HEART OVER HEAD

happy international women’s day <3 

“As you read a book word by word and page by page, you participate in its creation, just as a cellist playing a Bach suite participates, note by note, in the creation, the coming-to-be, the existence, of the music. And, as you read and re-read, the book of course participates in the creation of you, your thoughts and feelings, the size and temper of your soul.”

“I know how unqualified I am to attempt my own translation — I hold no doctorate, no professorship, no permission-slip at all — I am merely a woman who loves this poem. The task of translation itself, however, does not feel unfamiliar to me, not only due to translating my own poems, but because the process feels so close to homemaking. In Italian, the word stanza means ‘room’. If there are times when I feel ill-equipped and daunted by the expertise of those who have walked these rooms before me, I reassure myself that I am simply homemaking, and this thought steadies, because tending to a room is a form of labour I know that I can attempt as well as anyone.”