{"id":7933,"date":"2022-12-01T12:51:13","date_gmt":"2022-12-01T12:51:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/?p=7933"},"modified":"2025-05-20T07:34:12","modified_gmt":"2025-05-20T07:34:12","slug":"peter-robinson-two-for-john-james","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/7933\/peter-robinson-two-for-john-james\/","title":{"rendered":"Peter Robinson: Two for John James"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three from Rolf Dieter Brinkmann<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2018again the poems I\u2019d like to translate\u2019<\/p>\n

John James<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

After Shakespeare<\/strong><\/p>\n

The hand of winter falls<\/p>\n

and lies in the garden, where now<\/p>\n

a wooden frame has been<\/p>\n

erected. Dusky summer<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

fallen as the hand.<\/p>\n

Your head is frozen.<\/p>\n

The autumn with its<\/p>\n

dead fish on the<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

riverbed is<\/p>\n

like the stall with aged<\/p>\n

woman, who sits and reads<\/p>\n

the daily paper, till anybody<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

comes, buys one of the cold<\/p>\n

legs of chicken which lie<\/p>\n

in the fat-splattered glass<\/p>\n

container. The passer-by<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

pays, eats, slings the bone<\/p>\n

after the invisible angel.<\/p>\n

And spring comes, scatters<\/p>\n

the car headlights through<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

tinny leafage in the evening<\/p>\n

which with the wooden frame<\/p>\n

sinks down in the stream.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Mourning on the Line in January<\/strong><\/p>\n

A bit of line spans<\/p>\n

curved between two<\/p>\n

leafless trees, the<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

papers soon driven<\/p>\n

again, early morning<\/p>\n

freshly washed<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

black stockings<\/p>\n

hang there, from<\/p>\n

the entangled<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

long legs the water<\/p>\n

drips in the broad,<\/p>\n

early daylight on the stone.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Poem<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ruined landscape with<\/p>\n

tin cans, house entrance<\/p>\n

empty, what\u2019s in there? I came here<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

one afternoon by train,<\/p>\n

two jars in the travelling bag<\/p>\n

tightly fastened. Now I\u2019m also<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

awoken from dreams, blown over<\/p>\n

an intersection. And dust,<\/p>\n

dismembered pavane, out of dead<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

neon, papers and railway lines<\/p>\n

today, what do I get now,<\/p>\n

another day deeper and dead?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Who said, that\u2019s what living<\/p>\n

is? I\u2019m going into<\/p>\n

another blue.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

NOTE: The three translations sequenced here are from Rolf Dieter Brinkman, Westw\u00e4rts 1 & 2: Gedichte<\/em> (Reinbeck bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1975): \u2018Nach Shakespeare\u2019, p. 175, \u2018Trauer auf dem W\u00e4schedraht im Januar\u2019, p. 28, and \u2018Gedicht\u2019, p. 41.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Clear as Daylight<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2018The dancers, faces oblivious & grave<\/em>,\u2014<\/p>\n

testing\u00a0testing<\/p>\n

the dancers face oblivion and the grave.\u2019<\/p>\n

Geoffrey Hill, \u2018After Reading\u00a0Children of Albion<\/em>\u00a0(1969)\u2019<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Reading in an early dawn\u2014<\/p>\n

you\u2019re distracted glancing over<\/p>\n

edges of slim volume pages<\/p>\n

and words, too fathomable words<\/p>\n

cross patios, backyards,<\/p>\n

outliving children of Albion<\/p>\n

who face death now, as best they can,<\/p>\n

while the first birds sing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

To identify with where we live<\/p>\n

I read us into\u00a0every thing,<\/p>\n

like the cut of some salt-crusted brickwork \u2026<\/p>\n

though, try as I might,<\/p>\n

dripping tap and leaky cistern<\/p>\n

gall me to the quick,<\/p>\n

like one swan biting at another\u2019s neck\u2014<\/p>\n

as if we\u2019d never learn.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But even the things I\u2019m reading<\/p>\n

strayed among wild rhubarb<\/p>\n

are moving over surfaces<\/p>\n

of cloud types, sun- and storm-light,<\/p>\n

that heat has flaked to pieces<\/p>\n

and they\u2019re sublimed, resentment-free,<\/p>\n

like purgatories in others\u2019 verses,<\/p>\n

to skies filled with activity.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

NOTE: The epigraph cites the last three lines of \u2018After Reading Children of Albion<\/em> (1969)\u2019 in Geoffrey Hill, A Treatise of Civil Power<\/em> (Penguin Books, 2007), p. 23, which in turn alludes to John James, \u2018Bathampton Morrismen at the Rose & Crown\u2019, Children of Albion: Poetry of the \u2018Underground\u2019 in Britain<\/em> ed. Michael Horowitz (Penguin Books, 1969), pp. 160-1. \u2018Clear as Daylight\u2019 has recently been reissued in the second edition of English Nettles and Other Poems<\/em> with artwork by Sally Castle (Two Rivers Press, 2022). Reprinted with permission.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

PETER ROBINSON is Professor of English and American Literature at the University of Reading and poetry editor for Two Rivers Press. In the mid-1970s he was involved with the Cambridge Poetry Society and the Cambridge International Poetry Festival, in which capacity he hosted a number of readings by John James, while as an editor of Perfect Bound<\/em> he first published James\u2019s \u2018After Christopher Wood\u2019 in June 1976. They read together in a Salt Publishing event on 25 March 2004 in Trinity College, Cambridge. His essay \u2018John James and The White Stones <\/em>p. 71: Music, Rhyme, and Home\u2019\u00a0 and the review \u2018John James: Romsey Town<\/em>\u2019 have recently been collected in The Personal Art: Essays, Reviews & Memoirs <\/em>(Shearsman Books, 2021).<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Click here to go back to:\u00a0Contributors and Links to Pages 1 – 4<\/a><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Three from Rolf Dieter Brinkmann \u2018again the poems I\u2019d like to translate\u2019 John James   After Shakespeare The hand of winter falls and lies in the garden, where now a wooden frame has been erected. Dusky summer   fallen as the hand. Your head is frozen. The autumn with its dead fish on the   […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8145,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false},"categories":[68,12],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/images.jpeg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42xiC-23X","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7933"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7933"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7933\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8355,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7933\/revisions\/8355"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}