On the Daily Newspapers - Durs Grunbein

Daily report: This blog down for 12 hours or more yesterday & this morning. Scary to lose one's words. Not one but three mad missives in the midnight air to blogger help geeks, mad as in the Shakespearian sense. But as my hero, the unsung inventor of the electric guitar, Memphis Minnie once sung in 1929: "You can lose all your money/ But, Lord, don't you lose your mind."
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I love this poem I found today on Venepoetics.

As my gramma always said: Learn something everyday.
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5.24.2005

(ON THE DAILY NEWSPAPERS)
Durs Grünbein
[tr. Michael Hofmann]

I have breakfasted on ashes, the black
Dust that comes off newspapers, from the freshly printed columns.
When a coup makes no stain, and a tornado sticks to half a page.
And it seemed to me as though the Fates licked their lips

When war broke out in the sports section, reflected in the falling Dow.
I have breakfasted on ashes. My daily bread.
And Clio, as ever, keeps mum...There, just as I folded them up,
The rustling pages sent a shiver down my spine.

(Ashes for Breakfast, FSG, 2005)

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Guillermo concludes with:

I think of my friend J. who wrote in a poem:

"Our whole lives have been translations."
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read more for stunning words & insights on the translation process, there and on the rest of his blog

Venepoetics.

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