An Italian take on Ashbery’s Some Trees. (translation compliments of Google Translate). While hardly illuminating, fun to read this perspective and compare the original poem to it’s Italian translation.
Some Trees" John Ashbery's Poem
Walking among trees, woods, paths and books
by Tiziano Fratus
October 21, 2021
In the vast and intricate labyrinth of North American poetry of the last one hundred and fifty years, the one sown, among others, by Whitman, Emerson and Emily Dickinson, the poets who have listened to the microscopic shouting of nature are many. Perhaps some poets have remained sealed to things, to a descriptive or suggestive writing, in other cases they have united, in an epic embrace, the ant, the leaf that wrinkles and falls, the dewdrop and the colossal breath of the cosmos. . Poets who are often identified with a poetic fueled by the flapping of butterfly wings include William Carlos Williams, Robert Frost, Gary Snyder, Derek Walcott, Wendell Berry, Jim Harrison, William Stanley Merwin, Mary Oliver, Annie Dillard, as well as the recent Nobel Prize Louise Glück
Many others could be pointed out but let us dwell on a poet who has been widely read and shared and discussed in the past, namely John Ashbery (1927-2017). Often when Ashbery is mentioned one remembers the many awards obtained, for example the fact that one of his collections, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1975, available in Italy in the poetic series by Bompiani, Self-Portrait In a Convex Mirror, in the translation of Aldo Busi, his great admirer), has won major awards - the Pulitzer for Poetry and the National Book Award.
Critics called him the most influential poet of his generation. And today? Now that the man is gone, and now that his production can possibly be renewed only by unpublished works that have suddenly come to light and hidden for years, or for decades, in a shoe box, what remains of his lyric? Can we still look at him, in the showcase of the authors of the recent past, as a giant, or is the echo of his written word shrinking?
We know that some poets, over time, lengthen their shadow, or rather, innervate their light in many new readers, while others fade. Ashbery? To the critics the arduous sentence.
Briefly, I limit myself to recalling some of the titles of his works: Rivers and Mountains, Houseboat Days, The Vermont Notebook, A Wave, Hotel Lautréamont, Wakefulness, Chinese Whispers, A Worldly Country, Girls on the run, Commotion of the Birds).
We will go and caress some verses of the poet. And to be precise, we focus on a collection published in 1956, 65 years ago, entitled Some Trees, Certi Trees, winner at the time of the prize reserved for young poets from Yale University - another winner was Merwin, mentioned above, Glück herself, and then Auden, Kunitz, Wright, Hass, Forché.
In the rich anthology A wWorld That Cannot be Better, edited by Damiano Abeni and Moira Egan and published by Luca Sossella in that little editorial miracle that was the Poetic Art series, we find the poetry that gave the collection its title; the lyric is so beautiful and rich that it is worth reproducing it both in the original - the poem should always be enjoyed in the original, the translations, however functional or well thought-out, remain in any case, as Franco Battiato sang, like peace "by certain monasteries,” or the "vibrant understanding of all the senses in celebration,” only" the shadow of light,” both in the Italian adaptation.
There is no need for comments, just read the poem aloud, calmly, with beautiful full-bodied silences, as implied by the punctuation.
SOME TREES
These are amazing: each
Joining a neighbor, as though speech
Were a still performance. Arranging by chance To meet as far this morning
From the world as agreeing
With it, you and I
Are suddenly what the trees try To tell us we are:
That their merely being there
Means something; that soon
We may touch, love, explain. And glad not to have invented
Such comeliness, we are surrounded:
A silence already filled with noises,
A canvas on which emerges
A chorus of smiles, a winter morning.
Placed in a puzzling light, and moving,
Our days put on such reticence
These accents seem their own defense.
Ovvero:
Questi sono stupefacenti: accosto
ciascuno al vicino, come se il discorso
fosse una messa in scena silente.
Dandoci stamane casualmente
appuntamento così tanto via
dal mondo quanto in armonia
con esso, io e te
siamo d'improvviso ciò che
gli alberi cercano di dirci
che siamo: che il loro mero esserci
ha significato; che potremo toccare
presto, e amare e spiegare.
E lieti di non avere inventato
noi tale grazia, ne siamo circondati:
un silenzio già colmo di rumori,
una tela su cui affiori
un coro di sorrisi, d'inverno, un mattino.
Posti in una luce sconcertante, e in cammino,
i nostri giorni indossano una tale reticenza
che questi accenti paiono la loro stessa resistenza.
Tiziano Fratus lives in a house in front of a wood. He is the author of many books and meditates.