So I gave the class the challenge of finding a poem they like but aren't able to interpret. Here's my attempt, with "Song of the Seven-Hearted Boy," by Federico Garcia Lorca, translated by Jerome Rothenberg.

Song of the Seven Hearted Boy

Seven hearts
are the hearts that I have.
But mine is not there among them.

In the high mountains, mother,
where I sometimes ran into the wind,
seven girls with long hands
carried me around in their mirrors.

I have sung my way through this world
with my mouth with its seven petals.
My crimson-colored galleys
have cast off without rigging or oars.

I have lived my life in landscapes
that other men have owned.
And the secrets I wore at my throat,
unbeknonst to me, had come open.

In the high mountains, mother,
where my heart rises over its echoes
in the memory book of a star,
I sometimes ran into the wind.

Seven hearts
are the hearts that I have.
But mine is not there among them.

This poem was chosen because I have wanted to become better acquainted with Garcia Lorca. There may be a convergence of things here - Nick did his Walt Whitman project first semester, Slemp was looking at Ginsberg, Ginsberg wrote A Supermarket in California, which contains both Garcia Lorca and Whitman, a further perusal through the collection of Garcia Lorca poems I brought took me to Ode to Walt Whitman, which I wish I'd found first semester so I could have given a copy to Nick Horstmeyer. When I copied the poem into my notebook, I copied the original Spanish version, also - though Rosetta Stone may be coming to me at a pace apropos its name, I can try to get a head start on my line-by-line Spanish education.

So why did I select this one when I was looking for a poem to like? My first guess is its symmetry. Something in my nature demands the sense of balance and proportion, and I guess I heard echoes of The Tiger and the very pleasing could/dare of its first/last stanza symmetry. I like the way the first two and last two stanzas hold this song together. Maybe I had The Tiger on the brain because of the way the sevens of the poem lead me to something biblical, and if you know anything about me, you know that my sacreligious, blasphemous sensibility is somehow ironically attuned to anything biblical. While I have no idea what to make of "my mouth with its seven petals," I find the deliberate incongruence appealing. I'll have to ask someone to explain to me what I'm missing.

In the high mountains, mother,... There's someting in the tone of those stanzas I can't put my finger on. I feel like I get the feeling of "my heart rises over its echoes in the memory book of a star." There's a serenity, a solitude in that that isn't present in the seven girls with their long hands carrying me in their mirrors. As I look more closely at the two stanzas, I get a kick out of the inverted lines, and I am much more drawn to the one that closes with "I sometimes ran into the wind," which seems to be a way of being alive in the midst of that solitude.

Other lines that I really like: "My crimson-colored galleys have cast off without rigging or oars." Yes, I really enjoy "or oars." For truth, I love "I have lived my life in landscapes that other men have owned." I notice the translator's alliteration now that I've typed it again, and I wonder if that is done to preserve something that's already in the Spanish - I'll have to check tomorrow when I have both versions. But there's a fact in there that speaks to me. I know the word is paisajes, and for some reason my reflex saw that word and thought "countries." Nevertheless, I have done this as well, and knowing that no man owns the wind or the stars (or their memories), I sense the freedom in this poem, a spirit capable of its own freedom but connected to the mountains, to his mother, who exist together in the hearts of the poem.

I couldn't explain the seven hearts, or the reason the translation takes Siete corazones/tiene and translates that as something other than "Seven hearts I have." But the idea that my heart somehow isn't mine, I get that. I like it.

Anyway, this is what I would have done had I assigned this assignment to myself. As always, I avoided the direct entry into the subject by making connections (see any Brothers Karamazov entry if you want to see what I'm talking about). That's it for now, though. Nice to throw a few more logs on the blogoplace.