[Julie Steiner]

"Estampa" by Francisco Leal (Chile, 1977- )
from his book Insectos (Montevideo: Artefacto, 2005)


VERSE TRANSLATION:

Pattern

Round and round in the washing machine
in the water and suds
among the other colored clothes
is a tiny pair of underpants
patterned with butterflies
fading
in the water and suds
among the other colored clothes.


SPANISH ORIGINAL:

Estampa

Gira y gira en la lavadora
entre agua y espuma
y otras prendas de colores
un minúsculo calzón
con estampas de mariposas
que se destiñen
entre agua y espuma
y otras prendas de colores.


ENGLISH PROSE CRIB:

Pattern

Goes around and around in the washing machine
between water and foam
and other clothing of color
a minuscule panty
with a pattern of butterflies
that fade
between water and foam
and other clothing of color.

[Julie Steiner]

NOTES ON THE POEM CHOICE:

This is the kind of poem that women get slammed for writing, for two reasons. First, and most obviously, the subject is a domestic chore. How dull is that? Second, this poem's "message" has more to do with the establishment of a mood than with the articulation of an argument or narrative. As a result, nothing really happens. The poem ends almost literally where it begins, with the repetition of lines 2 and 3. There's no forward motion, no development. If the poem takes us anywhere, it's to the laundromat...and who wants to go there who doesn't have to?

[Edited to say: Obviously, that's not my opinion of this poem. But I've seen similar themes and approaches dismissed as Unworthy of the Lofty Pedestal of Poetry, or, worse, regarded as having been written by and for women: chick lit.]

I'm not going to congratulate the poet for being male. In fact, it annoys me when male writers get fussed over for bravely tackling traditionally female topics like parenthood and household tasks. The attitude that it's extra cool when men write about such things implies that it's still inevitably clichéd when women do, and that testosterone--not talent--is required to turn such unpromising material into true art.

In my experience, poetic subject matter is never clichéd--or original, for that matter; poetic treatments are.

So I think it's best to focus on the poem itself--what it attempts and what it achieves--rather than the sex of the author. Well, then, why did I bring up the gender issue at all? Because it gave me a convenient excuse to preach against the idea that poems are "about" their subject matter or primary images--which happens to be an idea which penalizes women more often than men.

Returning to the topic of repetition (heh!), this poem isn't a triolet, but it faces the same challenge that French repeating forms do: namely, how to keep the repetition from feeling redundant. Some poets try to make each iteration of a repetend slightly different, either by investing the same words with different meanings, rearranging the punctuation, or actually changing some of the text. But in the case of this poem, keeping the repeated lines identical fits perfectly with the sense of circular motion.

And I really do see those two identical lines differently, after the butterflies' fading is mentioned. On a literal level, I've become aware that the relentless swirling of water and suds is directly responsible for that fading effect. And focusing on the depictions of butterflies has momentarily turned them into actual butterflies, just long enough to take my thoughts out into the real world...where there is also circular motion going on, constantly. The repetend encourages me to take a perspective farther out still, and consider our round planet from space, with its water and colors and sudsy swirls of cloud, rather like the round window of a front-loading washer. I ponder the fact that we measure time in planetary turns, and I think of how those time-turns eventually cause the beauty of all living things to fade, as surely as the agitation of the washing machine is fading the butterflies on that poor little panty.

That is not the only possible interpretation, and I like that. Perhaps the fact that it is a woman's panty hints that the owner's beauty is also fading. Perhaps the tininess of the pair of underpants indicates that the wearer is a little girl, who cannot remain a little girl forever, to the sadness of the person doing her laundry. Perhaps the fact that the butterfly pattern decorates a delicate, intimate garment, damaged by friction with "other colored clothing" that need never be hidden, suggests something about sexual repression.

The poet has established a sense of perpetual motion, and a rather mantra-like, meditative mood...but the particular significance is left to the reader's imagination.

NOTES ON THE TRANSLATION:

The main difference I notice between the original and the verse translation is the role of verbs...which, in a poem "more about mood than message," is crucial.

The Spanish begins with a verb, gira: "turns, spins, rotates, revolves". The activity of that verb is further intensified with repetition, illustrating the repetitive action itself. To me, the English construction "Round and round...(line 2)...(line 3)...is" does not connote the same intensity of action: the frenetic verb has been downgraded to a mere state of being, and even that gets postponed until line 4. I would prefer something like "It spins and spins", or maybe "It swirls and swirls", followed by the prepositional phrases, followed by a colon to introduce the mysterious subject, the pair of underpants.

Changing the active "se destiñen" to the participle "fading" also sacrifices some of the original's frenzied motion. Before I read the Spanish, I had thought that the panty, rather than the butterflies, was fading...which is a far less interesting idea. I'd suggest either "which fade" there, or something to play up the similarity between se destiñen, "they fade" and destino, "destiny": "fated to fade," perhaps? (Nah, I think I'd prefer the active verb to the pun. Again, I think it's important to use active verbs to maintain that sense of relentless motion.)

One of the things I most like about the translation is the alliteration of t's and p's in lines 4 and 5: is a tiny pair of underpants / patterned with butterflies. The effect isn't overly dramatic, but I do notice it, and find it beautiful. Its sonic pattern to help me to imagine the visual pattern.

[Maryann Corbett]

I beg forgiveness for beginning with a nit. When I first read "Round and round... IS..." it struck me as unidiomatic, and I wondered if it might be a miscopying. But it's in Julie's commentary, so no. Am I just odd in thinking it's not natural sounding? (Wouldn't be the first time.)

Like Julie again, I'd like a more definite verb (whirls? spins? tumbles, even?) at that spot, and my brain can almost feel the translator choosing that more definite verb first, being dissatisfied with its heavy stress, and switching to something lighter.

[Seree Zohar]

Hey Maryann, “round and round…is a …pair of…” went right by me – if you hadn’t raised a Q I'd never have paid attention. An across the pond thing maybe? That’s coz ‘is’ comes paired with 'pair' and right after ‘among’ + ‘the other…clothes’ so positioning’s established clearly. Maybe you've got the same reaction to this as I get to the Americanese "Jones reported Sunday that..." - I really really need 'on' there, coz days can't be reported... "reported on Sunday" - and there's always this mental red pen making corrections, no matter how often that phrasing comes up

Gut reaction to this poem is linking the ‘tiny’ to butterflies whose life span is also tiny and feeling that sense of momentary sorrow over the inevitability of the little girl’s “littleness” coming to an end as the next cycle of development begins. I'd actually wondered if 'tiny' could imply belonging to a small girl's doll - but either way, it's a stage that ends to allow the next stage. My only nit would be to remove all of what become very dominant def.articles – removing them might also help to highlight the focal image by making it the only 'def.article', so to speak. Interesting piece, yes.

[Ann Drysdale]

Oh, good grief! The Pond strikes again! I read this, smiled and started to think what to say about the whyness of my smiling. It never occurred to me for a millisecond to wonder about the gender of the arse that owned the underpants. I "knew" it was male and carried on.

This has all the simplicity of the red wheelbarrow. It's a take-it-or-leave-it jumping-off point. A little thing, to hold in a clenched fist, like the thing Seree gave me on another of these threads, a thing that I wrote down on the pad by the phone. (It was the phrase "associative thinking", which I'd never heard before and which I shall cherish because I didn't know how much I needed it till it I saw it.)

I then noticed in the crib that the word is "panty", which is little and twee (and girly) and the translator has made it less sickly for me, but why do I like it so much better? It's only for Brits that the gender is changed by the word chosen to replace it.

Oh, this is going to go round and round in my head like stuff in the frontloader that I can see between the banisters if I look down to my left. The poem sat me in front of it, watching, as I sometimes do. Did I put the red Sloggis in or did I leave them in the bathroom? I watch the whizziness and yes - there they are. I feel happy for having spotted them. They are a feature of the midweek load. One day the gusset will give and they won't be. But not yet, not yet.

Let me throw a different detergent capsule in among the word-washing here. What about that phrase in the crib "of color"? It must be important. It is repeated. Is it a metaphor for... ?

Here (in the UK) when washing was a bigger deal than it is now, we used to refer to the contents of our washloads as "whites" or "coloureds" and nobody thought twice. Why, my neighbour Mary, who moved to Tenby, used to ask me not to burn my garden rubbish when she "had her whites out".

Mary died a couple of years ago. One of her front teeth was missing...

Oh, stop it, poem! I am not sure what it is you're trying to say, but I'm listening, I'm listening. And no, on second thoughts, don't stop. I'm enjoying the ride.

[John Whitworth]

I think my girls wore underpants when they were little. Or even just pants. There was a phrase they used in those days. 'This is pants!' Meaning no bloody good. 'Knickers!' on the other hand, was a general expostulation of annoyance. Isn't that so? Sweet little poem. Men can write sweet little poems. I do.

[Adam Elgar]

Everybody else has said all the interesting stuff. This is exquisite. Lovely the way the U of “butterflies” echoes all the way through, (redeeming the heaviness of ‘suds’ which otherwise lacks the evanescence of ‘espuma’).

[Sharon Fish Mooney]

Seems like this would be a contemporary poet worth exploring more --- http://central.colostate.edu/people/francisc/

My first reaction too was – ah — William Carlos Williams

Here’s a website of his book and all of his poems in Spanish -- all insects!

http://www.letras.s5.com/fl091005.htm

[Roger Slater]

I'm not sure I "get" the poem in Spanish, which makes it harder to comment on the translation, but I'll chirp in with a few comments anyway.

First, I think the word "pattern" may not be the right choice. According to my dictionaries, a pattern on clothing would be an estampado (same root, different form), and estampa is simply a shape or image without the notion of how various shapes form a pattern of any kind. Since the word is not just in the poem, but its title as well, saying "pattern" may be imposing some sort of metaphor onto the poem that isn't actually there.

Next, I don't care for translating "de colores" as "colored." I think the sense of the phrase is "colorful" or "multi-colored." It's a phrase that is often used to suggest diversity, like a rainbow, and in fact it is the name (I believe) of the United Farm Workers anthem under Cesar Chavez. (I'm not at all sure, but the poet may be trying to suggest some sort of assimilation, with the diverse colors fading among one another as they spin around together in the wash?)

I suppose calzón probably refers to a woman's panties, given that it has butterflies on it, but the word can also refer to a man's boxer shorts or a variety of other undergarments, so the translator apparently tried to play it down the middle and avoid being too specific.

Finally, the word "beween" in the translation bothers me a bit, since I think "entre" here is closer to "among" -- the undergarment is not located physically in between the water and the suds (how would that even be possible?) but is one of the items floating in the sudsy water.

[Susan McLean]

In this case, I just can't summon up much enthusiasm for the original, so the translation also is not doing much for me. Julie has made a good case for how one could read deeper meaning into the scenario, and the form does mimic the effect of a washing machine. But my reaction is still lukewarm.

Susan