5. Create a Work of Art

MA PROVENCE
En ma Provence le ble est toujours vert
Et les filles sont jollies
Elles ne meurent pas elles vous aiment a la folie-en
Ma provence
Bills break the breakfast teacups and the sun
Shines darkly over the bill-ware
She writes it out in envervatig prose
“In my provence, my rose.”
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In my Provence the blue is always green
And the girls are happy
They do not die they like you they have the madness in them
My Provence
Les factures se cassent les tasses à thé de petit déjeuner et le soleil
Brille obscurément sur la facture-marchandise
Elle l'écrit hors dans la prose d'envervatig
“Dans ma Provence, ma rose.”

One of the New York School Poet’s tourniquets were pseudo translations. They would take a poem in a different language and translate it from what they thought it meant. For my original piece of the project I mimicked a pseudo translation. The original poem “Ma Provence” was written in half English and half French. In my translation I translated the English to French and the French to English. Some of the words seemed to be lost in translation but I did the best I was able to. Much like the New York School Poets would have done.