Terese Coe
Terese Coe holds an M.A. in dramatic literature, and first wrote professionally
as a drama critic for The Rocky Mountain Review in Salt Lake City, then
as a columnist for The Wood River Journal in Idaho. She has taught
poetry workshops for advanced English students in Kathmandu, Nepal and for
children in Idaho; has written several plays about artists and writers in New
York; has worked for periodicals in positions which ranged from paste-up to writer
to editor-in-chief; and was an actor with The Committee Workshop and the God's
Eye Theatre in San Francisco in the late 60s. She has traveled widely and given
readings in Nepal as well as at St. Mark's Church and The Cedar Tavern in NY,
was a 2000 and 2002 recipient of Giorno Poetry Systems grants and a 2003-4
finalist in the Willis Barnstone Translation Prize. She now lives in
downtown Manhattan, where she teaches English composition. Her poems, translations,
adaptations and reviews have appeared or will soon appear
in Poetry, Threepenny Review, Nimrod, The Evansville Review, Blue Unicorn,
The Shakespeare Newsletter, The Formalist, Light, First Things, Orbis (UK),
Pivot, Leviathan Quarterly (UK), The Edge City Review, and in a number of online
journals including Verse Daily, Triplopia and The
Alsop Review. She received Pushcart nominations in 2003 and 2004.
Her book, The Everyday Uncommon, was awarded publication by The Word Press Poetry Prize
and can be ordered by clicking this
link. A few reviews by "people in the know" ...
“It’s clear to me that she knows what she’s doing, she’s doing what she wants to do, and she does it
well.”—Hayden Carruth
“She domesticates and humanizes the exotic without robbing it of its strangeness, just as she reveals
the inherent strangeness in everything looked at closely, however much we persuade
ourselves that we already know it intimately.”—Rhina P. Espaillat
“Intensely curious, and even
more intensely observant, Coe uses wry good humor and considerable formal
dexterity to keep the reader turning the pages of her album.”—R. S. Gwynn
O Say, Poet
Translation of Rainer Maria Rilke's "O sage, Dichter"
O say, poet, what you do? -- I praise.
But the deadliness and monstrousness,
How do you bear it, how do you take it? -- I praise.
But the nameless, the anonymous,
How do you conjure them, nevertheless? -- I praise.
Whence comes your right, in every mask,
In every costume, to be true? -- I praise.
And that the mute, the impetuous,
Like star and storm, are aware of you? -- Because I praise.
Dr. Claudia Grinnell was a consultant on this translation.
Mignonne
Translation of Ronsard's "Cependant"
For Rhina Espaillat and Alfred Moskowitz
And while this month of freshness lasts
Mignonne, come walk out on the grass;
This moment was not meant to pass
In vain, or rushing by.
Just as age turns black hair white,
It tosses spring out overnight.
Life has beckoned us to dance,
Love invited bright romance --
Love me, while the air enchants.
Reap and sanctify.
Vein to vein we flow, full measure;
Death will come and steal our pleasure.
Imitation of Martial
After Pierre de Ronsard
You want me to perform as slave
In every service you require;
To clear the path of gnome and knave
When you parade in silk attire;
To grovel every time you twitch
And burst with pride if you should snort;
To bitch and backstab when you bitch --
Enough! I do not care to court
Your trifling whims, nor do I owe
A duty to your odd pursuits.
Your menials rushing to and fro
Can't hope to match my attributes.
Chanson
Spring has not the flowers
Nor autumn such a squall
Nor summer heat the power
Nor winter cold the pall --
Nor Beauce the cornucopia,
Nor all the seas the fish,
Bretagne no utopia,
Auvergne no fount like this --
Nor has the night the torches,
Nor have the woodlands trees,
As I, the scars and scorches
You've burned there by degrees.
This translation of "Chanson" by Pierre de Ronsard was
originally published by Leviathan Quarterly in the UK.
And This Is What We Have
And this is what we have:
A rakish slated rooftop,
The aging tambourine,
A page of eggshell foolscap,
A flap of barkentine.
And this is what we lack:
A farthing saved for madness,
A farthing saved for pain,
A measure for our gladness,
A box to fill with rain.
And this is what we know:
A summer birth will flourish,
Orion's stars will shift,
The love of love will nourish,
The scent of death will drift.
And this is what we don't:
The reason for our living,
The price we pay for chance,
The sacredness of giving,
The grace of our own dance.
Will O’ the Wisp
Translated from the German of Rainer Maria Rilke
We have an ancient dealing
with those lights out on the moors.
They seem to me great-aunts, revealing …
things I fathom more and more:
We share the kind of family quirk
no power can suppress—
a bounce, a bow, a swing, a jerk
the others don’t possess.
I too am there, where no roads go,
where clouds put men to rout;
and I have seen myself below
my eyelids, going out.
Home Free All
I passed my childhood
home tonight,
its windows shorn
of Christmas light.
The blinds were down,
the ice was hard,
new window gates
above the yard.
No snowballs stacked
in forts of snow,
prepared for war —
gay Jericho!
The trees were gone,
our old mimosa
felled. They cut
Aunt Vi’s magnolia.
Deep inside
of all that scene
were Frankie, Mary,
small Kathleen,
the Indian burn,
the threat and brag,
running bases,
running tag.
And in the hedge
I’d found a dollar—
Halvies! Halvies!
came the holler:
five-cent Spaldeen,
charlotte russe,
caps for cap guns,
red caboose.
The straight-up maple
made Home Base,
her all-day shade
our feint and chase,
Johnny-on-the-pony,
double-Dutch,
punchball, thumbies,
touch-don’t-touch,
and she was prison,
she was flight,
she was loyalty
and might --
the tallest tree
and deeply grooved,
where we were tested,
we were proved.
With Home Free All!
we all broke free,
if someone touched
the maple tree.
Now every trace
of green and brown
was gone. Come sing me
All fall down.
With this, the strangeness
was complete,
and yesterday’s play
made obsolete.
And what new rough-
and-tumble love
have they, that we’d
no inkling of?
First published by The Lyric in previous form.
Apology from Fiji
Come all you surfers with your boards
and hunters on safari;
we’ve buried our ancestral swords
and we are truly sorry.
We offer this belated rite
for Reverend Thomas Baker;
our folk had never seen a white
who wasn’t a troublemaker.
In Fiji’s simple habitat,
it was and is tabu
to touch a Fiji chieftain’s hat—
one slip, and barbecue.
First published in Light.