What Sparks Poetry a series of original essays that explores experiences and ideas that spark the writing of new poems. In our new series focused on Translation a group of poet-translators share a seminal experience in translation. Each Monday's delivery brings you the poem and an excerpt from the essay.  
Gérard de Nerval
Translated from the French by Joshua Edwards
This is what I saw:—Trees along the way
In chaos, like an army in retreat;
And beneath me, as if moved by strong winds,
The ground churning with rushing dirt and stones.

Steeples rising up from verdant fields seemed
To guide hamlets of plaster houses, clad
In tile, which meandered along like flocks
Of white sheep, a red mark on each one’s back.

And the drunk mountains staggered: the river
A boa constrictor stretching across
The whole valley, springing out to squeeze them...
—I was in the coach, just barely awake!


Le Réveil en Voiture

Voici ce que je vis. — Les arbres sur ma route
Fuyaient mêlés, ainsi qu’une armée en déroute !
Et sous moi, comme ému par les vents soulevés,
Le sol roulait des flots de glèbe et de pavés.

Des clochers conduisaient parmi les plaines vertes
Leurs hameaux aux maisons de plâtre, recouvertes
En tuiles, qui trottaient ainsi que des troupeaux
De moutons blancs, marqués en rouge sur le dos.

Et les monts enivrés chancelaient : la rivière
Comme un serpent boa, sur la vallée entière
Etendu, s’élançait pour les entortiller...
— J’étais en poste, moi, venant de m’éveiller !
from the book THE DOUBLE LAMP OF SOLITUDE / Rising Tide Projects
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Image of the cover to Joshua Edward's book, The Double Lamp of Solitude
What Sparks Poetry:
Joshua Edwards on Gérard de Nerval's "Waking Up in a Stagecoach"

"I began with the title: “Le Réveil en voiture.” It seemed so simple. “Réveil” is “awaken” and “voiture” is something that carries someone, a vehicle. But which vehicle to put the reader in? What should carry them through the landscape of the poem? The obvious choices at first were “carriage” and “coach,” but those seemed too distant, too private, too monochrome. “Stagecoach” felt better! It was technicolor."
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Close-up detail of a color illustration of Safia Elhillo
"The Searching Poetry of Safia Elhillo"

"Elhillo’s poems often train their gaze on some half-shrouded point behind them, less concerned with finding their way back than describing the fog. The writing moves by torchlight, mapping haunted ground, measuring the distance between 'where i’m from' and 'where i was put,' the Sudan of her alternate selves and the America of her one life."

viaTHE NATION
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