The first thing I noticed about Forevernoon is the use of words that put together to create new ones that I am unsure of the meaning— "forevernoon" being one of them and a few others being "napepond,""moonnuns," and "Icaruswax." I am curious as to what these words were in the original and how the translator converted them, because they don't actually seem to mean anything in English (apart from forevernoon which does make some sense to me as a word). Other words such as "Gumbabw" and "bumgamb" don't seem to mean anything at all, and I am curious again as to what they mean in the context of the poems but also how they were translated and what they were in the original.
In the afterword, the translator specifically says that her translation of Àsta is in a way her own interpretation of the poems — "I have drawn for the anglophone reader a new map, pointing the way to some of what I have found." Indeed, the writing is at times extremely elusive, and it is hard to know what the poet is actually talking about. What made reading these enjoyable for me is that I was able to let them wash over me after a while rather than try to make logical sense of what she is trying to recount. Certain imagery resonated with me, and most others didn't, but I found it interesting that the translator was able to say that the very nature of Àsta's writing makes it so that there is not one route of meaning down which she could follow as a guide.
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