In the wake of Michael Hoover’s convalescing, area poets will be posting articles to further the conversation of poetry. Each edition will begin with a brief biography of the contributor.
This week, former Hanover Poet Laureate Dana Larkin Sauers is our guest columnist. Sauers is a member of the Hanover Poets and co-edited Digges’ Choice poetry journal. She has read widely throughout Pennsylvania and Maryland and has been published in various journals. Active in community efforts towards literacy, she hosts a First Friday poetry venue at The Ragged Edge on Chambersburg Street, Gettysburg from 7-9 PM and a bi-annual Open Mic Nite at Delone Catholic High School where she chairs the English department. She has published a nine-year poetry endeavor, Between the Space of Grace and Gray.
It was with some enthusiasm that I received an invitation from my friend Rich Hemmings, host of York Arts’ poetry venue a few weeks ago.
Rich has been the preeminent voice of the York poetry scene for many years. He’s the one who invites renowned poets from New York and New Jersey, arranges readings and signings, feeds and friends them while also putting them up for the night. There’s hardly a poet in the area who doesn’t appreciate what Rich has done for the local spoken word artistic community. He’s a man who goes to great extremes to support expression of all types.
Rich has a penchant for adventure, as well. His invitation to me revolved around the readings of a personal favorite, Polish author Wislawa Szmborska. Local Internet resources place her somewhere in her seventies or eighties. (We volleyed a few jokes about how the majority of us would like to be given a ten-year spread, preferably downward.)
Last Saturday evening, seven poets with seven distinctive voices of various education, occupations and ages as well as interpretations on Szmborska, gathered together and presented previewed and practiced readings for a shoulder-to-shoulder audience in from a damp autumn night.
Perhaps JoAnne Walcerz’s was the most memorable reading. JoAnne is multi-lingual, fluent in English, Polish and Russian. In addition to reading Szymborska’s selection with confidence, vigor and a whimsical attractiveness, she also read them in Polish. These included: “True Love/Milosc Szczesliwa,” “Birthday/Urodziny,” and “In Praise of My Sister/Pochwaia Siostry.”
The audience was treated with a pronunciation lesson and a rendering in both languages. Some attention was provided to the difficulties in translations. Poetry, is perhaps the most difficult because of the translator’s desire to keep intact, to the degree that it is possible, the tonal effect or emotional environment. This is largely accomplished through sound devices such as perfect or imperfect rhyme. Still, through one reading, Joanne focused the audience’s hearing to notice the extent that Szymborska went to create end rhymes that could be fathomed from either language. Joanne herself referred to this piece as Szymborska’s “Dr. Seuss” poem because of the accessibility of the end rhymes.
One of the poem’s that I was asked to recite is entitled, “Thank-You Note.” It’s a rather curious piece in the sense that it is addressed to those “I don’t love.” I appreciate its topsy turvy take. A certain degree of irony is created when what one expects to find following these words is something altogether different. See what I mean:
Thank-You Note
I owe so much
to those I don’t love.The relief as I agree
that someone else needs them more.The happiness that I’m not
the wolf to their sheep.The peace I feel from them,
the freedom—
love can neither give
nor take that.I don’t wait for them,
as in window-to-door-and-back.
Almost as patient as a sundial,
I understand
what love can’t,
and forgive
as love never would.From a rendezvous to a letter
is just a few days or weeks,
not an eternity.Trips with them always go smoothly,
concerts are heard,
cathedrals visited, scenery seen.And when seven hills and rivers
come between us,
the hills and rivers
can be found on any map.
They deserve the credit
if I live in three dimensions
in nonlyrical and nonrhetorical space
with a genuine, shifting horizon.They themselves don’t realize
how much they hold in their empty hands.“I don’t owe them a thing,”
would be love’s answer.
- Wislawa Szmborska