MATCHING WORDS : CUVINTE POTRIVITE.2 : methaphors
Join us on a language & poetry playground with Nina Cassian, instigated by Calin-Andrei Mihailescu 


RCINY is pleased to announce the second event of the special series inviting both Romanian and English speakers to flirt with Romanian language and literature in English translation, to play with words and explore how translation works.

Following the kick-off event on May 11, this second meeting invites the audience to take part in a more structured workshopping experience.

We will be playing with metaphors, those figures which bring language to life, life to language, and defend both against coercive meaninglessness. For as soon as language is born, it can congeal into a prison with many cells. If too long a time time is spent in them, tongues will become woody; the mind will limp its way aided by those tongues' wooden crutches, to turn into a tourist of the commonplace; now diminutive, imagination won't fence off the world's violence anymore.

Against the shady dynasties of tongue numb-ers, you are invited to join in this play, to bring to light the banners' underwear, and to heal the linguistic imagination hurt by the ceaseless assault of the TV and computer screens. Metaphors can't be taught, but they can be played with; they can be neither deduced nor deducted; their usefulness, though, goes beyond the usual.

We will be playing, thus, with metaphors that change our perspectives on the differences between inside and outside, and between the feminine and the masculine, starting from two of Nina's English poems, "Cast," and "Snow Man," respectively (both printed in her 'Take My Word for It,' W.W. Norton, 1998), but expanding to other poets' poems, in both English and Romanian. Bring pen and paper. Non-Romanian speakers are encouraged to join.


Cast

Wrapped in wet rags
like a mummy,
like a fractured leg...
The rags will become rigid –
I'll remain tender inside
like the pulp of some fruit of the desert
or like the Devil
immobilized in God


Snow Man

You are my windchill factor, my source of cold.
Two stripes of cold gush from your nostrils,
icicles cling to your eyelashes,
your mouth, an ice hole (I can see
the dark green words inside) –
Should I slide down your skin
to your sculptural phallus,
me – to freeze
you – to melt?


Whether written in Romanian or in English, Nina Cassian's poetry moves with the stars – spirited, ground-breaking, scrumptious. She invented a few poetic languages, the most radical being limba spargă (Brokenese). She lives in New York. Calin-Andrei Mihailescu moves fast. Proof: he hasn't yet been caught. He teaches literature at a Canadian university but drives often to NYC.


[Image: Nina Cassian. Photo by Oana Radu, RCINY]