Broken English: Poetry and Partiality PDF
Preview Broken English: Poetry and Partiality
Broken English Poetry and Partiality Heather McHugh \fTeslcyanU niversity Press Middleto\vn, Connecticut Puhlishcci by \\'c$ley,ln Universin Press, ,\liddleto\\,n, CT 064j9 Revised 1999 All rlgllts resened Printed in the United St~tcosf Lhnerica 5 + 3 2 CIP data appear at the end of the book Originally produced in 1993b y \\'e\ley,lnlUni\~er~inP rcss ofNc~rE.n gland, H.u~over,N H 03-55 Selections from Poems of Paul Celun translated by ~MichaelH amburger. Copyright C 1972, 1980,1988 by Michael Hamburger. Reprinted by permission of Persea Books, Inc. "The Courte of a Particular" 1s reprinted from Opw Postl~umousb \ IVallace Ste~ens Coplr~ghIt9 j- b\ Els~eS telens and Holl~S te\ens Reprinted b\ . permlss~ono f Alfred A Knopf, Inc md Faber and Faber Ltd Contents Prefatory Note vii Introduction i The Store 5 The Still Pool Forgets: A Remindingfiom the Yoruba 28 A Stranger's Way of Looking 41 Broken English: What We Make of F~a~ments 68 A Genuine Article 8 7 What Dickinson Makes a Dash For: Intevp?.etive Insecurit?,a s Poetic P~eedom 100 Essay at Saying: Paul Celan IIj Notes 139 Acknowledgments 149 Index of Names 151 Prefatory Note Most of these essays were delivered as lectures at the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, N.C ., the University of Cincinnati, and the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. Several appeared in the American Poetry Review, and "A Genuine Arti- cle" appeared in ZYZZYVA. I'm grateful to Cornell Capa and Magnum Photos for the chance to reprint the Robert Capa diptych here. Ulli Beier's work was my first and best resource for the Yoruba piece. Indeed at every turn I relied on good works already done: Ed Snow's transla- tions of &lke, the editions of Valdry in the Bollingen Series, the sen- sitive translations of Celan available to us through Michael Hamburger and Katharine Washburn, Guy Davenport's Archilochus, Stanley Lom- bardo's Parmenides and Empedocles, and more. Tom Phillips's treated texts deserve especially warm mention. I thank the Creative Writing Program and English Department of the University of Washington in Seattle, for ungrudging grants of leave, during which some of these essays were \vritten and revised; the Guggen- heim Foundation, for support during one year of the writing of these essays; and the Lila \l'allacc-Reader's Digest Fund for a n.riter's atyard that bought mc solme rcvising timc. viii Prefatory Note From the encouraging response of people who heard these lectures, or who read the essays in advance, came my determination to collect and finish them. But to my hardest critic and best friend, I owe most of all: Nikolai B. Popov, whose erudition kept me honest, and whose constancy kept me whole. It is to his high standards and intellectual integrity that I owe any refinement this book possesses; its immoderacies are mine. Brolien English
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