"Before the image / here is the story before the image," concludes the speaker of Jon Pineda's title poem in The Translator's Diary -- although here, his assertive repetition reads like a speaker second-guessing himself. Certainly, there are clear stories in Pineda's second collection of poetry -- a sister is dead, a dog carries a litter and children ask questions that their parents cannot answer. But in Pineda's landscapes of loss and memory, where even a beach scene feels chilly and peculiar, what strikes you first and continues to haunt you long afterward is Pineda's commentary on the "busily rendering" image, "always / temporal and yet always."
Framing lyric subject matter, Pineda's structural forms are traditional shapes that complement the highly meditative speakers they contain. There are many sonnets throughout the collection, for example. The narratives are grim -- speakers frequently inhabit "darkness" and "nothing" -- not unlike the poet's artistic grief over fractured images. Pineda's unwavering concern is elegiac experience lost in visual translation -- "the truth / how it never survives its translation." In the poem "Reflection," a young couple envisions a romantic future home life while waiting for a library to open. A blue heron circles above them. There is even talk of a "dog bounding about the backyard fenced / with tufts of cord grass." Finally, "the tall librarian waves ... / They don't / realize this man is only shielding his eyes from the sun. / It changes nothing at all." Like "Reflection," many of Pineda's poems conclude with lyrical moments where images are suddenly re-imagined differently, ultimately challenging the truthfulness and wholeness of a poem's driving memory or emotion and adding an additional layer to the collection's literal sense of loss.
Although preoccupied by "broken images," Pineda at once acknowledges the imagination's redemptive power to simulate a wholeness that heals and soothes. In the poem, "Freight," a son being rocked to sleep is startled awake by a sound outside. What follows is a hopeful spin on the idea of imagined memory. Taking on the burden of the truth, the father, "because [he] knows / [his son] loves trains," reassures the boy that the source of the sound "was just a train," and his son "[drifts] again" into a peaceful slumber. In general, the multiple appearances of children bring about a sense of calm in Pineda's collection; their soft faces and graceful movements are easily translated, a contrast to the heavy-headed adult speakers as well as a nod to time's role in distorting memory. In this sense, youth is considered whole and unbroken. But like the uncertain fade-in between childhood and adulthood, perhaps a healthy middle ground exists between the fragmented and the whole.
Part 10 of the book's title poem introduces the image of a basilica shaken by an earthquake, a fitting location for Pineda to reconcile his conflicting thoughts. Like "Freight," the speaker of "The Translator's Diary" eventually finds consolation in the act of creation. "When the effort to rebuild begins ... / each color will form on its own / in the hoarding of fragments, rough / or smooth ... / until, moment by moment, the image emerges." For poet Jon Pineda, images create an imperfect peace of mind but symbolize peace nonetheless. 3
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