21: Satu Kaikkonen

The above image is a vispo response to the text. Then, below, first, a Finnish translation. Then, an English translation.





Kuolin eilen
syntyäkseni tänään:
....................sitoakseni banjoni kielet täysikuun säteillä,

nämä tunnit
kuin hitaasti joutuva savu
.........................kytevä tuuli, taivaan alla vain hänen nimensä
kirjain kirjaimelta katoava.



Kuolin eilen,
mutta luuni eivät tahtoneet luovuttaa, eivät silmäni luopua
eivät sormeni soittamasta:


............synnyin, kuutamon alle, kasteen pakopaikkaan
hengittääkseni kukat, kuullakseni linnut
solmiakseni uudet sanat

puhtaat sävelet.

*

I died yesterday
so that I could be born today:
………………..to tie the languages of my banjo with the beams of the full moon,

these hours,
like the slowly coming smoke
……………….like the smoldering wind, under the sky his name
disappearing letter by letter.



I died yesterday,
but my bones did not want to give up, neither my eyes,
my fingers from the playing:


……….I was born under the moonlight to the escape point of dew
so that I could breathe the flowers, hear the birds
forge new words

pure tones.


*


I translated the poem from English to Finnish with a Google translation machine, and after that I picked up some words that made to me an influence. Then I wrote the new version of the poem in Finnish, and put it again into the translation machine. And after that I made a translation.
This poem is not very similar to original poems, but the most important thought to me was to keep the motion of the poem in my poem and of course words like banjo, moonlight etc. in it. The result is something that original poems really awaked in me, it's somekind of found inside the original poem - a poem in the poem.

20: Erín Moure

The brain’s smoke-like hearse
puts the smoulder to the real
The smoke-like brain
puts the smoulder to the real

the reel unwinds

Wretched and lying down
tonight I’m really old
There’s doors where my eyes, ears, mouth, nose
should be

a banjo, a memory, a regret

I have a foolish heart
and there’s windows where my heart, spleen, pancreas
should be
But I never regret moonlight in my bed

I move over: moonlight!



*

i could play with this awhile as i love revising, looking at the music of words, the effects different words and positionings have on each other... what that provokes in me, what more. or less. i tend to work by taking the first drafts and pulling out where i think language is working, and letting the strong language provoke me into generating more... i look at it all, and move things, and make new lines, and go where language wants me to go. this is a little bit of work, very modest, very quick in this case (otherwise i'd never get it done!). i kinda like the poem! it sounds like i wrote it!

19: Nf Huth

Smoke or smoulder
the moon is full and
(sifty tendrils of
proud or . . . )

(the smoulder
to the real . . . lazy, wretched, lying)
I would sing these strings
to the moon, full of

violet and doors
where my eyes, ears, mouth, nose

should be
if strings could
if I could remember or rouse

like a cloying rhyme
never fully closed

like an old poem
moonlight (in my bed) or
regret

(or . . . )
forgetful midnight words
vibrating like smoke.

18: Gregory Betts

Plunder in the Key of G

thought

lying
cloying
regret moonlight
regret
cloying
poem-thing

forgetful midnight

looking Gary


Plunder in the Key of A

What can a banjo
lazy and
brain’s
(brain’s hearse
real)
(brain
real)

and
an
a head
a ears,
a banjo, a, a
another
a heart

what that mean
thanks and
forward Gary


Plunder in the Key of R

you’re
brain’s proud smoulder
tendrils

(or …brain’s hearse
smoulder real)
(or… brain
smoulder real)

wretched
burns
rhyme
never
doors where ears,
regret
memory, regret
another heart

words?

forward Gary


Plunder in the Key of Y

you
you’re lazy

lying
my
cloying rhyme
fully
my eyes
my
memory
cloying

Gary


 
Coda: Plunder in the Key of E

when the
the smoulder
the smoke-like tendrils

(the smoke-like hearse
the smoulder the real)
(the smoke-like
the smoulder the real)

wretched
like poem

often violet inside head
like rhyme
never closed

where eyes, ears, nose
be

never regret bed
memory, regret
another poem

‘have heart’
does mean
sweet, forgetful?

17: Kevin Mcpherson Eckhoff

“this time, I know much”

what can I do with a banjo string
when laziness fills the moon with
the brain’s proud smoulder
a hearse of tendrils of gaseous ash
carbons the real

often a violet burns inside my head
like lechery and fazzle-pop

doors in my face
never fully closed
made of smoke

I resent the streetlight in my mirror and bed
and your fume-like music


*

notes on the process: my style, whatever, changes or is determined on a daily basis. some days, I lean towards any number or aesthetic of mechanical reorganizations of text according to word length, alphabeticalness (or anti-alphabeticalness) or parts of speech. for today, for me, for the poem – as it was given – the images were so strange and exciting and face-slapping that I decided to laser-pointer on them and excise the “poem” references and repetitions and stuff. So, yeah.

16: Dan Waber

This is a really interesting project. And thinking about it made me realize something about my own process that I hadn't been aware of previously--I don't work through anywhere near as many drafts today as I used to go through. I was an incessant reviser for a long time. I even used a version control system normally used by software developers that allowed me to keep track of every version, so that I could revert at any time to any draft. But today I work in a much less drafty room, so to speak. I write, and then I review and revise, and then prior to submission (if it's a piece that ends up being submitted, not much of what I do goes out anymore), I'll read through once more looking for typos. So, I can't really look at this piece as if it were a draft of mine, since I'm not really draft-based anymore. However, if this fits with your vision for the project, I can show you how I'd suggest it be re-written if someone were asking me for my opinion as an editor.


What can you do with a banjo
when you’re lazy and the moon is full?
The brain’s smoke hearse
puts the smoulder to the real.

I’m wretched and lie
like an old poem.

A violet burns inside my head
like a rhyme that cloys
never fully closed,

doors where my eyes, ears, mouth, nose
aren't.

I never regret moonlight in my bed--
a banjo, a memory, a regret,
another rhyme.

‘I have a foolish heart?’
What does that mean, these sweet,
forgetful midnight words?

15: rob mclennan

Gedichte 1853 Und 1854: Zum Lazarus: ‘Einst sah ich viele’

What can you do with banjo
lazy, when the moon is full

the brain’s proud
, tendrils

smoke-hearse
first, come real

lie, old poem, wretched rhyme

violet burns
a cloying head, my never-fully-closed

where eyes, ears, mouth, nose
should be

never regret
moonlight in bed

a banjo, memory, regret
another cloying poem-thing

‘I have a foolish heart?’
what does that mean?

sweet, forgetful
, midnight smoulders words


*


Note: If mine, I would read Barwin's original lines as quick scribbles, scattered throughout my notebook, to be reordered, cobbled together into a workable poem. I’ve been more interested in troubling the narrative impulse and longer lines, so my natural impulse would be there, and in altering the rhythms to more reflect a series of flows and interruptions, flows and interruptions. I would remove, automatically, repeated words, first-person pronouns, the unbearable “I,” which is difficult to remove, especially when you do (it remains, even invisible, like a stain).

Also, as I often rant to workshop groups, I would steer away from the use of “like,” finding it too passive, and even unbearable (I find removing “ing” has the same effect, for the same reason); why say a thing is “like” when you can be more direct, say simply a thing?