Translator's Confession, 3 a.m. by Idra Novey

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend May 13, 2014   Translator’s Confession, 3 a.m.   Idra Novey

Dear C, I dropped your sentence in hot water. I talked to the boil. I said Here is my thumb for you to burn. Here is the soft heart of my hand and my arm and the nape of my wreck. I said vapor, just take me. I’m done burning with these pages. Being invisible doesn’t mean a person won’t blister, doesn’t mean the blisters won’t fill with pockets of water or when lanced the rawest flesh won’t emerge. First the word then the murky leak begins—what another mind may scrape against but never skin.            Copyright @ 2014 by Idra Novey. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “I wrote this poem as a way to settle some unfinished business I had with Clarice Lispector, a Brazilian writer whose work I’d been reading intensely for nearly a decade and whose novel I’d recently translated.  As is the nature of unfinished business, once I wrote one letter to her, I needed to write another, and on it went for some time.” —Idra Novey   Idra Novey’s most recent book is Exit, Civilian (University of Georgia Press, 2012). She teaches in the creative writing program at Princeton University. Most Recent Book by Novey   Exit, Civilian (University of Georgia Press, 2012) “Letters to a Young Poet, 1987” by Lisa Sewell “The Translator’s Dilemma” by Ann Lauterbach “The going. The letters. The staying.” by Joshua Beckman Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038