ALESSANDRO
NIERO
Translated
by Eric Sweet
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The Consecration
of Imperfections
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Disclaimer: This introduction was written off the cuff, and in a fit of pique. It
isn’t fair to suggest that Brodsky is Niero’s primary
influence at this point. There’s too much Montale,
This being the first introduction to his
work in English, forgive me for pointing out the
obvious; namely, that Alessandro Niero has been
profoundly influenced by the work of Joseph Brodsky. As with all of us born
under Brodsky’s dog star, that influence means both how ones uses, and how one
refuses, the old man’s language.
In The
Precision of the Vertebrae, Niero’s refusal is
partly textual. Witness the absence of heroes: no more “I”, no more “thou”. The erosion of meters, the extermination of rhyme. The Metametaphorist’s use of words so over-specific they become
strange.
Much of his refusal is subtextual,
however, and supremely difficult to excavate from an alien shore. This is a
work in translation, after all, if such a thing is possible. More likely, this
is a work of translation.
In fact, a case could be made that its most
Brodsky-like elements were translated from 17th Century English
Metaphysical poetry into an Anglophile’s mid-to-late 20th Century
Russian, into a Russophile’s late 20th Century Italian, and back
into an Italophile’s 21st Century English.
This stuff might as well be slapped up on billboards for the WTO. Or crowned a Hapsburg empress.
Eric Sweet’s ear isn’t tuned to Brodskyisms the way that mine is, thank God. Were I to
handle these poems, they would very likely degenerate into an homage of
Brodsky’s English self-translations—a sort of linguistic crib-death for Niero. Instead, Eric has afforded him another opportunity
for refusal, another vector of escape. By presenting the work in a literal
translation, by providing a clear window onto the clockworks of Niero’s poems as they exist in Italian, Eric has
essentially purged them of influence, making even their most familiar aspects
seem unfamiliar.
But I have heard the magpies singing, each
to each.
Pasternak’s formula for escaping the
influence of Mayakovsky: to eliminate, from every
poem, every word that sounded like his idol.
In one’s own mind (which is to say, in
one’s own language), such a thing isn’t always easy. Isn’t, always, possible.
According to Walcott, “[t]o change your language you must change your life.” Unless, of course, you change your language by changing your
language. With that in mind, Eric has done a favor both to the reader
and to Niero; and to Brodsky, for that matter.
Kill Yr. Idols,
--Wayne
Chambliss
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Too often one thinks- metaphorically and
not- of a sky fused to
the earth.
The prerogatives of October though
draw the clouds above
with picture postcard
clarity,
colors too saturated to
be real.
Two worlds grazing and gazing upon one
another
and we too are
spectators.
From the window in transit: hexagonal
mowing of mint, forfeit
to the wind in the
farmer’s reckoning
Below, vines are wintering on the far
field,
insects and scum closed
within the brief,
immortal topography
of one viaduct and a
thousand ties.
They say that almost everything must
find its way,
that almost every
nimrod has
his god (and will go
as
he will go).
There are those though born with nothing
spread between their
fingers
and their hand, their
every clasp
a clandestine
contagion.
Gold, porcelain and other things in the
mouth,
a carnival of
reconstruction,
minimal prosthetic glories
to repair the damage
of a twisted
life. Money well spent.
The fear is that the heavens will repeat
themselves,
it would no longer be
true
the dragging of its
clouds,
that freeze every
living scene
into frame,
every word would quiet
itself,
like a worn-out
vertebra of hollow
phrases.
The ant has the prerogative of the cracks.
The inside is clear
like a room in a
mirror.
For us, the other ants,
only our countenance
somewhat proletarian,
and half-lost
like on enemy soil.
How one contracts life
is unknown at the
beginning,
how to slow a waltz
stripped of sound but for
which the rhythm
enthralls us like a mage
and our every action’s
encaged
in beats within
gilded sarcophagi.
The sea has breached
and bears the battle
to the border
of sea and river,
sugar and salt…