Time Mechanics: Poetry as Translation

This seminar focuses on experimental translations and transcreations in the spirit of Spicer’s claim in After Lorca: “A poet is a time mechanic not an embalmer.” Various approaches to leading a text across the time and space divide will be studied. If for Pound to “make new” is to look elsewhere, for Zukofsky it’s to listen closely. If Hawkey’s Ventrakl posits the poem’s decomposition over time, Bang gives us a current, self-obsolescing version of Dante’s hell. And while Hsia Yü’s poems stage the clash of analogue and digital transmission technologies, Brandon Brown offers contemporary readers Fleur du mal version 2.0.