{"id":399,"date":"2007-06-30T20:18:03","date_gmt":"2007-07-01T04:18:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/godammit.com\/2007\/06\/30\/reverdy-and-rozerem\/"},"modified":"2007-06-30T20:18:03","modified_gmt":"2007-07-01T04:18:03","slug":"reverdy-and-rozerem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/reverdy-and-rozerem\/","title":{"rendered":"Reverdy and Rozerem"},"content":{"rendered":"

Listening to \u2018 Bookworm<\/a>,\u2019 a weekly radio program hosted by Michael Silverblatt, I discovered the French poet \u00a0 Pierre Reverdy<\/a>. He is known as a Surrealist, but his poems seem very straightforward to my untrained ears. They are morbid, dismal, creepy, and cut to the heart of things with unusual eloquence. Keep in mind that I hate poetry, though.<\/p>\n

Ron Padgett read his new translation of a prose poem by Reverdy that ended with \u201c\u2026.alas, my hate endures\u201d bla bla bla. I experienced that shock of recognition: Mine, too! I thought happily.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been thinking of getting a tattoo, probably a terrible idea, but I haven\u2019t been able to come up with a good idea until now. So I\u2019ve been trying to find out how to translate this phrase back into French, without success.<\/p>\n

Can anyone help? \u201cMy hatred endures\u201d is the single best description of my worldview that I\u2019ve ever stumbled upon. I know it\u2019s pretentious to get a tattoo in a foreign language, but at least it\u2019s not Latin. I just read about some actress\/moron who has a tattoo in Sanskrit, which seems like some sort of milestone in stupidity. My other tattoo idea, for the last few years, was a gang-banger name that I think I made up: Lil\u2019 Spiteful. I\u2019m not ruling that one out, but I\u2019m wondering how it will go over in the nursing home where I\u2019ll end up, with nothing left in my memory bank except the Complete Lyrics of Bob Dylan.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, my hatred endures, and tonight it is flowing in several directions. I tried Lunesta<\/a> last night for the first time, and instead of that cute little butterfly I got nothing but grinding insomnia. I\u2019m so disgusted by this failed experiment in pharmaceuticals that I don\u2019t want to try my sample of Rozerem<\/a>. If I can\u2019t achieve the butterfly, it\u2019s hard to believe I\u2019ll get Abe Lincoln and that hedgehog. I don\u2019t even know if that thing is a hedgehog, a gopher, or a beaver.<\/p>\n

Alas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"