Archive for December, 2009

The BOA office will be closed for the holidays from Dec. 24 – Jan 4. We will no doubt have all kinds of good news to share with you by the time we’re back… In the meantime, on behalf of the staff and board of BOA Editions, we wish you all a lovely, bright, and shiningly poetic 2010!

Another smart review from Verse! Follow the below link to read Timothy Henry’s insightful review of Dark Things, poems by Novica Tadic, translated from the Serbian by Charles Simic, in which Henry says things like:

“In his introduction to Novica Tadic’s Dark Things, Charles Simic suggests that the reader of this haunted collection is led by “a nameless recluse, mistrustful and fearful . . . surrounded on all sides by monsters and apparitions generated by his vivid, guilt-ridden imagination.” With the guidance of this recluse, we are taken on a full-frontal tour of the narrator’s neighborhood, where this brilliant, delicate elder has lived long enough to lose any hope for his land’s salvation.”

[Verse Review of Dark Things]

Thanks to Idra Novey for this next installment of her guest blog series on poetry and translation!

Five Poetry Translation Myths and Five Splendid Quotes to Counter Them

For this week’s post on poetry translation, I thought it might be fun to pair some of the most persistent myths about translation with some quotes from my favorite writers and translators and see what they had to say to each other. Here are the results:

Myth Number Five: Translation is a passive undertaking. It’s all about invisibility and deference.

An answer from Anne Carson:

And if there is a silence that falls inside certain words, when, how, with what violence does that take place, and what difference does it make to who you are?

“Variations on the Right to Remain Silent,” in the journal A Public Space, issue 7.

Myth Number Four: Poetry is all about language use, so shouldn’t poets writing in English concentrate on poetry written in English? Won’t that teach them the most about language and poetry?

An answer from Jane Hirshfield:

When I read, as one still can, some spirited defense of English iambic meter as a basic expression of human nature, I despair. How can the authors of such essays not acknowledge that great literatures have been made of other meters than our binary or triple ones? That not all languages are stressed?

“The World is Large and Full of Noises,” in Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry (Harper Perennial, 1998).

Myth Number Three (thanks to Robert Frost): Poetry is what is lost in translation.

An answer from Charles Simic and Mark Strand:

Poetry is what is retained in translation…

All the poems in (this anthology Another Republic) are translations, yet have the authority of very good poems written in English…which says something about the poem’s ability to exist powerfully in a language other than the one in which it was written. How else are we to explain that there are young poets in the United States, say, whose work seems more influenced by poems of Popa or Amichai than by those of Stevens, Eliot, or any other of their American forebearers?

Intro to Another Republic: 17 European and South American Writers (Ecco Press, 1976)

Myth Number Two: There are so many great collections coming out now by immigrant poets writing in English about the countries they’ve left for America. Their books speak for Russia as much as any contemporary Russian poet writing in Russian, right? Why read a translation when we can read of those countries from great immigrant poets who also understand American poetry?

An answer from Andre Dubus II:

“We are, of course, a country of immigrants. We come from the very cultures we no longer seem to know…We have never been less isolationist in the variety of goods and services we consume from around the world, and never have we been more ignorant of the people who produce them. This is, if nothing else, fertile territory for misunderstanding, unresolved conflict, and yes, war.

Intro to the anthology Words Without Borders (Anchor, 2007).

Number One Myth about Translation: Some books just can’t be translated.

An answer from Eliot Weinberg:

There is no text that cannot be translated; there are only texts that have not yet found their translators.

“Anonymous Sources,” Oranges and Peanuts for Sale (New Directions, 2009.)

Pardon us for stating the obvious, but: Book Lovers Love Books. And there’s nothing better to a true book lover than getting their hands on that special, rare, limited edition and gorgeous book.

Here at BOA we understand that delight because we love books too. Our office shelves are overflowing with classic BOA books: limited editions, signed copies, special bindings, lovingly illustrated collections… You name it, we’ve got what makes rare book lover’s hearts go pit-a-pat.

As a way of sharing this bounty, we’ve decided to offer rare and collectible BOA books exclusively through Abe Books. Now our treasures can be your treasures!

Just click on this link and you’ll find rare and collectible BOA titles along with descriptions of each copy. Happy hunting (you book lovers know what we mean!):

[BOA Rare Books at ABE]

While we’re talking about On the Winding Stair… here’s another new review by John Madera for The Brooklyn Rail. Here’s a taste – you can follow the below link for the complete review:

“Joanna Howard’s lapidary debut On the Winding Stair is an escalier spiraling with brocaded lyricism, alternately swathed in darkness and bathed in phosphorescence. Metaphysical spaces coexist with vivid corporeality in a place where words aren’t so much modified as they are baroquely embellished, cast in irreality; we have, as in “Ghosts and Lovers,” “[t]he fantastic, the unthinkably thick swirl of sudden change.”

Brooklyn Rail review of On the Winding Stair

Verse magazine just published a brilliant review of On the Winding Stair by Joanna Howard. The review was written by Maria Ribas and is as sharp and insightful a read as an author (and a publisher) can hope for. Here’s a sample and you can follow the link at bottom for the rest of the review:

“Joanna Howard’s short stories flit about like phantoms–just as her characters are ethereal and haunting, her stories are framed by an aura of mystery and romance, with fleeting peaks of action. The 14 stories in On the Winding Stair range from a vignette of an encounter to a “novel in shorts” that encompasses several generations. Howard imbues all her tales with dream-like action and sidelong description, which creates a haze around the narrative that, rather than disorient, lulls the reader into her sometimes euphoric, sometimes tragic world. Her careful and practiced dismissal of the concrete allows the reader release from conventional concerns of plot and conflict, and ultimately celebrates the unknowable.”

versemag.blogspot.com/2009/12/new-review-of-joanna-howard.html

We are thrilled to announce that not one, but TWO, BOA books have been nominated for the prestigious Poets’ Prize. Nomina by Karen Volkman and The Boatloads by Dan Albergotti have both been honored with nominations this year.

The Poets’ Prize is awarded annually for the best book of verse published by an American in the previous calendar year. The $3000 annual prize is donated by a committee of about 20 American poets, who each nominate a book and who also serve as judges. The Nicholas Roerich Museum also contributes; the prize includes a trip to New York City, where the winner accepts the award and does a reading at the museum. The founders of the prize were Robert McDowell, Frederick Morgan, and BOA author Louis Simpson. The prize is administered by the Poetry Center at West Chester University.

The winner of the Poets’ Prize will be announced in spring. We have our collective fingers crossed, but we are proud of Karen Volkman and Dan Albergotti for this outstanding recognition.

For the past three weeks the BOA board, staff, interns, and I have been signing letters, and stuffing and sealing envelopes for our annual campaign. With book sales only funding 40% of our budget, the annual campaign is an extremely important source of funding for us. This year we are honored to have former U.S. Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winning poet Charles Simic serve as our Honorary Campaign Chair.

Charles Simic included the following note in our campaign materials:

“I was delighted to join the BOA Editions’ roster of authors and translators in 2009. My translation of distinguished Serbian poet Novica Tadic joined BOA’s 33 year tradition of publishing the best in American and international literature. Simply put, BOA remains one of this country’s most important literary publishers. It is my pleasure to serve as BOA’s 2009 Honorary Campaign Chair. If you have supported BOA with donations in the past, I encourage you to do so again. If you haven’t, there is no better –and necessary—time than now to give.”

Please consider contributing to our campaign this year. With every gift of $125 you will be listed on the colophon page of one 2010 BOA title of your choice. In addition you will receive a copy of each title you support. As a not-for-profit independent publisher, we depend on you to help us continue our mission of fostering readership and bringing high quality literature to the public. The board, staff, and I, along with my paper cut and bandaged fingers, thank you for thinking of us.

To donate please click the “Donations” button at the top of the page.

Last Friday night (December 4) the Anderson Alley holiday festivities got off to a rousing start when the jazz group stationed outside the BOA Editions’ office was confronted by peripatetic musicians from a Civil War reenactors group, intent on jamming. And jam they did on a lively version of “Dixie”!

Following that musical set, it was the poets’ turn.

On Poetry Translation, Health Care, and Conversations with the Visionary and Deceased

Have you seen a review of poetry in translation in a major newspaper lately?

I haven’t either.

Apparently, American aren’t interested in poetry from the rest of the world until the poet is old and bald or wins a Nobel Prize, but I wonder if that’s true. People love reading about the infra-realists in Bolano’s novels from an older Mexico City poetry scene. Isn’t it possible they’d also be interested in hearing about current poetry movements in China and Mexico, movements that reflect the huge changes happening in those countries, and which are changing things here, in our own?

Of course, to have more discussion of poetry in translation, we’d have to have more poetry translated. If it weren’t for university and independent presses like BOA, we wouldn’t even have the 57 books of translated poetry that came out this year in the U.S, and that’s 26 fewer books than in 2008. (For more info on these books, check out the blog Three Percent: www.rochester.edu/College/translation/threepercent/index.php?id=2370).

Our progress in the U.S. in bringing the rest of the world’s literature into our collective imagination is almost as slow as our progress on health care. In 1916, an American economist named Irving Fisher said he thought universal health coverage was just around the corner. And way back in 1827 Goethe predicted a world-wide explosion of poetry translations was bound to begin any moment.

What might Goethe say to Irving Fisher if they could see how much progress we’ve made on their predictions nine and eighteen decades ago?

Who knows, but below is an attempt to imagine it:

Fisher: Goodness, Johann. What do you think is taking them so long?

Goethe: View it to thy sorrow, Irving, grey thou’lt be tomorrow.

Fisher: What’s that?

Goethe: Small is the ring enclosing our life, dear Irving.

Fisher: Only if you can’t get a bigger, better ring, my good man. And isn’t the US all about bigger and better? I mean really, what’s the hold up? Look at your country, Johann. Germany set up a universal system in 1883. As an economist, I can’t understand how the US has let itself get this behind on so many fronts. How can the country stay ahead when we translate less than any other developed nation, and allow companies to charge so much for insurance 46 million people can’t afford it?

Goethe: The end of the castle soon gaineth.

Fisher: Well, I’m not sure what you mean by that. I do know I was also right about fruits and vegetables and the Americans are still struggling with that idea, too. At least they didn’t resist my idea for the Rolodex.

Goethe: Indeed, dear Irving, so why not let the wine unsparing run. And let it be our precept ever to admit no waverer here—for to act the good endeavor, none but rascals meek appear.

(Many thanks to Edgar Alfred Bowring for providing the translations for this interview, and to Jill Lapore, for her research on Irving Fisher in the December 7 issue of the New Yorker.)

–post by Idra Novey