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A second translation workshop happened in our Facebook group this weekend (which is an open group, by the way), this time tackling Julio Cortázar's "Zipper Sonnet." The group version hasn't been published yet, but it was great fun to lob back and forth various interpretations of both the overall meaning and tone of the poem and individual lines and words. I feel a bit like I'm looking inside of poetry by doing these – like a dissection somehow of poetry's core principles of meaning and sound. How do you make a poem that both means what the original means, and still has power and grace in its new language? This one is meant to be readable both from top to bottom and from bottom to top. A beautiful challenge. The original: de arriba abajo o bien de abajo arriba este camino lleva hacia sí mismo simulacro de cima ante el abismo árbol que se levanta o se derriba quien en la alterna imagen lo conciba será el poeta de este paroxismo en un amanecer de cataclismo náufrago que a la arena al fin arriba vanamente eludiendo su reflejo antagonista de la simetría para llegar hasta el dorado gajo visionario amarrándose a un espejo obstinado hacedor de la poesía de abajo arriba o bien de arriba abajo And two interpretations of mine, one rhyming and one without: top to bottom or else tail to top, this trail leads only to this trail faking the climax and then the drop a tree that rises or else fails, he who imagines it another way will be the poet of this contortion in the dawn of a cataclysmic day a shipwreck rising from the shore, then avoiding his reflection, barely oh enemy of symmetry to arrive at the gilded portion a mirror binds this visionary oh stubborn maker of poetry tail to top or top to bottom * upside down or downside up this road is ouroboros a false summit and then a cliff a tree that grows and splinters he who sees another way shall be a poet of convulsion in a terrible awakening the sand heaves forth its wrack he flees his reflection, he harries equilibrium, seeking a piece of gold – dreamer, lashed to the mirror dogged creator of the poem downside up or upside down *
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