Broken English: Poetry and Partiality

179 Pages·1993·8.81 MB·English

by  Heather McHugh

Broken English

Poetry
and
Partiality
Heather
McHugh
\fTeslcyanU niversity Press
Middleto\vn, Connecticut
Puhlishcci by \\'c$ley,ln Universin Press, ,\liddleto\\,n, CT 064j9
Revised 1999
All rlgllts resened
Printed in the United St~tcosf Lhnerica 5 + 3 2
CIP data appear at the end of the book
Originally produced in 1993b y \\'e\ley,lnlUni\~er~inP rcss ofNc~rE.n gland, H.u~over,N H 03-55
Selections from Poems of Paul Celun translated by ~MichaelH amburger. Copyright C 1972,
1980,1988 by Michael Hamburger. Reprinted by permission of Persea Books, Inc.
"The Courte of a Particular" 1s reprinted from Opw Postl~umousb \ IVallace Ste~ens
Coplr~ghIt9 j- b\ Els~eS telens and Holl~S te\ens Reprinted b\
.
permlss~ono f Alfred A Knopf, Inc md Faber and Faber Ltd
Contents
Prefatory Note vii
Introduction i
The Store 5
The Still Pool Forgets: A Remindingfiom the Yoruba 28
A Stranger's Way of Looking 41
Broken English: What We Make of F~a~ments 68
A Genuine Article 8 7
What Dickinson Makes a Dash For: Intevp?.etive
Insecurit?,a s Poetic P~eedom 100
Essay at Saying: Paul Celan IIj
Notes 139
Acknowledgments 149
Index of Names 151

Prefatory Note
Most of these essays were delivered as lectures at the MFA Program for
Writers at Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, N.C ., the University of
Cincinnati, and the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa.
Several appeared in the American Poetry Review, and "A Genuine Arti-
cle" appeared in ZYZZYVA. I'm grateful to Cornell Capa and Magnum
Photos for the chance to reprint the Robert Capa diptych here. Ulli
Beier's work was my first and best resource for the Yoruba piece. Indeed
at every turn I relied on good works already done: Ed Snow's transla-
tions of &lke, the editions of Valdry in the Bollingen Series, the sen-
sitive translations of Celan available to us through Michael Hamburger
and Katharine Washburn, Guy Davenport's Archilochus, Stanley Lom-
bardo's Parmenides and Empedocles, and more. Tom Phillips's treated
texts deserve especially warm mention.
I thank the Creative Writing Program and English Department of
the University of Washington in Seattle, for ungrudging grants of leave,
during which some of these essays were \vritten and revised; the Guggen-
heim Foundation, for support during one year of the writing of these
essays; and the Lila \l'allacc-Reader's Digest Fund for a n.riter's atyard
that bought mc solme rcvising timc.
viii Prefatory Note
From the encouraging response of people who heard these lectures,
or who read the essays in advance, came my determination to collect and
finish them. But to my hardest critic and best friend, I owe most of all:
Nikolai B. Popov, whose erudition kept me honest, and whose constancy
kept me whole. It is to his high standards and intellectual integrity that I
owe any refinement this book possesses; its immoderacies are mine.
Brolien English