O Cadoiro: Poems

by Erín Moure

Rooted in medieval Galician-Portuguese cantigas, most untranslated before now, Erin Mouré’s poems take off from the title phrase, literally “the place where falling is made.” Also a word for waterfall, O Cadoiro opens the “falling-place” that humans inhabit, where poems help heal without necessarily resolving anything. Where many poets tend to disdain the lyric form, Mouré embraces it — returning to its roots, reveling in its beauty, and exposing its surprising modernity.

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

First published August 28, 2007

About the author

Erín Moure is a transborder poet and translator of poetry and poetics. In Canada, the USA, and the UK (variously), she has published seventeen books of poetry, and several books of prose including a memoir and a book of short takes on translation. Her most recent book is Planetary Noise: Selected Poetry of Erín Moure (ed. Shannon Maguire, Wesleyan 2017). She is the translator or co-translator of seventeen books of poetry and three books of non-fiction (biopoetics) from French, Spanish, Galician, and Portuguese into English. Her translation of Wilson Bueno’s Paraguayan Sea (Nightboat, 2017) was a finalist for a 2018 Best Translated Book Award. She holds two honorary doctorates for her contributions to poetry and translation, from Brandon University in Canada and the Universidade de Vigo in Spain. She lives in Montreal.

Reviews

[Sabelka · Rating 4 out of 5]

O pracer brutal e inmenso que me produce xa só a mistura de linguas que fai este libro lembroume unha posición, a da simultaneidade lingüística (a diglósica non me vale, leave me alone), na que necesito volver estar moitísimas máis veces porque é a miña f-a-v-o-r-i-t-a. Secession/Insecession xa fixera que me estouparan o cerebro e o corazón --pero é que o de Erín Moure é moito. En serio, proxectos literarios como os desta muller, send them all my way porque me insuflan varios anos de vida ao lelos:

'And work on what the subject is. Is this to do with trobar. To trobar these days is caer. CAER. TO FALL. Mundo exemplar. With the weight on existence. When this falling exists, I know existence does too.'

'O que é espectral no cancioneiro é o sopro. Ce souffle qui sort à même le corps, a respiración non pas entre mais à l'intérieur des mots. "Cela parle, un fantôme."'

'O cadoiro is, literally, the place where falling is made. In Galician, cadoiro is one word for waterfall. Cataract, perhaps. Thus, the fall. This to me is the place of poetry, for whoever writes poetry must be prepared, ever, to fall down.
(...) The poems of the medieval Iberian songs, written in Galician-Portuguese, set aside God and history to turn toward... another human. Lyric was the fulcrum of this turn, and Galician its human language, for it was never ecclesiastical and never the language of history, but the idiom of emigration and of place's longing, of the beloved, of the bereft. In these poems, Dante's salvation narrative was not yet operative.'

E aínda nin mencionei a fodida marabilla que son as fotografías dos poemas "intervidos." Por subliñar, subliñei até isto que lle di a unha persoa chamada Oana Avasilichioaei nos agradecementos xd:

'for her irreplaceable axudas e axitacións, and for bringing me back to poetry's place of falling when I had fallen silent.'

Sobre os agradecementos necesito ademais engadir que o feito de que proban que Lisa Robertson leu todo isto faime bastante feliz e tamén me voa bastante a cabeza.

Non sei moi ben nin que acabo de escribir. Ceci n'est pas unha reseña pero estou: moi contenta. Cando poida volver circular libremente espero deixar de facer este uso desquiciado das reseñas de goodreads-perdón-grazas.

[Patch · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think i took a class on cantigas at an sca event? dont think i retained much though. part of me wishes I could better understand the non-english bits, part of me thinks languages are more beautiful when I dont understand them, and part of me thinks the shitty google translations I did might be best demonstration of the authors intended message about the inadequacy of language. which is a beautiful thought because it means the inadequacy of language can be accepted and turned into something meaningful on its own. im also reading the body in pain by Elaine scarry, and she talks a bit about language as an extension of ones own body, which is an interesting concept when applied to this book, especially the footnotes.

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am a sucker for the photographed poems commissioned by Ben Lerner. The red string tentatively binding the strips into place. As with many of Moure's books there is an ongoing betweenness by virtue of which the origin of the language, though often attributed to another, can never be trusted as anything other than othered language. A little jewel of a book, a troubadourian fall--the cascade of love, whoredom, and translation.

[Ricardo Traductor]

Great book!

[Alex Obrigewitsch · Rating 2 out of 5]

A saying of the fall of man, of Man's turn from God to the other Man, ie. Woman. Are they really translations, or reworkings and transcriptions of Moure's own? What is translation? The word that turns, passing between the one and the other, what it carries over and what it loses in its turn and its passing?

[Peter]

again. I like her. these poems are smart or something. There is an effort to combine criticism and poetry that is not uninteresting even as I am not quite convinced. I read another volume as well. But the name escapes me