Maintenant #70 – Ilya Kaminsky
Image, for me, is an international language. An image from Horace of a young boy playing on a flute to cows can be translated into any language. Whether you are in France or in Ukraine, or in China, you “get” it. It is a photograph made of words. So, image is a basic muscle of the poem, one could say. But I don’t think one can ride very far on just the images alone. There got to be some thinking/emotion and, of course, music.
In the 70th of the Maintenant series, SJ Fowler interviews the Russian / American poet Ilya Kaminsky.
Two poems
In my veins
long syllables tighten their ropes, rains come
right out of the eighteenth century
Yiddish or a darker language in which imagination
is the only word.
Imagination! a young girl dancing polka,
unafraid, betrayed by the Lord’s death
(or his hiding under the bed when the Messiah
was postponed).
By Ilya Kaminsky.
The Missing Links
Transmitting the Image, Rick Poynor on Andrzej Klimowski. * S. T. Joshi on the satirical impulse of Ambrose Bierce [PDF] * Children of Sebald, is W.G. Sebald the reason so many writers are turning to archival sources? * On Mass Observation. * Rhys Tranter on George Craig translating Beckett‘s letters. * Archive of hand-lettered book […]