Dos Press reading in Austin

Launch Reading for 2nd Book

Our launch reading for the second book will be at Okay Mountain in Austin on December 1st at 7:00PM.

Readers:
Michelle Detorie (CA, ed. Hex Presse) will read/perform w/Austin drummer, Chris Cogburn.
Johannes Goransson (Indiana, ed. Action Books)
Michael Cross (Buffalo, ed. Atticus/Finch)
Michalle Gould (Austin, reading from the first book from Hex Presse)

This will be a (small) small press affair, so there will be plenty of books to buy. We hope to see you there!

lip wolf review

At Harp & Altar by Jason Stumpf.

I'm Not There

I went to see Todd Haynes' new film "I'm Not There" on Saturday. It is fitting that it should be named for an obscure song (recorded once, on the original Basement Tapes, though later reworked according to Dylan into "Going, going, gone" from Planet Waves) that seems to have a mythical life of its own, because this isn't really a biopic but an exploration of various Bob Dylan Fantasies (his own fantasies about himself and America, our fantasies about him and America).

There has been much written about the fact that there are a slew of actors and actresses playing Dylan in this film. My first impression of this was boredom. Dylan already did this himself in his amazing 1977 film Renaldo and Clara (He plays Renaldo, Roger McGuinn plays "Bob Dylan," Joan Baez plays "Pale Shadow of Death"), and much more interestingly (if longer, about 5 hours long I would guess). And my immediate reaction was that this was a more palatable version of Renaldo and Clara (or perhaps "Masked and Anonymous," which I also thought was quite good.). In addition, all three of these movies are crowded with in-jokes and allusions to the Dylan canon ("See You Later, Allen Ginsberg" etc)

However, the more i think about this film the more I like it. Sure, it's much more palatable in a cliche pomo way, but it does make some good points. For one: the trans-gender, elfenness in Cate Blanchett's mind-boggling impersonation of Dylan from 1965-1966 (she imitates him down to the shakiness of the hands). This section is not only the most "accurate" historically, repeating quotes (song lyrics, "She's Your Lover Now" for example) word for word, but it also feels like the center of the film - the most "true" part of the film. And yet, this true part is the one of incredibly transgender simulacra and hallucinations. Dylan declares himself "against nature" (my favorite argument, as readers of this blog may know, is the idea of Dylan as Decadent Dandy).

By contrast, the most traditionally biopic part of the film is the segment where Heath Ledger plays Blood On the Tracks/marriage crackup era Dylan. In this segment, the Dylan character is sexist and "real" (he fights with his wife, cares about his kids etc). The segments feels like just another "Walk the Line," but it's not supposedly about Dylan but about an actor who became famous for playing Dylan a la James Dean in a film about the protest years. It is thus both the most "realistic" and the most conventional, but also the most explicitly false segment.

My favorite part is when Blanchett's Dylan says something like "Folk music is for people who like to pretend that they are divorced from evil. I don't want to divorce myself from evil." To a large extent poetry has become a way for people to imagine themselves outside of evil/capitalism/ideology.

Chinese poetry

[from Daniel Comiskey:]

Dear Friends,

I'm trying to help promote an event in which I'll be taking part next month, in
the fine company of a number of other poets and friends. Please find the
details below:


What:

Book Launch Reading for ANOTHER KIND OF NATION: AN ANTHOLOGY OF CONTEMPORARY
CHINESE POETRY (Talisman House, 2007)


Where:

ELLIOTT BAY BOOK COMPANY
101 S Main St. (corner of 1st Ave and Main St)
Seattle, WA 98104
206.624.6600
1.800.962.5311


When:

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 1, 2007
4:00pm


Tickets:

This event is FREE.


ANOTHER KIND OF NATION is a selection of poems by 24 poets from mainland China
born after 1960 and actively writing and publishing poetry in Chinese. Though
well-known in China, most of the poets here have seen their work in English
translation for the first time in this book. Edited by Chinese poets Zhang Er
and Chen Dongdong, this book showcases the Chinese poetry scene today in the
shadows of its long poetic tradition, the globalization of capitalism and the
resurgence of nationalism. The Chinese text was rendered into English by the
collaborative work of Chinese writers and 24 American poets. The 450-page
book, presenting the poetry bilingually, is introduced by the two editors in
English and in Chinese, with a post-face on the intricate translation process
utilized for the anthology.

Bruno K. Öijer + avant-garde

Something that is interesting about Silliman's comentators who are so invested in a kind of "hard" avant-gardism etc is that they seem unaware of the many contradictions within the history of the avant-garde; the concept of the avant-garde is full of contradictory impulses.

One of the major contradictions is the one between the visionary notion of the poet as a kind of seer (Rimbaud, Artaud, Mayakovksy) and the constructivist notion of art as anti-individualistic and invested in "the everyday" (what Silliman calls "realism"). Obviously these oppositions blend quite a bit in various figures and movements.

[Mayakovsky is a particularly interesting instance, as his dandyistic revolutionariness was difficult for the Bolsheviks to stomach.]

A place where this contradiction is very obvious is in the early career of Bruno K. Öijer, who rejected the Marxist simplicity of the Swedish poetry establishment (which could be described as a mix between Claudia Rankine and 70s workshop poetry) in favor of a hallucinatory Surrealism.

The Marxist establishment rejected Öijer as a nihilistic wanna-be-beatnik, and Öijer said this (in in interview quoted in an article by Per Bäckström I just read):

"Behind every system, behind every rule stands a corpse and laughs. You can't tell me who I should sleep with. I don't work for wages. My life is a revolution... My life is a beautiful life... What you call freedom, I call waste... I will continue to love my own voice. If everyone becomes me, everything will collapse."

As in Mayakovsky, notions of avant-gardism, Romanticism (later in life Öijer changed the K in his name from Kenneth to Keats)and decadence mingle.

I was talking to Jesper Olsson the other day about Öijer, and he suggested that one reason nobody seems to admit to having been influenced by Öijer these days is that he became so enormously popular (his work became rock songs, he even started his own band).

Review of Björling

[Review of our Björling book, You go the words, in HBL, the major Finland Swedish daily newspaper]


Vital, orakad
Publicerad: 12/11 10:16 ›uppdaterad: 12/11 10:16

I sin doktorsavhandling från år 2002 granskar Fredrik Hertzberg en rad engelskspråkiga översättningar av Gunnar Björlings poesi utgående från en teori om "poetisk materialitet", alltså egenskaper som grafisk form, ljud, rytm och syntax.

Hertzberg visar att översättare tenderar att anpassa sin tolkning efter konventioner i målspråket, grammatikaliska och litterära, vilket döljer materialiteten, ofta manifesterad som avvikelser eller mångtydigheter i ursprungstexten.

Enligt Hertzberg betyder detta inte att Björlings översättare - de som diskuteras är Marjorie Gerhardi, Martin Allwood och David McDuff - har misslyckats. Snarare är invändningarna en påminnelse om att översättningar alltid kan kritiseras ur en eller annan synvinkel. Uppenbart är ändå att Hertzberg, som Björling-kännare, föredrar tolkningar i vilka materiella element i möjligaste mån beaktas och kantigheter inte filas bort.

I avhandlingen ingår flera av Hertzbergs egna alternativa tolkningar av Björling-dikter. En naturlig uppföljning är att ge ut en hel volym. You go the words är en komplett översättning av Gunnar Björlings sista diktsamling Du går de ord från 1955. Den svenska texten finns parallellt med översättningen, ett synnerligen vettigt tillvägagångssätt när poesi av detta slag publiceras på ett annat språk. Även om läsaren inte behärskar svenska, ges han eller hon möjlighet att jämföra den yttre formen och till viss del också ljudlandskapet.



Rättvisande okonventionell

Den första engelska översättningen av Björlings poesi gjordes 1949 och sedan dess har flera urval publicerats i tidskrifter och antologier. Detta är emellertid första gången en hel samling översätts, något som självfallet bidrar till att vidga bilden av Björling för en internationell publik. Urval innebär ju alltid en förvrängning eftersom texter rycks ur sitt egentliga sammanhang.

You go the words ingår i en serie som utges av Action Books, ett förlag med anknytning till Notre Dame-universitetet i Indiana. På bakpärmen finns, såsom brukligt är på anglosaxiskt språkområde, lovordande puffar författade av bland andra Charles Bernstein och Marjorie Perloff, två storheter inom den samtida poesiteorin. De kan ses som ett värdefullt erkännande men påverkar också, på gott och ont, förförståelsen genom att Björlings diktning indirekt relateras till poetologiska trender.

I en välavvägd introduktion presenteras Björlings diktning och dess litterära och sociohistoriska bakgrund. Samtidigt redovisas också utgångspunkterna för översättningen: Hertzberg skriver att han försökt återge texten i "orakat" tillstånd, vilket innebär en avsiktlig betoning av det främmande. Strategin är både ärlig och genomtänkt och producerar en annorlunda Björling än den som hittills funnits på engelska. Poesin blir med ens mer okonventionell.

I allt väsentligt är detta en mer rättvisande representation av originalet.



Att äta språk

Samlingen exemplifierar den sene Björlings exceptionellt avskalade stil. Ibland är orden så få och raderna så korta att det är svårt att se några större variationsmöjligheter i översättningen. Men visst finns det gott om utmaningar när man ser på hela verket. När valet står mellan förtydligande tolkning och trogenhet mot diktens materialitet väljer Hertzberg konsekvent det senare alternativet, helt i linje med sin programförklaring.

Oundvikligen försvinner någonting i överföringen, exempelvis ekot av en äldre lyrisk tradition i ord som "ej", "blott" och "fågelen". Klangmässigt står översättningen närmare vår tids idiom än förlagan gör.

Sammantaget är resultatet ändå vital, närvarande, inspirerande text. "Att läsa Björling är som att äta språk", skriver den svenska poeten Aase Berg i en av bokens puffar. Så kan man också uttrycka det.

Och i Hertzbergs intelligenta tolkningar bevaras det tuggmotstånd som andra översättare i onödigt hög grad avlägsnat.

RALF ANDTBACKA

kultur@hbl.fi



GUNNAR BJÖRLING

You go the words (dikter)

översättning Fredrik Hertzberg,

Action Books 2007, 152 s.

SPD Bestsellers in September

1. Breaking Ground Paul Hunter (Silverfish Review Press)

2. You are a Little Bit Happier than I am Tao Lin (Action Books)

3. Lip Wolf Laura Solorzano, translated by Jen Hofer (Action Books)

4. Wars. Threesomes. Drafts. & Mothers Heriberto Yepez (Factory School)

5. I Hear My Gate Slam Taylor Stoehr ed. (Pressed Wafer)

Alta

Also, I just got back from the annual Alta conference (American literary translators association I think). Steve Bradbury gave me a copy of the most recent issue of Sentence (a prose poetry journal). This is a great issue, and it includes a Steve-curated special section of Asian prose poetry in translation, including some of my favorite poets like Kim Hyesoon Hsia Yu. Absolutely required reading.

Henry Parland

Garth from Ugly Duckling sent me the copies of my translation of Henry Parland's Idealrealisation. It looks fantastic. If you want to review it, please write to me and I will get you a copy.

MSA #2

At our panel, Sergio Bessa gave a fantastic talk (actually an excerpt from his fine book on Fahlstrom to be published soon, though it's been finished for some time) about "Birds in Sweden." This is a fantastic translation-based piece, which among other things features Poe's "The Raven" translated into "Whammo", a language Fahlstrom made up based on comic books. This then permutates in various ways and media using sound collage. Check it out on ubu.com.

MSA

Just got back from the Modernist Studies Association conference. Many good papers - especially a bunch on Decadence (the anti-Decadent rhetoric I realize is still with us).

My panel with Steve Fredman, Sergio Bessa and Jesper Olsson (who had not yet read the Art Forum article about his journal, OEI) - "Collage in the 1960s" - went well. We were in the last slot (unfortunately at the same time as Aaron Kunin's paper on ornamentation and cruelty), when a most people had left the conference. But Marjorie Perloff gave her keynote on Oyvind Fahlström and advertised our panel, so we had a pretty good-sized audience (including Marjorie).