May Column

Published in the Evening Sun the last Sunday of May:

People define poetry in many different ways. For example, William Wordsworth once defined it as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.” In a similar vein, Robert Frost wrote, “Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words." However, in its simplest form, I define poetry as a translation. After all, to get an emotion to the page, you must first put it into words. Though we usually associate the word “translation” with different languages, it can take on many different connotations.

During my last week of teaching writing at Columbia College Chicago, I had the opportunity to witness translation first-hand, as my students presented their final projects. Their assignment was to reflect on the research paper they spent all semester writing and to then translate their words and ideas into another art form.

For instance, one student, who had written a paper on heroin abuse, made a short film about the typical day for an addict. Another student created a sculpture to symbolize the main epiphany he had come to while writing a paper about the movie “Forrest Gump.” Yet another student, who had written an essay on the role of nature and nurture in religion, composed a song on her guitar and sang it for the class. While this project gave my art students a chance to be creative and do what they love, it also taught them a lesson about translation. Sometimes, to really understand something, we must translate it into a different form, one we are more familiar with.

This idea about understanding brings me to poetry and the poet’s comprehension of the world. Just as an architect can design a building to emphasize eco-friendliness, the poet can write a poem about the same subject. Neither the building nor the poem are the idea itself; however, they both are the idea translated into another form.

Essentially, the process of writing involves merely translation. Poets see something and translate it into words, while others might see something and translate it into a photograph or into music. In fact, in order to teach students about the poetry term “image,” I first teach them translation. To begin, we read a short poem together as a group, and I ask the students to draw it. As the students draw the poem, they actively translate it from words to images. Then, I reverse the process. I show them an image and have them write down words to describe it. This reflexive process shows that ideas can be understood in many ways, words being one of them.

Just as writing poetry aims to translate some aspect of the world, whether it is an idea, a memory, or an image, reading poetry also engages the process of translation. Have you ever read something and had to look up a word you didn’t know? In this instance, you practiced translation. After looking up the word, you replaced it with the word you already understood. Thus, you translated the word into a language that your sensibility recognized, that it could associate with other ideas and memories.

Yet, sometimes poems are difficult to understand, especially poems written in a language or context that seem foreign to us. Thus, translating the poem into our own sensibility, language, and context helps us better understand the general meaning. Take, for instance, “The Solitary Reaper,” by William Wordsworth. Here is the first stanza:

Behold her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland Lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!
Alone she cuts and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! for the Vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.

Words such as “Yon” and “Highland Lass” seem foreign, and though we can get an idea of the time period and what is happening, let’s see what happens if we change the context of the poem and make it more contemporary.

Here is my translation of Wordsworth’s first stanza:

Look at her, alone in the garden,
That solitary farmwife!
Picking beans and humming to herself;
Stop the car, or keep driving!
Alone she nips and jars the crop,
And hums a sad song;
Listen! The rows of corn and tomatoes
Overflow with the sound.

When I thought about a modern workingwoman to replace the “Highland Lass,” I immediately thought of a farmwife working in the garden because I grew up on a farm. Thus, my translation reflects my sensibility.

However, I’m sure each of you might translate the “Highland Lass” in a different way. My challenge to you for this month is to translate this stanza into your own idea of whom the “Highland Lass” represents in our contemporary world. What would the stanza look like if it better reflected your sensibility and experience? Please feel free to post your ideas on my blog: http://poetlaureatehanover.blogspot.com.