[ my translation from Recalculating]
It is with the utmost sadness that I learned that Régis died this morning, in Rome, after a fall. One of my “great companions” in my life in poetry, we have been intimate friends for decades, exchanging hundreds of emails, meeting in Brazil and the U.S., and working together on Sibila, both the print on on-line editions. Régis translated a selected poems of mine and I translated a few of his poems. We collaborated on some other poems and on several translations. Both of us suffered the loss of our daughters to suicide –- Bruna and Emma.
I felt a door slam shut this morning.
But so many good times. His memory will always be a blessing but I abhor saying –– memory.
A great poet dies, the work lives.
Prose
A poem can't be sold like music can, can't be sold like a painting, like a song can, nobody gives a dime, a damn, a poem don't live beyond its words, its dark and backward suns, can't be sold like prose can, only as if it were a story or the mocking echo of a poem, can't be sold like junk can, chunks of mango tree in a garden (or fragments of a garden hose), vats of burnt oil, even like a goldfinch can, singing in a trash dump, the black tongue of the sewers, where algae bloom, can't be sold like graffiti can, like a photograph or video can, or any arty film, can't be sold like a print or card can. Me, I'm a lousy trader in worthless things, beset by a plague of words.
[My translation from Recalculating]
Régis and I were riding through the outskirts of São Paulo on our way to Campinas. The World Cup was on and Régis shares Brazil's big-time enthrallment with the series. At one point, in an email, Régis reprimanded me for referring to the "Australia and Brazil game." "In Brazil, you never write the 'Brazil - Australia game', but 'Brazil x Australia'. The x meaning the match, the 'hardness' of the game .... It sounds like a battle, for us, not like a game." Régis told me he was devoted to a local football team and went to almost all their games. "My team's name is Palmeiras (Palms), founded in 1914 by Italian immigrants to keep alive Italian traditions in São Paulo." I asked him how the team was doing.
June 29, 2006
(23 seconds, 3mb)
Bonvicino on PennSound
Sibila
Green Integer books:
Beyond the Wall: New Selected Poems, U.S. $9.95
Sky-Eclipse: Selected Poems, U.S. $9.95
Nothing the Sun Could Not Explain—20 Contemporary Brazilian Poets, ed. Bonvincino, Michael Palmer, Nelson Ascher (digital only)
Histórias Da Guerra: Poema de Charles Bernstein
2006 in Brazil with Lehto and Dragomoschenko, as below, & with our play on the traitorous translator against the “original” and the matching t-shorts that say “Traitor to the Movement”
