{"id":9710,"date":"2013-01-24T08:54:32","date_gmt":"2013-01-24T12:54:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=9710"},"modified":"2013-01-26T12:19:27","modified_gmt":"2013-01-26T16:19:27","slug":"peter-paul-zahl-1944-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/peter-paul-zahl-1944-2011\/","title":{"rendered":"Peter Paul Zahl (1944-2011)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"menschen-pp-zahl_dernach-jamaika-ausgewanderte-dichter-schriftsteller-peter-paul-zahl-seine-autorenlesung-c\"<\/a>Today two years ago, the German poet Peter Paul Zahl<\/a> died in \u00a0Port Antonio, Jamaica.<\/p>\n

Zahl was a German anarchist who turned author while spending ten years in prison in the 70s after shooting at a police during a manhunt for terrorists. In 1985, he emigrated to Jamaica where he was granted Jamaican citizenship and worked as a stage director and writer.<\/p>\n

In the seventies I translated some of his work, but this being BC (Before Computers) the typed pages must be somewhere in my archives, unfindable. For the occasion I translated two short poems by Zahl \u2014who in the early Berlin days worked as a printer \u2014 both from his 1975 book Schutzimpfung \/ immunization<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n

the printer<\/em><\/p>\n

i called her lola montez.
\nshe prints 4000 sheets an hour.
\nhow many phon\/i don’t know.<\/p>\n

when she angers me
\nbecause of thin paper\/i don’t oil her.
\nshe’s painted black\/not me.
\nshe is loud. i’m silent.
\nso what can i say.
\nshe produces. i help her do so.
\ni’m not a\u00a0manufacturer.
\nthe boss is.
\nhe sits in his soundproof office.
\nwhere every friday I go and sign.<\/p>\n

i called her lola montez.
\nshe prints 4000 sheets an hour.
\nhow many phon\/i don’t know.<\/p>\n

when she’s very old
\nshe’ll be thrown out.
\nnot me.<\/p>\n

early death<\/em><\/p>\n

Mozart
\ndied at the age
\nof 35<\/p>\n

should I lament this
\nwhen the average
\nlife expectancy in Iran
\nis 30<\/p>\n

Chopin
\ndied at the age
\nof 39<\/p>\n

to reach 39
\ntoday in Ecuador
\nis quite an achievement<\/p>\n

Rimbaud
\ndied at the age
\nof 37<\/p>\n

he would be\u00a0among
\nthe grizzly old\u00a0men\u00a0today
\nin the ghettos of Cape Town<\/p>\n

let us not bemoan
\nthose who
\ndied too young<\/p>\n

better to make sure
\nthat those responsible for
\nthe early death in
\nIran\/Ecuador\/Cape Town
\ndie early<\/p>\n

thus we’d honor
\nthe classics<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today two years ago, the German poet Peter Paul Zahl died in \u00a0Port Antonio, Jamaica. Zahl was a German anarchist who turned author while spending ten years in prison in the 70s after shooting...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[91,103,1],"tags":[1337],"class_list":["post-9710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry","category-translation","category-uncategorized","tag-peter-paul-zahl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9710"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9710\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9745,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9710\/revisions\/9745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}