=10080037
“Love”/“Die Liebe” has been translated multiple times, but I’ve never read a translation that accurately represented the fairy tale themes of the work. I see it as telling an alternate Sleeping Beauty (Dornröschen) story. With that in mind, I translated ‘Dornenlächeln’ as ‘briar-smile’ to evoke one of the English names for the Sleeping Beauty story, “Little Briar Rose.” In this poetic retelling, instead of waking the woman, the couple sleeps together forever, eventually enveloped by the earth. I think it’s beautiful, with just a touch of subversion.
I also wanted to preserve the rhythm of inhaling and exhaling. Schüler is gifted at using the sounds of relatively simple seeming words to a powerful, and here I think erotic, effect. While sometimes there a similarly intoned cognates in English, as in the case of “Schlaf” and “sleep,” other times as in the case of “Zügen,” no amount of substituting words like “mountain” or “range” or “peaks” ever mimicked the sense of breath that she used; I decided to translate for semantics instead of sound. A German poet suggested various possible synonyms, but the word ‘range’ best completed the picture. Additionally, I toyed with the syntax of some sentences to keep a similar cadence to the original poem and included approximate rhymes in places where Schüler used rhymes, leading to sentences like “blessing both of us” instead of a more precise “blessing us both.”
Else Lasker-Schüler was a leading German Expressionist poet who also wrote plays, drew and painted. She was known to love singing and dancing while wearing elaborate costumes and making up bizarre nicknames for her circle of friends. As a Jewish woman, she left Germany after being assaulted in 1932, to live in Switzerland and later Jerusalem. She died in 1945 without ever being able to return to her first home.
Amelia Gorman, currently angling for a career change, is studying computer science, but in the past she was a baker with a background in French literature. She’s married to a German teacher and has many friends and family living in Berlin, so learning German was inevitable. Finding an Else Lasker-Schüler book sitting out on a table in a library years ago, however, was pure luck. Her favorite German pastry to make is Bienenstich Kuchen.
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
John C. Mannone, Poetry Editor
I am excited about this dark slate of poetry. We begin with what we hope will be a regular addition to Silver Blade poetry—Speculative Poetry in Translation.
In this issue, F.J. Bergmann (WI) translates Boris Vian’s French poem, “I will die from a cancer of the spine.” Be sure to read about the translation notes. (To see a performance in French, visit this YouTube video with Matt Bihin, but if you want to hear a progressive performance with an avant garde musical background, listen to Les Ecrits Vains).
Simon Perchik (NY) follows with another haunting poem whose first line is “This leaf shutting down.” His poems are unnamed, except by asterisk. This, together with some peculiarities in punctuation, constitutes his signature style. (The poetry editor took the photograph recently. He was on a nature trail by a still pool off a small stream in the Great Smoky Mountains when he took the picture of leaves and their reflections.)
Mary Soon Lee (PA) shares part of her epic fantasy rooted in Chinese myth and legend, “The Wild Horses Came Hastening.” Mary experiments with structure—groups of three narrative quatrains are sectioned between Haiku-like interludes that arguably form a contiguous poem itself.
Marge Simon (FL) writes an interesting and unusual poem with pigeons, “Serving the Blind Girl,” which is as suspenseful as the Alfred Hitchcock movie, “The Birds,” but wholly different.
Anne Carly Abad (Philippines) puts a new twist to a tire swing in “Tire under the bridge”—a dark (of sorts) fantasy.
Finally, Angela Brown (NV) opens her heart with “Black Momma-faces.” The poem is a dark narrative that we all wish was strictly speculative, but it draws strength and redemption through a chorus of conviction. I hope you all enjoy these talented poets.
John C. Mannone
hangs by ribbons
knotted from plastic straws.
It swings back and forth
by the breath of a bored witch
winking from an abandoned building.
And then the tire stretches,
droops into a thin ovoid
as soot-angels from the drainage
clamber for a spot to play—
their rust wings crackling
on the heads of line-cutting scoundrels.
Grass blades hiss warning
at the strike of three, the witch retreats
and the angels dribble down the way they came.
Children in school uniforms fill the streets.
They take turns on the tire swing.
–Anne Carly Abad
Anne Carly Abad is currently busy trying to learn a new trick—jewelry-making.
Her written work has appeared or will appear in NameL3ss Digest, Apex, and Not
One of Us. Her science fiction novel The Light Bringer’s Kingdom saw print this year and is now available at Amazon.
The pigeons moan when the blind girl calls,
for she is hungry and will be wanting pigeon pie.
Eugene sits in his big yellow chair to polish his spike.
I watch as he brushes the chamois over the walnut pole
until his fingers are stained darker than his skin.
We try to please her with small things, whatever we can manage.
I am embroidering a pillow for her with lilies that she can touch
on the surface of the rough cloth, perhaps even feel their color.
The blind girl is the last of her kind but she is not a witch,
not those poor creatures that were burned or drowned.
She calls us in visions when our services are needed
to purify our flock, and graciously we comply.
We are hers to bid, as a mother would bid her children,
and not a one of us dares question her except for fools
such as Rafe, misshapen and foul-mouthed, often drunk.
So it was natural that his blaspheming head wound up
on the sharp end of Eugene’s pole, supper for the crows.
There is always a great feasting and celebration
whenever a head finds its way to the spike,
when the blind girl calls.
–Marge Simon
Marge Simon lives in Ocala, Florida and is married to Bruce Boston. Her works appear in publications such as DailySF Magazine, Silver Blade and Urban Fantasist. She edits a column for the HWA Newsletter, “Blood & Spades: Poets of the Dark Side.” She has won the Strange Horizons Readers Choice Award, the Dwarf Stars and Elgin Awards and the Bram Stoker Award® for Poetry Collection.
On the rain-blown steppe
the wild horses came hastening,
hooves denting the mud.
Warm but wet, that first night
in the horse country,
rain trickling down his neck
as Wen Xun stood sentry duty.
He heard the horses
before he saw them,
unshod hooves sounding
softly on sodden grass.
Eight horses, riderless,
halted on the low hill top
overlooking the king’s camp
by the Guang Yun river.
Asleep in his tent,
how could the king summon them?
What call did they hear?
Wen Xun went into the king’s tent,
woke Captain Li, who woke the king.
Through darkness and rain,
the three men walked up the hill.
King Xau signaled the guards to halt,
went, alone, from horse to horse,
speaking to them,
laying his hands on them.
Wen Xun knew every verse of the song
about wild horses coming to the king.
Witnessing such a thing himself
scared him so much he shook.
Unbroken, untamed,
nothing they claimed from him, save
the touch of his hand.
Wen Xun was still trembling
when the king came over,
set his hand on Wen Xun’s shoulder—
“I’m sorry,” said Wen Xun, mortified.
“It’s all right. Come with us.”
And the king steered him forward
until they stood amid the smell,
heat, breath of the wild horses.
And there, his king beside him,
Wen Xun’s fear lifted clear,
and he trembled not at all
though more horses galloped up.
Their promise they gave:
to come if he needed them,
no matter how far.
At dawn, the horses left.
The three men went down the hill.
Silent. The rain had stopped.
The king’s face was streaked wet.
They hung their coats to dry.
Princess Suyin, already awake,
ran out to join them.
Wen Xun heated breakfast.
The night behind them, unspoken,
as it would have remained unspoken
except that the horses returned,
a dozen times in as many weeks.
By hill and by stream,
the wild horses came hastening.
What call did they hear?
–Mary Soon Lee
Mary Soon Lee was born and raised in London, but has lived in Pittsburgh for over twenty years. The first part of her epic fantasy in verse, “Crowned,” was published by Dark Renaissance Books in June 2015. The opening poem, “Interregnum,” won the 2014 Rhysling Award for Best Long Poem. Her poetry has appeared in American Scholar, Atlanta Review, Dreams & Nightmares, and Star*Line.
This leaf shutting down
drains as if its puddle
could speak for you
though the evenings too
have outgrown, no longer reds
or browns or face to face
the way all these trees
still gives birth in darkness
and the echo you listen for
has your forehead, scented
lulled by the gentle splash
coming by to nurse
–what you hear is the hand
hour after hour leaving your body
and this huge sea
that never blossomed
taking you back for rivers
that wanted to be water.
–Simon Perchik
Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, The Nation, Poetry, Osiris, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. His most recent collection is Almost Rain published by River Otter Press (2013). For more information, including free e-books and his essay titled “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities,” please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com.
By John C. Mannone
Consider science news in various forms as a prompt for speculative poetry. But first, let us consider a few things I consider important for science poetry, which also apply to nature poetry, historical poetry, geographical poetry, travelogue poetry and others. (I understand there might be other factors and that all might not agree with me, but these are part of my aesthetics and editorial focus for Silver Blade):
(1) Do not confuse writing about facts with poetic words as poetry (though it might be creative nonfiction). Much more is needed to lift it into poetry. I suggest a core of emotional truth must be present. This is facilitated with metaphors provided by science, nature, etc.—that is, by the subgenre you are using—to develop some aspect of the human condition or humanity, which can touch on socio-economic, political and spiritual issues.
(2) Cleverness/cuteness may entertain, but by itself rarely lifts science writing into the realm of poetry.
Of course, the other major elements of poetry—language, image, music and structure—must be present AND interconnect with each other. Collectively they must provide at an absolute minimum these three things: clarity, rhythm and depth as discussed in “Hearing the Literary Voice in Speculative Poetry”—a presentation at the Alabama Writers Conclave annual workshop in July 2015 at the University of South Alabama Fairhope. (Also obtainable from my blog/website, The Art of Poetry under the Poetry Classroom).
A few examples of my work that I consider science poetry are: “Beyond the Stars” (The Mystic Nebula), “Eulogy for a Voyager” (Red Fez), “Extinction Level Event” (Abyss & Apex), “Organic Chemistry” (3Elements Review), “Meteor Showers from Mars” (The MOON magazine) and “On the Brink of a Spinning Black Hole” (BlazeVOX).
But one doesn’t have to be a scientist to appreciate the wonders of the universe. And like anything else in nature, these wonders have been a continual source of inspiration for just about any kind of writing I have done. That includes setting for a scifi piece, imagined creatures (good and bad), the shear awesomeness of the night sky, and spiritual/meditative pieces. Consider these sources for ideas:
* A light year is about 5.85 trillion miles.
__________________________________________________________________
John C. Mannone has over 450 works in Windhover, Artemis, Southern Poetry Anthology (NC), Still: The Journal, Town Creek Poetry, Negative Capability, Tupelo Press, Baltimore Review, Pedestal and others. Author of two literary poetry collections—Apocalypse (Alban Lake Publishing) and Disabled Monsters (The Linnet’s Wing’s Press)—he’s the poetry editor for Silver Blade and for Abyss & Apex.
His collection, Flux Lines—a collection of love poetry based on science metaphors—was a semi-finalist for the 2014 Mary Ballard Poetry Chapbook Prize. He won the 2015 Joy Margrave award for creative nonfiction and has been nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize in Poetry.
He had been a research chemist for Martin Marietta, who helped with the Viking and Voyager missions, an amateur radio astronomer with a specialty in spectral analysis of antenna signals, and he’s a college professor of physics in east TN.
He says, “As a physicist, I often jest about my right-brain coming out of comatose when I started writing poetry. And that my analytical mind informs my poetry with fresh metaphors, but when I marvel at my universe through my telescope of poetry, I am further amazed. Indeed, poetry has enlarged it by teaching me how to think outside the box.”
Here we are now, walking to the end of the world,
some of us pushing shopping carts, others carrying
suitcases duffels, and our children toting dolls that say
Mama, Mama is it a long way to go, yet?
We tell them, No, no, it won’t be long now
and we point to a cellphone tower on the horizon.
From there, we’ll call out, and again, if no one answers
we’ll know we’ve reached the end of the world,
we’ll know there’s no point in going on.
But we’ll go on anyway to the next cellphone tower
and to the one after that, from one horizon to the next
for as long as we are able—
and the children carry dolls that’ll say over and over,
Mama, Mama is it a long way to go, yet?
And we’ll tell them, No, no, it won’t be long now.
WC Roberts lives in a mobile home up on Bixby Hill, on land that was once the county dump. The only window looks out on a ragged scarecrow standing in a field of straw and dressed in WC’s own discarded clothes. WC dreams of the desert, of finally getting his first television set, and of ravens. Above all, he writes, and has had poems published in _ Silver Blade, Liquid Imagination, Strange Horizons, Apex, Space & Time Magazine, Shock Totem, Scifaikuest, Star*Line and others.
The dog barked all day long,
but no one heard him.
No one came to give him food.
The dog ventured to the road
and faced a lot of traffic,
but cyclist saved him.
And they went ahead,
the dog still barking a lot.
A chariot with a rich man
stopped nearby, and its passengers
came out to take snapshots,
but they offered no bread
and went on their way.
The dog now came to a hut
and panted for some water.
Nobody quenched his thirst,
but threw water on him.
The dog sat on the green grass
of the garden and saw the baby
playing near the pond.
The dog dragged the child
to safety on the grass
and played with him.
The parents came to the dog.
The dog thought they came
to thank him and wagged his tail.
But instead, they brutally
beat him to death.
