Stingy Kids

Short Stories @ PEN World Voices

May 2, 2008

Short Stories
Scandinavia House
Participants: Young-ha Kim, Dafna Zur, Etgar Keret, Abdourahman Waberi and Ingo Schulze (Moderated by Radhika Jones)

"Short Stories" was an outstanding panel.  Jones asked very direct questions that not only got the writers talking about their work but also generated discussion between writers.  I'm sure that these writers have talked on numerous occasions about their interest in the short story, its status among other literary genres, and the different ways they approach writing.  Even so, there were numerous moments of "thinking out loud," of discovery and unveiling.

PEN Worlds Voices 2008

I just got around to organizing my notes on the PEN Worlds Voices Literary festival, which took place last week in NYC.  It's an amazing gathering of writers, publishers, translators and readers.  The only drawback: there was just too much to do and so many good things overlapped!  Here are my notes from the panels and readings that I attended--my notes on the panel "Short Stories" will appear in a separate post:

Wednesday, April 30

Rewriting Family
Housing Works Bookstore Café
Participants: P.F. Thomése, György Dragomán, Yael Hedaya (Moderator: Stacey D'Erasmo)

Dragomán is a Hungarian novelist and translator who was born in Marosvásárhely/Târgu Mureş, Romania in 1973.  As a literary translator, he's aware of the limits of translation but doesn't let them become an excuse for not translating.  So let's say you can only get 90%, he said, that's something!  He also conceded that the kinds of limits or problems that one translator faces may be entirely different for another.  If you can't find the solution, someone else will.  This is a very generous and optimistic approach to translation and I thank Dragomán for it.  An audience member asked about the different between translating poetry and prose and remarked that poetry, in particular, tends to be untranslatable.  Dragomán smiled and told us that his wife is a poet and frequently works with translators.  "First, the rhyme goes,  second, some of the meter....but it's ok!  Something stays and that's what's important."  I really wish more readers and critics would focus on how much remains in translation rather than fixating on "losses," which I put in quotes becomes often those who assert that something has been lost in translation 1) haven't read the original or 2) haven't/won't read the translation.

He has a fantastic author website (authors, take note!), where he's posted excerpts from and links to a number of interviews.  I recommend highly his interview with James Smith in which he discusses at length his relationship with his translators and how he approaches the task of translation.

Notes: AWP Panels

Notes: AWP Panels

I found my notes/fragments from the AWP panels "The Disabled Body Poetic" and "Writing as Translation."  They are far--very far--from being extensive or coherent.

from "THE DISABLED BODY POETIC"

Gregory Fraser

--brother had spina bifida
--"to strike poses on the page"
--poetry's "obsession with the material nature of language"
--"hyper-material"

William Carlos Williams--focuses on the thing of language

FORM: Hugo's choice of villanelle
      meter
      terminal rhyme

--using orderly form (ironically) to encase the representation or voice of disorderly bodies
--playing on expectations of how poems should look and behave

Paul Guest

--to rest on a bag of sand
--"the brain left to believe that something has vanished"
--"the rest of me floating away"
--spinal fluid coming out of the nose

Susannah B. Mintz

--"poems as representations of self experiencing can be though of as happening randomly"
on Fraser--brothers hips are "where his knees should be"
--loving what is wild, even in one's mind
--poetry not redemptive--writing doesn't repair, heal--rather it represents this intensity, this wildness

Jim Ferris

--how is disability useful--for a poet?
--structure of rhythm of body on the poem
--tides, sun, season--rhythmic workings that are ubiquitous ("waxing and waning of the desert")--the pacemaker, metronome
--the novel is always about disability, the breaking of norms (didn't catch the source he quoted)
-- promote a "disability aesthetics"--that isn't apologetic

from "WRITING AS TRANSLATION"

--"the tentacular relationships between all of our cultures" (Hugh Ferrer)
--lyric poetry is a translation ("one doesn't go around walking or humming in meter"--not sure who said this)

2008 AWP

My winter conference season finally came to an end with the AWP, the annual conference of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs.  This year's AWP took place in NYC and I was urged by many friends to give it a try, "if only for the bookfair."  As far as conferences go, this one was pretty laid back for me.  I didn't give any papers or feel compelled to attend many panels.  I spent my mornings working at the American Literary Translators Association table, raising visibility for my beloved organization, and my afternoons at the occasional panel or reading.  But most of the time that I wasn't with ALTA, I was at the bookfair.  The bookfair involved the participation of the usual suspects--mass market and university presses--but the real draw for me was the opportunity to support my favorite small and independent presses and to discover new, emerging publishers.  One thing that I noticed is the increased interest in translation, which I found very encouraging both as a translator and scholar of translation.  Action Books, in particular, stood out for me as a small publisher committed to English translations of contemporary writing.  At their table, I picked up Jen Hofer's translation of Laura Solórzano's Lobo de labio and had a nice chat with Johannes Göransson, Action Books co-founder and editor and a translator of Swedish literature into English.  He remarked that their decision to publish a translation is rarely guided by what is canonical.  Their manifesto declares "We want poetry that goes too far," and that commitment to bold, experimental writing carries to their translation choices. 

If you take a look at my book list (see post below), you'll notice quite a few purchases from Etherdome and Belladonna*, two presses that promote work written by women (in fact, only four of the books I acquired were written by men).  Etherdome publishes two chapbooks a year and each one is stunning.  I love the simplicity of their books--the layout of the poems is uncluttered and the covers always feature a delicate print in monochrome.  Belladonna* refers to its chapbooks as pamphlets or "chaplets" and they have more of a classic zine feel to them than the Etherdome books.  But belladonna* publishes with greater frequency, usually timing their chaplets for a poet's reading, and the range of the work they promote is more extensive (including poets like Marcella Durand, Alice Notley, Laynie Browne, Jen Benka).   They also publish translations, most recently a gorgeous English translation of Lila Zemborain's Malvas orquídeas del mar (Mauve Sea-Orchids).  (On 2/12, belladonna* is hosting a reading with the poets Barbara Cole and Elizabeth Robinson, who is one of the editors of Etherdome.)

AWP Book Bag

A long post on the AWP is forthcoming.  In the meantime, here's a list of the books I purchased or otherwise acquired at the conference.  My friends weren't kidding when they told me that the bookfair was reason enough to register for the conference.  Most of the books on this list are from small and independent presses, so I made it a point to provide links.

coming down in white by Lori Shine (Pilot Books, limited edition of 200)

nothing fictional but the accuracy or arrangement (she by Sawako Nakayasu (Quale Press, 2006)

Kiss Me with the Country of Your Mouth by Amy King (Dusie, 2007)

The Desires of Letters by Laynie Browne (belladonna*, 2006)

Befallen I by Erín Moure (belladonna*, 2005)

A Revisioning of the Preamble of the Constitution of the United States of America by Jen Benka (belladonna*, 2003)

Mauve Sea-Orchids by Lila Zemborain (trans. Rose Alcalá and Mónica de la Torre) (belladonna*, 2007)

Specimen, Specimens by Anne Heide (Etherdome, 2008)

Learning the Language by Kate Greenstreet (Etherdome, 2005)

passing world pictures by Valerie Coulton (Etherdome, 2002)

Some Bridges Migrate by Scott Pierce (Small Fires Press, 2007)

Air Pocket by Kimiko Hahn (Hanging Loose Press, 1989)

Fieldnotes by Mark Weiss (Junction Press, 1995)   

Isa the Truck Named Isadore by Amanda Nadelberg (Slope Editions, 2006)

Lyric Postmodernisms: An Anthology of Contemporary Innovative Poetry ed. Reginald Shepherd (Counterpath Press, 2008)

Nylund the Sarcographer by Joyelle McSweeney (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2007)

[one love affair]* by Jenny Boully (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2006)

Exit Interview by Paul Guest (New Michigan Press, 2006)

The Cow by Ariana Reines (Fence Books, 2006)

Mommy Must Be a Mountain of Feathers by Kim Hyesoon (trans. Don Mee Choi) (Action Books, 2008) ,

Lip Wolf by Laura Solórzano (trans. Jen Hofer) (Action Books, 2007)

At the Drive-In Volcano by Aimee Nezhukumatathil (Tupelo Press, 2007)

You Can Tell the Horse Anything by Mary A. Koncel (Tupelo Press, 2003)

Bright Turquoise Umbrella by Hermine Meinhard (Tupelo Press, 2004)

The Bad Wife Handbook by Rachel Zucker (Wesleyan UP, 2007)