Oliver, Joan

Spain/Catalonia, (1899-1986)

Porc
(original Catalan)

  1. Em cal un règim per a amagrir.
  2. La pell em tiba, panteixo massa.
  3. No em moc de casa, menjo a desdir:
  4. és clar, m’engreixo com un garrí,
  5. – allò que passa.
  6.  
  7. Però, ara sí:
  8. poques segones, gens de carbassa
  9. i les cent passes cada matí.
  10.  
  11. Ja tothom parla de Sant Martí!

Pig
(English translation)

  1. I need a system for losing weight.
  2. My skin’s stretched taut I get too winded.
  3. I scarcely stir from home. I eat unspeakably:
  4. obviously, I fatten like a hog
  5. – such things happen –
  6.  
  7. But, from now on:
  8. no seconds, nothing with pumpkin in it
  9. and a hundred pushups every morning.
  10.  
  11. Already they’re talking about St. Martin’s Day!

© Joan Oliver. New Directions in Prose and Poetry 31, edited by Peter Glassgold and James Laughlin. New York, NY: New Directions (1975).

About the Poet:

Joan Oliver, Spain/Catalonia, (1899-1986), was a poet, activist, playwright, narrator, translator and journalist. He was perhaps better known as “Pere Quart”, the name with which he signed his poems.

Oliver is regarded as one of the five most important Catalan poets of the 20th century. He was the creator of a very diverse body of work, his poetry was influenced by realism, with a skeptical tone, and by the effects of the Spanish Civil War. His narrative style is clearly marked by the irony against all the established conventions.

With his commitment to the Republican cause and subsequent exile, he reached his peak of fame in the 1960s through the points of contact in his work with what was known as “historic realism”. [DES-01/22]

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