International Exchange for Poetic Invention

José Garcia Villa: Doveglion

2008-07-17T13:43:00.000-07:00

From the Penguin website:

The centennial edition of major Filipino writer José Garcia Villa’s collected poetry

Known as the “Pope of Greenwich Village,” José Garcia Villa had a special status as the only Asian poet among a group of modern literary giants in 1940s New York that included W. H. Auden, Tennessee Williams, and a young Gore Vidal. But beyond his exotic ethnicity, Villa was a global poet who was admired for “the reverence, the raptness, the depth of concentration in [his] bravely deep poems” (Marianne Moore). Doveglion (Villa’s pen name—for dove, eagle, and lion) contains Villa’s collected poetry, including rare and previously unpublished material.

Bologna, Jul. 13th + Rome, Jul. 14th: Launch of the new issues of Aufgabe and The New Review of Literature

2008-07-09T08:32:00.000-07:00

Bologna, July 13th 2008, at 9:30 pm

as a part of the readings made possible by the association "Via de' Poeti"

in Giardini del Baraccano
(viale Gozzadini 1-3)

Jennifer Scappettone will introduce Aufgabe

and the feature of Italian "poetry of research" she edited.

Readers will include Giovanna Frene and Marco Giovenale

Rome, July 14th, at 8:30 pm

La camera verde
(via G. Miani 20)

Jennifer Scappettone and Paul Vangelisti

will introduce the new issues of

Aufgabe and The New Review of Literature

devoted to Italian poets translated into English.

Readers will include:
Gherardo Bortolotti, Alessandro Broggi, Laura Cingolani, Marco Giovenale, Milli Graffi,
Giuliano Mesa, Vincenzo Ostuni, Andrea Raos, Michele Zaffarano

Aufgabe feature: edited by Jennifer Scappettone
The New Review feature: edited by Andrea Inglese

*

INFO:

Aufgabe, issue #7:
http://www.litmuspress.org/pages/aufgabe7toc.html

The New Review of Literature:
http://gw.otis.edu/new-rev.htm
[ & http://slowforward.wordpress.com/2008/07/01/spring-issue-of-the-new-review-of-literature ]

La camera verde
via G. Miani 20 - 00154 Roma
e-mail: lacameraverde [at] tiscali [dot] it

[*] on Sat 12th, at 1:30 pm, Marco Giovenale will discuss with Vittorio Castelnuovo about the issues of the magazines, and the launch in Bologna and in Rome. On the air at Radio Città Futura

Language of the Apes

2008-06-27T22:21:00.000-07:00

Apes in the wild have language and it takes only a small leap of imagination to try to give them a second, human, language. For over forty years researchers have been trying to do this with increasingly good results. Our language, when it is passed on to a different species, becomes a new language. PrimatePoetics is born from the realization that this language should be appreciated in its own right, as the greatest revolution in literature since the invention of written Chinese 4000 years ago. PrimatePoetics is Here is the first primer to this new field. It explains where it comes from, it gives an overview of the field on an ape-by-ape basis and closes with an extensive anthology of relevant scientific and artistic sources. But most of all PrimatePoetics is Here hopes to give a feel for the outsider charm of the language of the apes.

Silencing the Voices >>

George Oppen, Buddhadev Bose and Translation

2008-06-26T08:03:00.000-07:00

Pat Clifford

We are all familiar with George Oppen. However, some may only know Bose for his poems “arranged” and included in The Materials. Few in the states realize how prominent and prolific he was, not only as a poet, but as an essayist, playwright and critic. He was the founding editor of the first Bengali-language poetry journal called Kavita, or Poetry. He was even regarded as the literary successor to Rabindranath Tagore, the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize for literature.

He was a founding member of what is called the post-Tagore modernist (or adhunik) generation—a Bengali modernism which reflected a shift away from Tagore’s Idealism toward more urban and secular themes. They were cosmopolitan and heavily influenced by Western literature, Bose particularly with Pasternak, and later Baudelaire and Holderlin. He also admired Pound, publishing his Confucius: The Unwobbling Pivot and The Great Digest through his Kavitabhavan press in 1949.

Politics was an inescapable reality for their generation. Bose was a member of several left-leaning groups, including the Communist-led Progressive Writer’s Union, in the 30’s and 40’s, but later felt that “what had been conceptually liberal turned into various hardened ideologies.” (Dyson, xxxiii). Frustrated by a lapse into what he felt was “political cacophony.” (AGG, 25) he had a growing sense of disillusionment, then frustration, with Bengali political poetry starting in the late 1940’s. He then made a break with the Indian Left that garnered him the label of “reactionary”, even “CIA Agent”, from some. The animosity only intensified as the Communist Party rose to power in West Bengal.[1] On the one hand still seen as hard-working and sincere, he also had the reputation for being uncompromising and too stubbornly stuck in his ways.

Compare this with Oppen’s active participation in the Communist Party, not splitting fully with it until late into the 1950’s. The FBI investigated the Oppens as potential Russian “agents”. But he did increasingly become disillusioned with the Party and emerged from the McCarthy Era as a perhaps more skeptical hero to the Left. Oppen, too, could be described as stuck in his ways, especially in replicating traditional gender roles.

Both Bose and Oppen distrusted what could be called the “poetry of the moment”. However, while Bose longed for a verse that was “conceived in the soul” (AGG 68), Oppen would seek a verse “confident in itself and in its materials” (SPDP, 32 – “The Mind’s Own Place”). Both valued a seriousness and intentionality that would defend poetry against a “furious and bitter Bohemia”. (SPDP, 30)

Unlike Oppen, culture and language played a pivotal if not complex role for Bose. And it was a mixture of desire and trepidation that led Bose to want to translate his works into English. Although he was fluently bi-lingual and heavily influenced by Western literature, he still felt that self-translation into English was an absurd task. He wrote at one point that he did not, “believe that foreigners can use the language of poetry, and the best we can do will remain pale approximations.” (L 3/3/62) It was to George Oppen that he looked to for help.

Bose and Oppen first met in New York in 1961 (coincidentally during a tour celebrating Tagore’s centenary year). During the visit, Bose met Ginsberg and others in New York at the time (Bose, in an essay, was impressed with Ginsberg: one “could realize that he was on a true mission, at the very least droplets of purity had touched upon him…” BG), but the connection with Oppen was the only one productive in a literary sense. In the beginning, though, there was awkwardness. Three letters written to June, in early 1961 (and the only reference to Bose included in his Selected Letters) (SL 45) describe his initial attempts at making several of Bose’s poems more palatable to American publishers. Right away, issues of race appear in conversations with James Laughlin (who had visited Bose in Kolkata several years before…): referring to Bose: “Jay (Laughlin) said he’s old, ugly and very dark. Looked at me thoughtfully and added, and Bengali”. Oppen’s response was dry: “Like Luther (?), I’m not Bengali. That will be a barrier between us.” (SL 45, italics added) Regardless of whether this is racial prejudice on Laughlin’s part, or just a joke gone awry, it’s unfortunate that this is one of the only easily available references to their process and does not seem to reflect the tone of their own interactions.

Over the next several months in the Spring of 1961, Oppen became increasingly involved in writing and re-writing several of Bose’s poems, most notably “To Memory” and “Still Life,” as well as “To A Dog,” all of which are from Bose’s 1958 book Je-Aandhar Aalor Adhik, or A Darkness Greater Than Light.

It is a great misfortune that the letters from Oppen to Bose are missing. However Bose’s letters to Oppen do survive, and from them Oppen’s communications from 1961 to 1964 can be pieced together, including at least five letters. The first letters deal with publishing concerns: Oppen appearing in Kavita, Bose seeking to be included in the San Francisco Review… Also, Oppen tactfully gaining permission to use “To Memory” and “Still Life” in The Materials. The later letters concern a memorable visit by Bose’s daughter Damayanti Basu Singh to the Oppen’s apartment in New York.

Bose’s letters have a cordial tone and express respect for Oppen as a fellow writer and kindred soul. His first correspondence was a postcard in May of 1961 upon leaving New York after their collaborative meetings. Bose recalled a visit to Oppen’s apartment: “the splendid view across East river, your good and strong sherry, and the gracious hospitality of your wife.” (L 1/21/62) Nevertheless, Bose was perhaps unprepared for the direction in which Oppen had taken his poems: “I felt the essence of my poem in it, although your style is very, very different.” (L 10/29/62). Despite the formal challenges, Oppen’s efforts are accepted in good faith: “It is perhaps needless to add how deeply I appreciate this delicate compliment from a fellow-poet; this, more than anything else, shows that the trouble I took over those translations has not been entirely wasted. You cannot know how inadequate the translations are, but even so they have meant something to you, which I find very encouraging.” (3/3/62)

The visit by Damayanti at the end of 1962 furthered their connection. She remembers; “From the station we walked to the Oppen's small apartment. We clicked instantly. Mary welcomed me with open arms and I felt totally at home in that small apartment strewn with books and a sweet little bird called 'bird' flying around freely.” (DBS 2/17/08) Bose remarks in another letter that Damayanti “was a little shocked that scarcely any one of our New York friends whom she met knew that her father was a writer; and one reason why she felt drawn to you was that you did. Also, having been raised in a literary household she felt easily at home in yours.” Bose thanked Oppen for the hospitality and added that, in Oppen’s description of the visit, he could feel his “rich human warmth in the words”. (L 1/13/63) Unfortunately, the last extant letter from Bose was dated December of 1964 and it may have been their last contact.

At first, Oppen’s role was one of an engaged editor assisting Bose with his own translation. One can picture them word-smithing in the faculty lounge: “Trying to explain to him what the word ‘kissing’ means to me, and why I omitted his line about ‘miles of kissing’ I made smacking noises at him in the hope that he would see what miles of kissing would involve. He didn’t but I attracted considerable attention in the NYU Faculty Club where we met.” (SL 48) Oppen then took this role a bit farther, so far as to rewrite a exact translation of Bose’s “To Memory,” in English with identical rhyme scheme, keeping lines intact and “without any rime-word which wasn’t in his version”. (SL 378) (By the way, I would love to see a copy of this, if it exists.)

The process finally morphed into what could be called an intra-lingual “transcreation”—a textual reworking that seeks to recreate the literary impact of the original for a new cultural audience. The process was successful in some ways, but a full-fledged transcreative process was hampered by Oppen’s lack of Bengali: in this sense language did prove to be “a barrier between” them.

Analyzing the various drafts of the poems by both authors, the basic theme and much of the content are, in fact, consistent, but with some telling differences. Bose’s Bengali original of To Memory 1, or “smRitir praati”, is a Petrarchan sonnet. It is an invocation to a goddess (or debee) who is the embodiment of memory and credited with existence itself. The goddess is described as “slumbering,” having “arctic seas” and although “dark” still holds “inexhaustible riches”— a powerful, female force whose hands are responsible for meaning itself: “in the womb of the mother // Shine the fate of man”.

Bose sent two self-translated versions of the poem to Oppen. The first was apparently included in a letter dated October 2, 1962, and is most likely a source text as it includes Oppen’s scribbles. Comments include the words “Primal Space” in bold letters as well as “and in dark is your promise.” He struggles with words “primordial” and “prehistoric” and plays with the concept of galaxies, interrogating the relationship of light and dark.

In the end, Oppen transferred twenty-eight words from Bose’s translation including cause, meaning, shore, shine, womb, etc. Some differences: Bose’s “Valueless” becomes “lost to us”; “inexhaustible riches” disappears entirely: possibly words smacking of privilege being muted.
More significantly, however, Bose’s “surf of the shore and strife of the day’s changes” – that is, the concept of the shore that needs to be left to enter the timeless peace of memory’s arctic sea, is replaced. Oppen instead invokes “the beaches // That shore the ocean” and ranks these beaches alongside the lute, canvas and marble—symbols of high art. Oppen is not concerned with an ascetic removal from life’s strife, but instead values meaning one finds in more pedestrian places, like beaches.

In addition, Oppen removes lines that refer to spiritual concepts that perhaps are too foreign or overtly religious for his taste. He edits out passages such as the “calm horizon where ages join one another”, or trikala (which in Bengali refers to three-part time— past, present, future) as well as a reference to “pre-historic lives”— the concept of reincarnation.[2]

There is one word, though, that Oppen inserts three times and which does not appear in any of Bose’s versions-- lost. “What your hands have let fall is lost to us.” This is reminiscent of another poem in The Materials, “Part of the Forest” where Oppen writes “to be alone is to be lost”, there explicitly concerned with a masculine self-isolation. Memory is a goddess, but a goddess not unlike a companion that prevents one from becoming “lost” or “alone”, a concept of memory that is clearly female and inescapably interpersonal. Bose’s first person singular becomes Oppen’s us.

Bose, after teaching in the States from ’63 to ’65, would return to India to face the aftermath of the Hungryalist Movement in Bengali poetry, developing an often antagonistic relationship with a movement more akin to American Beat poetry than Bose’s post-Tagore generation. He eventually found an English translator in Clinton Seeley, a University of Chicago Peace Corps alum, who meticulously translated Bose’s novel, Rain Through the Night-- a novel brought up on charges of obscenity in India in 1969. Oppen, on the other hand, would move to San Francisco and interact in perhaps a more interpersonal way with a new generation of poets.

This was apparently Oppen’s only translation / transcreation exercise. It clearly did not, as Bose hoped, “imitate the individual style of a poet and the peculiarities of the language in which the originals were written”. (L 3/3/62) However, it exemplifies poetry’s ability to act as a cultural mediator—always failing in some sense, sometimes offending—and sometimes acting as that bridge that enables us to feel a “rich human warmth in the words”. (L 1/13/63)

BUDDHADEV BOSE TIMELINE

1908: Buddhadev Bose born on November 30 in Kumillah, East Bengal (now Bangladesh).

1923 – 1931: Studies at Dhaka University, then moves to Kolkata.

1934: Marries high-profile singer Ranu Shome of Dhaka, who, as Protiva Bose, became an equally renowned fiction writer.

1935: Bose’s first visit with Rabindrinath Tagore at Santiniketan. Kavita magazine first published.

1937: From 1937 until 1966, Bose lived at 202 Rashbehari Ave. in Kolkata. This address was dubbed Kavitabhavan, or House of Poetry, the same name as Bose’s press, which published Kavita magazine and other works.

1941: Death of Rabindranath Tagore

1947: Indian Independence; East Bengal becomes East Pakistan and separated from India.

1949: Bose publishes Ezra Pound’s Confucius: The Unwobbling Pivot and The Great Digest in India through Kavitabhavan.

1954: Bose in U.S. teaching at Pennsylvania College for Women in Pittsburgh. Visits Henry Miller in Big Sur in April.

1956 – 1963: Founds then leads the Department of Comparative Literature at Jadavpur University, Kolkata.

1957: Publishes Language, Poetry and Being Human: A Protest Against the Reports of the Government’s Language Commission defending the Bengali language against Hindi being made the national language. He argues that, while other languages can be useful for everyday life, true poetry can only be written in one’s mother tongue. (Dyson, 177)

1961: Kavita magazine ceases publication after twenty-five years due to a growing frustration over the direction of Bengali poetics and the loss of his close friend, colleague and fellow poet, Sudhindranath Datta, in 1960. (DBS)

1962 – 1966: Bose’s daughter, Damayanti, studies Comparative Literature at Indiana University. Visits George and Mary Oppen in December, 1962.

1963 – 1965: Buddhadev and Protiva Bose in the U.S.. Buddhadev teaches first at IU in Bloomington, IN , then at Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, IL.

1969: Bose was prosecuted on obscenity charges for Bose’s novel, Raat Bhore BrishhTi (Rain Through the Night), a frank account of marital infidelity. He was later acquitted.

1974: Buddhadev Bose dies of a stroke on March 17th.

TO MEMORY: I

Buddhadev Bose
Translated by the Author c. 1962
(From material in the Mandeville Special Collections Library, University of California San Diego.)

Red = words used by Oppen, Blue = concept discarded by Oppen

I grant you are the goddess. All that is, is yours.
Hidden in your slumber is cause, beginning;
Beyond horizons it moves secretly and without awakening;
Yet should you stir an eyelid there blooms a marvel of flowers

And bright grapes kiss our clay and the earth grows delirious.
The carved stone has no meaning, the canvas is blank, the lute
Itself, until we sail your arctic seas, is mute
In the surf of the shore and the strife of the day’s changes.

Distant on the calm horizon where ages join one another,
And beyond in pre-historic lives and the primordial stark
Azure, like galaxies around us in the womb of the mother

Shine the fate of man and your inexhaustible riches.
The dark is your province, but more revealing than light is your dark,
And all that your hands let fall is valueless.

George Oppen
(From a poem by Buddhadeva Bose)
Red = concept entirely introduced by Oppen

Who but the Goddess? All that is
Is yours. The causes, beginnings,
Are lost if you have lost them;
But from your eyelid’s quiver

Flowers that are trampled spring
In their bloom before us, and a landscape deepens
Hill behind hill, and the branches
Bend in that sunlight—

The lute has no meaning,
Nor canvas, nor marble
Without you, nor the beaches

That shore the ocean,
The womb of our mother. Galaxies
Shine in that darkness—

O you who are darkness,
A core of our darkness, and illumination;
What your hands have let fall is lost to us.

STILL LIFE

Buddhadev Bose
Translated by the author c. 1964
(From material in the Mandeville Special Collections Library, University of California San Diego.)

Red = words used by Oppen ; Blue = concept discarded by Oppen

O apple, what are you? Redness of lips withdrawn
After the kiss, striking the air with luster?
Or an apsara’s rounded breast, darkened with the rapture
And held in the hand of a god whose sight is gone?

So much, yet just begun! This autumn seems unending.
Enough! But more. Even the skin is meshed
In eager sweetness. This glad befriending
Works through the loss undiminished.

And is that all? So think the sleepy ones.
But when some lust-encumbered eye
Sees through bowl and orchard, tears across the veils,

And in a strange spell of light, becomes
In you a forest, a spacious sky—
We too then wish we were something else.

George Oppen
(From a poem by Buddhadeva Bose)
Red = concept entirely introduced by Oppen

What are you, apple! There are men
Who, biting an apple, blind themselves to bowl, basket
Or whatever and in a strange spell feel themselves
Like you outdoors and make us wish
We too were in the sun and night alive with sap.

Sources

Bose, Buddhadev. An Acre of Green Grass. Calcutta: Papyrus, 1948. (AGG)

Bose, Buddhadev. “The Beat Generation of Greenwich Village.” 1961. Trans. Aryanil Mukherjee. (BG)

Bose, Buddhadev. Letters from the Oppen archive at the Mandeville Special Collections Library, University of California San Diego. (L)

Bose, Buddhadev. Various Poems in The Literary Review 5: 3. Fairleigh Dickenson University, Spring 1962.

Bose, Buddhadev. Selected Poems of Buddhadeva Bose. trans. Ketaki Kushari Dyson. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002. (Dyson)

Bosu Singh, Damayanti. E-mail Interviews with Pat Clifford. February 17, 2008 and April 22, 2008. (DBS)

Oppen, George, New Collected Poems. ed. Michael Davidson. New York: New Directions Books, 2002. (CP)

Oppen, George, The Selected Letters of George Oppen. ed. Rachel Blau duPlessis. Durham: Duke University Press, 1990. (SL)

Oppen, George, Selected Prose, Daybooks and Papers. ed Stephen Cope. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. (SPDP)

[1] “My father did join Progressive Writers' Union led by the Communist party of India to lend voice against fascism. He soon became disenchanted by the Party's high-handed ways and disassociated himself. He was always his own man, never compromised with anything and retained his freedom as an artist till his last breath. He paid dearly in left-dominated west Bengal, as there have been a systematic propaganda against him for a very long period. Generations after generations of left-leaning youngsters were forbidden to read BB who was labeled as a 'Reactionary' and an CIA agent!!! If they could they would house arrest him exactly the way America punished Pound. I see this anti-fascist period of BB's life when he indeed joined hands with the Communists is now being high-lighted everywhere. It is more important to note how the Communists reacted when he disassociated from them.” (DBS)

[2] Bose was not unaware of the tension concerning spiritual matters between Bengali and Western writing. In his defense of Tagore against Pound he wrote: “The only defect Pound notices in him is that his poetry is ‘pious’. This is natural, for in Europe poetry and religion separated long ago; … In India, this divorce has taken place only recently; it is still a common notion with us that the poet is a religious man…” (AGG 23)

2008-06-26T07:57:00.000-07:00

KAURAB Online Translation Archive (http://www.kaurab.com/english) is about to launch an international book review series called BOOK OPENER. We invite poets, authors, anthology editors and presses to submit international poetry (in English, original and/or translation/transcreation) publications for review. The idea of this series is to present international poetry reviews. The reviewers are mostly North American poets/editors. American poetry is also welcome. We will have a limited space for canonical work.

The book review series will acommodate a wide range of review styles from conventionally academic to dandily creative. We plan to include multimedia interactions and creative co-authoring. If you wish to submit a copy of your book/anthology, please send an email to editor@kaurab.com with "BOOK OPENER-" in the subject.

If the book cannot be reviewed for reasons beyond our control we will mail it back to you.

Dana Ward
Aryanil Mukherjee
Series Editor, Book Opener
KAURAB Translation Archive

Poetas en San Francisco:Flor y Canto en el Barrio: A Celebration of Latino Poetry

2008-06-24T09:34:00.000-07:00

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Friends of the San Francisco Public Library, the San Francisco Public Library, and Litquake announced today the San Francisco International Poetry Festival—Flor y Canto en el Barrio: A Celebration of Latino Poetry. The Festival will take place throughout San Francisco’s Mission District, July 24-26, 2008.

Translated to mean “Flower and Song in the Neighborhood,” the festival brings young, unpublished poets alongside authors such as two-time winner of the American Book Award, Alejandro Murguía, and San Francisco Poet Laureate Jack Hirschman for poetry readings, workshops, and a special exchange of culture and history.

“Flor y Canto is about the pursuit of peace through the celebration of poetry, art, culture, and friendship,” said the event’s curator and critically acclaimed poet Alejandro Murguía. “We want to bring together people from all walks of life to be part of this extraordinary event.” Murguía will be joined by other poets including, Alfredo Arteaga, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Tomás Riley, Leticia Hernandez, Roberto Vargas, Marc Pinate and many others.

“What we know is events such as Flor y Canto help bridge great divides,” said Donna Bero, Executive Director for the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library. “People from across the city who would never strike up a conversation are talking at these festivals. We’re excited to continue the conversation by hosting Flor y Canto.”

Flor y Canto en el Barrio: A Celebration of Latino Poetry is presented in conjunction with the San Francisco International Poetry Festival. While the International Poetry Festival is a biennial event, in the interim years, Friends of the Library present smaller language poetry festivals, such as this year’s Latino Poetry Festival.

The first Latino poetry festival west of the Mississippi was held in 1973 at the University of Southern California, but it was not until 2006 that San Francisco first hosted this event.

“It started out as a small gathering with a few poetry readings in the Mission District,” said Murguía, “This year’s event will include several additional poetry readings, music, workshops, and other activities. It will still embrace the festival’s core purpose of poetry as a bridge of culture and community.”

The festival is made possible through the support of several Bay Area organizations and business, especially those located in the Mission District of San Francisco. In addition to the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library, San Francisco Public Library, Litquake and 826 Valencia, local coffee shops and restaurants such as Philz Coffee, L’s Café, Casa Sanchez and many others will host readings and other events. “Since community is at the heart of this event it was important for us to gain the support of the local merchants and organizations,” said Bero.

The Festival will begin on Thursday, July 24 with a kick-off party at 6:00pm in Balmy Alley (24th St. between Harrison and Folsom) and a Lit Crawl of both established and emerging poets. The Lit Crawl will take place at over six different venues on 24th Street (between Mission and Bryant). Poetry readings and workshops for various ages and interests will continue throughout Friday and Saturday, July 25 and 26. For locations of the poetry crawl or for more details visit the Friends’ website at www.friendssfpl.org.

Friends of the San Francisco Public Library is a member-supported, non-profit organization that fundraises, advocates, and provides financial support for the San Francisco Public Library.

Flor y Canto en el Barrio: A Celebration of Latino Poetry
Featured Poets
* Lorna Dee Cervantes
* José Montoya
* Mamacoatl
* Roberto Vargas
* Jackie Mendez
* Alfredo Arteaga
* Nina Serrano
* Alejandro Murguía
* Cipactli
* Norman Zelaya
* Melissa Lozano
* Javier O Huerta
* Kim Shuck
* Francisco X Alarcon
* Victor Valle
* Naomi Quiñonez
* Marc Piñate
* Milta Ortiz
* Darren de Leon
* Las Manas Tres
* Alejandra Mojica
* Tomás Riley
* Barbara Jane Reyes
* Jack Hirschman
* Leticia Hernández
* Alfonso Texidor
* Catrióna Rueda Esquibel
* Jorge Argueta
* Janet J Cruz
* Adrian Arias
* Noelia Mendoza
* Walter Huracan Gomez

Schedule of Events for Flor y Canto en el Barrio: A Celebration of Latino Poetry

Below is a list of events that will take place during each day of the festival. Please note that each day includes multiple activities.

Thursday, July 24

Event 1: Festival kick-off party and Lit Crawl with young poets
6:00 pm; Balmy Alley, 24th St. between Harrison & Folsom; Lit Crawl locations include:

7:00 pm—“Other Voices/Many Americas”
Café La Boheme
3318 24th St.
(415) 643-0481

7:00 pm—“La Nueva Flor”
Philz Coffee
3101 24th St.
(415) 282-9155

7:00 pm—“El Corazon de la Misión”
Sundance Coffee
3000 24th St.
(415) 824-1706

8:00 pm—“Breaking Borders”
Accion Latina (El Tecolote Headquarters)
2958 24th St.
(415) 648-1045

8:00 pm—“Fuerza: From Sor Juana to the Mission”
L’s Café
2871 24th St.

8:00 pm—“Brave New Mundo – Cutting Edge of the 21st Century”
Galería de la Raza
2857 24th St. @ Bryant
(415) 826-8009

Event 2: Reception for young poets
9:00 pm; Casa Sanchez, 2778 24th St

Friday, July 25

Event 1: The Word From The Street (Tomas Riley of Youth Speaks hosts teen reading)
2:00 pm; Mission Branch Library, 300 Bartlett St. @ 24th St.

Event 2: Nuestra America I (Main Reading featuring six poets)
7:00 pm; Mission Cultural Center, 2868 Mission St.

Saturday, July, 26

Event 1: The Word Made Perfect: The Art and Craft of Translation (Translation reading/workshop)
2:00 pm; Mission Branch Library, 300 Bartlett St. @ 24th St.

Event 2: Nuestra America II (Main Reading featuring six poets)
7:00 pm; Mission Cultural Center, 2868 Mission St.

Contacts
Friends of the San Francisco Public Library
Katie Ambellan, 415-626-7512 ext. 123
Katie@friendssfpl.org

Manifesto of the Disabled Text

2008-06-17T15:40:00.000-07:00

[This is an article Joyelle and I co-wrote for New Ohio Review. I thought some participants in this blog may be interested in it. Apologies about the length.]

Manifesto of the Disabled Text
by Joyelle McSweeney and Johannes Göransson, Action Books

1. Discomfort with a translated text is discomfort with a disabled text. (“But the text can’t stand on its own!” “But something is lost, ruined, missing!”, etc.)

2. As do disabled bodies, disabled texts create a nervousness with reference to able, or enabled, texts and bodies. They give the lie to the supposed centeredness, completeness, originariness of able, enabled, or ‘original’ bodies and texts. Such nervousness is already an admission that all is not as stable—with our bodies, selves, and texts-- as we are led to believe we should believe.

3. Disabled texts need no longer comply with compulsory ablebodiedness.

4. This manifesto is a call for readers, teachers, publishers, editors, and translators to examine and overcome their discomfort with disabled texts and to resist compulsory ablebodiedness in their translation, publishing, teaching and reading practices.

5. But what is compulsory ablebodiedness? The phrase comes from disabilities studies, and was adapted by the theorist Robert McRuer from Adrienne Rich’s paradigm of ‘compulsory heterosexuality.’ ‘Compulsory ablebodiedness’ refers to the destructive, normalizing requirement placed on disabled bodies by society. In Kim Q. Hall’s, figuration, below, ‘compulsory ablebodiedness’ is contiguous with other destructive and difference-erasing paradigms:

Informed by Michel Foucault's concept of "disciplinary normalization" (1979), feminist disability studies interrogates the complex web of institutionalized techniques of normalization that sustain patriarchy, white supremacy, class power, "compulsory ablebodiedness," and compulsory heterosexuality (McRuer 2002). These myriad, mutually reinforcing techniques of normalization subject bodies that deviate from a white, male, class privileged, ablebodied, and heterosexual norm. Seemingly unrelated technologies such as orthopedic shoes, cosmetic surgery, hearing aids, diet and exercise regimes, prosthetic limbs, anti-depressants, Viagra, and genital surgeries designed to correct intersexed bodies all seek to transform deviant bodies, bodies that threaten to blur and, thus, undermine organizing binaries of social life (such as those defining dominant conceptions of gender and racial identity) into docile bodies that reinforce dominant cultural norms of gendered, raced, and classed bodily function and appearance.

6. Translations, as disabled texts, pose the same challenges to the conventional norm as disabled bodies do. They deviate from monolingual textual expectations, and are thus deviant. They threaten to blur, and thus undermine, organizing binaries of social/textual/literary life (such as those defining dominant conceptions of gender/genre and racial/national/linguistic identity). ‘Compulsory ablebodiedness’ requires that translated texts function as docile bodies that reinforce dominant cultural norms of genred, raced, and classed bodily/textual function and appearance.

7. When publishers, teachers, readers, or translators themselves require the translated text read ‘as if it were written in English’, as an ‘elegant’, ‘fluent’ ‘good’ poem ‘in English,’ they collude with and enforce such ‘compulsory ablebodiedness.’ And this is a best-case scenario, for too often publishers’, teachers’, and readers’ anxiety over translation as an incomplete, diminished, impaired version of an original results in translation not being published, taught, or read at all.

8. The effects of compulsory ablebodiedness on translation are intense and repressive. Translations are excluded from most publications, from most prizes, from most workshops, from most ‘English’ literature classrooms, and from most performances.

9. But while affirming McRuer’s diagnosis of ‘compulsory ablebodiedness’ and applying the phrase to the status of translation viz. text culture, we depart from Hall’s formulation, quoted above, in that we do not see the prosthesis as symptom of ‘compulsory ablebodiedness,’ that is, as a function of the requirement that disabled bodies or texts ‘pass’ as original, intact or able.

10. Instead, translation is the prosthetic that calls attention to its own un-naturalness; it is the peg-leg that deterritorializes the body. Then again, it is the peg-legged lady who refuses to wall-flower, who takes the stage, who is tantamount to the barn, who invites us to a barn-dance within her own leg wherein we wave our termitic jaws.

11.Translation is not only the text rendered into a new language; it is the entire operation. We don’t speak of the original and the translation, that is, the original and the plagiarized copy. When we say “translation” we mean the entire on-going process. And this process in all its ongoingness is the prosthetic.

12. We find synchronicity between our model of the prosthetic and that developed by David Wills in his work of criticism, Prosthesis. Among many wonderful new paradigms and disruptive subparadigms worked into this prose, Wills suggests “Prosthesis occurs on the border between the living and the lifeless. It represents the monstrosity of interfering with the integrity of the human body, the act of unveiling the unnatural within the natural.” Translation provides Wills with an instance of prosthesis which soon swells to include all acts of writing and reading: “Prosthesis treats of whatever arises out of that relation, and of the relation itself, of the sense and functioning of articulations between matters of two putatively distinct orders: father/son, flesh/steel, theory/fiction, translation/quotation, literal/figurative, familiar/academic[…] French/English, nature/artifice […]”

13. Like Wills, we wear prosthetic goggles, they’re the same as our eyes, we see the translation prosthetics in every text. In Aase Berg’s 2001 book Forsla fett (Transfer Fat), pregnancy – that capacious metaphor for the natural, and for the ‘natural,’ ‘spontaneous’ act of poetry writing – becomes all prosthesis. Translation (English tracts of string theory, zombie flicks and D-list movies, science fiction novels) is the constitutive action of the book. This un-natural prosthetic, this peg-legged text induces the reader to break down the Swedish language, to see its compounds as “un-natural.” In Berg’s monstrous figuration, the scientific becomes corporeal and the corporeal becomes scientific. Späckhuggaren (killer whale) becomes a späck huggare (blubber biter). The strings of science become umbilical strings. Text and body become a transfer of monstrous fat.

14. In his 1963 sound experiment “Birds of Sweden,” concretist poet and artist Öyvind Fahlström translates Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven” into “whammo” a language based on exclamations from comic books, permutating the poem into an sonic assemblage of shouts and moans. The prosthetics of the tape-player, of the translation. At the same time Fahlström creates “games,” in which the human body enters a room of moveable imagery; he also dreams of a mass-produced, mass-distributed project, a game called “Babies for Burroughs.” It took a strange marriage with the corporate body of General Electric to birth Fahlström’s omnivorously omnimedia “Kisses Sweeter Than Wine,” with a montaged cast of cyborgs, geniuses and ecstaticians.

15. Berg and Fahlstrom provide pragmatic models for how publishers and translators can channel their discomfort with the disabled text of translation into pieces that are multiple and already their own variants—visible, dynamic, threatening, prosthetic texts. This may be done by acknowledging and undermining ‘compulsory ablebodiedness,’ by dropping the requirement that texts be capable of ‘standing alone’ as ‘good’ or ‘fluent poems’, by instead inviting translation-the-process into and onto page/stage of the publication, revealing itself to be prosthetic, a mass of umbilical understrings. Practically speaking, this may involve visual appendages such as notes and hypertext, sonic prosthetics like recordings and phonetics, and especially the use of hybrid, invented, proximate, one-off pidgin languages, even the dreaded and verboten translatese. With electronic and web media, the possiblities can only metastasize.

16. We want to insist: All these suggestions are designed to admit the prosthetic status of the text. The text is always already prosthetic. In the case of translation and related practices, prosthetics does not mean to cover up the disabledness of the text, nor to compensate for it; instead it makes the disabledness visible and takes it as a catalyst for irrepressible transformations. Translators and publishers will have to collaborate to bring off this rejection of compulsory publishing conventions.

17. Meanwhile, English and writing teachers must get translation into the classroom by any means necessary. This may be threatening because it may mean presenting works over which the teacher herself does not have mastery. Thus the practical magic by which mastery over the text means mastery over the students will breakdown. Students and teachers will just have to invent an adventurous classroom ethos from there.

18. This is our deal now.

Footnotes:
See McRuer, Robert. “Compulsory Able-Bodiedness and Queer-Disabled Existence.” In Sharon L. Snyder, Brenda Jo Bruggeman and Rosmarie Garland-Thomson, eds., Disability Studies: Enabling the Humanities. New York; Modern Language Association of America, 2002.
Hall, Kim Q. “Feminism, Disability, and Embodiment.” NWSA Journal, Volume 15, Number 1, Spring 2003. p. 132. Accessed on Project Muse, http://muse.jhu.edu.lib-proxy.nd.edu/journals/nwsa_journal/v015/15.1hall.pdf, 12/07/2007.
Wills, David. Prosthesis. Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics Series. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995.
Wills, 247
Wills, 10
http://www.ubu.com/sound/fahlstrom.html.

Poets Residency in Portugal (University of Coimbra)

2008-06-11T08:47:00.000-07:00

Programa "Poetas em Residência" da Universidade de Coimbra -- Encontra-se aberto, até dia 30 de Junho de 2008 (prazo alargado), o Concurso relativo ao ano de 2009. Os/as 2 poetas seleccionados/as para uma estadia de 1 a 3 meses (Janeiro a Março de 2009) na aldeia histórica de Monsanto (com o apoio da Câmara Municipal de Idanha-a-Nova), usufruem, além da estadia, de uma bolsa de viagem, devendo apresentar, além de uma carta de apresentação e CV, um projecto de trabalho a desenvolver com alunos/as e docentes da Universidade de Coimbra (conferências, worshops, seminários, etc.). As candidaturas deverão ser enviad Poets as para adraianabebiano@sapo.pt ou gcapinha@ces.uc.pt. Para mais informações: http://www1.ci.uc.pt/poetas/noticias/noticias.htm

==*==*==*==*==*==*==*==*==*==*==

Poets in Residence Programme -- Application period open until 30 June 2008 (change of deadline) for January-March 2009 Residencies (1 to 3 months residencies). The 2 selected poets will be hosted at the historical village of Monsanto (sponsorship of the Municipality of Idanha-a-Nova) and are also entitled to travel grants. Please send a letter of application, a CV and a short project on the work you would like to develop with students and professors of the University of Coimbra (lectures, workshops, seminars, etc.) to adraianabebiano@sapo.pt ou gcapinha@ces.uc.pt. More information here

Vivek Narayanan in New York!

2008-06-10T05:52:00.000-07:00

How Soon Is Now?: Readings and Performances
FRIDAY, JUNE 20, 2008, 7:00 to 9:00 pm
North Wing—2nd Floor--THE BRONX MUSEUM
1040 Grand Concourse at 165th St. Bronx NY 10456

Admission: Free

Celebrate the works in the exhibition How Soon Is Now? with poetry and performances by Rodrigo Toscano, Vivek Narayanan, Camille Guthrie, Drew Gardner, Brandon Downing, Mónica de la Torre and others. Reception and music to follow!

...........................................

"Only further proof of the India-US neo-imperial nexus"
Vivek Narayanan and Michael Scharf at the Zinc Bar
Sunday, June 22 at 6:30pm

Zinc Bar
90 West Houston Street at La Guardia Place
New York, NY
2124778337

Jon Leon and Jennifer Scappettone ::: poems translated into Italian

2008-06-09T17:18:00.000-07:00

June 14th, 8:00 pm

La camera verde

(Rome, via G. Miani 20)

POETRY READING :

Jon Leon's "Diphasic Rumors"

and

Jennifer Scappettone's "Thing Ode / Ode oggettuale"

English texts + Italian translations

::: two new chapbooks from http://felixseries.blogspot.com :::

La Camera Verde, Rome 2008

introduction: Gherardo Bortolotti (translator of Diphasic Rumors)

*

Gherardo Bortolotti, Marco Giovenale and Jennifer Scappettone will read from the two books

Four Legs and One Smacking Mouth:

2008-06-08T12:40:00.000-07:00

Six Contemporary Arab Poets
Chosen and translated from the Arabic by Tahseen al-Khateeb, with editing by Linh Dinh

YOUSEF AL-KHAL (Lebanon, 1917-1987) was a poet, critic, playwright, journalist and translator. He is the author of more than eight books, among which are: Liberty (1944), Herodia (1955), The Deserted Well (1958), Modernity in Poetry (1978), and The Second Birth (1981). He is also the translator of T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" (1958), Selected Poems by Robert Frost (1958) and the anthology, The Divan of American Poetry.

Prayer in the Temple

I

The stone speaks. It becomes wine, becomes bread, it becomes.
The stone is a sky, blessed is he who has wings.
O how I love you tonight.
I embrace you like this for the first time. I undress in you, for the first time I am this stone-sky.
Your eyes, your whole body is a child swimming. I love the child and the water; the water and the child.
And in this wasteland, with but a stone to get along with, which bolsters and comforts despite its hardness.
Let this moment be for the two of us. The stone is a sky and we are its wings.

II

When I awake, the river awakes and flows and fills the plain. I'll hoist the day's mast. Alone. The companion I wait for has not come.
When I awake light sits before me. Why don't you rise up O foolish wound and carry your bed and walk?
The walls are vanishing. The air flutters its eyes. The feet are stomping the street's waist. There's no whispering in the light. The only password is to scream.
When I awake, my love awakes with me.

III

My legs are of reed, I'll find myself a cane.
I found it: a thread of blond silk.
Now I'll walk to the end of the earth. In the plain, in the mountain. In the night. In the day. I'll walk like a dream fulfilled by wakefulness.
My love is with me. My whole body is with me. My God is with me. Rise up O destiny and make room for me.

IV

From afar my oak shades me and takes care of me. Stretches out its arms to me. In its branches a nest with two sparrows.
Here I am singing. In the temple's courtyard an apple tree, its fruits are oil for my throat.
I'm crazy about my oak. For it I am here. For it I am singing.
During the day I dream of my shadow, and in the night I embrace it and slumber.
I'll raise the sun on my wings. I'll nail it down, so it won't move. The oak's shadow is my only bliss.

V

Tonight, I climbed the ivory towers. Your blue hair is my ladder.
Ah, and on your altar I offer sacrifices: a pair of doves, and an ewe fattened to be sacrificed. And here I am ascending the slope with my only child. The wounds of joy scream, my days are as silent as a hand.
At dawn, I will shepherd my sheep, and, in the evening, I will sing to them the songs of return.
Let me now scream.
My body departs me. Leaves me like a stranger, like a knight I've never seen.

VI

Your eyes are two creeks beckoning. How sweet is your child-mouth. Your tongue makes the body, and your panting gives the breath of life.
Ah, what a god you are. Your paradise is not leading astray. All its fruits are for me. And I am its first man.
Embrace me O felicity. On your body I steer my boat. Its oars are of eternal desire.
Let the tempest blow as much as it desires.
I am an ancient mariner and my boat is a cedar of love.
Embrace me O my little god. Close your horizons on me. Love me more than love. My history is a deep, bottomless wound.

VII

Don't shut your dress like this. Let it enter. Let it ascend. Your breasts are two summits. Their descending is tempting, opening the dreams of the body.
In your garden, I'll plant a stem of rose.
And if I lived until autumn, I'll pull down the hedge of boxthorn and erect one of wind and light.
Let's be happy today.
For a long time my tongue didn't swarm and crawl around honey. My nails are still blunt.
Stand naked opposite me and I will show you the keys of life.
O let it enter!
The light of life is small. Its presence is an eternity of posterity.

VIII

The window by your bed is stuck in the cloud. Do you open it, like this, and disappear?
Who sets the table today, spreads the cloth of happiness, embraces my solitude in the shadow and protects me from the blackness-of-the-face?
My presence is a wave of mystery your strange body unfolds.
Neither odalisques in my ships nor slaves. Nor pines. Nor jewelry of glass and stones.
In my ships a word and one little deed.
And here is the city, surrendered. Its walls begin to fall down.
And I am like July. My blood is a salvation from drought, and my body a feast for lovers.
We are all hungry for the body, and thirsty for the juices of the soul.

[...]

SPT conference on Aggression

2008-06-05T08:21:00.000-07:00

Last weekend was the SPT conference on Aggression in San Francisco and Oakland, California, USA.

The blog has a lot of "exhibits" in it that are worth reading.

Among the post-conference postings of talks (or talks that were posted pre-conference and then read at the conference) that I've found so far include...

Jasper Bernes's "The Liberalizing Ideology of the Internet".

Erika Staiti's "Race & Gender" archival project.

Craig Perez's "My Michael Magee and the Frontier of Democratic Symbolic Action"

Laura Moriarty's "Re Vision: Outlaws, Lone Wolves and Made Poets: Bay Area Poetics from the 70s to the Present". And then some out takes here.

Juliana Spahr's here.

Still hoping to find Rob Halpern's, Robin Tremblay-McGaw's, Tyrone Williams's, and Bhanu Kapil's sometime soon.

Audio archive supposed to be at a voice boxeventually.

from OEI, 37 & 38

2008-06-05T08:19:00.000-07:00

Jena Osman and I wrote this by request for OEI, issue no. 37 & 38 that is just out. It is translated there. Here it is in English...

Chain started, like many magazines, with a combination of homage and discontent. We were both graduate students at the State University of New York at Buffalo. And we felt restless and uncomfortable with the journals that we read even as we respected them. Most of the journals that we read and respected felt aesthetically dynamic and yet at the same time we felt their map of this dynamism to be too small. Our restlessness was not that much an aesthetic restlessness. We wanted, like many of the journals around us, to continue to think about nonstandard forms and poetries; we wanted to continue to gather together and support work that was in the tradition of that optimistic moment of turn of the century modernism when language sputters and fractures in unusually beautiful and aesthetically fulfilling ways. But we wanted a wider and different map. A map that had more than just our friends on it. A map that had work that was happening in other languages on it. A map that transgressed the recognized borderlines of genre. This mainly felt important to us intellectually. Yet at the same time we are sure it was important to us in many other ways. We are sure it had some impact on our creative work but it would be hard for us to document that impact. We have been shaped so much by the reading that we did for the ten or so years we worked on Chain that to imagine our work without that conversation feels impossible.

Our first attempt to create a new map was to issue a chain letter. For the first issue, we asked a number of women editors to very simply talk about “Editing and Gender.” We wanted to learn from what other women were doing. And we wanted to think about our own editorial practice as an extension of what a number of amazing women editors had already done. Among the question we asked were “what obligations do you answer to as an editor?” and “How have issues in current feminist theory influenced your editorial practice?” and “How do you think women fit into the exchange economy of editorial practice? Is editing an issue of economy or an issue of aesthetics, or both?” Responses varied; some dismissed gender as important, others argued that it was crucial. We also solicited a number of women writers to write a poem and to pass it on to another woman writer they admired, who would then write a poem in response and pass it on…etc. The result was a series of associative chains. While we did come up with the lists of poets who started the chains, we didn’t give them any aesthetic guidelines. Our hope was that they would introduce us to all sorts of new writers. A few did. But mainly we remember feeling at the time that the chains tended to circulate among writers we already knew (we discuss this problem, as well as our initiating editorial ideas in the introduction to the first issue, which can be found here: http://www.chainarts.org/GenderandEditing/editorsnote.html ). So we went back to the drawing board.

The issues of Chain that followed were further attempts to chart an unknown course, to discover writers and artists not a part of the scene we already knew so well. And in order to reach beyond our own aesthetic comfort-zones, we organized each issue around a special topic—usually a formal constraint—with our goal being to include as wide a variety of responses to that topic as possible. Past special topics have included Documentary (issue 2), Hybrid Genres (3), Procedures (4), Different Languages (5), Letters (6), Memoir/Antimemoir (7), Comics (8), Dialogue (9), Translation (10), Public Forms (11), and Facts (12). In the call for work for the Dialogues issue we asked our contributors to help us broaden the conversation by asking them to send us dialogues where they talk to someone they haven’t talked to before; the stimulus that led to the chain letter format of issue 1 still spurred us on.

In terms of nuts and bolts, our editing process went something like this: We had several months of conversation, often via email, where we would try and figure out the topic for the next issue. During this stage we often argued before we reached a compromise. We remember these conversations as incredibly useful and educational. Once we settled on a topic, we often researched it. During this early stage we contacted various people we knew asking them for a list of people to solicit for work or people ; the lists that people sent us were invaluable and often shaped the issue. We published the call for work at the back of each previous issue and we also sent it around widely, at first by letter and later by email. We also directly solicited (i.e. begged) people whose work we felt was really important to have in the issue. If we were lucky enough to have gotten a grant for the issue we sometimes paid people to do some sort of project for us that they might not otherwise do. (For example, in the “dialogues” issue we solicited and financially supported six of the dialogues.) In December of each year, we would read all the material we had received. And then we would sit down together and discuss each work. We read and discussed everything that we got, whether we had solicited it or not. The actual editing of the journal usually involved both of us sitting down on the floor and putting work into various piles: There would be the pile for work that both of us wanted. And then there would be the pile that we weren’t sure about. And then there would be the pile for work that we disagreed about. This stack of work took the longest. These meetings often took days and were exhausting, but ultimately we would find a combination of works that opened up the selected topic in multiple directions. Once this was done, we sent out letters and then came up with a plan for typesetting the work. Each of our issues are arranged alphabetically according to the last name of the authors, because we found that this “chance” system would lead to the most interesting juxtapositions between the works. We weren’t interested in arranging them in a way that created an editorial narrative, that called attention to us as “assemblers.” Our presence was pretty much restricted to the writing of the introductions, which we did collaboratively. One of us would do the first draft. Then the other person would edit it. And we would go back and forth until we felt it was finished. The rule was that either of us could edit or cut the other ; neither of us owned our sentences. It is a way of writing that we still often do (we’ve written this piece the same way). It works for us. After all of these steps were completed, the issue would come out about five months later.

Although our editorial practice with Chain was an attempt to widen the map as much as we could, a number of limitations came into play: We eventually had full time jobs. We had limited language knowledge and thus limited contact with writers from various places outside the US. We also resisted the business side of publishing; subscription development, advertising, and distribution were things we knew we should work on, but we could never quite find the time or energy. Although we considered the quality of our content and production values to be high, our attitude towards the “business” of putting out a magazine was very DIY. For all these reasons, the map of Chain has never been as wide as we might like it. But we like to think of it as a start. During its twelve years of production, Chain has introduced us to writers and artists that have changed our thinking.

Right now, Chain is on a hiatus. We needed a break. But we are working on a related project we are calling ChainLinks. ChainLinks is a book series, modelled around the same idea of interdisciplinary conversation as the magazine. Our call is not for work this time but for editors. And we want editors who can bring together three or so people whose work is in different media together around a topic. The first three books in the ChainLinks series are Intersection: Sidewalks and Public Space (edited by Nicole Mauro and Marci Nelligan), Borders (edited by Audun Lindholm and Susanne Christensen), and Refuge/Refugee (edited by Jena Osman). They will be appearing in spring/summer 2008. More information can be found at www.chainarts.org.

New plebella, argentine review

2008-06-04T12:27:00.000-07:00

Release of Plebella #13

For this issue, we have a wide interview with poet, translator and researcher Delfina Muschietti, and we have an advanced of her unpublished book El Enigma de las Flores.

Emiliano Bustos was invited to the Venezuela Book Convention 2007 (Filven 2007) and we have a beautiful and sensitive chronicle, an interview with poet Richard Montenegro, of group Li Po and a brief anthology of poetry of Venezuela (including poems by Ramos Sucre, Palomares, Gervasi, Wafi Salih and Calzadilla).

Rodolfo Edwards comments in column Sembradores de Fósforos, the spark that generated the poem that gives title to his first book, Culo Criollo, published by Siesta in 1999.

Matías Ayala gives an introducction to his dossier Puro Chile, collection of recent poetry from Chile , with poems by Rodrigo Lira, Diego Maquieira, Tomás Harris, Roberto Merino, Claudio Gaete Briones, Paula Ilabaca, Yanko González, Jaime Luis Huenún, Andrés Anwandter, Juan Cristóbal Romero and Julio Carrasco. Puro Chile will an extended version on line in our site, http://www.plebella.com.ar/, only for readers and suscribers.

Reviews of the latest books by Héctor. M. Ángeli, M.Julia. de Ruschi, Romina Freschi, Denise León and Agostina. L. López.

A comment on festival “Sin pedir permiso” by group Rosa Fuerte, festival we were part of last week.

And basis to Contest “Poeta Revelación” (in Spanish) and recent inauguration of our Journal http://www.plebellabilingue.blogspot.com/.

Subscription options

( 1 year, 3 issues + extras)

$40 Buenos Aires city

$50 para GBA

$60 rest of the country

Latin America u$s 30

rest of the world u$s 40.

Subscribe NoW!!! http://www.plebella.com.ar/suscriptores.htm

2008-06-03T08:34:00.000-07:00

I'm interested in starting a CD line for Moria Books. The CDs would
be basically PODs with 30-60 minutes of individual poets reading their
works. The CDs would be cheap and always in print. As usual, I'm
interested in "experimental" work, so being playful with the limits is
appreciated.

If you are interested in joining the project, let me know by e-mailing me at holdthresh at yahoo. You'll need to record your own sound. Once I receive it, I'll clean it up,
if needed, and get a CD cover ready.

The readings should be in English or Italian.

Bill Allegrezza

Poems in Response to China Catastrophe

2008-05-27T09:49:00.000-07:00

Call for poems about Sichuan Earthquake

Dear colleagues and friends,

We are writing to solicit you for contribution to an anthology of poetry dedicated to all those who died from or survived the tragic Sichuan Earthquake.

This earthquake, also known as the Wenchuan Earthquake, was the most tragic catastrophe since the 1976 Tangshan earthquake in China. As of May 27, official figures state that 67,183 are confirmed dead, and 360,058 injured, with 20,790 listed as missing. The earthquake left about 4.8 million people homeless. Hundreds of aftershocks continue to bring about more pain, terror and damage. With too many lives lost and so much pain still tormenting the living, this earthquake has turned out to be not only a disaster to Chinese people but a catastrophe facing all the human beings.

International efforts have been made for rescue and relief, and now more joint endeavors of people all over the world are expected for reconstruction, both material and spiritual. And poetry is one of the best ways to offer spiritual relief and psychological care to those who are living and suffering after the uncontrolled tragedy as well as expressing our awe of Nature and love for life. Let’s pray for both the departed and the living in poems. Let’s weave all our blessings and prayer into a beautiful anthology of poetry to honor, and mourn, the victims of the tragedy. Thus this anthology is not only for those who are closely concerned with the earthquake, but for all, over the world, who have been touched by it. Its significance lies not only in its poetic art, but in its expressions of solidarity.

In order to have this anthology of poetry come out as soon as possible, we expect you to send us the poems by June 25, 2008. All the contributions will be reviewed and selected for publication by a group of poets and scholars of the world, and those unpublished poems will be posted at our websites. Since this anthology is a nonprofit project, the contributors will get no pay for their poem(s) except two copies of the book.

Please be kind enough to forward our solicitation to your friends.

Best wishes,

Nie Zhenzhao (Email: niezhenzhao--at--163.com)
Chief Editor and Professor, Foreign Literature Studies,
Central China Normal University (CCNU)
Vice President, China National Academy of Foreign Literature
Vice President, Chinese/American Association for Poetry and Poetics (CAAP)

Luo Lianggong (Email: flschina--at--yahoo.com.cn)
Professor and Assistant Editor-in-chief, Foreign Literature Studies, CCNU
Executive Director, Chinese/American Association for Poetry and Poetics (CAAP)

Three new felix chapbooks

2008-05-25T09:28:00.001-07:00

Three new felix chapbooks+readings upcoming in Rome: Éric Suchère's "Surfaces || Dans l'atmosphère de" (May 26th), Marina Pizzi's "Dallo stesso altrove" (May 31st), and Kathleen Fraser's "Witness/Testimone" (same day).

Suchere's book and Fraser's one are bilingual: the Italian translations are by Andrea Raos, Massimo Sannelli and Michele Zaffarano (for Suchère) and Marco Giovenale (Fraser).

The readings will take place at La Camera Verde (Rome, via G. Miani 20), at 8 pm:

May 26 : Éric Suchère
May 31 : Marina Pizzi, Kathleen Fraser

TIRESIA, by Giuliano Mesa

2008-05-19T13:10:00.000-07:00

* * *

The first poem of TIRESIA is at gammm.org . And the book is available at La camera verde:

T I R E S I A

oracoli, riflessi

All the poems are translated into French (by Andrea Raos and Éric Houser), English (by Serenella Zanotti), Spanish (by Jeamel Flores Haboud), German (by Andreas F. Müller). With a series of paintings by Matias Guerra. The book also contains a CD with a reading from Tiresia and other poems.

* * *

[ see the series of readings in Rome ]

Adriano Spatola: "The Position of Things", Green Integer, 2008

2008-05-18T05:01:00.001-07:00

Un libro che fosse "il" libro di Adriano Spatola, con tutte o quasi tutte le sue poesie, si attendeva in Italia da anni. Bene: non senza logica, viene pubblicato negli USA, da Green Integer (www.greeninteger.com): i testi italiani sono accompagnati dalla fedele-acuta traduzione inglese a fronte di Paul Vangelisti, che con Beppe Cavatorta ha curato il progetto. Il titolo della raccolta è The Position of Things. Collected Poems 1961-1992, porta il numero 165 del catalogo G.I. e costa poco meno di 16 dollari (diciamo 10 euro e spiccioli).

È l'occasione migliore, per i lettori italiani e anglofoni, per (ri)confrontarsi con una delle voci poetiche più articolate, complesse e insieme generose dell'ultimo mezzo secolo. Qui, a eccezione della primissima raccolta del 1961, i libri di "poesia lineare" di Spatola ci sono tutti: Reattivo per la vedova nera (1964), L'ebreo negro (1966), Majakovskiiiiiiij (1971), Diversi accorgimenti (1975), Considerazioni sulla poesia nera (1976-77), La piegatura del foglio (1982), La definizione del prezzo (1992).

Come scrive Beppe Cavatorta nel saggio conclusivo del volume, questa traduzione inglese «rappresenta il culmine di un viaggio iniziato nel 1975 con l'edizione americana di Majakovskiiiiiiij, seguita nel 1977 da Zeroglyphics e, l'anno successivo, Various Devices [Diversi accorgimenti], sempre presso Red Hill Press, la casa editrice diretta e creata da John McBride e Vangelisti», a cui - si ricorda - dobbiamo versioni anche da Sereni, Porta, Costa, Niccolai.

The Position of Things è in parallelo il culmine di un'attesa pluridecennale anche per il lettore italiano, che può scandagliare adesso quasi tutta la produzione di un autore più in credito che in debito con la tradizione (post)surrealista, e con i tanti meccanismi delle avanguardie: cut-up, frammentazione e iterazione ossessiva, ricombinazione di segmenti irrelati, violenza e anarchia delle immagini, ricorso a Rimbaud, antilirica, gioco, metapoesia, invettiva, ironia, espressionismo, esplosioni materiche che non mancano di intrattenere - o forse avere per centro - un dialogo costante, laico e serissimo tra il linguaggio e il mito (come del resto si leggeva e si legge nelle pagine di Emilio Villa o Giuliano Mesa).

La lettura in sequenza delle poesie e delle prose di Spatola non fa che confermare la vitalità e le ramificazioni dei suoi ritmi ed estreme dissoluzioni, in cui «ogni singola parola è [...] una tempesta di gesti».

[ recensione pubblicata su "il manifesto", 14 maggio 2008, p. 12 ]

Omitted Prose

2008-05-09T22:59:00.000-07:00

I've just finished a manuscript called Anti M in what I'm calling 'omitted prose'. Omitted prose is when you write an entire work in continuous prose sequences – filled-up pages with paragraphs, chapters, and the like – then go through it and selectively remove a large portion (in the case of Anti M, most) of the words according to selection principles such as sound and phrasal and lexical significance. The retained words are largely kept in the same location they occupied when the other words were all around them, thus page space is activated in new ways. The prose and/or narrative architecture remains quite strongly in place even after the occlusion of the majority of supporting representational structures.

One might of course take out letters and morphemes and words in more semantically destabilizing ways, so that narrative architecture is undone. Omitted prose operates on that kind of continuum.

At dinner the other night, Rosmarie & Keith Waldrop mentioned a French female writer, whose name unfortunately escaped my recall, who carries out a similar compositional directive, ie keeping words in the same location even as she removes words around them. I don't know if that writer begins omitting from a 'prose' frame or from some other writing approach.

I'm curious to hear of other examples of omitted prose and of other terms people might have used for this compositional approach. There are of course a number of works such as radi os, where the text of another writer is occupied by a new writer who removes letters and words and retains others so as to highlight a new text from the prior one. Such works, so far as I know of them, inhabit texts that are in the public domain. That is an interesting and related topic touching on intellectual property and on notions of originality and textual integrity. At the moment I am specifically interested in hearing about writers who use omitted prose in their 'own' works.

Lisa Samuels

From Kyoto University Open Courseware

2008-05-05T05:23:00.000-07:00

Hi, everyone. So much is going on here. I can hardly catch up!

Kyoto University, Japan, has begun to publish some of their courses &
researches with YouTube. I found a couple of poetry-related features (all in English):

Interactive Poem
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=u1S86PUd-MQ

Romeo & Juliet in Hades
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=dEEyb0tcNy0

Hitch Haiku
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=MOU3mqCuHFY

They are all computer-generated, interactive... things... Well,
a bit weird, but interesting.

Keiji Minato

"the utopian library" -- a letter from Vittore Baroni

2008-05-04T10:49:00.000-07:00

ARTIST'S BOOKS – ALTERED BOOKS – IMPOSSIBLE BOOKS

ANTI-BOOKS – REVOLUTIONARY BOOKS – IMAGINARY BOOKS

THE UTOPIAN LIBRARY

In July-August 2008 the BAU Cultural Association (www.bauprogetto.it)
will organize in Viareggio a multimedia festival titled THE PLACES OF
UTOPIA, that will include art shows and installations, performances,
readings, workshops, conferences and other events revolving around the
theme of UTOPIA.

As part of this festival, I will coordinate THE UTOPIAN LIBRARY, a
reading room where the visitors will be able to look through a
collection of international artists' books culled from the E.O.N.
archives plus books expressly submitted. The books will be on display
in shelves and over tables, with the possibility of a direct, hands on
fruition.

You are welcomed to CONTRIBUTE A BOOK to the UTOPIAN LIBRARY, either
an original work related to the utopian theme, or a book you have done
in the past that you think will fit the project. An illustrated
catalogue of the books received will be sent to all the participants
(Arte Postale! magazine n. 95). Your book will not be returned, but at
the end of the festival will become part of the E.O.N. archive.

The size, medium and technique for the books is FREE.

The material is not restricted to paper, but please take into
consideration the hands on approach.

Deadline: all the books should arrive BEFORE JULY 15, 2008.

Mail to:

Vittore Baroni, via C. Battisti 339, 55049 Viareggio (LU), Italy

vittorebaroni [at] alice [dot] it

Thanks in advance for your participation

Feel free to circulate this invite

Vittore Baroni

STRIKE: Igniting the Fuse of Possibility

2008-04-30T11:20:00.000-07:00

A City Lights May Day event @ First Unitarian Universalist Church 1187 Franklin Street at Geary, San Francisco, CA

Doors open 7 pm; performance begins 7:30 pm
Admission: $12.00 @ door (no one turned away due to lack of funds)

Join City Lights and friends for an evening of narratives that cut through the core of the neo-liberal agenda

30 local poets, performers, fiction writers, playwrights, and musicians deliver 3 minute pieces offering imaginative responses to the hunger of global capital and its effects upon community.

STRIKE addresses strategies of resistance. We pose the question: what serves as meaningful resistance in an age of disaster capitalism? We shall explore the liberation of the commons- through poetry, performance, music, and magic.

Participants:
Charlie Anders
Maxine Chernoff
Justin Chin
Diane di Prima
Camille Dungy
Ananda Esteva
Guillermo Gomez-Pena
Lisa Gray-Garcia
Jack Hirschman
Paul Hoover
Kevin Killian
Joseph Lease
Jon Longhi
Michael McClure
Cameron McHenry
Annalee Newitz
Barbara Jane Reyes
Al Robles
Leslie Scalapino
Matthew Shenoda
Bucky Sinister
Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
Amber Tamblyn
James Tracy
Roberto Vargas
Youth Speaks
more to come.