Last week's prompt, most broadly, was to translate a poem from a language which the author does not know. Next Line, Please contributors were given Armando Frietas Filho’s “Cartão-postal sem fôlego” (“Breathless Postcard”) to translate into English from the Portuguese.
In the spirit of community--which launched the first ever prompt of Next Line, Please, a communally crafted sonnet, which can be found here--David Lehman chose single lines from different author's translations, rendering something altogether new, fresh, and downright good. Here is the "translated" poem:
Nature nurtures nothing, [David Lehman]
neither one’s name nor one’s trousers. [Emily Winakur]
A pair of dice is paradise [Millicent Caliban]
that falls like false promises, [Erik Chaney]
words ad infinitum [Patricia Smith]
or the verbiage of infinity. [Angela Ball]
Sadness [Justin Knapp]
is born … overarching like parasols. [Charise Hoge]
For there the rivers are paradises, [Courtney Thrash]
and all the verbs and infinitives [Ralph L. Rosa]
pass as rapidly as the water flows in the river. [Elizabeth Solzurg]
I am reason’s nudist, [Emily Winakur]
like mountain peaks overlooking [Charise Hoge]
tits of rock, ah! sacred, scared, and scarred. [Erik Chaney]
Where is our cave? [Emily Winakur]
And on which page? [Courtney Thrash]
And in whose book? [Angela Ball]
Visit the American Scholar's page to read the full post!
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