Rpodnee-blog - Blawg

hrmm. well hold on now ive been filled with a sudden joy and whimsy for the world

When you think of animals, think of this stick insect, Phryganistria chinensis Zhao. This species was discovered in China in 2014, and has recently been confirmed as the longest insect at 62.4 cm. Thats over two feet long. One specimen was brought to the Insect Museum of West China where it laid eggs. Post hatching, the offspring are still over 10 inches long.

photo by Xinhua

Saint Olga by Milhail Nesterov

Oil on canvas, (1892-1893)

By Calder Moore

Photos from around NYC.

honestly will never forget this older client we had who told me how her life had gotten so much better with time and age and asked how old I was and when I told her I was 28, she said I was just a baby and reassured me I had so much time ahead of me and how much better it'll get as I grow into my life. There was such an indescribable amount of love and hope in that single interaction I think I'll hold it with me forever.

you deserve people who listen to you ramble. you deserve people who love it when you’re excited, when you’re happy. you deserve people who check up on you and wish to see you well, people who not only accept you for who you are - but rejoice in it. 

I was wondering last night if it was at all possible to translate sign language poetry into writing, when translating poetry from one spoken language to another that uses the same communication devices is already a headache. So I found a book about sign language poetry (by Rachel Sutton-Spence) and it is a delightful read! At one point the author describes a poem by Clayton Valli about a boat, in which the rising and falling pattern of the words he chose (which are located at different heights in the signing space) evokes the bobbing motion of a boat on the water as it approaches a bridge. And, okay, it will never be the same thing but you can tinker with written words to create similar effects, like how Victor Hugo’s poem The Djinns uses rising and falling line length to convey quietness then frantic action then a return to stillness.

Then the author analyses a Christmas ASL poem by Dorothy Miles and at first you’re like, this is translatable—she lists things children ask for Christmas, and includes signs like “pets” and “cake” which both involve touching the back of one hand with the other, creating a visual rhyme. The English translation pairs “pets” with “candy cigarettes” to preserve the rhyme. The author adds that symmetry in signed poetry is comparable to assonance: instead of signing ‘2 people walking’ with one hand the poet might sign ‘1 person walking’ with the right hand and ‘1 person walking’ with the left hand, for poetical effect. As English doesn’t have this opportunity for symmetry, you can translate the intent behind this deliberate, aesthetic symmetry as a rhyme. But then the author goes on to describe how Miles uses gentle, fluttering-open ‘5′ handshapes to convey a feeling of magic and excitement, and adds extra finger-wriggling or fluttering to some signs to make them ‘sparkle’, so the poem goes something like magic-shivers-up-arms, magic-run-downstairs, magic-feel-bumps-through-stocking and as a translator, how do you not ruin the specific charm of this poem?? You would have to draw actual sparkles around every verse to convey a similar effect.

I really love poetry for how great it is at making us aware of all the resources and hidden treasures of our own language, that we often overlook in everyday life, but I also love the other side of the coin, how poetry in translation gleefully makes us aware of all the cool things our language lacks.