*1.it’d be nice to have some recognition by nowfor the invention of fire-proof coal,infinite soot,firesheds everywhere,to domesticate the weather or run wild with it,as long as we’re together.even now,wind is exchangedto pay for glowing embers,when too little thunderous air is on loanto the forest dweller, the steppe wanderer,the living. 2.somewhere in the shallowest lakethe earth’s change in fate is accumulatingor growing heavierand withdrawingor does a former tree wander inside its barklike a memory in a mind gone mad?dust blows away.after, the world turns flat,we were hilariously mistaken.what now? prayfor a wider gazetoward this season of the earth. 3.even an underground sea can be a valley,if steady beings settle it,if flesh has become place. *1.хотелось бы уже теперь прославитьсяизобретением несгораемого угля,несметной золы,огнераздела на все стороны и напротив,одомашнить погоду или с ней одичать,лишь бы вместе.уже сейчас,разменявшись на ветер,заплатить за тление,если мало грозного воздуха дали взаймылесному, степномуживущему. 2.где-то в самом равнинном озерескапливается перемена участи землеили она утяжеляетсяи удаляется внутрьили бродит в ней под корой бывшее деревокак у безумного память?пыль выветривается.после мир окажется плоским,мы смешно ошибались.что делать? молитьо расширении взглядана время земли. 3.долиной может быть и подземное море,если ровные существа его населяют,если плоть стала местом.
* [1. / it’d be nice to have some recognition by now]
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“* [1. / it’d be nice to have some recognition by now]” from FOR THE SHREW: by Anna Glazova.
Published by Zephyr Press on November 29, 2022.
English Translation Copyright © 2022 by Alex Niemi.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Anna Glazova is a poet, translator and independent scholar. She has published five books of poetry in Russian and received her PhD in German and Comparative Literature at Northwestern University (USA). She translates from German and English; among the authors she has translated are Franz Kafka, Unica Zürn, Walter Benjamin, and Emily Dickinson.
Fondation Jan Michalski, Tonatiuh Ambrosetti
Alex Niemi is a writer and literary translator. She is the recipient of an NEA translation grant, the Heldt Prize, and an AATSEEL Book Award. Her latest translation is The Endless Week by Laura Vazquez (Dorothy, a publishing project) and she is the author of the poetry chapbook Elephant (Dancing Girl Press). You can find more of her work at alex-niemi.com.
"These faithful and accurate translations can give those without Russian the confidence that they are reading a close reproduction of Glazova’s original texts. For those with Russian—whether learners or the more proficient—the dual-language text is a great asset and instructive in the art of translation. It is a great pleasure to trace Niemi’s versions of the Russian and to see how idiom and image find their expression in English, how compression and precision are reproduced in a language that struggles more than Russian to convey these qualities. This collection by Zephyr press is beautifully produced."
—Emily Lygo, Slavic Review
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