Poets on Translation: Relative Pitch

Poets on Translation is a series of short essays in which poets examine the intersections of poetry and translation in relation to questions of language, identity, authorship, and more.

Like mother, like daughter, they say, and that’s how it turned out for me, despite my resistance. My mother was a tireless advocate for the study of foreign languages and was considered a pioneer in teaching foreign languages at the elementary school level, when young minds are most flexible. She served as the president of the American Association of Teachers of French and consulted with school districts across the country and around the world. In addition to French, she knew Spanish and some Russian, and while I was enrolled in advanced French in high school, she pushed me to study Spanish (“You’ll thank me one day!”). I acquiesced, but French remained my first love. I was intrigued by the poetry of Baudelaire, Verlaine, and Rimbaud and moved by Apollinaire’s “Pont Mirabeau,” where love, like the Seine, is carried away by the waves. The musicality of these poets especially appealed to me as a serious pianist (I’d started lessons with my mother when I was six years old). 

Reading French poetry and Shakespearean sonnets in high school inspired me to write poems. They were not very good—a few limericks, a sonnet or two. One poem, however, stands out in the stack of dog-eared papers I’ve saved from that era—a poem I wrote in French, without the intermediary step of English. I can see now that I was channeling the French Romantic poets and their sweeping descriptions of nature, when I wrote, for example, “la terre me séduit” (“the earth seduces me”). The poem maintains a metrical four-beat rhythm, as well as an ambitious end-line rhyme pattern that only utilizes the stressed vowel sound “[i]”—like the English vowel “[ee],” but crisper. The last word in each line is as follows, with the last syllable stressed: “languies,” “lit,” “gris,” “séduit,” “amie,” d’ici,” “luit,” “bénit,” “s’enrichit,” “parmi,” “vie,” and “nuit.” As I describe this poem, written when I was a high school junior, it now seems obvious that my signature translation strategy of “sound mapping,” which involves identifying salient patterns of assonance, alliteration, and silence in the original text, and infusing this music into my translation, highlighting the different sounds in different shades, had its roots here. 

The fact that I have “relative pitch” (like my first cousin, the singer-songwriter Carole King) has also informed my approach to translation. Having relative pitch means I can identify or sing a particular musical note if I first have a point of reference. For example, if I play a “B” on the piano and then turn my back when another note—say an “A”—is played, I can correctly identify it. Similarly, if I’m asked to sing an “A” when, say, flying on a plane, I’ll be flat by half a step, but if I first play a neighbor note on a pitch pipe, I’m spot on. One could almost draw an analogy between relative pitch in music and a similar concept in translation, where context is everything.

After an auspicious start for a career in foreign languages, including a master’s in French language and literature, a doctorate in foreign language methodology, and a stint as a foreign language teacher, I panicked. How could I be me if I was just like my mother? I abruptly changed course and became a school counselor. I stopped reading French books. I stopped writing poems. 

It wasn’t until my then-husband enrolled in a writing class at the Bethesda Writer’s Center that I felt the urge to take my first poetry class. Years later, I audited an MFA workshop taught by Michael Collier, who suggested I try my hand at translation. He referred me to Robert Bly’s Winged Energy of Delight, where I was first introduced to Tranströmer and Mirabai, and reacquainted with Vallejo and Neruda. Soon after, I met Christopher Merrill, head of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, which resulted in my reading The Craft of Translation, edited by John Biguenet and Rainer Schulte. Guided by Chris’s advice to “just dive in,” and essays written by such translation luminaries as Margaret Sayers Peden and Gregory Rabassa, I finally felt empowered to translate French poetry. But who? A dear poet-friend suggested I translate René Char, a poet considered by some the “greatest French poet of the 20th century.” I asked this friend, “How do I start?” “Just translate the poems that sing out to you.” 

Ever since, I haven’t been able to turn a deaf ear to these songs. My translation focus has evolved over time, and more and more I find myself translating francophone poets from the Caribbean and Africa, including Suzanne Dracius (Martinique), Sylvie Kandé (Senegal), Alain Mabanckou (Congo-Brazzaville), Samira Negrouche (Algeria), Khal Torabully (Mauritius), and Abdourahman A. Waberi (Djibouti). I even ventured into Spanish (thank you, Mom!) to co-translate Wendy Guerra (Cuba). 

Although the poem I wrote in French so long ago borders on the sophomoric, I recognize in the last stanza a seed of what my translation practice is today, with its emphasis on honoring sound:     

        Le murmure des ombres tout à coup s’enrichit,
        Et je sais que ces choses seront toujours parmi
        Les plus grandes joies que j’aurai dans ma vie

        The whispers of shadows turns suddenly deep
        And I know that these matters will always be
        Among life’s greatest delights for me

I guess I should have listened earlier to my 17-year-old self!