Rosmarie
Waldrop (b. Germany / USA)
1935
Rosmarie
Waldrop was born Rosmarie Sebald in Kitzingen am Main, Germany, in 1935. At age
10 she spent half a year acting with a traveling theater, but was happy when
schools reopened and she could settle for the quieter pleasure of reading and
writing which she has since pursued in and out of universities (Würzburg,
Freiburg, Aix-Marseille and Michigan, Ph.D., 1966) in several countries.
At
Christmas in 1954, the young Sebald performed in a concert for US soldiers
stationed in Kitzingen, after the performance Keith Waldrop, who had been in
attendance, inviting members of the orchestra to listen to his records. Upon
that occasion he met Rosmarie and became friendly, the two eventually beginning
to translate German poetry into English together.
Rosmarie went on to the University of Würzburg,
studying literature, art history, and musicology. In 1955 she transferred to
the University of Freiburg, discovering the fiction of Robert Musil and
participating in a protest against a lecture by philosopher Martin Heidegger because
of his wartime association with the Nazis and his anti-Semitic viewpoints.
She next attended the University of
Aix-Marseille, where Keith spent the years 1956-57 on his GI Bill.
At the end of 1957, Keith returned to
the University of Michigan where he won a Major Hopwood Prize, sending most of
the money to Rosmarie in order to pay her passage to the US. The couple were
married at Michigan, where she also became a student, receiving her Ph.D. there
in 1966.
In 1961 the Waldrops bought a second had
printing press and began Burning Deck Press, which when on to become on the
most influential publishers of innovative US poetry and works in translation.
Waldrop has also written to important
works of fiction, The Hanky of Pippin's Daughter (1986) and A Form/of
Taking/It All (1990), as well as books of literary criticism.
In the 1960s Rosmarie also begin writing
and publishing her own poetry in English, producing over the years numerous
works and further translations, many of which received critical acclaim and
brought her several awards including the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by
the French government and a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts in
2003. She received the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation for her translation
of Ulf Stolterfoht’s Lingos I – IX in 2008, and was awarded the America
Award for Literature for a lifetime contribution to international writing in
2021.
Waldrop writes of her work: “The
linguistic displacement from German to English has not only made me into a
translator, but has given me a sense of writing as exploration of what happens
between; between words, sentences, people, cultures. In writing, this of course
means composition. I am not so much concerned with the ‘right word,’ but how
words connect, their affinities, slidings, the gaps between, the shadow zone of
silence and margins. As Gertrude Stein knew from the start: “Everything is the
same except composition and as the composition is different and always going to
be different everything is not the same.”
BOOKS
OF POETRY
A
Dark Octave
(Durham, Connecticut: Burning Deck, 1967); Camp Printing [visual work]
(Providence, Rhode Island: Burning Deck, 1970); The Relaxed Abalone
(Providence, Rhode Island: Burning Deck, 1970); Spring Is a Season and
Nothing Else (Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin: Perishable Press, 1970); Letters
[with Keith Waldrop] (Providence: Rhode Island, Burning Deck, 1970); Alice
ffoster-Fallis [with Keith Waldrop] (Providence, Rhode Island, 1972); The Aggressive
Ways of the Casual Stranger (New York: Random House, 1972); Words Worth
Less [with Keith Waldrop] (Providence, Rhode Island: Burning Deck, 1973); Until
Volume One [with Keith Waldrop] (Providence, Rhode Island: Burning Deck,
1973); Since Volume One [with Keith Waldrop] (Providence, Rhode Island:
Burning Deck, 1975); Kind Regards (Providence, Rhode Island: Diana’s
Bimonthly, 1975); Acquired Pores (Paris: Orange Export, 1976); The
Road Is Everywhere or Stop This Body (Columbia, Missouri: Open Places,
1978); The Ambition of Ghosts (New York: Seven Woods Press, 1979); Psyche
and Eros (Peterborough, United Kingdom: Spectacular Diseases, 1980); When
They Have Senses (Providence, Rhode Island: Burning Deck, 1980); Nothing
Has Changed (Windsor, Vermont: Awede, 1981); Differences for Four Hands
(Philadelphia: Singing Horse, 1984 / reprinted [Providence, Rhode Island:
Paradigm, 1999]); Morning’s Intelligence (Grenada, Mississippi:
Salt-Works Press, 1986); Streets Enough to Welcome Snow (Barrytown, New
York: Station Hill, 1986); The Reproduction of Profiles (New York: New Directions,
1987); Shorter American Memory (Providence, Rhode Island: paradigm
press, 1988); Peculiar Motions (Berkeley, California: Kelsey St. Press,
1990); Fan Poem for Deshika (Tucson: Chax Press, 1993); Lawn of
Excluded Middle (New York: Tender Buttons, 1993); A Key into the Language
of America (New York: New Directions, 1994); Light Travels [with Keith
Waldrop] (Providence, Rhode Island: Burning Deck, 1995); Another Language:
Selected Poems (Jersey City, New Jersey: Talisman House, 1997); Blindsight
(Saratoga, California: Instress, 1998); In a Flash (Saratoga,
California: Instress, 1998); Split Infinites (Philadelphia: Singing Horse
Press, 1998); Blackwards (Bray, Ireland: Wild Honey Press, 1999); Reluctant
Gravities (New York: New Directions, 1999); Cornell Boxes (Los
Angeles: Seeing Eye Books, 2001); Trace Histories (New York: Balladonna
Chapbooks #29, 2001); Blindsight (New York: New Directions, 2003); Love,
Like Pronouns (Richmond, California: Omnidawn, 2003); Splitting Image
(Tenerife: Zasterle Books, 2005); Second Language (Ellsworth, Maine: Backstreet
Books); Gap Gardening: Selected Poems (New York: New Directions, 2016); The
Nick of Time New York: New Directions, 2021)
For
an extensive library of audio readings, click here:
http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Waldrop.php
For
a film of Waldrop with poet Oskar Pastior in Paris, click below
http://doublechange.org/2008/05/08/08-05-08-autour-doskar-pastior/
╬Winner
of the PIP Gertrude Stein Awards for Innovative Poetry in English
2005-2006
Our
Ears Are Now in Excellent Condition
1.
“45’ FOR A SPEAKER”
Sound
begets sound. A newborn rhythm pitches toward the past, a steady hum shaped
like a room. Which, at any instant, you may leave. Our concern is rather with
the present. When present, with animal intelligence. You’d rather father forth
noise. To flow among the finest, most sensitive, most hair-like vessels. Your
other ear can be held against me. The silence tossed does not fall into
psychology. On the wet pavement, the drop of a hat, in stitches. Wherever a
scar, sounds mushroom. The parts and parcels of the score.
2.
A PAIR OF SOCKS, A METAL BOX
Does
his head have a bed in it? How else this ease, this healthy lawlessness, these
old sneakers. How to switch on the dark. How to stitch in time. How to empty
the mind and tune the membranes. Is John Cage a subject or an idea? Out of step
or on track? Does he lean on his elbow? the message is covered with mud at your
service. We’re not in the glory of now knowing what we’re doing. Though
prolonged falling gathers fatigue, even into winter. After the rain, more rain,
I’ve never thought my guts would shake with echoes while I declare my love.
3.
“VEXATIONS”
Men
are men and moss is moss, but percussion is hitting tin pans, rice bowls, iron
pipes. Hitting, rubbing, smashing. And breathes accordingly. Without a bit of
confusion, unimpeded, even jazz cannot get hot nor feet off the ground. A sound
has no legs to stand on, but timbres fly with the blackbirds, and slavery is
abolished. There is no doubt which way is up. The Geneva convention is also
abolished. We declare war: sound or silence? By evening, personality is a
flimsy thing to build an art on, though it pleases the hepcats. This
performance fits long-jointed toes on our thoughts, to wear like a helmet.
4.
FURIOUS POLLEN
Once
we’ve learned to listen in ignorance, once the glue is removed, sound comes
into its own and penetrates the subtlest tissues. Its essence is to perish, but
not, like prose, into comprehension without residue. Suppose the inevitable
waves. Why not clear the mind of music before the ratios lap at the labyrinth
and the free wheel is drowned. Ignore causalities. Casualties. These sounds do
not conceal life’s horror. Took like a duck to second and tritone, the modern
intervals. Even more to noise. Blow nose. In time itself, not measure of two or
three.
5.
SATIE’S FURNITURE
Falls
between friends dining together. In the shape of a pear or riding habit. Cuts
out having to love our own banalities, or looking for zero in the twelve-tone
system. There’s not enough of nothing. Even when we consider hopes in
Esperanto. Loudspeakers, multiple, the sounds of knives and forks on tape.
Prepare the piano to tack with the where-to no sooner done than forgotten. In
Tibet, showing your tongue means welcome, means to show benevolence and purity
of words.
6.
INCURABLE FLOURISHES
While
frequencies knit to the inner ear, nobody means to circulate his blood. A
density of sound that comes to blows, to terms, to Providence, to nought. The
tuning of 12 TV sets, the transparently genetic code, the problems without
solution, the threadbare suit. Lectures on nothing and something. While music
is contemporary we have no time to separate it from life. this is why there are
no masterpieces, which would protect us. The tone clusters where the heart
beats. The nerve of microtones sliding across the synapse. Hold watch to mike.
This concert is not a compendium.
7.
MORE AND MORE WE ARE GETTING NOWHERE
Everywhere,
they have been discriminated against. Noises. American, trained to be
sentimental, I champion the underdog, coming on loud, banging my fist. Though
to write it down is hard. The mind on it takes the ear off it. Think of Morton
Feldman. In his music heroic or erotic—an equal, not lesser, flavor? Action
within the gamut of love produces sensuous coughing and clicking of tongues. An
atmosphere of devotion interrupted by trust in the dollar. Don’t hold your
horses. More and more we are getting nowhere, and that is a pleasure.
8.
BEAUTY
The
necessity to avoid it. Family values require greater earnestness surrounded by
mauve bouquets and candelabras in the grand style. What’s not only beautiful
but also ugly, not just good, but also evil, not just true, but also an
illusion, not just touching nose and ears, but also rubbing eyes? Sounds are
shadows, in secure possession of nothing. Straight from the hip, the horse’s
instep, immense need. We grow thin inside by exclusion, no matter how huge our
terror outside. Of again, of always, of forced marriage, European harmony,
owning one’s home. A rhythmic structure of yes to what comes: no other way to
the dark night of the soul.
9.
ANYTHING MAY HAPPEN AND IT DOES
It
is not irritating to be where one is. Only if you’d like to be with competitive
remnants or the rapid gallop lurking in the woodwinds. Even if the piano is
prepared, don’t fight as the monster shifts shape; the pronoun, reference; the
performer, pitch and duration. A technique of imperfection. Listening as
ignorance. I’d like a glass of water, here, on tape, unless some other form of
tuning. What we need is irresponsibility. If we had to decide which foot to put
in we’d never manage. Are you deaf by nature, choice, or desire? As Buckminster
Fuller says, movement with the wind in the Orient and movement against the wind
in the Occident meet in America, in John Cage, an upward leap into the air,
whatever the consequences.
10.
SOUNDS, LIE LIFE, AN ACCELERATION OF MATTER
Let’s
admit that the lines we draw are not straight. After a life of correctly
brushed teeth, we prefer parentheses and italics. Rules of misbehavior. Should
it not be Monday? A year from? Inspiration is not a special condition. Ordinary
disorder vibrates into surprise. The existence of a sound, for instance, a
field phenomenon, not limited to one known point. The smallest common
denominator in charge of dynamite. The wall around our ears. The notes soggy
with similarities. The view from the balcony repeated by all the windows, which
wearies observation.
11.
TRANSCRIPTION FOR AN AUDIENCE OF ONE
A
throw of dice does not abolish music, but needs skill to become event. A
Buddhist and his ears. Though time is up, he still keeps it. With a timbrel.
The brain and its dreams, such a fleeting moment in the movement of matter. So
like a blind fold. Separation of mind and ear spoils the new sensuality, the
tropical fungi. Now what shall we do? November night continues into the movies.
Where the horse’s hoof suspended in mid-air comes down. Precise, but not
measurable, elastic directions pitch toward change of tempo while the middle
holds against expansion. Conclusions can be drawn.
12.
INTERSECTIONS INSTEAD OF
Any
technique, to be useful, must fail to control. Of no purpose, of course, of nature.
Snore, cough, hiss, slap table, cough, brush hair, laugh, cough, clap, gargle.
Music for a room. What cannot be assimilated to the system. Suffice it to spew
out the suffix, the prefix, anything fixed. Need I quote Blake? It’s an
eight-loud-speaker situation we are in. A hub of transmission. Not an anechoic
chamber. This music, which has no stories to tell, is so naked that it will
take enormous effort to slip out of its spell.
___
Reprinted
from Colorado Review (Summer 2005). Copyright ©2005 by Rosmarie Waldrop.
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