mistranslating Neruda
Matt Mason
New Michigan Press
Tuscaloosa, AL
(c) 2002
I first wrote about this press (briefly noted) in 2011 when I acknowledged Stephanie Anderson's chapbook In the Particular Particular which was the 2006 chapbook contest winner for this press.
I didn't write about the curiosity I had for a press with the name it has being located in Alabama, but since my writing in 2011 the press has moved to Arizona. Making additional sense (?)
I am going to paste here a longer review of this chapbook since the reviewer captures the essence of this book better than I : "…Mistranslating Neruda is Matt Mason’s homage to Pablo Neruda’s Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair. Not only does Mason mimic the sequence in length, but he also tries duplicating the inventive use of language: Like angel hair pasta waving goodbye to the boiling water, / the sausages from the refrigerator fly into your hands. // Innumerable hearts of the sausage / fortify inside the rare silences of young love. Equally emblematic for the rest of the sequence, Mason writes, early on: Body of a woman, white as flour, as egg whites, / you break into the world with the immediacy of warm cookies. Lines like these make Mason’s chapbook a hoot to read. While he actively tries to mimic Neruda, to “mistranslate” him, Mason’s own sense of absurdity takes off, pulling the reader along. These poems also display the depths of Mason’s imagination, but do they stand up to the master inspiring them? No, but they weren’t intended to, either. In his preface, Mason claims everybody has read a horrible act of translation, be it in high school English texts or elsewhere, and this chapbook was to be a satire on “mistranslations.” That doesn’t change the joy of language Mason revels in, and to this collection, that’s a gift.” –Rich Ristow, from https://richristow.wordpress.com/tag/mistranslating-neruda/
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