Back in print! How to Prepare Yourself for the Collapse of the Industrial Publishing System

Glad to see the cyclical life of this co-translation

How to Prepare Yourself for the Collapse of the Industrial Publishing System by Eric Schierloh is officially back in print and available now.

Independent production featuring:

• Covers: High-contrast black and gray Risograph ink on sturdy white cardstock.

• Interior: Printed on tactile gray paper.

• Limited Run: This edition is limited to 227 copies.

Eric Schierloh’s philosophy centers on the "bibliographic self-management" movement. Vamos hacia small-scale, hand-made, and the sustainable. For organizers, writers, a zine-makers, and homemakers alike; fight against the homogenization of culture, this text is an inspirational talisman for any workbench, kitchen counter, or home library for reimagining the tools for life and a vocation outside the traditional corporate machine.

Order here: https://halfletterpress.com/how-to-prepare/

Support independent publishing! Build your own press! Prepare for the collapse! 

 

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Another translation for Matambre Mag: The Monster & the Canela

Read the full piece by Federico Levin Matambre Mag.  Thanks to Kevin Vaughn, once again, for the invitation to translate not only interesting stories but also unique writers from Argentina.

Introduction of the story below:

The Monster and the Canela by Federico Levin

"Two guys converse one afternoon in October 2010 at a farm in San Rafael, Mendoza. One is younger, skinny, and curly-haired, with a somewhat urban look: Santiago Salgado. The other guy, José Antonio, is an older man who looks like he has lived his entire life in this precise spot. They spend a good while standing around drinking mate. They sit down and share some wine. Zunilda comes over and brings some homemade bread, cheese, and olives to go with it. 

At dusk, a strong wind picks up. Along with the sound of the swirling leaves and the peremptory threat of a day that may suddenly come to an end, the breeze brings Santiago something unexpected, a smell that quickly turns into an aroma: it smells like cinnamon. It smells green, to the tone of the slightly psychedelic hue of vine blossom, and, surprisingly, like canela, which translates to cinnamon. First, Santiago doubts his nose, despite its usual faithfulness, after all, it is his main detective tool. Is it or isn’t it? He looks at the vineyard and does the math: Syrah, Torrontés, Malbec. No, it can’t be. Until his look averts and finds, not in the vineyard but next to José Antonio’s house, two stray vine rows. That’s where the smell is coming from. 

He feels a euphoria erupt that is hard to put into words, impossible to understand for someone who does not know its history. The smell is not that of cinnamon sticks, the ones that are boiled to make tea, prepared with curry, or sprinkled onto the foam of coffee to make a cappuccino in the big cities. No. It is the canela grape that releases that subtle breath during its flowering. 

Is it?

We still don’t know. But to understand the enormity of this moment, the profoundness of this question, in order to switch on our curiosity, we must first know Santiago’s story. And that of the Canela grape."

Continue reading. . .

Translation for Matambre Mag: Overlooked modernism and empanadas in the middle of Downtown

If you plan to travel to Argentina and want a deep dive into the food and all that entails, you must contact Kevin Vaughn. For your pre-trip prep you can read his zine Matambre, and then while you are in Buenos Aires have him introduce you to the food and the people connected to it by booking his professional, no bull-shit, fringe tours at Devour Buenos Aires. 

Kevin graciously asked me to translate a guest piece for Matambre written by Nadin Petrone about Galería Boston. Buenos Aires is full of Galerías and I am obsessed with walking through them. So this piece was a joy to translate and to learn more about one of the most frequented (for empanadas) yet overlooked architectural oddities and beauties of Buenos Aires. Nadin Petrone's photography is another must for anyone interested in Buenos Aires, check her IG, and read my translation of the piece on empanadas and the eclectic Galería Boston over at Matambre Mag. 

Overlooked modernism and empanadas in the middle of Downtown

"My go-to place on Florida Street is the Galería Boston. As in many other old commercial galleries nearby, time stopped over 50 years ago. Some entrances are camouflaged among the more flashy windows of neighboring stores, leaving these large spaces forgotten, which penetrate the blocks and used to be populated by various stores. Just in the kilometer that the pedestrian street covers, there are 17 galleries and many more in the surrounding streets. 

Just a few meters away, nearly right across the street, is the undisputed star of the block: the famous Galería Güemes, which astounds with its Art Nouveau style and its marble and bronze from the beginning of the twentieth century. In addition to its purely architectural attraction, it has the added flavor of a picturesque and somewhat improbable anecdote: it was the home of the writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and his pet, a seal pup that lived in the bathtub of his apartment.

In contrast, the Galería Boston, with its more modest charms, has yet to be discovered by many. Almost all of the interchangeable characters on the grooved letter-board at the entrance have fallen off. This board once displayed the stores' names on each of its three levels. Today, most of them have been vacant for years and nothing seems very inviting to passers-by.

It was inaugurated in the early 1960s, and its most valuable attribute, consisting of three large murals with figures in low relief, goes unnoticed. The author is a multifaceted Argentine artist named Héctor Julio Páride Bernabó, known as "Carybé," a nickname he picked up in Brazil, where he was more prolific and recognized than in his homeland. 

As an analogy with the DNA of the City of Buenos Aires, "La Güemes," reminiscent of European constructions, coexists with "La Boston," which, despite its Saxon name and its modern architecture, celebrates the Latin American essence on its walls.

Despite its artistic heritage, many visit the Galería Boston for some highly praised empanadas made using a recipe from the province of Catamarca. La Cocina is located on the central floor and has long ceased to be an open secret among workers in the area, thanks in part to the renewed boom of vintage bars and cafés on social media. "

Continue reading here . . .

2 Translations for the HKWF International blog

These past 2.5 weeks were spent translating two pieces for the hkwm.blog that you can find below. The first is a write-up on the Spanish edition of the Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism-Feminism (HKWF) by Ana Miranda Mora. It is adequate to say that this is a clear example of why I continue to pursue work in translation. The apparent discrepancies between language and culture push me to scrutinize my language and perceptions of our world. Particularly these two pieces led me to overhaul my often coagulated viewpoints leaving me to consider my social and cultural privileges in the structurally unjust global systems we live in today.

Read Feminist irruptions in Marxism. About the publication of the Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism-Feminism in Spanish by Ana Miranda Mora (Trans. paul holzman)

Read my translation of Diana Fuentes's piece on the Spanish philosopher, poet, translator, and activist Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez.

Translation: How to Prepare Yourself for the Collapse of the Industrial Publishing System

 

by Eric Schierloh

translated by Eric Schierloh & paul j holzman

 

Using Bruce Charles Mollison’s How to Prepare for the Collapse of Capitalism as a starting point, Eric Schierloh partially rewrites and expands far beyond it. The idea of “agricultural reform” that appears in this anarchist flattening of the hierarchy of urgency was outlined metaphorically, and only a few days apart, by two of the author’s friends who don’t know each other. For this, he thanks Chilean poet Diego Alfaro Palma and the Argentine letterpress printer stranded in Italy, Federico Cimatti of Prensa La Libertad.

 

1 – Learn to print, not a text but a book, and not just using a home printer. A typewriter, stamps, engraving, silkscreen printing, letterpress, collage; this can all be useful for writing and for the book outside of the industrial publishing system.

 

1 – The industrial publishing system implies, to some degree, a standardization of text (edition) and material for the marketplace, in addition to economic dependency—in the vast majority of cases pitiful and meager and altogether unfair in terms of percentages—both symbolically and instrumentally. Very few writers know how to make a book, and perhaps even far less want to manufacture them.

 

1 – The material diversity of the publications will never be industrial because the very nature of the industry is replication, centralization, and an endless increase of revenue to the detriment of everything else. Meanwhile, your nature as a being inserted into a dynamic system (which includes the biblio-system) is, first of all, diversity. So take that diversity to the text as a writer and to the book as a publisher—ultimately, toward a new art of making books.

 

1 – Allow failure and error to have a place in your procedures.

 

CONTINUE READING HERE

Publishing on the Margins: A Conversation with Argentine Artisan Publisher and Poet Eric Schierloh

 

I first came across Eric Schierloh’s multifaceted cultural artisanry imprint Barba de Abejas (Bee beard) when I was gifted a copy of Richard Brautigan’s Please Plant This Book. Eager to read the poems in Spanish, my then one-dimensional approach to books, I carefully opened the object unable to overlook the detail in each item. To my surprise, out fell eight envelopes from a peculiar binding that had subverted the traditional text block. Each side of the envelopes donned a poem in either Spanish or English enfolding a seed between each version of the text. Also included was a book of Schierloh’s own poetry written while representing Argentina at the Guadalajara International Book Fair and a hand-painted watercolor portrait of Brautigan. Perusing this offbeat compilation became the defining moment that began to expand my relationship with books, the written word, translation, and the circulation of it all.

Reaching ten years at the end of 2020, Barba de Abejas has released forty-six titles of more than thirty authors, and around 6,600 books along with 1,900 chapbooks—each one made by hand and including ancient text to contemporary poetry. Eric was willing to answer a few questions to discuss artisan publishing and his advocacy for publishing on the margins, outside of the industrial publishing complex.

 

Paul Holzman: What was the tipping point to go DIY and to bring the entire process into your home? Tell me about the moment you decided to plan, lay out, print, and hand-make your first book.

Eric Schierloh: It was at the end of 2010, and it had to do with two things: a certain “disappointment” regarding the dynamics of the industrial publishing system and having come across, by pure chance, the case of Ulises Carrión while in Guadalajara, Mexico. A very talented artist who transcended the frontiers of literature in order to make the manufacturing and publishing of things almost intrinsically linked to writing, Carrión speaks of the modern writer in terms of someone cut off from the material conditions of book production, and that was the exact split I had experienced publishing industrial books in small independent publishing houses. It took me a year and a half to get a grasp on all this and to teach myself the craft of editing (which includes publishing and distribution), the designing of books, and bookbinding.

CONTINUE READING HERE

REVIEW: The “Untranslatable” Osvaldo Lamborghini’s English-Language Debut

 

The subject of Osvaldo Lamborghini’s impact on Argentine Literature summons a polarity of responses. The late Leopoldo Marechal, commenting on Lamborghini’s seminal El Fiord, said: “It’s perfect. A sphere. Shame it’s a sphere of shit.” On the contrary, César Aira, Lamborghini’s mentor/curator of sorts, extrapolates his singularity—claiming his work to be unparalleled. Academics of the greatest rigor and other heavyweights of the contemporary Latin American literati—such as Tamara Kamenszain and Roberto Bolaño—have unfettered their comments on the writing of Lamborghini as well: the former finding the need to unabatedly analyze, theorize, and deconstruct the dialectic around Lamborghini’s work, and the latter encouraging the reader to enter with caution. With so much contention surrounding his oeuvre, taking on the task of translating any of Lamborghini’s work is a mighty—even ominous—task. It therefore comes to no surprise that a print translation into the English has taken a relatively long time to reach our hands, but it has arrived: Two Stories by Osvaldo Lamborghini, by the intrepid hand of translator Jessica Sequeira.

The written word, for Lamborghini, permeates the conscious with a concise and potent mechanism, boggling the minds of readers with an intelligently savage use of syntax, punctuation, and orthography. I first encountered his antics in El Fiord, his first publication. After quickly scrapping my thesaurus and dictionary, I stumbled between aversion and infatuation, rummaging through a labyrinth of blogs and academic databases for explanations and makeshift guides to the text. After a few years of indulging in the somewhat toxic relationship of attempting to translate El Fiord into English, my notes revealed that a great many elements of his writing transcend conventional translation approaches and decisions, culminating in ever more possibilities for the text. Thus, translation is an important tool for engaging the multifarious nature of Lamborghini’s work, and Two Stories demonstrates that the act of translation proves to be a helpful light while shadowboxing what some call the “untranslatable” Osvaldo Lamborghini.

CONTINUE READING HERE

expulsion of a theatrical register

At some point I convinced myself, "You should read Harold Pinter."

I said okay and my fingers started to peruse the pages of "The Room". But I read "La habitación." I have sacrificed an opportunity. The chance to read "The Room" with a clear feeling of newness is now a lost offering, released without considering before the act. Yes, translation tweaks a work in a way that presents anew certain subjects, especially poetry and narrative. And I assume it is similar reading theatre pieces. But again, I convinced myself to read theatre and did it. More chore than aesthetic stimulation. The takeaway: Harold Pinter avoids any definitive matters. He seems to blatantly suggest to avoid at all costs, writing decisively. At least it seems this way to a malleable theatre mind. But both my mind and memory falter and the interest I had while I was reading was minimal. For the discipline and obligation connected to the text- both the transposed speech "advice on writing theatre (rough translation from the Spanish)" and "La habitación"- dominated the entire experience. Now I wonder to myself, "is my reading and comprehension in Spanish poor? Or is the lack of interest and excitement for the material the reason I faintly recall what I gulped down a few weeks ago? The ambiguity in "The Room" or rather, in "La habitación", was the driving force. Why did the man sit and not speak? Where the hell could this room be and why was it called La habitación? Why did it seem that they were actually to be speaking in English when the typed text was in Spanish. Are these characters each speaking different languages and their mutual understanding an expanding tension on the verge of snapping?

At some point I convinced myself, "Deberías leer a Harold Pinter."

Review: Mr. Kafka: And Other Tales from the Time of the Cult

Mr. Kafka: And Other Tales from the Time of the Cult by Bohumil Hrabal
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Short and concise stories that personify factories from a Prague of the past. These same factories were the historic backbone and the bloodline to the industrial revolution that would forever knead the world into its most recent mold. Thankfully, Bohumil Hrabal generously envisages a Czechoslovakia quite unknown, or too difficult to know by the mildly curious Anglophone. This short story, much like the other translations of his work into the English, will coerce and foment a curiosity difficult to satiate. The western (English speaking reader) will find an upshot of communism foreign to the paradigmatic concept that unintentionally- in these short stories- brings philosophers, writers, doctors, criminals, women, and other common folk into a daily interaction. They work side by side in a grueling environment that requires excessive clothing and excessive exposure, creating a vulnerability to the systematic oppression and humanistic oppression already established by a more universal society.

However, the seemingly chaotic threads in these seven short stories must be taken into account. They leave the reader with a ware much like the ingots themselves– better conceived as shrines, meccas, or nebulas at the helm of an existence and essence of the eclectic group of individuals found throughout Mr. Kafka: And Other Tales from the Time of the Cult. The dichotomy of destruction and creation is beautifully narrated by a Hrabal, who himself was submitted to the democratically elected communist regime that delivered him into the crucible that would ironically forge his style and tone that would consequently establish him as a Czech writer; decisively severed from his influences. It cannot be denied, however, that Bohumil was continuously tempted to stray towards the surrealistic and western influence instilled in him early on. That is especially telling in his moments of poetic narration. God bless the hammer, the sickle and the Phrygian cap. God bless Bohumil Hrabal!

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Review: Transatlantico

Transatlantico by Witold Gombrowicz
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I had to labor through this book. Since last year I've been chomping at the bit to read Witold Gombrowicz ever since the publishing house, el cuenco de la plata, began releasing a series of his writings translated into Spanish. It seems Sergio Pitol has been commended for his translation of a difficult, and often deemed impossible, translation of this surreal biography of Witold's first days in Buenos Aires. Despite this praise, the Castilian Spanish was the first contribution to a vicissitude of excitement previous to opening up this book. The difficult language and syntax was the second contributor to a stymied initial intrigue for a glance into a renowned Polish writer who spent 10 years (maybe more?) of his life living in Argentina.

However, I was pleased to encounter a most unique approach to the idea of identity, loyalty- both to nation and to individuals connected to oneself by the sole fact of nationality-, and the apparent transformation a person experiences when choosing to live in another Nation-state different from the one they hold inherent allegiance to.

One factor to the uniqueness in this book is that the flow and tone liken to a stream of consciousness type of narrative which guides the reader at an accelerated pace. This quickness captures a desperation as the individual seems helpless to control much of anything, while the futility of settling down in his new environment unfolds into a game of tug-o-war and ambiguous submission. What is most peculiar of Trans-Atlantic is that Gambrowicz confronts the forces and circumstances that are both within him and beyond him which are innately Polish, and only exposed by his decision to stay in a foreign land.

This peculiar approach to a migrant's account of their first experiences in Buenos Aires was the last and most penetrating vicissitude that turned this read into a rigorous one, however not hindering, another example of Witold's ingenuity.

My expectation was high and in search for a fresh and unique glimpse into a city I know well as an immigrant. I hoped to find similarities in passionate narrative, both in critique and appraisal, descriptions of a fondness for the streets and the hustle and bustle of Buenos Aires, the admiration and annoyance of the crass Porteño manner. But to my surprise, and to the demise of my expectation, very little of Buenos Aires is registered in Witold's account in regards to landscape, arquitecture, intercultural exchange, and potent cultural nuances. Despite this, Gambrowicz cleverly uses Buenos Aires as a latent antagonist to issues otherwise held at bay in an individual comfortable at home. Buenos Aires plays the part as agitator to an individual's conception of identity and loyalty to a nation or the idea of home and the individual's pertinence to that home. I was disheartened that many different combinations of cities and nationalities could have been used as the setting for this story. But at the same time I must appreciate this universal characteristic and adaptability of Trans-Atlantic.

In the end, it is fascinating how the author was able to strip Buenos Aires of its heterogeneity and vibrancy. He leaves a blank canvass only to sloppily splatter the abstract mess that is blind allegiance to nations and fellow countrymen and giving an account of an individual desperately moving along to complete the fleeting journey of escaping, or disconnecting, from ones identity that is heavily saturated by the enigma of nationalism. The process is unique and much harder to explain in word, but I believe Witold Gambrowicz succeeds in Trans-Atlantic. However, this conclusion is hindered by my lack of Polish.

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Poetry in translation :: Confetti-Ash Selected Poems of Salvador Novo

Buy at SPD Books!

Confetti-Ash Selected Poems of Salvador Novo

The online literature magazine Circulo de Poesía offers a glimpse into 15 of the selected poems from Confetti-Ash translated by Anthony Seidman & David Shook. The print copy, which can be purchased at SPD Books, also includes my translation of Jorge Ortega's rapt introductory essay.

read the poems

Review: Rilke shake

Phoneme Media´s Bilingual
edition translated by Hilary Kaplan
CLICK HERE TO BUY

Rilke shake by Angélica Freitas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a blend, a mix, a jumble– a Rilke Shake. In Angélica Freitas’(@rilkeshake) collection of quirky poems the lively samba does not call her to the streets. Her “Rite of Passage” is composed of neighborly looks that silently deduce her identity with questions unspoken and answered before they are never asked. The author prefers her "Blake toasted– and buttered." Angélica claims to never have read Chaucer but does not lay down to this assumed literary inefficiency. She throws this fact into the mix of ingredients that is ironic, pithy, and concisely reflective showing that her literary antecedents are content and thickset without Chaucer at their table. The reader will find popular Brazilian culture and other global elements flipped and agitated, or mixed as the title suggests. What better way to take this approach than through poetry? Freitas’ does not hold back. The emotion and tone blends a nostalgia of love, and childhood memories, with a yearning desire that articulates past with future, resulting in a raw exposition of the present that suggests numerous lenses and angles exist and that they may be better shaken up rather than straightened and ordered. In the poem "October thirteenth" the poet directly concludes that she cannot finish the poem. It struck closely to what Alejandra Pizarnik has said about finishing a poem, “you cannot finish a poem, it’s not done, the poet abandon’s it, the reader must finish it.” Just like a good ol’ American milkshake, you cannot chug it, you have to pucker up and suck hard at the beginning because it’s too fun and exciting not too. However, you will quickly realize that the pace sets to a slower rhythm until it melts a bit- read melting as accustoming. As I accustomed to Freitas’ style and flow–when the consistency of the shake thinned out–I was able to finish it like all readers are invited to. Hilary Kaplan’s translation is scrupulous. The translator’s note, is strategically placed to conclude the collection with coherence which personally helped me to finish even more satisfied, jovially licking my lips leaving me with sticky fingers. Upon finishing this book of previously blogged poems, one is going to need a few napkins to clean up after the beautiful mess from delighting in Angélica Freitas` Rilke Shake. “Surrender your Mallormé, olé” and read Phoneme Media’s irreproachable bilingual edition of Rilke Shake.

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Review: Bessarabian Stamps: Stories

Bessarabian Stamps: Stories by Oleg Woolf
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Available from Phoneme Media

Upon delving into Bessarabian Stamps, I immediately experienced what translator Boris Dralyuk had communicated in his preface that, "So much is born of so little." Immediately– I confirmed both the shortness and depth found in the book. Consequently it made for a challenging read while I struggled to maintain a coherent and linear reading of the 16 mini narratives due to characters with interchangeable names and seemingly ambiguous daily occurrences. However, I managed to advance in the reading and began to feel Oleg Woolf's mundane rhythm and the harmonious predicament of a community in limbo with no desire and no energy to be emancipated.

Woolf's descriptions of the town sustain each story and healthily compliment the interpersonal treatment between the characters and their town. They embellish each individual’s temperament and simultaneously, these temperaments become the crux of the book and its flow. In many instances Woolf intertwines Sănduleni into the DNA of each character, while each character weaves their own self reciprocally back into the town, thus showing that a place refuses to exist without those who inhabit it. Sănduleni has been precariously governed and manipulated by numerous regimes of rule throughout its history. It has seen it's borders morphed and moved numerous times deeming lines on a map as superfluous to its denizens that were either included or omitted by the busy boundaries. In Woolf's Sănduleni the trains sigh and the lakes need no inspiration. The town's profile is ostentatiously ordinary. Its people are mysterious and their language creates a tone and mood that is so unique that at times it seems unbearable to the reader. Yes, their language and dialogues are unconventional and may dizzy the reader, but they are the cogent themes of a people and region that have been dizzied by their own history. This consequently tends to lead the reader to believe that neither the region nor its people seem to fret over the ambiguity of their nationality or borders. But as the characters interact throughout each stamp, their ho-hum and somber tone latently screams, “that is not so!”

To be repetitive, the characters' discourse is a reflection of their setting– and Woolf pinpoints that with his wit and pithy narrative. Many stories can help a reader visualize another world. Bessarabian Stamps unleashes years and depths of a town in only a few pages. The setting and its dwellers effortlessly compete for the role of protagonist. The reader does not see another world, rather experiences and becomes familiar with the idiosyncrasies of an unusual normalcy found in the interaction of the habitants in their town. The people and the place will leave any curious reader profoundly satisfied and enlightened in a shadow of repetitive uncertainty. Does the post physically arrive to Sănduleni? Are these Stamps of any veracity? This book is a door to a plethora of other doors, each providing a glimpse into a community and its people where both refuse to reveal anything definitive about their shared predicament, leaving the reader's imagination to excavate its own depths. It must not go without mention that Boris Dralyuk has provided a vigorous translation that is certain to quench the curiosity of the English-speaking reader.

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An ode to Amenaza

Edited by Olga García (Garden Oak Press, 2015)
Click to purchase

My translation of the poem Soneto La Carpio by poet, translator, and friend David Shook was published this past year in the bilingual anthology Frontera Piel/Skin Border. "It is an ode to his 'cock'"– as Andrew Perez of The Sun writes. Amenaza was a fighting cock purchased while David and I were living in Costa Rica back in 2008. Together we frequented the furrowed dirt streets (now mostly paved) of La Cueva del Sapo, or La Carpio. Cock fighting and breeding was not hard to come by in the neighborhood veined by a myriad of streets. Subversive to the hills of higher class neighborhoods in the hills, La Carpio is like an excavation, or quarry, squatted and developed by Nicaraguan refugees. One has to descend into La Carpio. In doing so, the individual cannot escape contemplating the neighborhood that beautifully takes to task societal structure and questions a collective majority that acquiesces the marginalized in present day structures.

The underpinning of the neighborhood is an organic response to fundamental needs for survival, escape, settlement (planting roots), raising families, and creating a collective identity in a foreign land.  At the age of 17 I did not realize the commonalties I shared with many of the friends in the neighborhood, nor my personal need for survival, escape, settlement, and a collective identity. La Carpio and its people were enriching my identity, deconstructing it and restructuring it. My preconceived notions of existence and life as I knew it were befuddled much to the breach found in language and privilege.

La Carpio's presence in San Jose subversively began, has grown, and now thrives. Shook has astutely taken a form, deconstructed it and restructured it, and possibly echoed this sequence. His sonnet has been molded into the flow and rhythm of life in La Carpio. His poetics bring a closeness to the investment of putting money towards a fighting cock in hopes for entertainment, winnings, and pride. It represents individuals identifying with risk, importance, and success while being battered daily by monotony, shallow pockets, and marginalization. Gruesome like a cock fight, David tears apart the traditional Sonnet and transfigures it with precision– fitting it like a glove on the milieu of La Carpio. The poem calls for a plummet into the opulent exposure found in La Carpio and its microcosm. I am grateful to have translated this poem, grateful to see her in print in a bilingual edition, grateful for David's ode to Amenaza, and grateful to a neighborhood and individuals that marked me deeply, much like the iron talons that continue to mark and slit a more recent generation of cocks in La Cueva del Sapo.

Review of Uyghurland: The Furthest Exile

from Phoneme Media 

"home becomes an abyss, a perpetual flux . . ."

Spanning two decades of poetic creation, this collection of poems carefully presents Ahmatjan Osman to the Anglophone reader. Fortunately, this bilingual edition from Phoneme Media encourages the reader to take a calm and patient approach guided by a concise and chronological distribution of the author’s poems.

Initially it is hard to scope Ahmatjan Osman residing in Canada, working a blue-collared job– fork lift operator to be precise. Through a veiled and dark imagery,  the exile motif that permeates throughout the book, challenges the reader to discover. He rightly utilizes the juxtaposition of the occidental and oriental to do so. Like an invocation, Osman boldly poeticizes the seemingly mundane and marginal Western life of an outsider, an immigrant or refugee; demonstrating that this predicament cannot cage and execute the emotion, passion, and assertiveness acquired when leaving home– despite assumptions that it may dilute or be catalogued as forgotten.

The tones of desperation, nostalgia, and anxiety bleed from these pages creating a strong and potent memory or even prophecy. However, the tones are more like oil to the water– the oil as poetry and the water the milieu of the author. It is fascinating that his exile to Canada acts as crucible to forge a poetic language that characterizes the Uyghur language, and the place– or places– which it represents and remembers.

The author lacks a refuge story for the front pages, however, his voice blends an alienated world into a not so extraordinary landscape of Canada for the English reader. Osman summons a memory of home that appears to not exist, or results as mystical and oneiric. He speaks a language only known to the transparent and invisible stories that walk amongst the many oblivious denizens of the world that claims to have a home, country and nation. Unfortunately, the Westernized citizens tend to only look Far East if a garish headline story peaks the interest of the entertainment world. Ahmatjan Osman challenges this with his poetry to listen to the depths and of the common cry in all who are exiled. How many more voices could be echoing or joining this cry in the Western world? 

Uyghurland: The Furthest Exile does not depreciate, (what was mentioned as “story”); rather its poems bring a depth to all matters of modern migration that is relevant in today’s world. The rhythm and song of this collection does not clarify this abstruse theme, nor should it.  The ebb and flow of the collection declares that many exiles exist and they will not end until death, continuing on in an eternal resonation.

What happens with the displaced when justice is reached? What is the outcome when the misplaced are placed? In the shadow of these questions, Ahmatjan Osman gives voice to a being and spirit subject to undefined and dark realities that are constantly imposed upon them and become individuals exposed in foreign circumstances yet granted  the oddness place of exile. The injustice culminates in generalizations and other evasive definitions that, unfortunately, are commonplace in mass media and pop literature; from the most conventional to the most venerable.

The poet’s patience in the shadow of this predicament, and his longing to genuinely search for a new language in light of the refugee, the migrant, the foreigner, place, and home; are felt and prominent throughout this book. Furthermore, the rigorous translation of Jeffrey Yang falls nowhere short of what seems to be a noble and never-ending process. These lines and stanzas travelled thorough self-translation by Osman himself, were passed along to Yang, whom the author trusted for his refined poetic knowledge in the English language, and concluded in a fluid exchange of reciprocity and established trust that is rampantly characteristic in the entire collection. The book is a pure and timeless creation between two dedicated individuals that are bound by a sturdy trust. This indispensable relationship between Yang and Osman present the poems to the curious and novice reader with an experience of reading Uyghurland with a clear sense of familiarity; breaking borders and resonating in a liminal space– possibly named exile. This accessibility does not yield any attraction to a seasoned reader of Uyghur literature or poetry. Phoneme Media’s bilingual edition will more than satiate a reader of a more seasoned familiarity.

In a time when so many humans out of dire need due to horrific circumstances are fleeing one physical place for another; “home” becomes an abyss, a perpetual flux, much like the displaced, misplaced, or place itself. Home never disappears as the memory is a powerful faculty, despite suppression and oppression. This book will take you by the hand and guide you to a place that glimpses these notions in a unique and different way. It honestly searches and cares for the vulnerable beings of this world, not turning a blind eye like the systems and institutions tend to do today.  These poems are subversive without surrendering to exclusion or boxing any individuals in. The poetry of Ahmatjan Osman is an invisible hope that guides the reader throughout its lines and words. Never did a reader expect such modern words to create an arresting ancientness coupled with a welcoming to join the exile. Can a homogenous white Caucasian North American really resonate and fall in synch? Can he or she glimpse into the world of exile? Yes. And there is something strong, declarative and inclusive in Ahmatjan Osman’s following line: 

“Refugee water in all of us.”

October, 2015.

Poking at Memory: A Conversation with Rocío Cerón and Anna Rosenwong | World Literature Today

Poking at Memory: A Conversation with Rocío Cerón and Anna Rosenwong | World Literature Today 

During the month of June and trickling into July of this year, I had the opportunity to interview Rocío Cerón author of Diorama, and translator Anna Rosenwong. Fortunately, World Literature Today was gracious enough to run it for their column Translation Tuesday this past week. The link above will take you to the interview.

I have now read through the book of poems 4 times. Over the months I have been browsing it's pages from time to time in search of the stubborn melodies and rhythms that will not leave me and contrarily have nestled into my mind hoping to find them again amongst the stanzas and lines. Diorama seems like a hallucinogenic journey with no end. It has not ended for me despite putting it down. The pauses, the imagery, and the allusions are palpable and visionary to the happening of daily life here in Buenos Aires. My notion is that this could be said for other places in Latin America and possibly in regard to other metropolitan cities where migration is constant and growing; not to exclude the spaces where the transitory individual is commonplace (That is if all spaces are not so). Honing in on the liminality of the book's landscape, both political and social, it is important that the reader notice the rich language and potent call to listen. This is enhanced when Cerón invites the Paraguayan writer, and friend, Cristino Bogado to translate a repeated refrain into the Guaraní, extending the book deeper into a frontal reality of Latin American that is so often boxed in as anamorphic due to generalizations and misinformed interpretations. Confusing and hard to capture its coherence at times, the modern urban setting of Latin America is difficult to sketch, interpret, or process, much like the first couple readings of Diorama. However, Cerón exercises her style to corral the elements of such a world by transposing it all to paper by virtue of her visual and symphonic poetics. To the readers' excitement, they will notice that Anna Rosenwong's translation is peerless and nothing short of honest, careful, and symphonic in and of itself.

 As Rocío says, "[Diorama]is a listening book; that´s to say, a book that is influenced by the voices, images, and truths of a nation, a continent. Thus the voices, like in a symphony concert, mix; they meet in a polyphonic composition."