Sherry Chandler

Pablo Picasso’s poetry has been collected by Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris in a book called The Burial of the Count of Orgaz & Other Poems (Exact Change, 2003). This book is not new, though the Christian Science Monitor is just now mentioning it. The poems are translated by Joris, Rothenberg, and about a dozen other poets. Timothy Cahill in the CSM quotes Rothenberg thus: “it’s the work of an accomplished poet,” says Mr. Rothenberg. “It was not trivial work. It’s part of the history of experimental poetry in the 20th century…”

The CSM gives an couple of examples of these poems and more can be found at Cipher Journal, including the one below:

8-9 november 1944

on the shrubs of ink fresh butter lace fans open in sated scattered
divinities the incandescent crystal that sings on the wing on the bee’s wax
of the rose-bush gathers with delicate and supple spoonfuls the airy houses
of cards of the perfumed male voices of feathers oiling the road
the miraculous rainbow festoons of the jars full of milk drinking with loud
yells the azureal blue jumping with both feet on the tropics of the mirror
hanging with all hands at the window

—Translation from French by Pierre Joris

Thanks to The Rake’s Progress for the link to the CSM.

Sunday Night Before the War

From the driveway, I could see his light,
a single candle in a wrought-iron vine
that curled a fantasy into flower,
white taper for a stigma.

I joined him in his watch on the front step
as clouds rushed east across a moon
two days off full,
first shirt-sleeve night of spring.

We talked about the wren he’d seen at nest,
who’d won the pitch game at my mother’s,
and tried to coax the long-haired tom
away from open flame.

A milky drop splashed on the iron vine,
spider, new-hatched surely, timed
like that day’s daffodils
to catch the new-hatched bees.

Light, heat, or affinity drew her, white
to white. She started down the stem, backed up,
went on, wedged herself into the crack
between metal and wax.

Turned somehow in that tiny space,
she began to climb again just
as a stream of molten wax dripped down.
We blew the light out and went inside.