Wednesday, May 08, 2013

Beautiful ink painting by Wang Yu 王云 (1968~)

In waiting for a new post here on the blog, I wish to share this beautiful image by Wang Yu.







 If anyone is wondering why there has been so little activity for the last year, my nine and a half month old daughter is the answer.

See you!


Lagt inn av kl.

4 comments:

Lyle Daggett said...

Greetings and joy, Thekla, and welcome, Thekla's daughter.

The ink painting is quite remarkable. Looking at it here, I would not have guessed it to be a painting -- it very much looks like the original was a photograph.

I've been occupied much of the past month with reading Airmail: The Letters of Robert Bly and Tomas Transtromer, published recently this year in the United States by Graywolf Press, a publisher here in Minneapolis. The letters cover the period from 1964 to 1990 (the great majority from prior to 1980).

I'm enjoying them immensely. They give a strong sense of the warm friendship between the two poets, also with much lively humor, and something of the events of the larger world in the background of the letters. Also very much talk in the letters about translating poetry: Bly translating Transtromer (and other Swedish poets) to English, and Transtromer translating Bly and other American poets to Swedish. Much about the detailed nuances of words, which I'm finding deeply fascinating.

There was apparently a Swedish edition of the book published first, under the title Airmail: Brev 1964-1990, published by Bonniers. The U.S. edition is edited by Thomas R. Smith, a poet who has worked closely with Robert Bly for many years.

I hope you and your daughter are doing well. Cheers!

4:50 am
Thekla said...

Hello , Lyle,

it's been a while!

Yes, I have read a little of Airmail (in Swedish or Norwegian, I don't remember). Your rendering of it inspires me to pick it up, especially as translation interests me. A friend gave the book to us after he was finished -- thank you, TE.

Robert Bly has also translated Norwegian poetry, I think Olav H. Hauge is one of them.

I am looking forward to being able to write a little here. Things are remarkably busy with a rather investigative busybody in the house.

Thanks for stopping by after all this time!

T

8:28 am
Lyle Daggett said...

Yes, among Norwegian poets Robert Bly has translated Olav Hauge, also Rolf Jacobsen, these among several others.

As it happens, a book of Jacobsen translations is sitting in a stack of books near me at the moment, The Roads Have Come to an End Now, published here in 2001 by Copper Canyon Press, which includes translations by Robert Bly, Roger Greenwald, and Robert Hedin (along with the original Norwegian poems).

Here is one of Bly's translations of Jacobsen that I've particularly liked. The Norwegian title is "Solsikke."

Sunflower

What sower walked over earth,
which hands sowed
out inward seeds of fire?
They went out from his fists like rainbow curves
to frozen earth, young loam, hot sand,
they will sleep there
greedily, and drink up our lives
and explode it into pieces
for the sake of a sunflower that you haven't seen
or a thistle head or a chrysanthemum.

Let the young rain of tears come.
let the calm hands of grief come.
It's not all as evil as you think.

*

4:10 am
Lyle Daggett said...

Sorry, typing error: third line of the poem should read "our" inward seeds of fire...

4:12 am

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