The Galloping Hour: French Poems

by Alejandra Pizarnik, Patricio Ferrari (Translator), Forrest Gander (Translator)

A beautifully produced and exquisitely translated edition of French poems by “the best exponent of the poetry of introversion and metaphorical delirium” (Italo Calvino)  The Galloping French Poems ―never before rendered in English and unpublished during her lifetime―gathers for the first time all the poems that Alejandra Pizarnik (revered by Octavio Paz and Roberto Bolano) wrote in French. Conceived during her Paris sojourn (1960–1964) and in Buenos Aires (1970–1971) near the end of her tragically short life, these poems explore many of Pizarnik’s deepest the limitation of language, silence, the body, night, sex, and the nature of intimacy. Drawing from personal life experiences and echoing readings of some of her beloved/accursed French authors―Charles Baudelaire, Germain Nouveau, Arthur Rimbaud, and Antonin Artaud―this collection includes prose poems that Pizarnik would later translate into Spanish. Pizarnik’s work led Raúl Zurita to “Her poetry―with a clarity that becomes piercing―illuminates the abysses of emotional sensitivity, desire, and absence. It presses against our lives and touches the most exposed, fragile, and numb parts of humanity.” 

Genres: Poetry, France

96 pages, Paperback

First published July 31, 2018

About the author

Born in Buenos Aires to Russian parents who had fled Europe and the Nazi Holocaust, Alejandra Pizarnik was destined for literary greatness as well as an early death. She died from an ostensibly self-administered overdose of barbiturates on 25 September 1972. A few words scribbled on a slate that same month, reiterating her desire to go nowhere "but to the bottom," sum up her lifelong aspiration as a human being and as a writer. The compulsion to head for the "bottom" or "abyss" points to her desire to surrender to nothingness in an ultimate experience of ecstasy and poetic fulfillment in which life and art would be fused, albeit at her own risk. "Ojalá pudiera vivir solamente en éxtasis, haciendo el cuerpo del poema con mi cuerpo" (If I could only live in nothing but ecstasy, making the body of the poem with my body).

Reviews

[Edita · Rating 5 out of 5]

All day long I hear the noise of moaning water. My memory, my bloody place, my archaic angel bitten by the wind. All day I sleep moaning while words fall like shredded water, I fall moaning, I remember the water’s noise falling through my dream of you. All night I listen to the steps of something coming for me. All night I delineate in my eyes the form of your eyes. All night I’m swimming your waters, drowning in my eyes become your eyes. All night I speak with your voice and tell myself what you silence. All night you rain over me, rain of water-hands that drown me. All night and all day long I contemplate the blue stains on a wall, each passing hour pining for the obscene word that will form your face. I don’t abandon this place of recognition, only relinquish it when you arrive. And all day long I sleep moaning. I remember the wind, all night I think of the wind that comes to me and abides in me. My memory, a frenetic bird on the gray beach under the cold wind that comes and comes on again and won’t leave. The wind in me, you in me, all night I cry remembering the water falling and the cold shore under the gray wind. Where is your archaic knowledge? – they ask me. Where is your silence? All night I hear the noise of my weeping face. And it’s the course to your natal place, to your pure suffering. All night under the unknown rain. To me they’ve offered one silence full of forms – you say. And you go off desolate as the sole bird in the wind.

[Emily Laurent-Monaghan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Memory near oblivion. Far death
the voice grinds and vibrates and trembles
the wind denies
the wind lies
the vain wind
the hand hides
the holy hand
the sent saint
the saint inseminated
by the wind that lies
I lie
I deny
I lie down
from gold and from grind

If you think the prose in the English is beautiful. . .

Souvenir pres de l'oubli. Mort lointaine.
la voix grince et trepide et tremble
le vent dement
le vent ment
le vain vent
la main ment
la main sainte
la sainte enceinte
par le vent qui ment
je mens
je m'en demens
je m'endors
d'or et d'ouir

My my

[Peycho Kanev · Rating 4 out of 5]

SEX, NIGHT

Once again, someone falls in their first falling – fall of the two bodies, of the two eyes, of four green eyes or eight green eyes if we count those born in the mirror (at midnight, in the purest fear, in loss), you haven’t been able to recognize the voice of your dull silence, to behold the earthly messages scrawled in the middle of one mad state, when the body is a glass and from ourselves and from the other we drink some sort of impossible water.
Desire needlessly spills on me a cursed liqueur. For my thirsting thirst, what can the promise of contact with your eyes do? I speak of something not in this world. I speak of someone whose purpose is elsewhere.
And I was naked in memory of the white night. Drunk, and I made love all night, just like a sick dog.
Sometimes we suffer too much reality in the space of a single night. We get undressed, we’re horrified. We’re aware the mirror sounds like a watch, the mirror from which your cry will pour out, your laceration.
Night opens itself only once. It’s enough. You see. You’ve seen. Fear of being two in the mirror, and suddenly we’re four. We cry, we sob, my fear, my joy more horrible than my fear, my obscene words, my words which are keys locking me into a mirror, with you, but ever alone. I know the nature of night. We’ve fallen so completely into jaws which couldn’t fathom this sacrifice, this condemnation of my seeing eyes. I speak of a discovery: felt the I in sex, sex in the I. I speak of burying everyday fear to secure the fear of an instant. The abyss of absence. But who’ll say: don’t cry at night? Because madness is a lie too. Like night. Like death.

Memory near oblivion. Far death
the voice grinds and vibrates and trembles
the wind denies
the wind lies
the vain wind
the hand hides
the holy hand
the sent saint
the saint inseminated
by the wind that lies
I lie
I deny
I lie down
from gold and from grind
these demented hands are mine
my holy hands
inseminated by your shadow
I collapse
I touch myself
a flower’s gesture
frail
cold
I offer myself awfully
abyss frost
I offer myself
you frighten me
I offer myself
I don’t give a fuck

[Zoe Tuck]

Is it possible to make a book like this while one is still alive? Do scans of handwriting and drawing become more interesting posthumously as kind of somatic record?

[Carolina Garrido Cepeda · Rating 4 out of 5]

La nota al final donde Patricio Ferrari explica el origen de esta selección y el procedimiento de traducción es muy, muy interesante. Amé su concepto de "transcreación".

[Mark Eisner · Rating 5 out of 5]

these poems through deft and delightful translation and editing gallop through the heart as you read the stunning verses and lines that just bring you up by their reins (?) ;0

[John Allen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alejandra Pizarnik is a poet I've always wanted to see translated into English, even though this seems a little rushed for the holidays. There's lots of untranslated stuff.

Some of the prose poems and individual poems are so direct and visceral that it just has an immediate effect upon reading. There's no need of mediation.

"Once again, someone falls in their first falling--fall of the two bodies, of the two eyes, of four green eyes or eight green eyes of we count those born in the mirror (at midnight, in the purest fear, in loss), you haven't been able to recognize the voice of your dull silence, to behold the earthly messages scrawled in the middle of one frenzied state, when the body is a glass from ourselves and from the other we drink some sort of impossible water."

It reads like her most productive period was in Paris, and that for even a willed person such as this, she had used a lot of her creative energy and was not happy with having to leave. Otherwise her death seems a little abrupt. A great prose poet.

[r. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Je voudrais vivre pour écrire. Non penser à autre chose qu’à écrire. Je ne prétend pas l’amour ni l’argent. Je ne veux pas penser, ni construire décemment ma vie. Je veux de la paix: lire, étudier, gagner un peu d’argent pour m’independiser de ma famille, et écrire.
*
je me vois nue
entre les déchets
qu’on rejette
chacun son lieu
de hurler
et de dire
une absence
chacun son absence
j’ai choisi
je suis pure
j’ai bue pour le revoir
au fond du vin
ton cri en vain

[Briana · Rating 5 out of 5]

wind, eyes, night

[Eileen]

tbh i remember almost nothing of this bc it’s been a looking at words as im falling asleep kinda situation but i love the drawings at the end

[Hind · Rating 5 out of 5]

"We die of fatigue here. We’d love to offer ourselves as quickly as possible. Someone has invented this sinister plan: a return to the archaic gaze, a going toward the expectation figured by two blue eyes in the black dust. Silence is temptation and promise."

[Phoebe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Deeply introspective. But not my flavour.

[Tatyana · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Naked. Fatigue of the body transparent as a glass-tree. Near yourself you hear the brutal rumor of inextricable desire. Night blindly mine. You’re farther gone than me. Horror of checking for you in the screams of my poem. Your name is the disease of things at midnight. They had promised me one silence. Your face is closer to me than my own. Phantom memory. How I’d love to kill you – "
-- "Naked"

"the back of the curtain
makes love to the wind"

"With crystal chords I play love’s very tune
In soft falling rain that allays my wound"

"All night I delineate in my eyes the form of your eyes. All night I’m swimming your waters, drowning in my eyes become your eyes. All night I speak with your voice and tell myself what you silence."

"Return once again. Your inexpressible face revealed to me the inner tearing. Your eyes blind everything, even the night, your name written inside me."

"All night you rain over me, rain of water-hands that drown me. All night and all day long I contemplate the blue stains on a wall, each passing hour pining for the obscene word that will form your face. I don’t abandon this place of recognition, only relinquish it when you arrive."


“And now
what will I do
with all this time
that forms my life
with all these people
who care nothing for me
now,
that you’ve left
all these nights
why, for whom
and this morning
for nothing returning my heart banging
for whom why
banging gravely,gravely,and now
how to face up to
that nothingness
my life slipping
o friends
be gentle
you know well
we have nothing to do with it
And now
what will I do
now
that you …”
-- "And Now"

[Jared Levine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alejandra Pizarnik is amazing, and these translations were well done. I appreciated the introduction—giving context to the Parisian-hype of the era that drew Pizarnik to Paris. I found the concept of collecting the poems written in French by a writer not known for writing in french to be interesting. A valuable contribution to those interested in Pizarnik.

For me, these weren’t the most moving of Pizarnik’s work. I enjoyed this, but didn’t love it. Would recommend to any francophiles out there.

[Lily]

little vignettes... at times these felt more like diary entries than fully-formed poems, but it's always lovely to get something so raw from a poet you love. i enjoyed how personal it was: the inclusion of her drawings captioned w/one-liners. but i wouldn't recommend this to people reading pizarnik for the first time.

[Emilia]

Hace mucho que no leía poesía y no sé como sentirme con esta. Pensé que la iba a sufrir más y todo pero no sé. Creo que el tema general es la soledad o al menos esa es la interpretacion que le doy. No se me queda tanto :(

[Shannon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pizarnik is one of my absolute favorites. Her collected poems in Spanish and her diaries are two books that I return to regularly. I was very excited to read this book of previously unpublished work in French, but I have to say that this book seems thin and hastily done, (1) thin, because the number of poems is minimal and around half the book reproduces manuscript pages, (2) hastily done because the introduction and translation leave something to be desired. The introduction contains some infelicities, such as "periods of debilitating mental health" (pg. 10), where illness would have been an obvious better choice of wording. Perhaps an oversight, but something that an editor should have caught. Other choices I challenge more strongly, and I do so saying that often, complaints about translation sound pedantic, even to me, the person who is about to complain about translation. However, this *is* a bilingual edition and Pizarnik *is* one of my favorites. So, the poem on page 20 begins with "Si pour une fois de nouveau..." and ends with "Si pour une fois encore." These are translated "If for once again..." and "If again each time." Why destroy the repetition in English, the interrupted circularity? Other choices bother me too, such as the translation of the French "regard" with "regard" in English, when "look" or even "glance" would have been in keeping with the tone. Or "colérique" translated as "choleric" when "angry" or "short tempered" would have worked well. The pained literalness of the Latinate translation entirely misses Pizarnik's poetry. This brings me to what I suspect is the root of my discomfort with this book: it feels like French is an adornment, meant to lend some sort of authenticity to the text along with the manuscript pages. The reader is not meant to read or interpret the French, but instead absorb the aura of Frenchness that the poems have and that the introduction sets up as the lure of modernist Paris. As a reader, I find this off-putting and contrived. Most of all, I think it undersells Pizarnik to an audience that, I suspect, could use a more careful edition that would help fully appreciate her beautiful verse.

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alejandra Pizarnik’s style of poetry is really sparse, yet some of her lines and words pack so much punch. The lack of punctuation and resulting ambiguity is a double-edged sword, but ultimately I think that makes reading her a richer experience, because you’ll be able to find new meanings and appreciation each time. Her sense of wordplay is fun and powerful, which I especially love because of the fact that French isn’t even her first language.

The translation faltered a bit sometimes, though. There are certain words that lost meaning from the original in my opinion, where I might have translated it differently.

I’m super glad I own this, so I can return to it over and over again.

[Samantha · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really loved The Galloping Hour by Alejandra Pizarnik. It's made up of prose poems and poems using verse. Pizarnik's poetry is fascinatingly elusive and open to interpretation. I related very much to this work.

Certain elements, similar lines, and variations on the same ideas are present throughout The Galloping Hour. Things carry over from one poem to the next, and build on each other. There is a recurring motif of eyes, and eyes within eyes. These poems deal with alienation, loss, and rejection. They're a plea, a cry of desperation. They also give off a vibe of being close to death but not giving a fuck. A continuous theme is the speaker having nothing left to live for now that the person they're addressing is gone.

The Galloping Hour is often ominous, scary, and bleak. It contains frightening imagery. The poems possess an unusual use of language with with surprising arrangements of words. I was impressed by the innovation and enthralled by the mysterious meanings. The book also contains drawings by Pizarnik with her captions describing them. Reading those captions, I kept going, If this ain't me. They're great representations of mental illness, anguish, and torment. You can feel the inner struggle.

I loved the wild, strange alchemy of The Galloping Hour. Pizarnik's poetry is a wonderful swirl of words. This was very much my kind of poetry collection.

[Cassie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not sure how fair it is to rate a collection of poetry in translation, to be honest. Translation seems like such a difficult and personal art (especially for poetry: what do you prioritize? The literal meaning? The rhythm and melody of the language? The tone? The form? The connotative meaning?), that it seems like making a judgement call on the translation and/or the original text feels odd. Especially when you don't speak both languages—like, who am I to judge? I can't speak or read French.
But the disconnect is felt here. I love translations where you can feel that they're a translation, and that traces of the original language echo throughout. Maybe my disconnect here comes from the fact that I don't feel that, that the texture of the translations is far flatter than the original text. And that is probably more on the nature of English and French as languages than it is an indication of the quality of the translation.
I'm not sure. I've read this multiple times, and I plan to revisit it to give it another shot, but as it stands, I just don't really connect with it.

[Kokelector · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cuando amas te encuentras en la encrucijada de saber si sigues siendo lo más importante para tu cerebro y decisiones. Puedes caer en el completo olvido de tu ser, de quién eres y quizás, hacia dónde te puedes dirigir. Pizarnik, en estos versos plasma esas emociones que no pueden habitar más allá de saberse dueña de una amor que le es esquivo. Este plaquette de 13 poemas, inéditos en español, traen a la memoria personal esos amores que existieron y dejaron mella por lo trágico (es una historia que se repite hasta el hartazgo) y su autora deja en tinta cómo fue ir acostumbrando la memoria al olvido: (...)”Te busco en el viento. No eres un grito. Pero te busco en el viento.” (...) “no olvides tus ojos/ porque es ahí donde yo habito.” (...).

[Carolina · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is so much immediacy, urgency and passion in her words. Words are a way for salvation from the night of the soul...
This is so different from other, more intellectual or contemporary poetry. These poems feel intensely personal; in some measure you can find a parallel to Plath.

[Briana · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lovely little book of poems. I recommend reading if you’re studying French and if you’re genuinely in love with words. The English translations are really good but it doesn’t have the same magic as the original poems in French.

[Cody Stetzel · Rating 4 out of 5]

What lovely poems, loving and lovely and terrifying. The drawings and etchings accompanying the work are engaging and I can't wait to read more Pizarnik.

[Bobbi Phillips · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finally, beautiful translations of Alejandra's work, and some great background on the poet, herself.

[Melisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

The translations are just perfect. And Alejandra's poems are beautifully breathtaking as always.

[Marc Nash · Rating 4 out of 5]

Video review https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8al3...

[LA.]

in my mind this is how on-the-verge-of-a-breakdown late-night smoking from the balcony of a quaint parisian apartment feels like

"toute la nuit je me noie dans tes yeux qui sont mes yeux"

"They tell me: choose the silence or the dream. But I agree with my wide-open eyes going toward – going toward, never vacillating from – this zone of voracious light that will devour your eyes."

“naked. fatigue of the body transparent as a glass-tree. near yourself you hear the brutal rumor of inextricable desire. night blindly mine. you're farther gone than me. horror of checking for you in the screams of my poem. your name is the disease of things at midnight. they had promised me one silence. your face is closer to me than my own. phantom memory. how i'd love to kill you –”

my top fave (bc maybe the title alone nearly made me sob a little):

I check for you in the wind

"I check for you in the wind. You’re not a cry. But I check for you in the wind.
Night opens me and it’s you.
Return once again. Your inexpressible face revealed to me the inner tearing. Your eyes blind everything, even the night, your name written inside me.
Return as ever. Your eyes are my only conveyance to death’s other face.
Each word is you begging to utter it. Each word is the long invitation to memory.

Return, while night clatters and mirrors open and everything tears inside because of your absence. Everything wants to get on with the wind, the sky. To register a terrible gesture, some way of being without you, an impossible.
Your eyes begin in my eyes which no longer see you. Begin in my voice which no longer speaks to you. Die out in my hands which no longer touch you. Your eyes are inscribed in my flesh. No one can bear to see me now. Sinister tattoo. I do the rain, I do the sun. For want of your eyes in my eyes.”

in french bc it looks sexy:

“Je te cherche dans le vent. Tu n’es pas un cri. Mais je te cherche dans le vent.
La nuit m’ouvre et c’est toi.
Reviens encore une fois. Ton visage inexprimable m’a dit ce qu’est ma déchirure. Tes yeux aveuglent tout, même la nuit, ton nom écrit en moi.
Reviens comme toujours. Tes yeux sont mon seul mouvement vers l’autre face de la mort.
Chaque mot c’est toi qui le veux dire. Chaque mot est une longue initiation au souvenir.

Reviens, pendant que la nuit sonne et les miroirs s’ouvrent et tout se déchire dans son être à cause de ton absence. Tout veut avoir des rapports avec le vent, le ciel. Pour chercher un geste terrible, une manière d’être sans toi, un impossible.
Tes yeux commencent dans mes yeux qui ne te voient plus. Ils commencent dans ma voix qui ne te parle plus. Ils meurent dans mes mains qui ne te touchent plus. Tes yeux se dessinent sur ma peau. Je suis atroce à voir maintenant. Sinistre tatouage. Je fais la pluie et le soleil. À défaut de tes yeux dans mes yeux.”

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una colección que nos entrega 13 poemas que Pizarnik escribe en Francia por primera vez editados como conjunto en español por Cuadro de tiza. La edición en bilingüe, muy bien cuidada como ya es tradición por la editorial chilena.
Los poemas exploran el diálogo de Pizarnik con un otro ausente que se construye sobre su propio reflejo. Si los leemos como una unidad los poemas exploran los desequilibrios que se oponen en el silencio y la sobreabundancia de voces que plagan los pensamientos de la voz poética.
Una buena entrada a la poesía de Pizarnik en español ya que hoy en día es difícil encontrar otros textos que no sean las poesías completas editadas, siendo estas últimas bastante intimidantes para un lector que recién quiere conocer las particulares de la poeta.

[Kimmy ♡ · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I offer myself
you frighten me

I offer myself
I don’t give a fuck”

Pizarnik writes like a downpour in Paris, where I lay, and would happily die. Honest. She's heavy droplets of direct, raw prose that wash over you and leave you cold, frozen in the spot. She stings. She makes my heart sing. I'm alarmed at how her works in Spanish were perfectly translated (there were some bits). Unsure how French natives feel about the translations, my native language(s) are Roman, and the sentence structures crisscross. Still, I want to dust off my French after this.

“my language is the priestess”