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Off the Coast – Spring 2009

Volume 15 Number 2

Spring 2009

Quarterly

Sima Rabinowitz

This “international/translation issue” features the work of poets from Bangladesh, Sweden, India, Cyprus, Scotland, France, London, Greece, the Philippines, Switzerland, Turkey, South Africa, Scotland, Italy, Germany, Canada, and the United States (most of these are poems with an “international” component of some kind). As several poems appear in languages other than English with English translations and translators’ credits, my assumption is that the others – no matter their country of origin – were written in English. (An editor’s note would help readers know for certain when they are reading originals and when they are reading translations.) Many of the contributors are natives of one country, but residents of another. The issue presents a laudable compendium of international writers, many of whose work is otherwise unavailable to readers in the States. The editorial vision is generous and eclectic, allowing for work that encompasses a variety of poetic styles, modes, and themes; most of the translations are polished, competent, and fluid.

This “international/translation issue” features the work of poets from Bangladesh, Sweden, India, Cyprus, Scotland, France, London, Greece, the Philippines, Switzerland, Turkey, South Africa, Scotland, Italy, Germany, Canada, and the United States (most of these are poems with an “international” component of some kind). As several poems appear in languages other than English with English translations and translators’ credits, my assumption is that the others – no matter their country of origin – were written in English. (An editor’s note would help readers know for certain when they are reading originals and when they are reading translations.) Many of the contributors are natives of one country, but residents of another. The issue presents a laudable compendium of international writers, many of whose work is otherwise unavailable to readers in the States. The editorial vision is generous and eclectic, allowing for work that encompasses a variety of poetic styles, modes, and themes; most of the translations are polished, competent, and fluid.

Several poems offer evocative scenes of the places from which they derive or where the poets have spent time or manage to imagine with great specificity, such as Nausheen Eusuf’s “Rickshaw Rides” about Bangladesh: “But the even rhythm of the rickshaw // Relieves us from speech. Around us / The insistent bustle of restive streets, / The beggar’s plaintive song, the heat / And dust of afternoon, the warm / Solace of the rickshaw’s embrace”; and Marilyn Johnston’s “Cordoba” (“darkening arid hills, the olive groves laid out / row after row, the tiled roofs that cover even / the most modest houses below in the old walled city”).

There are a number of love poems (why is a love poem all the more lovely in Italian?), including translations by Will Wells of Umberto Saba’s “Due Madrigali per la Duchessa D’Aosta” (“Two Madrigals for the Duchess of Aosta”). Saba (one of a very few poets in the issue from an earlier era) is not particularly well known to readers in the US, but his work deserves a wider audience, and the two short poems presented here are excellent examples of his masterful writing. Poems included here also take the shape of metaphysical musings, parables, and personal stories. There are also a number of explicitly political poems, South African poet Tendai R. Mwanaka’s “That Child” and “Unemployment Cheque”; Chicago poet Ruth Goring’s “Soap is Political”; and Amina Khan of Scotland’s poem, “The Nucleus of Iran,” among them.

I was struck by the journal’s careful editorial composition, introducing the issue with “Maidu” by Michael Riversong of Wyoming, which concludes with a lament (excerpted here) that serves as a sort of ars poetica:

Forces we don’t understand
come upon us.
Some forces do not want to understand us.
Now only one still knows
this language
this Maidu.
The rest of us can only hope
that is enough.

And ending the poetry section of the issue (there are also a number of short reviews), with “Salto de San Antón” by R. W. Haynes of Texas:

I’m not dead yet. Listen to my voice
In this trashed-out canyon where I abide.
And this spirit’s wild plunge filters inside
That part of the mind where sometimes you rejoice
And changes you forever in half-forgotten ways

Finally, the issue also contains several brief reviews, primarily of books from indie presses, books we might not know of if journals like Off-the-Coast didn’t go to the trouble of reviewing them. What I appreciated, above all, in these reviews is the honesty. The reviewers are (happily) opinionated, critical, and sincere, which makes for interesting and useful reading.
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