Interview by Colin W. Sargent<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The White House, The Colbert Report<\/em>\u2026Holiday Inn By The Bay. Internationally famous poet Robert Pinsky\u2019s March 7 pilgrimage to Henry Longfellow\u2019s \u201cbeautiful town that is seated by the sea\u201d in support of a Portland Museum of Art show creates an astral pairing of America\u2019s first translator of Dante\u2019s Inferno with his own, astonishing modern version.<\/h3>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/Dali-31-giants-la-jolla-jewelry.jpg\" "\\"Dali-31-giants-la-jolla-jewelry\\"")
<\/a>Visiting this town as a poet without channeling Henry Longfellow is like slouching into Liverpool as a musician without The Beatles on your iPod.<\/p>\nThere\u2019s no way three-term U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky<\/strong>\u2013here to promote the PMA show of Edward Weston\u2019s 1941 photographs illustrating Walt Whitman\u2019s Leaves of Grass<\/em>\u2013won\u2019t have the bearded one (the first American to translate Dante\u2019s Inferno<\/em> in 1867) fixed on the \u2018shoreless seas\u2019 of his mind. He and Longfellow have shared a voluptuous intimacy in the dark woods of Dante Alighieri\u2019s original Italian as fellow translators of the Inferno<\/em>, enjoying the kind of rapport across the centuries lesser talents can only dream about.<\/p>\nWhen you went to Hell in 1995, was Longfellow there, waiting for you (or at least the residual sense of his highly-praised 1867 translation of the Inferno<\/em>)?<\/strong><\/p>\nLongfellow taught Italian literature, lectured on Dante. His gorgeous, blank verse translation was important to me. I used it as a crutch (or a trot, in the old expression) when I was making my version. His verbal music and scholarship were inspiring and useful.<\/p>\n
Across the centuries, compare and contrast Longfellow\u2019s translation with your own.<\/strong><\/p>\nLongfellow\u2019s sonorous, gorgeous lines are in Miltonic blank verse: the order of the words is, a lot of the time, the word order of Latin, rather than spoken English\u2013which makes it an excellent trot, among other things, since he can maintain Italian word order (though sometimes difficult, especially after a while). Any 15 or 20 lines of it are rich and enchanting, but most American readers become exhausted by it, the pace and artificial idiom. Dante\u2019s Italian moves very quickly. I try to use few words, and to convey that quickness and directness of the original.<\/p>\n
To illustrate the flavors of three translations of Dante, please take us very close to your decisions about the line in the Inferno<\/em> where Virgil answers the question about whether he\u2019s man or shade.<\/strong><\/p>\nLongfellow\u2019s 1867 version:<\/em><\/strong> He answered me: \u201cNot man; man once I was\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\nJohn Ciardi\u2019s 1954 version: <\/em><\/strong>\u201cNot man, though man I once was, and my blood\u201d <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\nPinsky\u2019s version:<\/em><\/strong> \u201cNo living man, though once I was,\u201d he replied.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\nThe Italian line is: Rispuosemi: \u201cNon omo, omo gi\u00e0 fui.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\nLongellow gets an equivalent of that \u201como, omo<\/em>\u201d repetition, enabled by the Latinate word order. I try to keep it simple and sayable. I guess the Ciardi is somewhere in-between?<\/p>\nPerhaps no living person can objectively assess Longfellow\u2019s skills and reputation as you might. You even live in Cambridge! e.e. cummings snarked, \u201cChrist and Longfellow, both dead\u2026\u201d Nostalgia aside, does Longfellow cut the mustard today? Or is he \u201cpedastalled for oblivion\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\nI\u2019ve already said how highly I value his Commedia<\/em> translation. I like some of his poems\u2013e.g., \u201cThe Fire of Driftwood\u201d\u2013very much.<\/p>\nAnd there\u2019s that wonderful video of Longfellow\u2019s \u201cA Psalm of Life\u201d read by Rev. Michael Haynes at www.favoritepoem.org.<\/p>\n
Tell us about your upcoming appearance and your admiration for Edward Weston\u2019s attempt to capture Walt Whitman\u2019s Leaves of Grass<\/em><\/strong> <\/em><\/strong>in photographs he took across the country\u2013including two in Maine\u2013as part of the new show at Portland Museum of Art.<\/strong><\/p>\nWhitman writes, \u201cMy voice goes after what my eyes cannot reach,\u201d and in the same sentence \u201cSpeech is the twin of my vision.\u201d Twins are not the same, even if some are called \u201cidentical.\u201d So Weston\u2019s photographs don\u2019t so much capture Whitman\u2019s poem as look in the same direction. Less illustrations than companions.<\/p>\n
How do you rate the following famous poets connected with Maine: Edna St. Vincent Millay, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Robert Lowell*?<\/strong><\/p>\nRobinson\u2019s \u201cEros Turannos\u201d is one of my favorite poems. As someone who comes from a small, seashore town (Long Branch, New Jersey) I think of it as one of the greatest American works about a town. It is in a way spoken by a town. (You can hear me read the poem at: youtube.com\/watch?v=d7qTiKbI_eQ and there\u2019s a wonderful letter about it in Americans\u2019 Favorite Poems<\/em>.)<\/p>\nTell us a story about the first time you ever visited Maine. <\/strong><\/p>\nWhen my kids were small, we went all the way up to Rangeley Lake: thrillingly remote, and beautiful. And for several years we rented a beautiful place on Lake Kezar, where the kids swam and fished, etc. But most memorably, we took the ferry (a four-passenger motor launch as I recall) to Cushing Island, for a rented-house vacation in that kind of insular community. I remember being on the beach and seeing big tankers pass close by. Our first night there\u2013feeling like outsiders\u2013there was a thunderstorm, and as the power went out and the house went black, we smelled smoke.<\/p>\n
We called 9-1-1, I guess, and the fireboat came out from Portland. Turned out the lightning had hit the chimney, and what we smelled was long-accumulated soot. This adventure gave us an identity within the island community: We were the family in the house hit by lightning, and people were willing to chat with us about it.<\/p>\n
Maine people can certainly connect with the emotional precision of your poem \u201cShirt\u201d because we take great pride in the \u201cearthly competence\u201d of our creating, say, the L.L. Bean boot or the 1937 America\u2019s Cup-winning J-Sloop Ranger<\/em>. How do you define the Maine mystique? <\/strong><\/p>\nThe tradition of knowing how to do things, and knowing how things are made or repaired: I grew up somewhat familiar with that tradition, even on the Jersey Shore. In your, um, more austere climate, practical savvy is that much more important, I guess.<\/p>\n
Hmm\u2026\u201cOn Time And Under Budget.\u201d Not exactly a poetry slogan, is it? Easier to imagine appearing in a poem by Whitman than one by Longfellow. Robinson might use it, saturated with irony.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a delicate jazz to your poems in Gulf Music<\/em>. How do you feel about the hoots and shouts of a poetry slam?<\/strong><\/p>\nPerformance can be a great art, but I am most interested by poetry in the reader\u2019s voice. That is demonstrated by the videos at: www.favoritepoem.org. I\u2019ve already mentioned Longfellow read by Rev. Haynes. Look also at the construction worker reading Whitman, the glassblower reading O\u2019Hara, the Jamaican immigrant reading Plath.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s the best poem written to date that mentions Maine?<\/strong><\/p>\nFirst one that comes to my mind is \u201cEros Turannos.\u201d Whitman in his poem on election day uses the phrase \u201cTexas to Maine.\u201d If I was seeking, I\u2019d look through Heather McHugh\u2019s poems as well as Longfellow\u2019s. And wasn\u2019t Louise Bogan born in Maine?<\/p>\n
Have you ever written a poem that takes place here? Could you please provide it for us?<\/strong><\/p>\nWell, \u201ctakes place\u201d may be an exaggeration\u2026but here\u2019s \u201cVessel,\u201d which I remember writing on that vacation on Cushing Island. The childhood game of stretching out in bed at night and imagining my body as a boat sailing into sleep: Maybe the big ships on their way near the beach got mixed up with that?<\/p>\n
Tell us about the moment when you decided, what the hell, why not translate the Inferno<\/em>? So many scholars\u00a0 intentionally choose a small canvas for their work. How\u2019d you shake off the \u2018anxiety of influence\u2019?<\/strong><\/p>\nNot an issue at all\u2013maybe I\u2019m too insensitive to feel such a thing? I got hooked on the technical challenge, felt I had a way to make the poem quick and plain in English, and a way to create an equivalent of terza rima, without sacrificing idiom. It was more like having an absorbing new video game or sewing pattern or boat-building pattern than a large undertaking. It was like trying to master a song, or working on your jump shot or something. It was not consciously a scholarly or even a literary process: more athletic or musical or puzzle solving: working on a wonderful jigsaw puzzle or Sudoku.<\/p>\n
If you could buy a place on the Maine coast, where would it be\u00a0 and what would it look like?<\/strong><\/p>\nIn a city or town, not isolated. More like Heather McHugh in Eastport than a luxurious compound. I like towns, I like streets. That hip neighborhood of Portland, maybe?<\/p>\n
Do you enjoy lobster? How would it be served in the Inferno<\/em>?<\/strong><\/p>\nYes, very much. Boiled.<\/p>\n
What current Maine poets are on the map these days? <\/strong><\/p>\nNot the kind of thing I tend to know, so I might omit someone obviously important. Among people I know, Heather McHugh lived in Maine for years, and I believe Annie Finch and Ira Sadoff live in Maine. But really, I don\u2019t know\u2013Americans in general, and writers in particular, move around so much that sometimes it\u2019s hard to be sure who is where: something I feel double about. My family has been in Long Branch for three or four generations, and the place interests me endlessly\u2013but I don\u2019t live there! And my instincts are probably more cosmopolitan than regional, though I feel both those conflicting tendencies. On a less extreme wavelength than the Charbonneau of your novel, many of us tend to be hybrids that pop up in unlikely places.<\/p>\n
Corresponding with a translator of Dante brought back a visit John Ciardi made to Lincoln Middle School in the early 1970s, where he did a presentation on poetry in our auditorium\u2013mostly enlarging on concepts from How Does A Poem Mean<\/em>. There was a lull toward the end\u2026the sense of waiting for the bell. Then, to finish the show, he had his son come on stage to join a set of drums, and he played \u201cWipeout.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\nAre you trying to get me to promise I won\u2019t do that?<\/p>\n
<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\nWho:\tThree-term U.S. Poet
\nLaureate Robert Pinsky<\/strong><\/p>\nWHAT:\t2011 Bernard A. Osher Lecture: \u201cAn Evening with Robert Pinsky: Is Vision the Twin of Speech?\u201d<\/p>\n
WHERE:\tHoliday Inn By the Bay,
\n88 Spring Street, $15<\/p>\n
WHEN: \tMonday, March 7, 6-8 p.m.<\/p>\n
INSIDE TIP:\tThe release date of Pinsky\u2019s highly anticipated Selected Poems (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, $26) is April 12. His \u201csavage, inventive\u201d Gulf Music, 2007, interpolates \u201cvoodoo music\u201d with \u201cspecial forces.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/a>Visiting this town as a poet without channeling Henry Longfellow is like slouching into Liverpool as a musician without The Beatles on your iPod.<\/p>\nThere\u2019s no way three-term U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky<\/strong>\u2013here to promote the PMA show of Edward Weston\u2019s 1941 photographs illustrating Walt Whitman\u2019s Leaves of Grass<\/em>\u2013won\u2019t have the bearded one (the first American to translate Dante\u2019s Inferno<\/em> in 1867) fixed on the \u2018shoreless seas\u2019 of his mind. He and Longfellow have shared a voluptuous intimacy in the dark woods of Dante Alighieri\u2019s original Italian as fellow translators of the Inferno<\/em>, enjoying the kind of rapport across the centuries lesser talents can only dream about.<\/p>\n When you went to Hell in 1995, was Longfellow there, waiting for you (or at least the residual sense of his highly-praised 1867 translation of the Inferno<\/em>)?<\/strong><\/p>\n Longfellow taught Italian literature, lectured on Dante. His gorgeous, blank verse translation was important to me. I used it as a crutch (or a trot, in the old expression) when I was making my version. His verbal music and scholarship were inspiring and useful.<\/p>\n Across the centuries, compare and contrast Longfellow\u2019s translation with your own.<\/strong><\/p>\n Longfellow\u2019s sonorous, gorgeous lines are in Miltonic blank verse: the order of the words is, a lot of the time, the word order of Latin, rather than spoken English\u2013which makes it an excellent trot, among other things, since he can maintain Italian word order (though sometimes difficult, especially after a while). Any 15 or 20 lines of it are rich and enchanting, but most American readers become exhausted by it, the pace and artificial idiom. Dante\u2019s Italian moves very quickly. I try to use few words, and to convey that quickness and directness of the original.<\/p>\n To illustrate the flavors of three translations of Dante, please take us very close to your decisions about the line in the Inferno<\/em> where Virgil answers the question about whether he\u2019s man or shade.<\/strong><\/p>\n Longfellow\u2019s 1867 version:<\/em><\/strong> He answered me: \u201cNot man; man once I was\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n John Ciardi\u2019s 1954 version: <\/em><\/strong>\u201cNot man, though man I once was, and my blood\u201d <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Pinsky\u2019s version:<\/em><\/strong> \u201cNo living man, though once I was,\u201d he replied.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n The Italian line is: Rispuosemi: \u201cNon omo, omo gi\u00e0 fui.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Longellow gets an equivalent of that \u201como, omo<\/em>\u201d repetition, enabled by the Latinate word order. I try to keep it simple and sayable. I guess the Ciardi is somewhere in-between?<\/p>\n Perhaps no living person can objectively assess Longfellow\u2019s skills and reputation as you might. You even live in Cambridge! e.e. cummings snarked, \u201cChrist and Longfellow, both dead\u2026\u201d Nostalgia aside, does Longfellow cut the mustard today? Or is he \u201cpedastalled for oblivion\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019ve already said how highly I value his Commedia<\/em> translation. I like some of his poems\u2013e.g., \u201cThe Fire of Driftwood\u201d\u2013very much.<\/p>\n And there\u2019s that wonderful video of Longfellow\u2019s \u201cA Psalm of Life\u201d read by Rev. Michael Haynes at www.favoritepoem.org.<\/p>\n Tell us about your upcoming appearance and your admiration for Edward Weston\u2019s attempt to capture Walt Whitman\u2019s Leaves of Grass<\/em><\/strong> <\/em><\/strong>in photographs he took across the country\u2013including two in Maine\u2013as part of the new show at Portland Museum of Art.<\/strong><\/p>\n Whitman writes, \u201cMy voice goes after what my eyes cannot reach,\u201d and in the same sentence \u201cSpeech is the twin of my vision.\u201d Twins are not the same, even if some are called \u201cidentical.\u201d So Weston\u2019s photographs don\u2019t so much capture Whitman\u2019s poem as look in the same direction. Less illustrations than companions.<\/p>\n How do you rate the following famous poets connected with Maine: Edna St. Vincent Millay, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Robert Lowell*?<\/strong><\/p>\n Robinson\u2019s \u201cEros Turannos\u201d is one of my favorite poems. As someone who comes from a small, seashore town (Long Branch, New Jersey) I think of it as one of the greatest American works about a town. It is in a way spoken by a town. (You can hear me read the poem at: youtube.com\/watch?v=d7qTiKbI_eQ and there\u2019s a wonderful letter about it in Americans\u2019 Favorite Poems<\/em>.)<\/p>\n Tell us a story about the first time you ever visited Maine. <\/strong><\/p>\n When my kids were small, we went all the way up to Rangeley Lake: thrillingly remote, and beautiful. And for several years we rented a beautiful place on Lake Kezar, where the kids swam and fished, etc. But most memorably, we took the ferry (a four-passenger motor launch as I recall) to Cushing Island, for a rented-house vacation in that kind of insular community. I remember being on the beach and seeing big tankers pass close by. Our first night there\u2013feeling like outsiders\u2013there was a thunderstorm, and as the power went out and the house went black, we smelled smoke.<\/p>\n We called 9-1-1, I guess, and the fireboat came out from Portland. Turned out the lightning had hit the chimney, and what we smelled was long-accumulated soot. This adventure gave us an identity within the island community: We were the family in the house hit by lightning, and people were willing to chat with us about it.<\/p>\n Maine people can certainly connect with the emotional precision of your poem \u201cShirt\u201d because we take great pride in the \u201cearthly competence\u201d of our creating, say, the L.L. Bean boot or the 1937 America\u2019s Cup-winning J-Sloop Ranger<\/em>. How do you define the Maine mystique? <\/strong><\/p>\n The tradition of knowing how to do things, and knowing how things are made or repaired: I grew up somewhat familiar with that tradition, even on the Jersey Shore. In your, um, more austere climate, practical savvy is that much more important, I guess.<\/p>\n Hmm\u2026\u201cOn Time And Under Budget.\u201d Not exactly a poetry slogan, is it? Easier to imagine appearing in a poem by Whitman than one by Longfellow. Robinson might use it, saturated with irony.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a delicate jazz to your poems in Gulf Music<\/em>. How do you feel about the hoots and shouts of a poetry slam?<\/strong><\/p>\n Performance can be a great art, but I am most interested by poetry in the reader\u2019s voice. That is demonstrated by the videos at: www.favoritepoem.org. I\u2019ve already mentioned Longfellow read by Rev. Haynes. Look also at the construction worker reading Whitman, the glassblower reading O\u2019Hara, the Jamaican immigrant reading Plath.<\/p>\n What\u2019s the best poem written to date that mentions Maine?<\/strong><\/p>\n First one that comes to my mind is \u201cEros Turannos.\u201d Whitman in his poem on election day uses the phrase \u201cTexas to Maine.\u201d If I was seeking, I\u2019d look through Heather McHugh\u2019s poems as well as Longfellow\u2019s. And wasn\u2019t Louise Bogan born in Maine?<\/p>\n Have you ever written a poem that takes place here? Could you please provide it for us?<\/strong><\/p>\n Well, \u201ctakes place\u201d may be an exaggeration\u2026but here\u2019s \u201cVessel,\u201d which I remember writing on that vacation on Cushing Island. The childhood game of stretching out in bed at night and imagining my body as a boat sailing into sleep: Maybe the big ships on their way near the beach got mixed up with that?<\/p>\n Tell us about the moment when you decided, what the hell, why not translate the Inferno<\/em>? So many scholars\u00a0 intentionally choose a small canvas for their work. How\u2019d you shake off the \u2018anxiety of influence\u2019?<\/strong><\/p>\n Not an issue at all\u2013maybe I\u2019m too insensitive to feel such a thing? I got hooked on the technical challenge, felt I had a way to make the poem quick and plain in English, and a way to create an equivalent of terza rima, without sacrificing idiom. It was more like having an absorbing new video game or sewing pattern or boat-building pattern than a large undertaking. It was like trying to master a song, or working on your jump shot or something. It was not consciously a scholarly or even a literary process: more athletic or musical or puzzle solving: working on a wonderful jigsaw puzzle or Sudoku.<\/p>\n If you could buy a place on the Maine coast, where would it be\u00a0 and what would it look like?<\/strong><\/p>\n In a city or town, not isolated. More like Heather McHugh in Eastport than a luxurious compound. I like towns, I like streets. That hip neighborhood of Portland, maybe?<\/p>\n Do you enjoy lobster? How would it be served in the Inferno<\/em>?<\/strong><\/p>\n Yes, very much. Boiled.<\/p>\n What current Maine poets are on the map these days? <\/strong><\/p>\n Not the kind of thing I tend to know, so I might omit someone obviously important. Among people I know, Heather McHugh lived in Maine for years, and I believe Annie Finch and Ira Sadoff live in Maine. But really, I don\u2019t know\u2013Americans in general, and writers in particular, move around so much that sometimes it\u2019s hard to be sure who is where: something I feel double about. My family has been in Long Branch for three or four generations, and the place interests me endlessly\u2013but I don\u2019t live there! And my instincts are probably more cosmopolitan than regional, though I feel both those conflicting tendencies. On a less extreme wavelength than the Charbonneau of your novel, many of us tend to be hybrids that pop up in unlikely places.<\/p>\n Corresponding with a translator of Dante brought back a visit John Ciardi made to Lincoln Middle School in the early 1970s, where he did a presentation on poetry in our auditorium\u2013mostly enlarging on concepts from How Does A Poem Mean<\/em>. There was a lull toward the end\u2026the sense of waiting for the bell. Then, to finish the show, he had his son come on stage to join a set of drums, and he played \u201cWipeout.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Are you trying to get me to promise I won\u2019t do that?<\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n Who:\tThree-term U.S. Poet WHAT:\t2011 Bernard A. Osher Lecture: \u201cAn Evening with Robert Pinsky: Is Vision the Twin of Speech?\u201d<\/p>\n WHERE:\tHoliday Inn By the Bay, WHEN: \tMonday, March 7, 6-8 p.m.<\/p>\n INSIDE TIP:\tThe release date of Pinsky\u2019s highly anticipated Selected Poems (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, $26) is April 12. His \u201csavage, inventive\u201d Gulf Music, 2007, interpolates \u201cvoodoo music\u201d with \u201cspecial forces.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nLaureate Robert Pinsky<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n88 Spring Street, $15<\/p>\n
![\"Bookmark](\"http:\/\/s7.addthis.com\/static\/btn\/lg-share-en.gif\")
<\/a><\/p>\n