[Terese Coe]

Agenda UK has featured six translations of mine at their website: from the German, two of Rainer Maria Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus, and three sonnets from the Spanish of Borges and one from that of Lope de Vega. This is a supplement to their Reconsideration of Rilke issue.

http://www.agendapoetry.co.uk/featured-translations.php

(You'll need to scroll down that page to see the link to the Spanish translations.)

I hope you enjoy them, and sincere thanks to Bob Schechter for his inspiration.

Terese



[This message has been edited by Terese Coe (edited September 28, 2007).]

[Seree Zohar]

that's wonderful to hear, Terese.

[David Landrum]

Congratulations, Terese!

dwl

[Roger Slater]

You're the third Spherian, I think, to translate that Lope de Vega sonnet on the age-old theme, "Women, can't live with them, can't live without them." Julie Stoner, I think, posted a translation of it here some time ago. And, as you know since you were in the same issue, my version was in the Evansville Review (with Julie represented with a translation in that issue, as well). And now you've joined the party. Amazing that the three translations resemble each other only slightly, given that they "translate" the same poem. They each bring out something different. Yours, I think, emphasizes the "can't live with them" side of of things, and brings out the misogyny more, making Lope sound a bit angry and spooky. I think that mine made Lope sound more like he was making sexist jokes but that he was not really angry about anything. It's been a while since I've seen Julie's, so I can't remember what emerges from hers. Interestingly, I suppose that if we were all just reading and discussing the original, we might each have come away with our own different slants on the tone and meaning of what Lope was saying, none of them "right" or "wrong," but as translators we are sort of forced to lock in an interpretation for readers of the target language.

Anyway, congratulations on the bunch!

[Duncan Gillies MacLaurin]

Very nice work, Terese!

Duncan

[winter]

Good stuff, Terese. I particularly liked your Rilke sonnets.

How long does it take, on average, for the Agenda editors to respond to submissions? I've thought of submitting poems there, but never have. It's a pretty good magazine.

[Juleigh Howard Hobson]

Congratulations to you!

Juleigh

[Terese Coe]

Seree, David, Bob, Duncan, Rob, & Juleigh,

Thanks for taking a look and the kind words.

Bob, I recognized the dramatist in Lope de Vega before I knew he'd been a dramatist. The neat paradoxes he creates are one of the original's drawing cards, and it's also quite neat that you, Julie and I each managed to translate it by our own lights.

Rob/winter, it didn't take long for Agenda's reply for the hard copy translations, only a few days, but I was lucky to happen upon the call for Rilke translations at the right time.

Edit: No idea what the average response time is from Agenda, Rob.

And Bob, after thinking about it, I realized I'd come across his name in grad school, but doubt I was encouraged to read his drama. Lorca was the Spanish dramatist everyone was mad about then (and of course Lorca's plays are a powerful background for these sets of dramatic opposition in the female psyche, or what is presented as such). All very theatrical! Lope de Vega is saying as much about himself, of course, as he is about women. It could be very funny on stage, as in My Fair Lady's "Let a Woman in Your Life."

Terese

[This message has been edited by Terese Coe (edited September 25, 2007).]

[Jim Hayes]

Great Terese, absolutely great.

Well done again.

Jim

[Janet Kenny]

I envy you folk with a key to Spanish. Congratulations Terese.
Janet