Sally Bliumis-Dunn
Poeta. Estados Unidos
Enseña poesía moderna y Escritura Creativa en Manhattanville College. Recibió su licenciatura en idioma ruso y literatura por la Universidad de Berkeley en 1983 y su maestría en poesía en el Sarah Lawrence College en 2002.
Sus poemas han aparecido en BigCityLit, Lumina, New York Times, Nimrod, The Paris Review, PBS News Hour, Prairie Schooner, Poesía Londres, Rattle, Rattapallax, Spoon River Poetry Review y probabilidad de un fantasma, una antología difundida por Helicon Nueve en 2005.
En 2002, fue finalista para el Premio Pablo Neruda Nimrod / Hardman. Su manuscrito, Talking Underwater, ha sido finalista en la Universidad de Arkansas Premio Press First Book en 2006, semifinalista para el concurso The Kenyon First Book en 2002, el brillante Hill Press en 2005 y finalista del Premio de Poesía Snyder Richard de Ashland Press en 2006, fue publicado por Wind Publications en 2007. En 2008, se la invitó a leer en el "Programa de poemas de amor" en la Biblioteca del Congreso. Second Skin fue publicado por Wind Publications en 2010. Vive en Armonk, Nueva York con su esposo, John. Comparten cuatro hijos, Ben, Angie, Kaitlin y Fiona.
Reproducimos la columna de la semana del Poeta Laureado Ted Kooser llamada American Life in Poetry. En ella, cada semana publica un poema de algún poeta contemporáneo norteamericano junto a alguna observación suya. Se trata de un ejercicio que permite conocer el panorama actual de la poesía de Estados Unidos. Para esta entrega presentamos un poema de Sally Bliumis-Dunn llamado Corazón. La traducción de la columna y el poema corre a cargo de Andrea Muriel (Ciudad de México, 1990).
http://circulodepoesia.com/2015/05/poema-de-sally-bliumis-dunn/
American Life in Poetry: Column 529
por Ted Kooser, Poeta Laureado, 2004-2006.
La gente habla de “flores y corazones” cuando están hablando de poemas con una sensibilidad predecible, pero aquí hay un antídoto para todos ellos: de Sally Bliumis-Dunn que vive en Nueva York. Su más reciente libro de poemas en Second Skin, Wind Publications, 2010.
Corazón
Ella pintó sus labios
color rosa hibisco.
El labio superior se hunde
perfectamente en el centro
como un corazón de San Valentín.
Tiene sentido para mí–
que los labios, el abierto
ah de la boca
tenga más forma de un corazón
que el corazón humano real.
Recuerdo la primera vez que lo vi–
venoso y brillante
como el rezumar de una serpiente–
si esto fuera
lo que nos enseñaron a dibujar
que diferente habríamos
aprendido a amar.
People speak of “hearts and flowers” when they’re talking about poems with predictable sentimentality, but here’s an antidote to all those valentines, from Sally Bliumis-Dunn, who lives in New York. Her most recent book of poems is Second Skin, Wind Publications, 2010.
Heart
She has painted her lips
hibiscus pink.
The upper lip dips
perfectly in the center
like a Valentine heart.
It makes sense to me—
that the lips, the open
ah of the mouth
is shaped more like a heart
than the actual human heart.
I remember the first time I saw it—
veined and shiny
as the ooze of a snail—
if this were what
we had been taught to draw
how differently we might have
learned to love.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright © 2014 by Sally Bliumus-Dunn and reprinted by permission. Introduction copyright © 2015 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
Tell It Slant
Have to sail at an angle,
never directly into the wind –
other things too –
can't look right at the sun,
the world, only visible
in the light that falls around it;
and in books as well,
the best drawn characters most often
evolve through indirection:
a lipstick smear on a collar,
contents of a bedroom drawer.
I imagine, for some reason,
a single two by twelve board
I need to lean against a barn –
it won't even stand unless
I place it at an angle.
I don't know how many other
things like this are true,
but I like trying
to see her words –
the tall right triangle the barn
and board create together,
the purple tufts of clover
slightly darker in the grass.
Poetry Kanto
What Brings Us Together
I dream I am building
with beach glass –
brown, green and white pieces,
an occasional royal blue.
I glue each piece
to the edge of another.
What I am building is hollow,
so light shows through;
it is wider at the base,
and tapers to a point.
At first I am building
on a tar-stained lot,
then it switches to our lawn,
and I see you
walking toward me, waving
something like a letter.
You don't ask what I'm making.
And because it's a dream,
I don't mind.
We are talking through
the language of things.
Poetry Kanto
The Door
Through the bare trees
along the property line,
a woman in a field.
She doesn't know I see her
beating the horse with her crop, kicking it in its belly. And I don't
shout to try and stop her.
I stand on the leafy trail
as if all I can do
is let what's happening
harden in me like a terrible stone.
When she finally stops,
it is still
some moments before I can release
the screeching whistle
from whatever was keeping it
locked inside me.
Her head jerks in my direction.
as though I had opened a door
she hadn't known was there.
MARGIE
Three O'Clock Slump
You know those afternoons:
too drowsy, the head nods.
The lines in the book
blur, the book
becomes a piece of driftwood
and your fingernails cake
with moss and mud from
trying to hang on.
The next thing you remember
is the soft muddy bottom,
and you, looking dreamily
up through the water
at your own thoughts
as though
at the underside of leaves,
that begin to look
like flattened hands or paws
without the mass of a body,
the orb of a head —
which is how you are
beginning to feel
about your body and your mind.
They have floated so far
away from each other.
The Same
Invocation
The way you sway
as you walk to me,
or froth the milk each morning,
the ordinary always
becoming something else
like an atmosphere
changing.
Let there only be a sweet
lingering in the air
that pulls us from moment
to moment; and far off
in the distance,
the old pain in starkest
contrast.
Let my body never
memorize your body;
let our constant vanishing be
the window we look through
and each of our steps vanish
the one that came before.
Tiferet
2006
Stone
The surface tension of the water ––
what is light enough
to float there, glide –– the water bug,
yes, but not the dragonfly.
Delicate floating, this a poem
for you and for all that falls
below the surface of chest, thigh, sheets.
Lying on our bed,
the streetlamp's orange light;
the lovely length of my husband
flickering beside me.
The past falling through
our bodies like a stone.
Guinea Pig
When the small hill
of the mother's body stayed still,
I knew she'd died.
Fanny sat in the woodchips beside her.
When I returned with a ziplock bag,
she lay right on top of her, making
a soft, almost inaudible sound –
her mourning strangely the same
as any other I've known –
the same perfect limpness
of one body thrown over another
like a hopeless cloth,
and the sound of deepest sorrow,
muffled as though it came
from the center of a gigantic stone.
I couldn't bring myself to move her.
All afternoon she lay
on the sudden silence of
her mother's heart
and on the slower news
of the body, which still
offered a fading warmth.
The Bellevue literary Review
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