Creative writing teachers and poets have been using a version of this exercise for years. Robin Behn and Chase Twichell published a variation of it in their excellent anthology of writing exercises, The Practice of Poetry. Pegasus faculty advisor Jeff Newberry has modified it further, including a foray into Google Translate in an effort to make the language more textured and strange.
If you've written a new poem, why not submit it to Pegasus?
- Using a search engine like Google or Yahoo, locate a poem by a poet you like but with which you are unfamiliar. It's best if the poem is some thirty lines or more. Short poems resist this kind of tinkering. If you're too familiar with the poem, you're likely to stay too close to it.
- Head over to Google Translate and cut and paste the poem into the box. Translate the poem into several languages and then back into English. You can go with any pattern, but Romance languages seem to work the best. You might go from English to Spanish to French to English to Italian to Spanish and back to English.
- You will wind up with a strange document, an odd translation that probably doesn't make a lot of sense if you read it loud. Don't worry; that's a good thing.
- Cut and paste the newly-translated poem into a word processing document. Triple space it.
- You can print it if you want to work with hard copy. Otherwise, type into your word processor.
- Beneath each line, write a response to it. Don't worry if your line is a "true" response. Try to capture something from the original line, but do not merely translate the line again. Work to talk back to the line; try to pick up the texture or the timbre of the language.
- When you are finished responding to each line, delete (or cross out) all that remains of the original poem.
- You know have what is probably a mess of disconnected lines. But, again, that's good. You also have a (very) rough draft of a poem.
- Put the new draft away for a few days. Then, come back to it and read it, seeking congruities (or incongruities) and connections. Play with the lines the way a sculptor plays with clay. Push things around; add more; cut if need be. Keep playing with the language until you are satisfied with the poem. The goal is to end with a new draft, one that reflects its own internal concerns and internal unity.
- You now have a new poem.
If you've written a new poem, why not submit it to Pegasus?