Voice of Ice - Voix de Glace

by Alta Ifland, Gary Young (Introduction)

Poetry. Translated from the French by the author. VOICE OF ICE is prose poetry presented in a bilingual edition. Written in French and translated by the author into the English, these poems were generated in a process yielding concurrent shifts to the original. Poet Wanda Coleman says: "In transplanting her painterly European sensibility into an American poetic context, Alta Ifland creates and redreams the hauntingly surreal emotional landscapes of dislocation, desolate distances, and Redonesque disjuncture from which she shapes these ever-shifting, mad-and-mythic excursions-in voices angry, awed, childlike, sardonic, she startles and disturbs, charms and exalts." VOICE OF ICE is published as part of the TrenchArt Parapet series, with an introduction by Gary Young and visual art by Danielle Adair.

Voice of Ice is a series of prose poems about the estranged self living outside of one’s native land and away from one’s native tongue. Eastern European poet Alta Ifland writes first in French, then translates her work into English before returning to the original French for further revisions, a process of linguistic reconciliation as much as translation. Published in a bi-lingual, French/English edition, Ifland repeatedly turns to remembered images of her unnamed homeland to animate her unfamiliar home, creating, what poet Gary Young calls, in the Introduction, “a brilliant collection of prose poems document[ing] the quest for a coherent self, an authentic identity born out of the chaos of language and history.”

Genres: Poetry

121 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Born in Transylvania, Romania; grew up under communism; emigrated to the United States in 1991. Studied French literature and philosophy in France. Writes (and translates) in French (second language) and English (third language).

Books:

Voix de Glace/Voice of Ice (prose poems; French/English; Les Figues Press, 2007). 2008 Louis Guillaume Prize.

Elegy for a Fabulous World (short stories; Ninebark Press, 2009). Nominated for the 2010 Northern California Book Award in Fiction.

Death-in-a-Box (short stories; Subito Press, 2011). 2010 Subito Press Fiction Prize.

The Snail's Song (prose poems; Spuyten Duyvil, 2011)

Reviews

[Nina Kossman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Originally written in French and translated by the author, these short poignant prose poems are a miracle of trilingualism, since French is the author's second language, and English, her third. Yet any native speaker / writer has a lot to learn from Alta Ifland's vertiginous skill in using words in such a way that we are totally transformed by the end of reading each of these short, elegant pieces, which express the inner reality so often overlooked not only in contemporary prose but, unfortunately, in much of contemporary poetry as well. The order in which the prose poems are arranged - from the first one titled "Birth" to the last one, "Death" - is important, because the structure reflects not simply a life cycle of a human being but a lifespan of a dream, or more precisely, a living cycle of a subconscious self. I spent quite a bit of time with this little book, which casts its own peculiar spell on an attentive reader, and which, in addition to, or more precisely, despite of being a quick and enjoyable read, is profound - a rare thing in our pragmatic and matter-of-fact time. Highly recommended!

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

It took me longer than I thought it would to read this book. I think this is because the poems are relentless in their sameness. This is definitely part of the poet's point, I think, so it's not necessarily a flaw, but I will admit that after a while it dragged on my enthusiasm. The book contains bleakly compelling, surreal prose poems that explore the concept of "the self", and the destruction, dissolution, and eventual reconstruction of one's concept of identity. Some of the poems would stand alone very well, while others are probably stronger as part of the collection, but on the whole they work together seamlessly to create a dreamlike, consistent vision.

Ifland's sensibility is one of visceral, bloody violence: "His eyes have been burst, and in their place there are now two dark holes, surrounded by blood clots...and I see the knife rising and stabbing the empty sockets, and behind the holes the gaze is not yet dead." The poems reminded me of Rimbaud (I'm thinking in particular of "Voyelles", with its strange mix of the grotesque and the ecstatic). There are recurring images of seeing and speaking, eyes and bones, silence and song, material and immaterial birth/death, and a consideration of what constitutes a writer's self. The writer's self is particularly complicated in Ifland's world, because there is "[n]o language. Absolutely no language." The speaker in the poems mourns, "My language doesn't belong to me", but at the same time yearns to "write a first line that belonged to no one and would be the exact opposite of the desire to write that gave birth to it."

This is a bilingual edition (French-English) and the author did her own translation from the French. I became obsessed with tracking the differences between the French and the English versions of the poems, and the liberties that the poet took with her own work. For example, the first line from "Le chat, la souris et le Merlot" ("The cat, the mouse, and the Merlot") is "Dans un panier: des noix, deux oefs, quelques noisettes, un orange, une oie." Which literally translates (I think) to: "In a basket: some nuts, two eggs, some hazelnuts, an orange, a goose." But Ifland's English translation reads: "In a basket: some nuts, a cup, duck mousse, an orange juice, a goose." It could be that my very limited French prevents me from understanding additional meanings of the French phrases, or the connection to the English vocabulary that Ifland chooses. Nevertheless, I find it fascinating to note what Ifland conveys in French, what she conveys in English, and to consider why she might vary her content based on the language she's writing in.

I gave three stars to this book above, but, really, I give it three-and-a half. I just couldn't choose an extra half star in the Goodreads interface.

[Marissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book felt inconsistent to me. There were some prose poems that I really liked but many that did not engage me. It is well-written and an interesting translation project. I would look for more by this writer but ultimately I feel this collection would have been more powerful whittled down to its more poignant core.

[E.S. Wynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

At times dark, at times light-- a constant struggle for identity and one's place in the world. Voice of Ice is a collection of poetry/flash fiction pieces in both French and English (with the French text of each piece on the left and the English text on the right. I really enjoyed this book, saw the author live at Sac State (yay!) and will definitely be spreading the word to others.

[Karla · Rating 5 out of 5]

Check out the wonderful Parapet series here:
http://www.lesfigues.com/lfp/index.php