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INTRO
One of New York City's biggest annual poetry festivals is taking place this week. The People's Poetry Gathering is in its fourth year, and this year it is dedicated to poetry in languages other than English. Giuliana Chamedes spoke with the festival's keynote speaker, poet Robert Bly.
NARR
Robert Bly is a tall man with soft white hair and a bright silk scarf. He's a storyteller, and this Wednesday, he cast a spell over an attentive audience of about one hundred poetry-lovers. Bly turned eighty this year, but he doesn't plan to slow down any time soon. Every few months, he leaves the States and travels the world in search of new poets to translate. Bly has already translated dozens of poets from South and Central America, Spain, Japan, India, and Norway. He says that he only translate those poets who speak to him on a personal level.
SOT (:14)
So all of these, I don't say they're the greatest poets. They're the ones who get to me, they're the ones who keep me up past midnight translating. So I love every one of them.
NARR
Bly's got a special connection to the Spanish-language poets he's worked with - people like Pablo Neruda, Antonio Machado, and Juan Ramon. Bly says that the practice of translating poetry is like falling in love again and again…or like stealing sugar.
SOT (:21)
Because the sweetness of someone like Juan Ramon, sweetness is huge. And then you get a little bit of that be putting it into your own language. So people say to me: do they pay you well enough? And I say: they don't pay me a damn thing, but I love sugar, so I don't care!
NARR
Bly finds haikus by Kobayashi Issa, an 18th-century Japanese poet, to be particularly sweet. He read two of them.
SOT (:14)
Morning glories, yes, but in the faces of human beings there are flaws. The old dog bends his head listening, I guess the singing of the earthworms gets to him.
NARR
Bly is just like that old dog, he's a listener. He is traveling to Iran in a week to work with poets there and act - as he says - as an ambassador of peace in a troubled time. The one-week poetry festival closes on Sunday, with readings taking place at the Nuyorican Poets Café and the Bowery Poetry Club.
This is Giuliana Chamedes, Columbia Radio News.