NewPages Blog

From scholarly publisher, Brill, Between the Lines: Yang Lian’s Poetry through Translation by Cosima Bruno “illustrates how the study of translation can enhance our experience of reading poetry. By inquiring into the mutual dependence of the source text and its translation, the study offers both theoretical insights and methodological tools that bring in-depth stylistic analysis to bear on the translations as against the originals. Through such a process of discovery, Cosima Bruno elaborates a textual exegesis of the work by Yang Lian, one of the most translated, and critically acclaimed contemporary Chinese poets. This book thus reconciles the theory-practice divide in translation studies, as well as helps to dismantle the lingering Eurocentrism still present in the discipline.”

Many literary magazines pass through my hands each day. These are some of the magazines I’ve seen over the past couple of months that have really caught my eye:

Gargoyle

Boulevard

Fiddlehead

Passages North

Seneca Review

Whitefish Review

World Literature Today

BPR

Unstuck

The new issue of The Georgia Review contains a special issue about Mary Hood (“How She Went Further”). The feature contains a piece of her fiction titled “Some Stranger’s Bed” alongside a lengthy interview conducted by William Walsh and titled “The Woman Who Almost Bolted.” This is followed by Hood’s “I Seem to Write You Everything: Selected Letters to Stanley W. Lindberg, 1982-89,” with an introduction by Douglas Carlson and commentary by Stephen Corey, and Hood’s “Breaking It” essay.

The issue also features an essay by Nancy Geyer; fiction by Lynn Schmeidler and Ginger Eager; poetry by David Clewell, Andrea Hollander, Lola Haskins, Alice Friman, Albert Goldbarth, and Anna Silver; art by Amze Emmons; and reviews by Kevin Clark, Matthew Bryant Cheney, and Gary Kerley.

“Are there too many memoirs out there? Are too many being written? Is enough, enough?” writes Joe Mackall, editor at River Teeth in the most recent issue. “After all, for the last twenty-five years we’ve read memoirs on every conceivable subject. Some great, some good, some fair, some poor . . . I’m treating my question rhetorically, of course.” He suggests that nobody ever questions if people should stop writing poems, plays, or movies, so the same question should not be asked of memoirs. Yet, critics do. “Those of us who love memoir know how some critics appear to delight in deriding them,” he says.

What probably doesn’t come as a surprise, Mackall answers his question with a resounding no. “I need more than family stories. I need them all. I need the lives of others. And yes, all great art gives us these lives all the time. But it seems to be the special province of memoir, its simplest and purest objective.”

This Spring 2013 issue features the work of Amy A. Whitcomb, Kirk Wilson, Sonja Livingston, Glenn Moomau, Philip Gerard, Marilyn Bousquin, Kathryn Wilder, Richard Goodman, Jackson Connor, and A. Sandosharaj.

Alimentum: The Literature of Food online journal celebrate National Poetry Month each year with MENUPOEMS. This year they have selected poems related to a favorite restaurant (and have included links to those establishments). In addition to the 17 poets in the MENUPOEM feature, there is an additional sidebar of “Featurettes,” which includes videos, viseopoems, and a page of “secret foods” (what readers eat on the sly…).

A few of my favs include “In the Most Unlikely Places” the first part of a video by Jason Bell (Editor-in-Chief of The Columbia Review) as he explores ‘why he likes southern food,’ a video from a series created by Dutch artists Lernert & Sander of Arno Coenen explaining the “nature of his beer-centric multimedia project to his dad” while the two sit drinking homebrews, and the concrete poem “Bebe Coca-Cola” by Brazilian writer D

The Rain Taxi Review of Books Online Spring 2013 Edition offers readers a great special feature:  “Sentenced to Depth: An Interview with Willam H. Gass” interviewed by John Madera. The comprehensive (25,000 words!) interview is offered as a PDF chapbook, so it can be printed or read as an e-book. An excerpt of the interview appeared in the Rain Taxi Spring 2013 print edition, so this is a real treat to have access to the full text here. Thanks Rain Taxi!

National Nurses Week is celebrated annually from May 6, also known as National Nurses Day, through May 12, the birthday of Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing.

Celebrate the nurses in your life with this new collection for Creative Nonfiction: I Wasn’t Strong Like This When I Started Out: True Stories of Becoming a Nurse, Edited by Lee Gutkind.

From the CNF website: This collection of true narratives reflects the dynamism and diversity of nurses, who provide the first vital line of patient care. Here, nurses remember their first “sticks,” first births, and first deaths, and reflect on what gets them through long, demanding shifts, and keeps them in the profession.

The stories reveal many voices from nurses at different stages of their careers: One nurse-in-training longs to be trusted with more “important” procedures, while another questions her ability to care for nursing home residents. An efficient young emergency room nurse finds his life and career irrevocably changed by a car accident. A nurse practitioner wonders whether she has violated professional boundaries in her care for a homeless man with AIDS, and a home care case manager is the sole attendee at a funeral for one of her patients.

What connects these stories is the passion and strength of the writers, who struggle against burnout and bureaucracy to serve their patients with skill, empathy, and strength.

In honor of the 75th Anniversary of Carver’s birth on May 25, events are planned throughout the month of May in Port Angeles, Washington. Full schedule of the Carver Festival.

The Festival begins May 9 and ends May 25 and will feature films, dance, reader’s theater, readings, artwork, and guest writers, scholars, artists, and filmmakers.

Special guests will include:

• Writers in Residence Jane Mead and Lucia Perillo
• Poet Henry Carlile, a close friend to Raymond Carver who taught his work for many years at Portland State
• Artists Alfredo Arreguin and Susan Lytle
• Guest filmmakers Mike Kaplan and Jean Walkinshaw
• Tess Gallagher, Alice Derry, and other local writers
• Jim Guthrie and the PA Readers Theater
• The Walla Walla Dance group led by choreographer Vicki Lloid

The celebration is organized by Tess Gallagher and Peninsula College, with support from the Peninsula College Foundation, the Peninsula College Associated Student Council, and the Peninsula College Office of Instruction.

There’s ONE WEEK LEFT in the Rain Taxi: Review of Books online auction. In honor or National Poetry Month, the spring fundraiser features poetry items, including SIGNED first editions, used books and collectible items, chapbooks, broadsides, and even a “textile surprise.” Over three dozen items are available for bidding on eBay. The auction ends on Saturday at 6pm (PST) – so get bidding!

Mudfish magazine recently sent out an email announcing that although their website is out of date, they are still going about business as usual. “Our webmaster has gone missing,” writes Jill Hoffman, “For reasons unknown, he has vanished from virtual reality. . . Please bear with us.” She urges anyone who knows of a person who could update their website to please contact her ([email protected]).

In the meantime, she would like to announce 2 things:

1. Terry Phelan’s second book of poems, Fires in Sonoma (Box Turtle Press), is being distributed to Barnes & Nobles across the country. This is a companion single book of poems to Mudfish.

2. The 11th Annual Mudfish Poetry Prize is now open for submissions for unpublished poetry. Check out the call for submissions on the NewPages contest list.

In Bill Moyers’ program “Moyers & Company,” this week, author Sherman Alexie shared the names of some of his favorite Native American writers. Moyers’ website includes a page for each with a sample poem in print or video and links to additional information.

The original April 12, 2013 program is available online – Living Outside Tribal Lines: A hard look at the state of American economic inequality, and writer Sherman Alexie on living in two different cultures at the same time.

Lawrence Foundation Prize

Rebecca Makkai has won the $1000 Lawrence Foundation Prize for 2012. The prize is awarded annually by the Editorial Board of MQR to the author of the best short story published that year in the journal. Makkai’s story “Cross” appeared in the Summer 2012 issue.

Laurence Goldstein Poetry Prize

Angie Estes has won the 2012 Laurence Goldstein Poetry Prize, which is awarded annually to the author of the best poem or group of poems appearing that year in the Michigan Quarterly Review. Her poems “Le Plaisir” and “Item:” appeared in the Fall 2012 issue.

Page Davidson Clayton Prize for Emerging Poets

Margaret Reges is the fourth recipient of the new Page Davidson Clayton Prize for Emerging Poets, which is awarded annually to the best poet appearing in MQR who has not yet published a book. The award, which is determined by the MQR editors, is in the amount of $500.

For more information please go to michiganquarterlyreview.com.

“The writing of Calendars began with a question about pronouns: what would it take to make of ‘I’ and ‘you,’ the other I am separated from by history, ideology, religion, nationality, or gender, a ‘we’?”

“My work has long been haunted by the quest to understand why we humans do violence to each other, a question that’s impossible to answer satisfactorily but that we must continue to ask. You might say that it was both the violators and the violated (often one and the same) who inspired this book: Agamemnon and Clytaemnestra, Oedipus, the imprisoners and the imprisoned in the Spanish Inquisition and in Tehran’s Evin prison, those lost in the Nazi Holocaust and in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Figures who stand on the sidelines, knowing too much, as what they have foreseen comes to pass compelled me as well…”

Read the rest here.

It Was 50 Years Ago Today! Organized by Penn State University, this international Beatles celebration will be held at Penn State’s Altoona College on February 7-9, 2014, in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ legendary appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. In addition to panels and presentations, the conference will include film screenings, musical performances, art and photography exhibits, and keynote addresses by leading Beatles critics and musicologists. The conference will conclude with a commemorative screening of The Ed Sullivan Show as it was originally broadcast on February 9, 1964.

Tentative speakers include noted Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn, music theorist Walter Everett, Beatles instrument expert Andy Babiuk, and Beatles author Jude Southerland Kessler. The conference will also include a concert by the celebrated Fab Faux, which Rolling Stone magazine described as “the greatest Beatles cover band–without the wigs.”

Call for Papers is open until July 1, 2013.

“Almost, 50 years back, in 1964, Allen Ginsberg brought back some avant-garde writings of contemporary Bengali poets of the Krittibaas and Hungry Generation groups from Calcutta. Allen helped Lawrence Ferlinghetti do a special issue on Bengali poetry in the City Lights magazine. A similar but more extensive portfolio of Bengali poetry was recently released in Jacket2.”

Edward Chaney, in a post on  Hayden Ferry Review‘s blog, thinks out loud about comics and their importance and place in literature. “There do not seem to be many venues to submit comics,” he writes, “and because the internet is so vast and full of content, unless you are among the lucky few to strike comedic gold, the comics will most often go unseen.” He then interviews Rob Stapleton, editor-in-chief of Booth magazine.

Stapleton explains that it is hard to define and come up with vocabulary for comics in literary journals. While Booth calls them “narrative comics,” he admits that even that might not be the best. “Still haven’t hit a bullseye with this vocabulary.” But whatever it is called, Stapleton makes it clear that Booth isn’t looking for the comic strips in the Sunday paper. He says that the comics are considered literature “when the artist understands and integrates the central tenets of story, character, and pathos.”

Chaney points out two good examples of the pieces that Booth publishes: “Death of a Monolith” by Dustin Harbin and “How I Came to Work at the Wendy’s” by Nick St. John. “I’m looking for comics that integrate humor and story, characterization and a unique worldview, a keen eye and a large, possibly bruised, heart,” says Stapleton.

And Stapleton plans to continue publishing them. But there are other magazines that are publishing them as well. Stapleton gives a few examples: Tin House, McSweeney’s, Virginia Quarterly Review, Barrelhouse, and The Florida Review.