{"id":61761,"date":"2018-12-25T17:07:39","date_gmt":"2018-12-25T17:07:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=61761"},"modified":"2018-12-25T17:07:39","modified_gmt":"2018-12-25T17:07:39","slug":"wishing-zp-readers-a-merry-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=61761","title":{"rendered":"Wishing ZP readers a Merry Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[ by Charles Cameron &#8212; with a poem by Richard Wilbur ]<br \/>\n.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>TWO VOICES IN A MEADOW<br \/>\nby <strong>Richard Wilbur<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>A Milkweed<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Anonymous as cherubs<br \/>\nOver the crib of God,<br \/>\nWhite seeds are floating<br \/>\nOut of my burst pod.<br \/>\nWhat power had I<br \/>\nBefore I learned to yield?<br \/>\nShatter me, great wind:<br \/>\nI shall possess the field.<\/p>\n<p><strong>A Stone<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>As casual as cow-dung<br \/>\nUnder the crib of God,<br \/>\nI lie where chance would have me,<br \/>\nUp to the ears in sod.<br \/>\nWhy should I move? To move<br \/>\nBefits a light desire.<br \/>\nThe sill of Heaven would founder,<br \/>\nDid such as I aspire. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>**<\/p>\n<p>I was listening to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wnyc.org\/story\/stephen-mitchell-reads-richard-wilbur\/\">a podcast with <strong>Stephen Mitchell<\/strong> discussing this poem<\/a>, and then his own translation of the Odyssey, and was struck by these two comments on the music of poetry &#8212; echoing my love of <strong>Bach <\/strong>and my interest in counterpoint and stereophony:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>You can read a translation by somebody who\u2019s really good and say, Ah, that\u2019s got to be done by so and so, in the same way that you hear a bit of Goldberg Variations and you know that\u2019s Glenn Gould or Murray Perahia..<\/p>\n<p>The poet of the original poem, whether or not anonymous, is listening to something, and the listening eventually becomes the words, so it\u2019s not something, if a poem is really good, it\u2019s not something in a sense he\u2019s creating, it is creating through him, or her, and that\u2019s what becomes the poem. So in the same way, a really good translator is listening, but it\u2019s stereophonic, so in one ear he has the original poem in the original language, and in the other ear, there\u2019s pure, you could say pure longing, or pure silence, where nothing is happening and he cannot force it and will not force it, and then at a certain point, the English words form by themselves, as that counterpoint to the original language, and then it\u2019s done. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>**<\/p>\n<p>BTW:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/QUO-dq-blow-shatter-me-donne-wilbur.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"625\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-61765\" srcset=\"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/QUO-dq-blow-shatter-me-donne-wilbur.png 600w, https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/QUO-dq-blow-shatter-me-donne-wilbur-288x300.png 288w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>**<\/p>\n<p>With this simple, humble poem set in a field &#8212; not in a manger, mind you, but in a field, any field pretty much, though there are crib-nativity echoes in each stanza &#8212; we at <strong>Zenpundit <\/strong>wish all our readers the happiest of holiday seasons, in whatever tradition you each may follow..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[ by Charles Cameron &#8212; with a poem by Richard Wilbur ] . TWO VOICES IN A MEADOW by Richard Wilbur A Milkweed Anonymous as cherubs Over the crib of God, White seeds are floating Out of my burst pod. What power had I Before I learned to yield? Shatter me, great wind: I shall [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[837,526,497,645,627,480,741,1596,720,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bach","category-charles-cameron","category-christianity","category-counterpoint","category-doublequotes","category-music","category-poetry","category-polyphony","category-translation","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61761"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61761\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61767,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61761\/revisions\/61767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}