Mar 13 Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir and Vala Thorrods Reading - Rose

Forevernoon transported me across time and space, and each time I thought I landed somewhere to be able to understand what was going on, I was picked up again. The book was lyrical and direct at the same time, and reading it made me wonder how it would be read aloud, perhaps accompanied by music or as the music itself. The bareness of the language made up of dispersed verbs and nouns created a rhythm that gave each section a beat, and invented compound words like “luckdagger” (18), “napepond” (33), and “ghostsequins” (67) added new interpretations to the many I already had. Each section followed its own set of rules and form in that there were no rules and no form, so I felt like I was constantly dreaming while reading, trying to make sense of something that seemed to have no sense. I was also interested in the spacing of the lines, with single words followed by couplets followed by tercets followed by longer stanzas. I felt like I was playing an imaginary game of ransom notes, moving words around the page to see what new feeling I got from the poem. I liked the succession of poems from “[Carriage A]” to “[Carriage B]” to “[Carriage C],” and then from “[THIRD WINDOW]” to “[SECOND WINDOW]” to “[FIRST WINDOW],” again giving me little idea of what to expect. Some of my favorite lines were “we sipped spring water by an open window in the limerick room” (37) and “a velociraptor locked in a closet in a flower in front of the / frontal dream” (41) because I was so confused and mesmerized at the same time. 

        I wonder what Vala Thorrods’ process of translation was like, and I especially wonder if she began translating poem-by-poem from beginning to end, if she picked one to start randomly, or if she hopped from fragment to fragment. I couldn’t help but read some lines like, “aí ha hhííí / jaja haí hah hahah heh / tchah tsk-tsk” (60) out loud, so I can just imagine the fun that went alongside playing to the sensorial aspects of the poems. As Thorrod describes in her translator’s afterword, Ásta’s poems are always looking to get “somewhere” (81), and it is the reader’s choice to step onto Ásta’s vessel or not, capturing any bits of the journey that they can. The goal is not to make sense of the poetry, but to come along for the ride and see where one ends up. I feel like if I were to have translated this text, I would probably think of it as both the best and worst thing I have done, feeling both relief and frustration. I am most looking forward to—hopefully—hearing Ásta and Thorrod read the originals and translations out loud so I can hear their own rhythms to the pieces, hop back on the vessel, and discover new destinations.