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O Resplandor
This brilliant collection explores the idea that the act of reading is a practice of embodiment, containing all the experiences of the body itself: love, splendor, travel, doubling, and loss. The "resplandor" of the title refers to the radiance of the body when the language of the book flows into ears and eyes. As Moure explains, "We call this moment 'reading,' and in reading we stop and reverse time, explode geographies, inhabit others, and resurrect ourselves." In unexpected ways — through impossible translation, anachronistic journeys, and a fictional mystery that involves a search for a translator who exists only in the future beyond the book itself — O Resplandor confounds notions of authorship and translation, all while conveying the clamor over love and loss. Richly challenging and charged with Erín Moure's distinctive energy, this is a work about the powerful light contained in the human body, in translation, and in poetry.
160 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2010
About the author
Erín Moure
78 books36 followersErín Moure is a transborder poet and translator of poetry and poetics. In Canada, the USA, and the UK (variously), she has published seventeen books of poetry, and several books of prose including a memoir and a book of short takes on translation. Her most recent book is Planetary Noise: Selected Poetry of Erín Moure (ed. Shannon Maguire, Wesleyan 2017). She is the translator or co-translator of seventeen books of poetry and three books of non-fiction (biopoetics) from French, Spanish, Galician, and Portuguese into English. Her translation of Wilson Bueno’s Paraguayan Sea (Nightboat, 2017) was a finalist for a 2018 Best Translated Book Award. She holds two honorary doctorates for her contributions to poetry and translation, from Brandon University in Canada and the Universidade de Vigo in Spain. She lives in Montreal.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 27, 2022
It's not the love of no one
but that no-one had yet penetrated
the air of anyone daring far off
to face fully the air's possible loveliness.
Air's loveliness crowns her, and i am made to know
this, though it is something i so rarely know,
unless . . .
* * *
This pietà
is a man
in the care of another man
as tomorrow begs them
into the most gentle
torsion of a foot in the back
this back, in turn, touches the foot
back, gently
!flesruoy fo erac ekaT
* * *
By its wheated thread, it penetrated
worked tin, my lips' opening.
By its paradise, it penetrated
deeply my pectoral cloud, to merge with
sky.
By its singular anchor, it penetrated
bleeding me of verse in the sea's
oration.
And so. All coasts arrive
at this barrier.
And light spreads. Imprudently, the melee
in the body raises its unique mask.
For here i did not exist yet,
wings open, and so, and so, this.
* * *
My fear of lightning in the face, unintelligible
my fear of nodding faces won't dislodge
my fear of cattle, my fear of wafers
of flack and favours
My smell gone cold and yours at most
that leaves me fearing my own ghost
dislodging cranes from each wet field
In time this temper yields
to a stirring in the blood
as i stretch out, old, limping
shaking a bit, get on, i'm not going to be born
as anyone's twin, it wouldn't be prudent
Me shaking with words, and my mother so ill,
kind star i lean on, whose root bends to me.
* * *
My torso is throne for your somnolence
ô you who reign
My word is bread dark to your longing
ô you who reign
My eyes crown you where you
reign
You make my Saturday your Sunday
and oh you reign
The time in which i lie beside you is your gift
in which i'm reined
Your sadness lets me lift the chalk of dawn sky's
rain
Your far prairie is my mortal grain
ô, you who reign.
* * *
As such, i triple you,
in the cloth where we may be judged:
In which the eye divines the marks of its lauding
as a tunnel privileges
the face of one, faced with the face of the other.
And this cloth where we may be judged
privileges us; it triples:
In it we divine the marks that aid us
to unite the chafing fields we're called to face
with the blue of our carnality.
Still yet this cloth where our judgement roils us
triples blue:
In which the eye divines a foot that lauds its earth
as simply as an artery courses blood
till the face of all landscape coincides with sleep
yet sees.
* * *
I carry such frenzy i'm nervous,
my green limbs galvanize and
won't perish in amnesia.
No more does stone own me, nor will i carry one last
cutting battle to the grave of stones,
but cut it repeatedly free of the machines.
It is not my place or lore
to set free symbols with their encrypted dints
but to hold and celebrate all cattle
doubly lithe in a dance of ebony.
No more will i carry the heat of misery;
with my arms' incipient mortar
and faithful hands, i embrace time
to galvanize the possible, the lore of existence.
I've never called life sacred. So much
have i seen it
accelerate in concrete form.
Having never been pristine as a star
i can't ponder
my own life.
I was in it. I carried it in the heat of day.
It dried. Pestilence retreated from it.
I carried it in the wings of birds,
and they gave me new wings to fall into the borealis.
How could i have given credence
to the void? Everything for flight.
Everything,
for the wish that lifts up the limbs of
the sky and takes flight.
So i extend my hand, and its fingers
* * *
I came out of the pleistocene into your beauty;
i clambered over the black wall separating
hands and light
to the shock of you,
to the shock of greeting you
with my eternal foot hanging still on the other side.
I could not speak in light,
but scrambled in its annular crags.
It pulled teeth out of its mouth
so i would not come further,
but the soft light of rapture
was mine, and mine the indefatigable foot rising
I cam out of the pleistocene into your beauty
and i could not carry myself over the wall
in such shuddered light
till i lifted my eternal foot skyward, holding
your high foot with my foot as my voice rose to your low voice
and the wall bowed
and the cattle
heard lowing, rapture lighting the sky.
* * *
E.M.:
The Celan translations have become impossible. My translated line "Spoke a leaf" is Galego, not Celan. The subject tailing its verb. The ache in my mouth and throat is such that even English emerges as giddy, in Galego. As if English, the old tongue of no one, tongue of us all, gibberish I had lived in since childhood, scrubs off. Spoke a leaf. In fact, no leaf speaks since they cut down the tree outside my window last week. Now the racket is even louder, on Saturday night, especially, without the wall of foliage.
* * *
On the right side, the rash over the shoulder blade.
Curvature and trust.
This in the spine's bone. (Listening.)
There is no word, not even one from on high, that has any right. . . .
Her knees up, sideways, stabilize space here, such
this arm.
When you look at the clouds she says, (Speaking.)
you can see images.
I saw the two dogs playing, the dark one held the light one down.
Then a cat came.
The curve and tilt of that vertebral column. Press it. Press it again.
That feels good, she says.
When I look at her, then, now,
what image?
but that no-one had yet penetrated
the air of anyone daring far off
to face fully the air's possible loveliness.
Air's loveliness crowns her, and i am made to know
this, though it is something i so rarely know,
unless . . .
- from Initial Elegy, pg. 3
* * *
Die Welt ist fort, ich muss dich tragen. Paul Celan
This pietà
is a man
in the care of another man
as tomorrow begs them
into the most gentle
torsion of a foot in the back
this back, in turn, touches the foot
back, gently
!flesruoy fo erac ekaT
- Pietà, pg. 12
* * *
By its wheated thread, it penetrated
worked tin, my lips' opening.
By its paradise, it penetrated
deeply my pectoral cloud, to merge with
sky.
By its singular anchor, it penetrated
bleeding me of verse in the sea's
oration.
And so. All coasts arrive
at this barrier.
And light spreads. Imprudently, the melee
in the body raises its unique mask.
For here i did not exist yet,
wings open, and so, and so, this.
- Dictate, pg. 25
* * *
My fear of lightning in the face, unintelligible
my fear of nodding faces won't dislodge
my fear of cattle, my fear of wafers
of flack and favours
My smell gone cold and yours at most
that leaves me fearing my own ghost
dislodging cranes from each wet field
In time this temper yields
to a stirring in the blood
as i stretch out, old, limping
shaking a bit, get on, i'm not going to be born
as anyone's twin, it wouldn't be prudent
Me shaking with words, and my mother so ill,
kind star i lean on, whose root bends to me.
- My Fear, pg. 37
* * *
My torso is throne for your somnolence
ô you who reign
My word is bread dark to your longing
ô you who reign
My eyes crown you where you
reign
You make my Saturday your Sunday
and oh you reign
The time in which i lie beside you is your gift
in which i'm reined
Your sadness lets me lift the chalk of dawn sky's
rain
Your far prairie is my mortal grain
ô, you who reign.
- Sovereign, pg. 49
* * *
As such, i triple you,
in the cloth where we may be judged:
In which the eye divines the marks of its lauding
as a tunnel privileges
the face of one, faced with the face of the other.
And this cloth where we may be judged
privileges us; it triples:
In it we divine the marks that aid us
to unite the chafing fields we're called to face
with the blue of our carnality.
Still yet this cloth where our judgement roils us
triples blue:
In which the eye divines a foot that lauds its earth
as simply as an artery courses blood
till the face of all landscape coincides with sleep
yet sees.
- Contemplative Sky, pg. 57
* * *
I carry such frenzy i'm nervous,
my green limbs galvanize and
won't perish in amnesia.
No more does stone own me, nor will i carry one last
cutting battle to the grave of stones,
but cut it repeatedly free of the machines.
It is not my place or lore
to set free symbols with their encrypted dints
but to hold and celebrate all cattle
doubly lithe in a dance of ebony.
No more will i carry the heat of misery;
with my arms' incipient mortar
and faithful hands, i embrace time
to galvanize the possible, the lore of existence.
I've never called life sacred. So much
have i seen it
accelerate in concrete form.
Having never been pristine as a star
i can't ponder
my own life.
I was in it. I carried it in the heat of day.
It dried. Pestilence retreated from it.
I carried it in the wings of birds,
and they gave me new wings to fall into the borealis.
How could i have given credence
to the void? Everything for flight.
Everything,
for the wish that lifts up the limbs of
the sky and takes flight.
So i extend my hand, and its fingers
- Sheepish Elegy, pg. 63
* * *
I came out of the pleistocene into your beauty;
i clambered over the black wall separating
hands and light
to the shock of you,
to the shock of greeting you
with my eternal foot hanging still on the other side.
I could not speak in light,
but scrambled in its annular crags.
It pulled teeth out of its mouth
so i would not come further,
but the soft light of rapture
was mine, and mine the indefatigable foot rising
I cam out of the pleistocene into your beauty
and i could not carry myself over the wall
in such shuddered light
till i lifted my eternal foot skyward, holding
your high foot with my foot as my voice rose to your low voice
and the wall bowed
and the cattle
heard lowing, rapture lighting the sky.
- Undrastically, pg. 78
* * *
E.M.:
The Celan translations have become impossible. My translated line "Spoke a leaf" is Galego, not Celan. The subject tailing its verb. The ache in my mouth and throat is such that even English emerges as giddy, in Galego. As if English, the old tongue of no one, tongue of us all, gibberish I had lived in since childhood, scrubs off. Spoke a leaf. In fact, no leaf speaks since they cut down the tree outside my window last week. Now the racket is even louder, on Saturday night, especially, without the wall of foliage.
- pg. 91
* * *
On the right side, the rash over the shoulder blade.
Curvature and trust.
This in the spine's bone. (Listening.)
There is no word, not even one from on high, that has any right. . . .
Her knees up, sideways, stabilize space here, such
this arm.
When you look at the clouds she says, (Speaking.)
you can see images.
I saw the two dogs playing, the dark one held the light one down.
Then a cat came.
The curve and tilt of that vertebral column. Press it. Press it again.
That feels good, she says.
When I look at her, then, now,
what image?
- Tres, pg. 101
April 19, 2010
Whereas usually the translator is an invisible presence in the translation, in this book the presence of the translator seems to be the subject of the translation itself?
March 4, 2014
O Resplandor presents itself as a book of translations, wherein the Romanian verse of Nichita Stănescu finds articulation in the English tongue. But here's the catch: author/translator Erín Moure (aka Elisa Sampedrín, aka Eirin Moure, aka Erin Mouré) speaks no Romanian. How does she make it work? Well, with an ear to sound, rather than an eye to semantics...
Take, for instance, her rendition of Stănescu's "Elegia intaia," which she titles "Initial Elegy." The first stanza of the original poem reads as follows:
Now, compare this to Moure's "translation":
(Hint: "sine" doesn't mean "cinema," nor does "nici" mean "Nietzchean.")
The result is distinctly Cagean in flavour, but also makes for a very frustrating read. Granted, Moure punctuates her poems with an existential detective story, in which several "versions" of herself (à la the heteronyms of Pessoa) pursue the mysteries of translation and selfhood. Yet these prose sections, insofar as they come off as self-indulgent and somewhat ham-fisted, only serve to hurt the book as a whole. The same goes for her frequent invocations of "high theory" (specifically, that of the venerable Jacques Derrida), which struck me as pedestrian in a "senior-level-English-major" sort of way.
Excellent cover design, however.
Take, for instance, her rendition of Stănescu's "Elegia intaia," which she titles "Initial Elegy." The first stanza of the original poem reads as follows:
El începe cu sine şi sfârşeşte
cu sine.
Nu-l vesteşte nici o aură, nul-l
urmează nici o coadă de cometă.
Now, compare this to Moure's "translation":
With cinema so far off, i am yet
incipient with film.
This, though i never dressed a Nietzchean dawn, never
pressed my arms to the tail of a comet.
(Hint: "sine" doesn't mean "cinema," nor does "nici" mean "Nietzchean.")
The result is distinctly Cagean in flavour, but also makes for a very frustrating read. Granted, Moure punctuates her poems with an existential detective story, in which several "versions" of herself (à la the heteronyms of Pessoa) pursue the mysteries of translation and selfhood. Yet these prose sections, insofar as they come off as self-indulgent and somewhat ham-fisted, only serve to hurt the book as a whole. The same goes for her frequent invocations of "high theory" (specifically, that of the venerable Jacques Derrida), which struck me as pedestrian in a "senior-level-English-major" sort of way.
Excellent cover design, however.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews