… when it comes to quoting Matthew McConaughey.
“I’ve found that a good plan is to first recognize the problem, then stabilize the situation, organize the response, then respond.”
“Knowin’ the truth, seein’ the truth and tellin’ the truth are all different experiences.”
(Quoted by Mimi Swartz, “Could Matthew McConaughey Be All Right, All Right, All Right for Texas?”, NYTimes, 5-9-21)
(c) 2021 JMN
Like a pig rooting for truffles I harvest luscious phrases from Roberta Smith’s art critiques.
After “he jumped on the Color Field painting bandwagon,” Jules Olitski (1922 – 2007) created works that “mess with space and scale in a visceral, almost sculptural way.”
His paintings have “wall power” and “come at us with cartoonish verve.”
They “tacitly ignore the medium’s physical limits, implying that the image extends far beyond the canvas….”
Olitski’s shapes “give us formalism at its most ferocious and most fun.” A critic who compares a shape to a “teething ring” is no slouch at fun. And it takes caliber to call a background “very pushy.”
Could the fact that “[Olitski’s] paintings have sometimes been called feminine” explain their appeal to my womanish nature? Not wholly; the man in me is on board with them too.
(Roberta Smith, “The Great Beginning of Jules Olitski,” NYTimes, 1-28-21)
(c) 2021 JMN
The paintings of 90-year-old Frank Auerbach, “last surviving member of a pathfinding generation of postwar British figurative painters,” are up my alley. Auerbach’s iterative pigment attacks are savage and astonishing, and Jason Farago is always good for a blue-streak of commentary.
Viscid, murky… paintings… not the sort you love at first sight… burned oranges and sallow yellows, the dirty browns and olives of a filthy bus window… a narrow band of brown and ocher smears, only a bit differentiated from a background of bilious blue-green…
… Fluid, vigorous lines, full of zigzags and hairpin turns, applied with an almost vulgar density… a hard-to-interpret helix of sickly, mossy yellow-green: a calligraphic whirlwind that, from another painter, would read as a gesture of impertinence.
Farago’s ear fails him only when he writes “gloopy glory”; the glory is “goopy.”
(Jason Farago, “The Gloopy Glory of Frank Auerbach’s Portraits,” NYTimes, 1-21-21)
(c) 2021 JMN
…The vanities of posh men… centre on an ancient system that trains a narrow caste of people to run our affairs….
Ever questing to penetrate British lingo, I wobble over “public” versus “private” education in the kingdom’s parlance. In my country, private school is where the wealthy go, and public school is for the rest of us. It’s a system straightforwardly corrupt and named. In contrast, John Harris’s terminology respecting the UK variant seems crucivalent and meanderish to me. Perhaps that’s how the lords wish it.
… This is essentially a story about privilege, and the shamelessness and insensitivities that come with it. More specifically, it centres on the renaissance of an archetype that has been nothing but trouble: the ambitious, dizzyingly confident public schoolboy [my emphasis], convinced of his destiny but devoid of any coherent purpose… Brexit, let us not forget, is a direct result of the latter-day dominance of politics by the privately educated [my emphasis].
(John Harris, “Britain’s overgrown Eton schoolboys have turned the country into their playground,” theguardian.com, 5-2-21)
(c) 2021 JMN
Versión castellana del poema “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” (1856) de Walt Whitman
English text at http://www.poetryfoundation.org
Spanish Interpretation by JMN
[Translator’s note: The whole of part 7 follows. Of the poem’s 9 parts this short one has its peculiar thorniness. The elfish spin Whitman places on his queries and hedging averments — “as good as” and “for all” — dares my Spanish. “Who knows… but” reeks of subjunctive mood, but I’ve groped with moot outcomes for Spanish-sounding phraseology that puts the tone across. Whether or not my dependent clauses cut the mustard, ¿quién sabe?]
(7)
Closer yet I approach you,
Cada vez más me acerco a vosotros,
What thought you have of me now, I had as much of you—I laid in my stores in advance,
La consideración que ahora tengáis de mí, tanta tuve yo de vosotros — acumulé mis reservas por adelantado,
I consider’d long and seriously of you before you were born.
Pensé larga y seriamente en vosotros antes de que nacierais.
Who was to know what should come home to me?
¿Quién iba a saber lo que hubiera de domiciliarse en mí?
Who knows but I am enjoying this?
¿Quién sabe que yo no disfrute esto?
Who knows, for all the distance, but I am as good as looking at you now, for all you cannot see me?
¿Quién sabe que, pese al extremo de lejanía, yo no os contemple ahora, dado que no me podéis ver a mí?
(c) 2021 JMN. All rights reserved
Like cartooning, the act of translation has proven dangerous at times. For his role in putting Christian scriptures into English, John Wycliffe’s long-dead bones were dug up, burnt, and chucked into the river by order of churchmen.
… The act of translation itself entails certain claims about the nature of sacred literature. The vernacular, for instance, was once so scandalous that church authorities dug up John Wycliffe’s bones, four decades after his death, setting fire to his skeleton and dumping what was left of him into the River Swift to punish the memory of the man who wanted to make the Bible available in English.
(Casey Cep, “What We Can and Can’t Learn from a New Translation of the Gospels,” The New Yorker, 4-28-21)
The arc of demented piety is brow-furrowing and bends towards homicide. As an impertinent translator of Pablo Neruda I count it a blessing that he has a non-faith-based following.
(c) 2021 JMN
Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada. Cien sonetos de amor
1924, Pablo Neruda y Herederos de Pablo Neruda
1994, Random House Mondadori
Cuarta edición en U.S.A: febrero 2004
[LXXXIII]
Es bueno, amor, sentirte cerca de mí en la noche,
It’s good, love, to feel you near me in the night,
invisible en tu sueño, seriamente nocturna,
invisible in your sleep, seriously nocturnal,
mientras yo desenredo mis preocupaciones
while I untangle my preoccupations
como si fueran redes confundidas.
as if they were confounded nets.
Ausente, por los sueños tu corazón navega,
Absent, through dreams your heart sails,
pero tu cuerpo así abandonado respira
but your body thus abandoned breathes
buscándome sin verme, completando mi sueño
seeking me sightlessly, completing my dream
como una planta que se duplica en la sombra.
just as a plant repeats itself in shadow.
Erguida, serás otra que vivirá mañana,
Standing tall, you’ll dawn among the living,
pero de las fronteras perdidas en la noche,
but something of the borders lost at night,
de este ser y no ser en que nos encontramos
of this to be and not to be in which we dwell,
algo queda acercándonos en la luz de la vida
keeps on moving us closer in life’s light
como si el sello de la sombra señalara
as if the stamp of shadow had branded
con fuego sus secretas criaturas.
with fire her undercover creatures.
Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada. Cien sonetos de amor
1924, Pablo Neruda y Herederos de Pablo Neruda
1994, Random House Mondadori
Cuarta edición en U.S.A: febrero 2004
[English translation by JMN.]
(c) 2021 JMN. All rights reserved
This gallery contains 1 photo.
A glance tells me this blog started in April 2018. This is April 2021. An anniversary month invites breaking the fourth wall for a moment. Brokenly, the endeavor here is twofold: (1) to practice writing; (2) to practice translating. I … Continue reading
Versión castellana del poema “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” (1856) de Walt Whitman
English text at http://www.poetryfoundation.org
Spanish Interpretation by JMN
[Translator’s note: I’ve arbitrarily divided part 6 into 3 segments. The third of the three segments follows. The poem has 9 parts.]
[6.3]
[I] Was one with the rest, the days and haps of the rest,
Unido fui con los demás, los días y sucesos de los demás,
Was call’d by my nighest name by clear loud voices of young men as they saw me approaching or passing,
Llamado de mi nombre familiar fui en voz alta y clara por los chavales cuando me veían acercar o pasar,
Felt their arms on my neck as I stood, or the negligent leaning of their flesh against me as I sat,
Sentí sus brazos en el cuello estando yo de pie, o bien el apoyo casual de sus carnes contra mí cuando me sentaba,
Saw many I loved in the street or ferry-boat or public assembly, yet never told them a word,
Vi a multitudes que amaba en la calle o en el buque o en la asamblea pública, y no les dije jamás palabra,
Lived the same life with the rest, the same old laughing, gnawing, sleeping,
Viví la misma vida que los demás, el mismo reír, roer, dormir,
Play’d the part that still looks back on the actor or actress,
Hice el papel que todavía recuerda al actor o a la actriz,
The same old role, the role that is what we make it, as great as we like,
El viejo papel de siempre, el papel que resulta ser lo que hacemos de él, tan grande como deseamos,
Or as small as we like, or both great and small.
O tan pequeño como deseamos, o bien grande y pequeño a la vez.
[End of part 6]
(c) 2021 JMN. All rights reserved
EthicalDative 
‘A Beautiful, Pathetic Object’
It’s a pleasure to meet William T. Wiley, who moved and shook in a West Coast “funk art” scene while steering clear of wealth and fame. It’s no surprise that agreement on what exactly defined the funk art movement was nugatory. For example: “It wasn’t, for starters, redolent of New York in the heyday of Minimalism.”
Wiley’s Weltanschauung emits a whiff of California cool that’s quaintly boomerish — like praying for peace. This article evokes the vibe in alluding to “a now-vanished scene informed by Mr. Wiley’s communitarian spirit.” It must be said, an artist whose idea of real life was “to go salmon fishing or deal with tree limbs” has found purpose.
This tribute leaves me with a sole sticking point:
I’m far from understanding why devotion to Zen is perceived to “undercut” and oppose affection for cowboy mythology.
(Deborah Solomon, “William T. Wiley, ‘Funk Artist’ Who Spurned Convention, Dies at 83,” NYTimes, 5-5-21 )
(c) 2021 JMN