Circus  

(translated by Ry Beville)

There have been however many eras  
And there has been brown war

There have been however many eras  
And in the winter gales have blown

There have been however many eras  
The one here this evening, in its prime       
The one here this evening, in its prime

From the circus tent’s lofty beam  
A solitary trapeze artist swings
A barely visible trapeze artist swings

Hanging his arms while upside down  
Beneath the dirty cotton canopy
Yuahhn     Yuyohhn     Yuyayuyon

A white lamp burning nearby  
Exhales its breath of cheap ribbons

The spectators, all of them sardines,  
With oyster shells of ululating throats
Yuahhn     Yuyohhn     Yuyayuyon

Darkness beyond the tent     the darkest dark  
The evening stretches on endlessly late  
The nostalgia of him in his little parachute  
Yuahhn     Yuyohhn     Yuyayuyon

from Poems of the Goat

Born in 1907 Nakahara Chûya was one of the most gifted and colourful of Japan’s early modern poets. A bohemian romantic, his death at the early age of thirty, coupled with the delicacy of his imagery, have led to him being compared to the greatest of French symbolist poets.
Since the Second World War Nakahara’s stature has risen, and his poetry is now ranked among the finest Japanese verse of the 20th century. Influenced by both Symbolism and Dada, he created lyrics renowned for their songlike eloquence, their personal imagery and their poignant charm.

Translator: Ry Beville graduated from the University of Notre Dame (B.A.) and UC Berkeley (Phd), and studied Japanese poetics at the University of Tokyo. He has translated Nakahara Chûya in three volumes: Poems of the Goat (2002), Poems of Days Past (2005), and Uncollected Poems (2007). He also created the Haikuism app. His most recent publication is the novel, What Remains. He is president and CEO at Brightwave Media, and a professor at UC Berkeley.

originally published in Ping-Pong Journal of Art and Literature

In May of 2014 I participated in Aller Retour Paris:  a week of art, poetry, film, and music in the heart of Paris, celebrating the city’s role in shaping Henry Miller as a writer and raconteur. Ping-Pong literary journal hosted the opening night party at Shakespeare and Company. Reading poetry while looking at Notre Dame Cathedral is kind of wondrous. I hope I never get to that place where I think that isn’t the coolest thing on earth, cuz it kinda is. I figured since I was in Paris I’d see about interviewing one of my favorite poets, Alice Notley, who kindly agreed. J. Hope Stein, my friend and newest poetry editor at Ping-Pong also came along, and together we had tea and conversation with a woman who makes life itself an art, like Henry says is the trick of the whole thing. What follows is a shortened version (you have to buy the print copy of Ping-Pong to read it in its entirety).

Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
the (partial) interview with Alice Notley

by: Maria Garcia Teutsch and J. Hope Stein
May 2014 at a café in Paris, France

MGT

I find a playfulness with language and punctuation in your writing with the things that bind our language and in some ways release them. And I’m wondering if in English you find there are more boundaries on the language than you do in the French?

Alice

No (laughs). No, because English is my first language and for me it has no boundaries. But I don’t think one has more or fewer boundaries than the other.

MGT

In French everything is gender, and I know in German everything is gendered.

Alice

In English a lot is gender and nobody notices it.   And if you speak a language you don’t notice it. I don’t notice it so much in French. Mostly I strive to master it so I can speak the language. The words you expect to be feminine are never feminine.   It never works the way it’s supposed to. It all comes from Latin. I took Latin in high school and I know that gender is always unexpected. (Laughs) Read More >