 M. A. ISTVAN JR., although a university professor, actually makes most of his money now as a method translator of AAVE. In light of his extreme efforts to ensure sincere and emotionally expressive translation, Jet Magazine has in fact dubbed him the Daniel-Day-Lewis of his craft. For instance, he might sip Tempranillo from a Burgundy glass when translating to Standard English and swig Boone’s Farms from a brown-bagged bottle when translating the other way. Visit his page at https://txstate.academia.edu/MichaelIstvanJr. Twenty-Three Angles on Wonder 1 Insecurity about being too inexperienced for her-- and yet did you ever wonder if she, in her life now, looks no longer for those men (but for one like you)? 2 Wondering, some days, whose life this is. 3 Wondering whether the kid is going on and on simply because he is a kid, or because he senses our need for the distraction of his voice. 4 Looking back and forth, from object to seer’s face, trying to intersect the thread of wonder. 5 Wondering whether marital affairs disappear from the record after a certain length of time. 6 Armageddon on the horizon, the God-teen wonders whether she should practice going without TV and cookies or enjoy them while the last. 7 Passing things down being such a primal joy, no wonder the insane lengths gone by parents of those who accept only the host culture. 8 Wondering whether it would seem prudish to drop-cloth the place in plastic and have gift bags of lube for each orgy member. 9 Stutterers wondering whether they are so shy because they stutter or that they stutter because they are so shy. 10 Stealing the offerings to the gods all these years, you start to wonder whether you might be a god. 11 When our delight in something grows past a point, is there much wonder why delight withers in those around us? 12 Alone and wondering if anyone is thinking of you right now. 13 How much of our advances in knowledge is born less from wonder than from a wickedness in seeing people stripped of naïve beliefs? 14 What do we let slip (into the) past with all our time wondering how we let things—weekends, vacations—slip past? 15 Spring cleaning wonder at how you could have been the child in the photo. 16 Wondering whether the family priest was contributing to your son’s confusion as he tried to ease yours: “He’ll grow out of it.” 17 Unable to reach around himself so far, the mom wonders who—which friend-- helped tape the bomb to her son’s chest? 18 Mothers wondering, not whether you had a good time, but whether you were the prettiest at the party. 19 Wondering how to get the beloved out of your house, not knowing what to do or say next. 20 Watching the one next to you sleep wondering how such a face might one day break your heart. 21 Wondering whether you were liked because of your race or in spite of it. 22 Is that regular mode of life following a great victory a chance to reflect and reenergize, or one to wonder why you did not simply kill yourself in the climax? 23 Wondering why you have lived so long. Townhouse Community Jobsite Legs hang from the back door, the deck yet to be built. Salami sandwich warm with summer, mayo clear. Skin and clothes and air one in dampness. Speckled hands open Dostoyevsky on a painter’s lunch break. Declawing the Poet Why do we so widely tolerate the poetry that is purposely obscure, weird and inane for its own sake, when we hate poetry so much? Why do we keep around the poetry that is intentionally incomprehensible when we are at war with the art, a war now simply to prevent its support and efficacy? We need such poetry—cryptic and private, untranslatable and inaccessible—for our identity as enemy of poetry. Unworthy of study, it is the Jew for the antisemite. It reminds us why we hate poetry. Shelves stay stocked so that our disgust and our mocking never dies. The obscurantists paint themselves as radicals, the most committed to the fight, failing to see that they are the chief fuel of their enemy. Of course, they need their enemy too. That, plus the formula always enticing for the indolent-- the more incomprehensible the more profound-- is perhaps what keeps them going. But their role is more than providing fuel for their enemy. It is also to ensure that they themselves remain disempowered. For to glorify the obscure is to glorify flabbiness of mind. And what is best for us? That our enemies stay declawed, especially when they do not need us to do the clipping. Some phenomena, the obscurantist might say, are not so clear, and the expressions about them reflect that. This sounds like a good comeback. It seems reasonable to say that it is best for language to match the phenomena it describes. But you can be clear, succinct, and organized when describing how the phenomena is so rich in complication that rendering it in language will always leave something behind. And you can be clear, succinct, organized when describing what you do end up describing of that phenomena. Fancy polysyllables, forced deviations from ordinary speak, can be avoided. Repeated Play 1 Once I was the little boy lunging to hug my father as he growled and contorted low in a demonic pose. Now I wait around the corner for my son, squatting hunched with claws up, baring teeth in my monster breathing. 2 The lunging hug and pouting are meant to knock the father from whatever force appears to have overtaken him. Mixed in there as well is hope to avoid prolonging the terror in some vain chase if, indeed, the father has been taken over. Fighting Temptation He tries to handle threats to his goodness, his virtue, by regarding such threats, such temptations, as confirmation of his virtue. And so he says to his heart, “Goodness is a comfortless state. These new temptations are flooding in not because my resolve is petering out. Virtue is a lodestone for temptation. Mine is so big that much is being drawn from quarters previously unknown.” The pride he shows in his achievement is not a boasting to others; it is not vanity.-- The will to stay good itself might be, though.
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