We opened class this week with a Susan Stewart quote speaking on the purpose of poetry. Stating that “the work of poetry is to counter the oblivion of darkness,” the quotation segwayed into a discussion covering form and expression of self. One of the grad students brought up a fascinating concept from classical Chinese poetry that “The literary constructs people as people construct the literary.” Our group briefly compared the classical Chinese quote to a Hemingway quote: “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit at a typewriter and bleed.” While both are interesting, the prior seemed more fitting for Petrarcha, as he seemed to be carefully crafting a possibly disingenuous persona rather than spilling his true sentiments.

While the class focused primarily on how Petrarch built his own image and his contributions to the image of the ideal female, our group also wondered if Petrarcha helped launch the stereotype of the revered but long-suffering/tortured male artist. While Petrarcha seemed to primarily use his (perhaps fictitious) anguish over Laura to seem all the more in love and all the more effortlessly talented, he also seems to be playing into contemporary tropes of horribly depressed creative geniuses whose sadness fuels their innovation. It is evident that Petrarch was trying to convey his sadness from all angles, as one classmate brought up the “heavy” sounds in the translated version of his text introduced by words such as “woe”.

Delving more into the Petrarcha text, the discussion highlighted language’s ability to conjure images, such as the youthful lady and the laurel created in our minds by the first line of Petrarcha’s 30th sonnet. The poem refines the image of the woman by specifying parts of her body, bringing back the discussion of the body from last week. Our group noted that poems access a more carnal side of human emotion. Lida observed that “You don’t see works of fiction or poetry about the quadratic equation.” Unlike the bodies from last week, however, Petrarcha fragments the body of another, setting near precedent for the fragmentation and objectification of women’s bodies in later media.

The part of the discussion that resonated most with our group outside of class was the brief turn into Translation Theory shortly before we began working with the various Gwendolyn Brooks poems. Because there are so many elements in poetry, translators are given the freedom to focus on parts of the poems that they believe to be the most important, be it rhythm, rhyme, or the meaning of each word. I was reminded of a video and article I recently saw about a woman, Amber Galloway Gallego, who is working to translate more than the lyrics of songs into American Sign Language. She explains how her method not only helps convey the instrumental sounds in music, but also metaphor and wordplay used in the lyrics. I couldn’t help but notice that the video is devoid of the opinions of any deaf individuals for whom this woman is aiming to help. I believe this acts to further highlight the power given to translators. Thankfully, the video does have accurate closed-captioning.

http://www.vox.com/videos/2017/3/27/15072526/asl-music-interpreter

Written by Claire