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for last few days, since I've been busy proofing a Spanish translation of one of my poetry books. When my Blood and Soap was translated into Italian, I had to make over a hundred corrections, so a similar situation here. Translation is always a nightmare. No joke. Among my copious notes to Luis Alberto Arellano in Mexico City, "Moonwalk in this instance refers to both Michael Jackson and Neil Armstrong," "Not teary, but 'watery,' to echo 'glass of water,' vaso de agua," "A windbag is a person who talks too much, so I’m deliberately misusing it in the original English. By misusing it, I’m also presenting it literally, as 'wind' and 'bag,'" "Is there a way to insert the verb 'swirling'? It’s important to make this GHOSTLIKE laughter CONCRETE, as if it’s a mass of leaves," "'What’s up?' is American colloqualism for 'What’s happening?', 'Que pasa?', so 'something was up' means 'something has happened' or 'something may happen soon.' Is there a Mexican equivalent for this?", "It’s important to repeat 'closed,' 'cerrados,' twice, for comic effect."

And a question from Luis, "I have a question about your use of the word "hubbub". In the poem "My rising prospects," the meaning may be understood as din, noise. But in the poem "Adultery murder suicide pact", the word in lips of the woman doesn't make sense. I know the word "habbib", an ancient Arabic word meaning friend, lover. Are you playing with the homophony of these two words?


Gawd lawd, me coconut is gonna explode. To drive me even crazier, Vietnamese poet Nguyen Thi Thanh Binh called me out of the blue yesterday. She wanted a themed poem in Vietnamese, so of course I dropped everything to write it. It will be in Tien Ve by midweek.



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