literary passport

Percy Shelley's "Adonais"

"Language can posit and language can mean, but language cannot 

posit meaning."  

What a pretentious statement, but Percy Shelley's poetry has led Paul de Man to this non-sensical literary-critical peroration.  So, let us leave de Man behind and venture into one of the greatest poet's greatest poems - "Adonais".  The group of Spenserian stanzas stands as one of the great monuments in the use of the English language.  The tight control and fluid mastery Shelley demonstrates in this lamentation cannot be beat with a stick.    Read and enjoy. 

The One remains, the many change and pass;	460
Heaven’s light forever shines, Earth’s shadows fly;
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments.—Die,
If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek!	465
Follow where all is fled!—Rome’s azure sky,
Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words are weak
The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak.

Link to entire poem found here 

                     

Benjamin Péret

Benjamin Péret has been lurking in my subconscious all of my life. When I read the volume "From the Hidden Storehouse" in the Field Translation Series from Oberlin, I entered the frightening, hilarious room which contains my dreams' nightmares. The English translation by Keith Hollman sizzles and the book contains works from four other volumes by Péret, offering a rich slice of the work by a poet who never abandoned surrealism.

Le Grand Jeu (The Big Flame) 1928

De Derrière Les Fagots (From the Hidden Storehouse) 1934

Je Ne Mange Pas De Ce Pain-Là (I Won't Stoop to That) 1936

Je Sublime (I Sublimate) 1936

Un Point C'est Tout (That's All There Is To It) 1947

The introduction to the text by Charles Simic not only sheds light on the shadowy world of Péret, but on the former poet laureate's own work as well.

This website is a treasure chest full of details on the work and life of Péret.  

One poem from the Oberlin collection.  (May the copyright gods protect me.)

A Thousand Times

for Elsie

Among the gilded debris of the gasworks

you will find a chocolate bar that will flee at your 

approach

If you run as fast as an aspirin bottle

you will end up way behind the chocolate

which upsets the countryside

like shoes with holes

on which a traveling cloak is thrown

so the passers-by aren't frightened by the spectacle

of this nudity

which makes the teeth chatter in the boxes of face

powder

and the leaves fall from trees like factory smoke-

stacks

And the train passes without stopping at the little

station

because it isn't hungry or thirsty

because it's raining and it doesn't have an umbrella

because the cows haven't come back yet

because the route isn't safe and it doesn't like

to meet drunks or thieves or cops

But if larks lined up at the kitchen doors

to be roasted

if water refused to cut the wine

and if I had five francs

There would be something new under the sun

there would be loaves of bread on castors which 

would smash in the police stations

there would be nurseries for growing beards

where sparrows would raise silkworms

there would be in the hollow of my hand

a small cold Chinese lantern

gilded like a fried egg

and so light that the soles of my shoes would fly off

like a false nose

so the bottom of the sea would be a telephone

booth

where no one would ever receive a call

Poems by Bradford Gray Telford

Bradford Gray Telford is one of the most talented young poet/translators that Host Publications has come across in recent years. His translations of French poet Geneviève Huttin appear in The Dirty Goat 18 and a selection from his original Flaubertgasms is featured in The Dirty Goat 16. Check out his website, where you'll learn more about Brad's work. Read Brad's poems and you will simply be amazed.

A Modern Imitation of Goethe’s Faust : Alasdair Gray

 

Alasdair Gray, the greatest living Scottish writer, is little heard of here in the United States. His work seethes with energy, imagination, and righteous anger. Please take time to visit his website and blog; both recent discoveries of mine, though I have loved Gray's work for years.

       

His blog can be found here

Get Your Goat : 20th Anniversary! Austin Chronicle Review

The Dirty Goat

An Austin Chronicle Review of the 20th Anniversary Dirty Goat!

This month marks the 20th anniversary of The Dirty Goat, the long-running literary journal based in Austin and New York City. From humble roots in 1980s Austin, when each new volume was launched with a keg party in Harris Park, the journal has expanded in size and reputation – as has Host Publications, the independent press that grew up around it. From its new headquarters in downtown Manhattan, Host continues to deliver high-quality international literature with friendly, irreverent energy and a Texas drawl.

Complete Review Here  

Between Dawn And The Wind : The Sarmatian Review

By Anna Frajlich. Translated and with an introduction by Regina Grol. Cover art by Rafał Olbiński. Austin, Texas: Host Publications, 2006. xii + 143 pages. ISBN 10: 0-924047-41-0. Paper. $15.00.

The Sarmatian Review

Dubbed "the best Polish poetess of her generation," Anna Frajlich has developed an extensive body of work, which reflects her struggles and triumphs as a woman, immigrant and Polish ex-patriot. Part of the 1968 Jewish exodus from Poland, Frajlich has infused her poems with sensitive and penetrating notations of changing attitudes toward emigration. She has gone through life recording her insights, reflections or moods and has miraculously found terse and unpretentious artistic forms for their expression. This second edition contains several recent poems not included in the original version and it is clear that Frajlich's poetry continues to speak to our hearts and minds.

Sensitivity is Anna Frajlich's poetic domain. Sensitivity toward the beauty of the world, toward seasons, toward the landscape...Two realms overlap in her poetry: the realm of eros and the realm of memory. In the interpenetration of these two voices, in the vibrating tissue of her poems Anna from Brooklyn is a poetess of exile. And that comprises Frajlich's unique, inimitable and personal sphere of sensibility.

– Jan Kott

 

World Books Review: “Life As It Is” – A Wealth of Fetishes

"Life As It Is"
short stories by Nelson Rodrigues
translated by Alex Ladd
The Arts Fuse review

 Still relatively unknown in the United States, Nelson Rodrigues (1912 -1980) is considered by many to be Brazil's greatest playwright. He wrote seventeen full-length plays, as well as movie scripts, soap operas and novels. The fifty-eight stories in this collection are gathered from his newspaper column, A Vida Como Ela É (Life As It Is). Written in the 1950s, these stories have since been republished numerous times in Brazil, where they have been adapted for theater, television and cinema.

Figures of Speech: Poems of Enrique Lihn : Review

A Voice from No Man's Land

Enrique Lihn's writings, both creative and critical, are considered in Chile some of the most significant in the country's distinguished literary history. This bilingual volume is the most complete collection of Lihn's work in English. As well as some of Lihn's familiar poems, this volume includes representative poems from a number of his later books, previously uncollected pieces, and selections from his final moving sequence, Diary of Death.

A book by Host Publications

 

The Young Man From Savoy : A Review

A review by Tim Feeny of the University of Illinois

The Young Man from Savoy is the story of Joseph Jacquet, "a young man unlike others." The existence of this village boy, hired out as a hand on a schooner, seems fated to unravel from the moment he glimpses the mesmerizing Miss Anabella, a high-wire artiste with a traveling circus. She becomes the object of Joseph's fantasizing obsession, and a catalyst for the bizarre and brutal acts that ensue.

Set at the beginning of the twentieth century in a French mountainside village overlooking Lake Geneva, this tale of all-consuming love plays out against a backdrop that is at once idyllic and askew. Vividly imagined and masterfully wrought, The Young Man from Savoy is a meditative page-turner, a novel whose spare, mutedly lyrical prose stands in contrast to the dramatic tale it recounts. In this remarkable work, acclaimed French Swiss writer C-F Ramuz has left us a lasting legacy, a work of laconic and unsettling power.

A book by Host Publications

The Old Man's Verses : A short review

A nice review, check it out! 
Right Reading

Austin International Poetry Festival 2009

April is poetry month!

Join us for the 17th Annual celebration of AIPF:
April 23-26, 2009.

Austin International Poetry Festival is the largest non-juried poetry festival in the United States. This 3-day festival has drawn poets from every continent, and features live readings at more than 15 Austin-area local venues. Events include poetry slams, open-mics, workshops, yearly youth and adult anthologies and more. Come join our celebration!

For more INFORMATION, or to REGISTER, visit:
www.aipf.org

**AIPF is funded by the City of Austin**
This project is funded and supported by the City of Austin Through the Cultural Arts Division and by a grant from the Texas Commission on the Arts, as well as an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that a great nation deserves great art.

Please support our local poets! 

2008 Northern California Book Award Nomination

poetry by Ivan Diviš
translated by Deborah Garfinkle
bilingual Czech/English

8.5" x 5.5"
171 pages

Adopting the persona of the eponymous Old Man, celebrated Czech poet Ivan Diviš (1924-1999) writes of the comfort of memory, the nature of faith and the pain of exile. In this moving chronicle of loss and isolation, Diviš transports us through space and time, from the pristine mountain peaks of Tibet to a Prague gutter, and from the Big Bang up to the barbarous century of Hitler and Stalin, right through to the brink of the new millennium and the threshold of his mortal existence. With alternating lines of earthy vulgarity and lyric transcendence, the poems in this moving collection expose the longing, pathos and absurdity of human existence. Available to English-speaking audiences for the first time, The Old Man's Verses is a provocative, darkly humorous collection from one of the twentieth century's most extraordinary poets.

This book has been nominated for a 2008 Northern California Book Award in the category of literature in translation.

Nominees in the translation category are:

Senselessness, by Horacio Castellanos Moya, translated by Katherine
Silver. New Directions.

The Old Man's Verses, by Ivan Divis, translated by Deborah Garfinkle. Host
Publications.

Odes and Elegies, by Friedrich Hölderlin, translated by Nick Hoff.
Wesleyan University Press.

State of Exile, by Cristina Peri Rossi, translated by Marilyn Buck. City
Lights Books.

Belonging: New Poetry by Iranians around the World, edited and translated
by Niloufar Talebi. North Atlantic Books.



The Northern California Book Awards were established by NCBR (formerly the
Bay Area Book Reviewers Association, or BABRA) in 1981 to honor the work
of northern California writers and recognize exceptional service in the
field of literature here in northern California. In addition to the book
awards, the Fred Cody Award is presented annually for lifetime literary
achievement and service to the community. This year novelist, publisher,
and playwright Dorothy Bryant will be honored.

The 28th Annual Northern California Book Awards will be on Sunday, April
19, in the Koret Auditorium at the San Francisco Public Library, 100
Larkin Street at Grove. The Awards Ceremony is from 1:00-2:30 pm, with a
book signing and reception immediately following. The ceremony and
reception are free and open to the public.

More info can be found here.
The Old Man's Verses is available for purchase here.

World Books Review: “The Loving Specter of Yiddish”

With Everything We've Got
A Personal Anthology of Yiddish Poetry
edited and translated by Richard J. Fein
Host Publications

In With Everything We've Got, translator and poet Richard J. Fein introduces English-speaking audiences to some of the most poignant and passionate voices of the twentieth century. This outstanding collection features the work of fifteen acclaimed Yiddish poets, and includes the translator's own poetic responses to their verse, and to the act of translation itself. The poems offer nuanced experiments in form, thoughtful meditations on the fate of the Yiddish language, and reflections on a diverse range of themes and concerns, from the joys and hardships of immigrant life in America to the alienation of workers in the modern metropolis. With extensive biographies of the poets, an incisive introduction to the cultural background of their work, and a bilingual English/Yiddish format, With Everything We've Got is a wholly enjoyable and diverse anthology of Yiddish poetry, and a comprehensive introduction to an essential chapter in the story of Judaism.

This book has received a favorable review by The Arts Fuse.
Review can be found here and a copy can be ordered easily here.
Facebook!

The Dirty Goat 20 : Celebratory Issue

The Dirty Goat, published biannually in January and September, brings together the finest in contemporary poetry, prose, drama, literature and visual art from across the globe. The Dirty Goat is a journey which may take the reader from avant-garde Czech drama on one page to contemporary Turkish poetry on the next. Continually expanding the cultures it explores, this journal offers a taste of some of the world's most provocative and talented artists. With its wide array of art and literature, The Dirty Goat is a glimpse into the cutting edge of the international arts scene.

More info on The Dirty Goat can be found here.

Back issues are also available on a limited basis here.

Austin Chronicle : New in Print

A review of After-Dinner Declarations by Nicanor Parra and translated by Dave Oliphant. (Published by Host Publications; 513 pages.)

In the 235 poems that make up these collected declarations, renowned Chilean "antipoet" Nicanor Parra provides an entertaining and enlightening perspective on the modern world. Delivered as a series of five "verse speeches" during the 1990s, the poems in After-Dinner Declarations eschew literary ostentation in favor of playful, conversational musings. In a language steeped in colloquialisms, Parra's declarations employ a diverse range of discourses - from puns and allusions to diatribes and eulogies—in order to expose the hypocrisy of human institutions and offer a quipping challenge to those who remain satisfied with the status quo. Parra uses his linguistic brilliance and logical ingenuity to confront some of the most serious problems of our day, addressing perennial motifs such as ecology, human rights and responsibilities, and the limits of scientific knowledge. As the antipoet moves deftly from one topic to another with unbounded inventiveness, he discovers for us a wealth of political, philosophical, and literary insights, as well as unexpected connections between ideas that shape our lives.

"One of the great names in the literature of our language."

– Pablo Neruda

"After-Dinner Declarations, brilliantly translated by Dave Oliphant, shows us a new side of Nicanor Parra, one of the truly seminal figures of modern Spanish American poetry. Written in a raucous and wry vernacular, and enriched by the lyricism and wisdom that come from a long and fully engaged life, Parra's observations offered here touch on a wide variety of topics and issues, ranging from personal relationships and culture to politics, ecology, and the future of our planet. After-Dinner Declarations is a must read for anyone interested in Parra, the power and appeal of socially conscious poetry, or the exciting new field known as inter-American literature."

– Earl E. Fitz, Vanderbilt University