Intimate Distortions

by Steve McCaffery

On a hard rock in the past, overlooking a wonderful blue sea with the hot sun shining down, somebody writes a love poem and puts it to sea in an old bottle. Centuries later, with the same sun shining, someone else picks up the bottle in a dark bar and drinks the contents. `Bring back the future', shouts a cloud in the sky. It is from the central predicaments staed in this anecdote that this book springs. Employing a translation system known as `allusive referential' McCaffery invents a way of avoiding the strictures of classical translation. Developing all the suggestions and connotations of Sappho's words and phrases, new texts are produced which are at the same time vital re-readings of the originals. Irreverent, yet executed in a spirit of love and respect, Intimate Distortions curves gracefully (and occasionally naughtily) away from the strict linear dictates of authorized translation to produce poems of delightful misprision.

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Hardcover

First published September 15, 1979

About the author

Steve McCaffery is the author of over twenty-five books of poetry and criticism. He has twice been awarded the Gertrude Stein Award for innovative poetry and twice shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award. His poems have been published in more than a dozen countries. A long-time resident of Toronto, he is currently the David Gray Professor of Poetry and Letters, University at Buffalo.

Reviews

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

there are no words for it,
only a vehement hieroglyphic
designating the impossible
meeting of matter and spirit.

- Antonin Artaud

so the fragments go on
and this

the wreck if a doing
on the thighs

of a sculptural lamb
in a place called

palace or text

- pg. 5

* * *

and the gossip of people
goes on


& the eggs fry

& the wildest flowers get plucked


hens feathers for
their petals

- pg. 13

* * *

she wrote
orgasm


the dawn

a girl goes down on
another girl

and she causes her pain
and she spells it


sundown

- pg. 52

* * *

i am around you
your parenthesis

i dont know what
you know if

even knowing you
know anything

but of two minds
to form a horn

some other blows

- pg. 69