Oswald Egger
I totally recommend the book "Room of Rumor" (Green Integer 116) by the German writer Oswald Egger, who happens to be Aase Berg's German translator.
This makes sense because the book is steeped in dense and neologistic Germanic lines as well as apparently a kind of commentary on the act of translation.
In that way it seems to be very much a translation that figures translation as collaboration with his American translator Michael Pisaro.
This is what Pisaro writes in the afterwords:
"The process for me was like creating an alternate tuning of "regular" English - where the grammar, syntax and vocabulary may occasionally deviate microtonally from standard usage... And so this English lies somewhere between the state of the language (as I perceive it) and something else: Egger-German."
A very interesting and beautiful book. I would make an excerpt but I don't think the poem makes much sense as excerpt. Well, OK, here's a stanza:
Already in the early sun of the unwaves, over
cold-waltz colors - the river island slope-
hatches steam steps hill-watch graves-
grating in posts
[...]
This makes sense because the book is steeped in dense and neologistic Germanic lines as well as apparently a kind of commentary on the act of translation.
In that way it seems to be very much a translation that figures translation as collaboration with his American translator Michael Pisaro.
This is what Pisaro writes in the afterwords:
"The process for me was like creating an alternate tuning of "regular" English - where the grammar, syntax and vocabulary may occasionally deviate microtonally from standard usage... And so this English lies somewhere between the state of the language (as I perceive it) and something else: Egger-German."
A very interesting and beautiful book. I would make an excerpt but I don't think the poem makes much sense as excerpt. Well, OK, here's a stanza:
Already in the early sun of the unwaves, over
cold-waltz colors - the river island slope-
hatches steam steps hill-watch graves-
grating in posts
[...]
posted by Johannes at 9:07 AM
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