Posts by Aaron Poochigian

Translation Tuesday: Four Poems by Gena Gruz

September 7, 2021  |  in Translations  |  by Aaron Poochigian

A troika of horses with bells on trots

This Translation Tuesday, we bring to you four poems by the poet and artist Gena Gruz in Aaron Poochigian’s translation. Reflecting on the Bulldozer Exhibition of 1974—where Soviet authorities sent literal bulldozers to destroy the art pieces of an unofficial art exhibition held by a group of avant-garde artists—Gruz’s poems respond to a crucial juncture in the history of modern Russian art. Be it the “budding façade” of marching girls or a “goldfish in fishnet negligee,” her poems, terse as they are, bristle with the power to invoke a surreal atmosphere in which a new social world is on the verge of being born, and a new language articulated. 

Girls in 1981 

girls are marching
moving en masse in formation
government provisions
are rearing outspoken heroines
their legs are covered with the down of pre-pubescence
their toenails are covered in polish the color of poppies
they in sailor suits
budding façade 

Tree

A tree is bowing to a locomotive
Shovel me into the furnace instead of coal
Wrapped like herring in newspaper
It will be burnt for power
It won’t become a coffin
It won’t become a fence
won’t see a girl coming home from school READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: Archilochus on the Solar Eclipse, 648 BC

August 22, 2017  |  in Translations  |  by Aaron Poochigian

All that we human beings have assumed will be in doubt

In tribute to the total solar eclipse that was visible across the United States on Monday, we’re excited to present a poem written nearly 2500 years ago on April 6, 648 BC by Archilochus, a Greek lyric poet from the island of Paros who was well-known for composing poems based on his emotions and experiences. What remains of the poem Archilochus composed is a fragment that recounts a solar eclipse, where, needless to say, things get very weird very quickly. Translated by Aaron Poochigian. 

Nothing’s unreasonable, nothing too much, nothing stunning,

now that Zeus the Father of the Gods has cloaked the light

to make it night at noontime, even though the sun was shining.

Terrible dread has fallen upon men. From here on out

all that we human beings have assumed will be in doubt,

and no one should be shocked to see, in briny acres, land

animals, walking creatures, having sex with dolphins, when

their four legs come to love the sounding waves more than the sand,

and dolphins with their flippers come to love a mountain glen.

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Aaron Poochigian is the author of the thriller in verse Mr. Either/Or (www.mreitheror.com) and the poetry collection Manhattanite (www.aaronpoochigian.com).

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Translation Tuesday: Prologue to Bacchae by Euripides

November 10, 2015  |  in Translations  |  by Aaron Poochigian

"I have compelled this town to rant and howl, / dressed it in fawnskin, put my pine-cone-tipped / and ivy-vested spear into its hands"

Dionysus:

Here I am, Dionysus, Zeus’s son,
the god whom Semele, the daughter of Cadmus,
birthed, with a bolt of lightning for a midwife.
I am back home in the land of Thebes.

My sacred form exchanged for this mere mortal
disguise, I have arrived here where the Springs
of Dirce and the river Ismenos
are flowing. I can see my lightning-blasted
mother’s tomb right there beside the palace,
and I can see as well her former bedroom’s
rubble giving off the living flame
of Zeus’ fire—Hera’s deathless rage
against my mother. I am pleased that Cadmus
has set the site off as a sanctuary
to keep her memory. I am the one
who covered it on all sides round with grape leaves
and ripe grape clusters. READ MORE…