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Max’s Musings

By Max Molleston

We never hold back presenting and/or reviewing poetry by talented writers from lands we know little or nothing about, appreciating difference or tribute “sameness” as verses in their chosen order meet print. Many of us connect the same feelings and acceptance as a poem is recited for a crowd. This month, the poet is Czech writer Jaroslav Seifert. The language of Seifert you are reading was translated by Ewald Osers, with editing and more translation by George Gibian. These men are making us understand the language that Jaroslav Seifert initially placed on paper.

IF YOU CALL POETRY

If you call poetry a song

— and people often do—

then I’ve sung all my life.

And I marched with those who had nothing,

who lived from hand to mouth.

I was one of them.

I sang of their sufferings,

their faith, their hopes,

and I lived with them through whatever

they had to live through. Through their anguish,

weakness and fear and courage

and poverty’s grief

And their blood, whenever it flowed,

spattered me.

Always it flowed in plenty

in this land of sweet rivers, grass and butterflies

and passionate women.

Of women, too, I sang.

Blinded by love

I staggered through my life

tripping over dropped blossoms

or a cathedral step.

We must trust the translator’s feelings about the language and style effort placed and consider this poem faithful to his obvious passion.

Aside from the line ”and passionate women”, phrases as they come take our senses and what we imagine on a trip we, ourselves, might be a part of, or have been, or will be. In 1984 the Swedish Academy called the book of sixty-two poems “endowed with freshness, sensuality and rich inventiveness,” providing “a liberating image of the indomitable spirit and versatility of man. ” The Swedish Academy, if we have forgotten, awards Nobel Prizes and Seifert’s was for Literature. The poems therein are from a 60 year span, published by MacMillan based New York as part of their Collier series. Join me here in June and help the lot of us decide if what is offered suits you.