You’ve said that you consider language sacred. There is something soulful in this perspective. As a poet/writer, how do you write silence? As a translator, how do you read, translate, or remap silence in the Hebrew texts you work on?

If your goal is success in the conventional sense, rather than a given intensity of experience or quality of composition, there won’t be time for silence. But poetry takes time. Literally and figuratively. Time enters into the fibers and figures of a poem, into the sound and space that bind its letters and lines.

I know it’s not exactly fashionable, but I do think of language as “sacred” in that nothing is more basic to our being alive in the world — among other users of words and in history. If you add to that a secularized quasi-Kabbalistic belief in language as the very material of creation, and a reflection of the forces sustaining existence, this sense begins to take on some imaginative substance. But just because one has a particular notion doesn’t mean that one will necessarily act in a particular manner. Belief in the sacred aspect of language could as easily lead one to violence as to pacifism, or to silence as to cacophony — “a joyful noise unto the Lord,” a talking in tongues, a proliferation of textual commentary, or blather about the “spiritual.”

That said, the question of, as you put it, writing silence, or how silence might be translated or remapped, does go to the heart of the kind of work I’ve been trying to do for a long time now. In my most recent book of poems, Things on Which I’ve Stumbled, there is a section in “Notes on Bewilderment,” that addresses all this:

If your goal is success in the conventional sense, rather than a given intensity of experience or quality of composition, there won’t be time for silence. But poetry takes time. Literally and figuratively. Time enters into the fibers and figures of a poem, into the sound and space that bind its letters and lines. And if you don’t give a poem and a poetry time, life won’t enter into it. On the other hand, too much silence and you have only that, or worse — sanctimony, a failure to respond, which is an abdication of responsibility.

As for the dual processes of writing and translating, could you elaborate about the remapping they involve?

When time is giving form to a poem — mine or someone else’s — when, syllable by syllable, it becomes a critical part of the poem’s in-formation, the poem provides a complicated kind of pleasure that is also a carrier of wisdom. And at the heart of that sensation is audition — hearing and being heard. …to hear something as complex as another person’s speech, or to truly hear anything, in order for it to impress itself upon you, you have to be silent. (“The narrow mind is the discontented one,” says W.S. Landor in a poem. “There is pleasure in wisdom, there is wisdom in pleasure.”) In order to hear something as complex as another person’s speech, or to truly hear anything, in order for it to impress itself upon you, you have to be silent. That goes for hearing the emergence of a so-called original poem as it begins to take sonic and conceptual shape in your mind, and it also goes for registering the textures and dynamics and emphases of a poem in another language before you begin translating it into your own (which is to say, as you read). You have to know what it is, or wants to be. Not perfectly — which is impossible — but deeply, with its subtle variations of sound and lack of sound, before you can give it new articulation. And much, though not all, of that knowledge comes through a listening and a hearing — which is to say, out of silence.

The fourteenth-century Spanish (and sometimes Hebrew) poet Santob de Carrión put this marvelously in an epigram:

To what extent are your choices — linguistic and with regard to imagery — when translating intuitive?

It’s always a combination of intuition and tradition, information and transformation. Although poets can revise, and I certainly do (extensively), the improvisatory aspect of the whole enterprise is critical for me — both in the composition of my own poems and in my translation of work by others. That moment of initial and ongoing physical contact with the materials of the real, or the imagination, or a foreign poem —which is also a listening — will to a large extent determine the quality of what eventually emerges as the poem in English. And again, this holds for whether we’re talking about original writing or translation. In the end, it’s all a matter of composition — of putting words in a row so that they might do something meaningful and memorable.

How would you describe the energies of your poetry?

I wouldn’t.

You once said that you recognized in your translation work poetry that will eventually lead you to your own voice. Do you find yourself embattled or battling with other voices when switching gears from dense translation to writing? (Does anything “happen” in-between these two creative processes?)

I tend not to think of poetry in terms of “voice” — and I’m guessing I said the translation would or might lead me to my own poetry. Which is what happened. It’s very much like the dialectic between silence and sound we just talked about. It’s not that first there is silence and then there’s sound and composition. It’s that the two are always in tension. Likewise with writing my own poetry and writing my own translations (or translating the poetry of others). Sometimes the transition between these activities is smooth, but more often than not it is, in fact, something of an agon if not an outright psychomachia. One can only hear so much at once. I usually have to tune out all the other voices I’m drawn to in order to hear the poem or poems that might be written. And vice versa. And that process isn’t always pretty. On the other hand, it is extremely rich. And once I’ve made the shift or crossed the threshold I actually enjoy the spontaneous return or resurrection of other voices.

As for what “happens” in between the two creative processes, the answer is: “Everything and nothing.” It’s all rather mysterious, and I like it that way.

From Rift (1988) to Things On Which I’ve Stumbled (2008), your poems evolve from an architecture of thoughts and images to different linguistic registers. What ingredients constitute the important poetic layer for your writings? How do you relate to image, and what are your biases?

It should be clear by now that sound is central for me: the range of acoustic options that English affords for texture, linkage, and effective surface tension. But I’m also increasingly interested in syntax and inclusiveness, the ability to speak clearly while also ranging widely and attempting to fold into the movement of verse things that aren’t easily said or generally talked about. On the whole I think it would be accurate to say that I want every part of a given work to be doing just that: work — whether I’ve written it, translated it, or edited and published it. Imagery is the least of it.

I am interested in your musical ear. What music draws you?

I listen to all kinds of music, and frequently. I love Near Eastern classical music (usually for voice and oud, or small ensemble). Byrd is a favorite among Western composers, and of course Glenn Gould. At the moment I’m listening to a lot of Schumann, piano works performed by Peter Frankl, who is one of the most sensitive interpreters of music I’ve encountered in years, and whose playing as part of a chamber ensemble (with Kyung-Wha Chung and others) I find utterly magical. I’m also wild about the tenor Ian Bostridge — his English Songbook, his Schubert lieder and Schumann songs. I love the English song tradition generally — Ivor Gurney (as composer and poet), and Gerald Finzi, to start with. I also listen to a lot of jazz piano (Bill Evans, Art Tatum, Monk, among others) and singers like Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett, Louis Armstrong. And there’s always Dylan. And Elvis Costello. These are all musicians who have an impeccable and distinctive rhythmic touch, and who achieve an uncanny kind of counterpoint among the various elements that combine in their sound. My favorite rock band for the past few years has been Fountains of Wayne — geniusy lyrics (“The night I can’t remember with the girl I can’t forget”), extraordinary layering of historical tones, and just fabulously inventive combinations of word and melodic line. They’re the smartest band I’ve encountered, and also offer the most pleasure.

As writer, translator, and editor of an independent publishing press, you juggle many creative projects and responsibilities. Do you have a work routine?

Only that I try to show up every day, preferably early. The poet John Wieners once said something that has stayed with me. When asked what his method was, he said, “Arm against the hard brown desk.”

Obviously there is a certain amount of juggling going on, but really no more than everyone is engaged with: work, family, writing, friends, service of a sort. I often try to compartmentalize — but things tend to spill over from one area of engagement to another, and in the long run that’s for the better.

Beyond the page (outside of literature), how would you like to reach out towards a wider humanity?

Good literature is, as I see it, already “beyond the page,” as it moves into people’s lives. But I also take real pleasure in reading poems in public, and I enjoy teaching and take that encounter seriously. There are also sporadic periods of direct or indirect political engagement. All that and daily life as it takes shape all around me is humanity enough.

Peter Cole
BY Lynn Saville
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE POET

How do you nourish yourself spiritually once you step out of your writing life into the so-called banal quotidian world? That is, how do you keep your inquisitiveness alive and constantly stay alert?

I don’t find the quotidian world banal at all — at least not usually, and so long as shopping malls are kept out of the equation. Everything’s interesting, at least in principle, though “staying open,” as I think the great dance critic and poet Edwin Denby once wrote, “is everyone’s problem.” As for how to stay open — well, for one, there’s luck. That is, letting oneself stumble onto (and sometimes into) things and allowing them to lead to other things one might never have noticed. I also have a tendency to rotate the literary crops — in terms of period and mode, content and form. And I have a weakness for challenging projects, so I have no choice but to learn new things and enter new worlds. That’s been a blessing. Moreover, my wife, who is also a writer, is extremely curious, and both reads and gets out a lot. So, if all else fails — as it often does — I can always just check in with her.