AMD 5

This week for my AMD 5 I decided to read and listen to Germany poetry. The website lyrikline had several recordings of German poets reading their poems. One of my favorites poems on the site is by Arne Rautenberg and it's called "die tollen walrosse". That loosely translates into "the roudy walruses". Here is the poem and a link to listen to the audio version:

zehn walrossen mit super perücken

sollte ein tolles kunststück glücken
erst sah man sie zusammen rücken
sich unverhofft nach etwas bücken 
blitzartig schnell die zungen zücken
und durch zehn riesen-stoßzahn lücken
blassrosa kaugummiblasen drücken

http://lyrikline.org/index.php?id=162&L=0&show=Poems&author=ar07&cHash=d45ed82d41

My attempt to translate the poem line by line resulted in this:

Ten walruses with great wigs

Were supposed to be wonderful successes

Once one moved they all would move

One (walrus) unexpectedly bent to pick something up

Like lightening all the tongues come out

And through the spaces between ten giant tusks

pinkish bubblegum is blown out

After attempting to translate a couple other German poems into English I came to a realization. It is very very hard to translate a poem to another language and retain the original message and beauty of the native language. So I decided to practice scansion on the rest of the poems I read which was still a challenge since I had to think about emphasis of German words. I really liked this poem, about a car, because of the speed at which the author reads it mirrors his fast automobile http://lyrikline.org/index.php?id=162&L=0&show=Poems&author=bb00&cHash=1eeb796466. Then there is something about hearing Johannes Kuhn read his poem "Schulkinder" that makes one want to hear it again and again. Here is that link: http://lyrikline.org/index.php?id=162&L=0&author=jk01&show=Poems&cHash=7a59659eaa. I have never heard of Johannes Kuhn before looking at this website and even though I cannot truly appreciate his prose, I thoroughly enjoy the manner in which he reads his poems. However, my favorite German poet thus far is, like many others, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.