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.

Demolition

Last week, Geegaw and I attended Anne Carson's reading/performance of "Cassandra Float Can" and "Possessive Used As Drink (Me)" at the 92nd St Y.  Geegaw paid far better attention than I did, so I'll point you to her summary of both performances.

Cassandra Float Can

"a sensation of veils flying up...call this sensation Cassandra"

"not translatable but not meaningless"

This was a hypnotic and distracting performance.  While Anne Carson spoke in soothing tones, several individuals dressed in black walked along the stage and through the aisles carrying large prints of architectural images.  Some of these images were also projected on a large screen.  Carson spoke about the relation between Cassandra and translation.  According to Greek mythology, Cassandra was the daughter of the Trojan King Priam and was cursed with a gift of prophecy that no one would believe.  After the Trojan War, she was taken by Agamemnon and, in one of the most incredible scenes in literature (which I've only read in English), she stands at the threshold of his home, foresees what awaits her inside, and cries out to the spectators "Otototoi popoi da Opollon Opollon."  Carson's entire performance hinges on this one phrase.  The on line Ancient Greek lexicon that I consulted interprets "otototoi" as a cry of dismay, alarm, awe. Its translation varies.  But it's also worth speculating, as Carson and other scholars do, if it is even Greek in origin.  What language is Cassandra speaking at this moment?  Is she simply emitting sounds of dread or speaking in another tongue?  Either way, how does one translate this cry?  Is there even anything to translate? The skepticism of the chorus provokes a fascinating exchange on language and translation:

CASSANDRA: I tell you you'll see Agamemnon dead.
CHORUS MEMBER: Poor girl, calm yourself. Tone down those words.
CASSANDRA: No—no one can heal what my words prophesy.
CHORUS: Not if they're true. But may the gods forbid!
CASSANDRA: While you pray here, others move in to kill.
CHORUS LEADER: What man is going to commit such crimes?
CASSANDRA: What man? You've completely missed the point.
You've failed to understand my prophecies.
CHORUS LEADER: Yes I have—
I don't see who has means to do it.
CASSANDRA: Yet I can speak Greek well enough.
CHORUS LEADER: So does the oracle at Delphi,
but understanding what it says is hard.

(translation by Ian Johnston)

We learn later in the performance that many of these circulating images are part of what remains of Gordon Matta-Clark's "building cuts," large scale art works that often consisted of cutting holes and creating fissures in abandoned buildings or structures slated for demolition.  It seems that inevitable destruction is the connection between Matta-Clark's buildings and Cassandra's threshold.  Cassandra stands before Agamemnon's home and envisions its ruin.  It's completely unavoidable.  Her speeches to the chorus before she enters the house are stunning in their lyrical power but they are useless.  Cassandra could have stepped inside without a word but, instead, she gives prophecy another try, though she's fully aware that she won't be understood.  She's casting a light that no one will see until it's over.  Like the light in those remaining, surviving images of Matta-Clark's "cuts." 

Possessive Used As Drink (Me): a lecture in the form of 15 sonnets

"Poet Anne Carson proves that even the lowly subject of pronouns can be delicious." (via Play Gallery)

1. Triple Sonnet of the Plush Pony: Part I; Part II; Part III
2. Sonnet Isolate
3. Recipe
4. Sonnet of Addressing Gertrude Stein
5. Sonnet of Addressing God
6. Merce Sonnet
7. Sonnet of Addressing Oscar Wilde
8. Deictic Quiz Sonnet: Parts I through VI
9. Drop't Sonnet
10. Sonnet of the Pronoun Event
11. Sonnet of Exemplary Sentences from the Chapter Pertaining to the Nature of Pronouns in Émile Benveniste's Problems in General Linguistics (Paris 1966)
12. Reticent Sonnet
13. Sonnet of "We Tried Doing It Without The Cue Sheet But Couldn't Remember What Color Referred To What Movement And What Had Been Done And What Was Left To Do"
14. Sonnet of the English-Made Cabinet with Drawers (in prose)
15. Crowning Sonnet (Fashioned from the Foregoing 14 by Chance Operations)

I've included links to video excerpts of this performance. 

Good Things

Following up on my previous post on ASL poetry, I recommend that you read H-Dirksen L. Bauman's article "Redesigning Literature: Poetics of American Sign Language Poetry."  Bauman employs the lexicon of film studies to discuss ASL poetry as a visual art.

"Whether flesh, celluloid, analogue, or digitized, the ASL text is always a human body, projecting its own visual-spatial-kinetic experience, awakening similar lived experiences in the minds and bodies of the viewers...The two bodies together, the poet's and the viewer's, ultimately combine to create the text which is more than a script of linguistic signs, but a lived cinesthetic experience."
...

"While many presume that film has introduced a uniquely modern means of perceiving the world, we can reasonably assume cinematic-like composition of Sign predated the cinematograph by a good 2500 years. We can speculate that the Deaf signers mentioned by Plato in The Cratylus conversed through a series of visual images that were constantly being framed, cut, and edited throughout the course of a narrative. In this sense, cinematic experience may be akin to aspects of Deaf epistemology that have been around as long as signing communities. Cinema is but one medium through which we can produce moving images; Sign is another such medium-perhaps even the ur-medium-for producing moving images."

Plato's The Cratylus:

SOCRATES:  ...Suppose that we had no voice or tongue, and wanted to communicate with one another, should we not, like the deaf and dumb, make signs with the hands and head and the rest of the body?

HERMOGENES:  There would be no choice, Socrates.

SOCRATES:  We should imitate the nature of the thing; the elevation of our hands to heaven would mean lightness and upwardness; heaviness and downwardness would be expressed by letting them drop to the ground; if we were describing the running of a horse, or any other animal, we should make our bodies and their gestures as like as we could to them.

HERMOGENES:  I do not see that we could do anything else.

SOCRATES:  We could not; for by bodily imitation only can the body ever express anything.

HERMOGENES:  Very true.

******

The Frick Collection is currently showing  "Antea," a beguiling portrait by Parmigianino.  It's a one work show, which made me think of the last one work exhibition I saw: Jay DeFeo's "The Rose" at the Whitney.  "The Rose" weighs over 2000 lbs and took DeFeo about eight years to complete.  It was featured on the main level of the Whitney in a space that seemed too small, too claustrophobic for a work that massive.  But the longer I spent in front of the painting, the less constrained I felt by my physical surroundings.  There were a few other drawings and paintings by DeFeo on display in that wing, but I still think of it as a one work exhibition.

Fans of John Ashbery may recognize the name Parmigianino.  It was his self-portrait that inspired the title poem of Ashbery's 1975 collection Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror.

Paul J. Karlstom's 1975 interview with DeFeo is a first-hand account of the post-Depression history of fine arts pedagogy in California.  I wish I had taken more art history courses in college but, honestly, I never honed the skills necessary for retaining dates (my Achilles heel when it comes to history, in general, and birthdays, in particular).  But I found this interview to be a very engaging history lesson.  "...when I say that, when I went to the University of California, we were hanging on to the apron strings of Cubism, I mean I was hanging on for dear life. And I've never let go because I still love that period."

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)

Reading @ JCC

On Sunday, I will be reading my translation of a short story by Reuven Miran at the JCC. The story "Meteor" will be appearing (along with two other stories) in an upcoming issue of Zeek. And if time permits, I also will share a very recent translation of a poem by Anna Herman.  Here's the event information:

Babel to Bamba: New Words From, About, and Wrestling with Israel
Sunday, February 25, 5:00-6:30pm
JCC in Manhattan, 334 Amsterdam Ave @ 76th St

Zeek presents poets, writers, performers, and artists shouting, jamming, and reciting their work about the Promised Land. Featuring both American and Israeli voices (and Israeli-American ones), we'll move beyond the cliches to engage with the social, political, and religious realities of Israel and diaspora, as reflected in the literary mind. Co-presented with Corner Prophets as part of Israel Non-Stop at the JCC.

The Spirit of Multiplicity

Blurring Boundaries: A Conversation on the Art of Translation with Rosa Alcalá, Ryoko Sekiguchi, and Cole Swensen (Poets House, 11/17/06)

Last night, I attended the closing event of the Festival of Contemporary Japanese Women Poets, which was organized by belladonna*, Poets House and the Bowery Poetry Club. The conversation began between Alcalá, Sekiguchi and Swensen and continued with a Q&A. I was introduced to Sekiguchi's work on Wednesday but last night she elaborated further on her experiences in and thoughts on self-translation. Swensen, also a well-regarded poet, translated into English Sekiguchi's Japanese to English self-translations and has translated a number of French works, focusing in particular on cross-genres. She currently teaches at the University of Iowa. Her comments addressed the role and influence of translation on a poet's "original writing." Rosa Alcalá is a poet and translator who teaches in a bilingual MFA program at the University of Texas, El Paso. She opened the conversation with an observation on borders:

Notes on "Crossing Currents"

Festival of Contemporary Japanese Women Poets:
November 15-17, 2006 at Poets House and Bowery Poetry Club

Day 1:

Cross Currents and Innovation in Japanese Poetry, A Panel Discussion

With Ryoko Sekiguchi, Takako Arai, Kiriu Minashita, Kyong-Mi Park, and Sawako Nakayasu. Moderated by Rachel Levitsky, co-curator and founder of Belladonna*.

Rachel: Each of you write in a personal language but ultimately writing in a language that is "socially criticized" and localized.

Ryoko: Japanese poet living in France. Now writes in French and Japanese. Self-translates. Relation of poetic identity to native culture shifts with each book. The shift itself is a choice, a project. Wanted to write a book that explored how one finds a place as a minor sexuality, so assumed that position. Writer can assume positions they do not personally hold.

Kyong-Mi: Korean-Japanese poet whose native tongue is Japanese. Was encouraged to write from a Korean-Japanese perspective in order to "get more attention." Realized then that positions can be enforced from teh outside. What identity might be broken down in the process of figuring it out.

Takako: Her identity position has changed along with her poetry, has been informed and shaped by the writing of poetry. Growing up in a textile town, on the periphery/margins of Tokyo, became something she thought about more and more as she continued to write. Remarked that immigration laws in Japan changed in 1990 to allow Japanese-Brazilians to settle there. Before that Koreans were the primary outsiders in Japan.

Kiriu: Interested in the illusion of monoculturalism. Monoculturalism has developed in Japan over time; Japan's beginnings are highly multicultural, a beginning that has been glossed over by the myth of monoculturalism.

Takako: 150 years ago Japan was less linguistically unified. Tries to incorporate older forms of Japanese into her work to reflect and engage these linguistic layers.

Ryoko: Need to go back to the past to uncover these layers, to discern our multiplicity. Challenges the myopia of the present.

Kyong-Mi: Written Japanese also has an extremely layered history, has been genderized since the 12th century. (a lot of discussion on how writing in kanji, Chinese characters, was reserved for men, but that women developed their own form of writing; ideas on proper women's writing, which emphasizes sentiment and elegance, continue to have hold)

Ryoko: Often asked, why are you writing in French, Japan wasn't a colony of France. The question becomes: what is wrong with engaging in a language to which you have no historical connection?

Kiriu: The Tale of the Genji was written in a period when the Japanese were no longer going into China to study--when contacts with other countries are cut off that's when we start to go inward. In Japan, there is currently an emphasis on "beautiful Japanese" in literature. Her experimental verse challenges the relation between "the beautiful and elegant in poetry" and femininity. She also deliberately gave herself a name that is androgynous. "Kiriu" has a rich etymology and could mean "jet stream energy."

(Discussion turned to Gertrude Stein, breaking down language replaces breaking down identity in Modernism but the anthology on hand shows that both are occurring simultaneously. Ryoko Sekiguchi has translated Stein into Japanese.)

Ryoko: Rephrasing Stein: "I am me because my reader know me." I am someone standing in the background of my own work, its language. It's a tenuous position. It's easier to write towards an idea of your reader, but now, in translation, it is open to a reader I never anticipated. So in an age of translation, how flexible should this make your stance vis-à-vis the reader?

Kiriu: Resumed writing in 200 after a hiatus of 5-6 years.

Takako: "I feel like I'm a mass produced product made in a Tokyo automobile company. The fact that I have no locality is my identity." No sense of a real home. (When she is speaking of the suburbs I hear the words "bad town.")

Kiriu: I change my name with each genre. I can think of seven or eight right now. The pleasure of disguise.

Following the discussion, each poet read a poem. Takako's poem is one that Sawako has not translated so she does so automatically! Takako's poem is about an "empty weaving factory." The image that stands out for me is that of a woman whose hair gets caughts in a machine. "But these are not ghosts." Kiriu reads "Sonic Peace" which is in the anthology. "Under the sun/ Not a single new thing comes to be"

In the Q&A, Takako remarked that "in Japanese one can separate the gender of the writer from the gender of the poetic speaker." When she reaches an impasse in her own writing she switches gender which then changes her relation to her writing and opens up new avenues. That option, she says, "is an interesting element of the Japanese [linguistic] toolbox."