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Tuesday, July 26th, 2011
Timothy Burke's blog dropped off my radar a couple of years ago... Today I happened back onto it by way of Russell Arben Fox -- I'm making it a regular stop on my politics reading list from now on, based just on the two topmost posts at the moment -- one of the most scathing bits of criticism of President Obama I've read yet, one that really articulates the disappointment I feel at his term in office; and a bedtime story for the Republicans in congress who are hell-bent on destroying our nation in service of an incomplete, ill-considered analogy of the national economy to a family's budget.
posted evening of July 26th, 2011: Respond
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 Last week, Sylvia finished up a bicycle repair class she's been taking at summer camp. Today, Tom Reingold, who taught the class, invited her over for a lesson in wheel-truing -- the last step to getting her new bike ridable. It is a blue Jamis Ranger of recent vintage which Tom found in his ramblings in need of lubrication and tuning-up, and a new seat. And it's all done! Sylvia took her first ride on it this evening.
I'm impressed -- I must have been 14 or 15 before I did a full tune-up on a bike. Click through for more pictures of the bike repair.
posted evening of July 26th, 2011: 3 responses
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Sunday, July 24th, 2011
At The Hooded Utilitarian, the first posts have gone up in the new Illustrated Wallace Stevens roundtable, which will be ongoing over the next few weeks. Up first is Mahendra Singh's take on the totally seasonally appropriate Cuban Doctor. (Singh styles himself "An illustrator busily fitting Lewis Carroll into a protosurrealist straitjacket with matching dada cufflinks.")
posted morning of July 24th, 2011: Respond
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Tuesday, July 19th, 2011
Franklin Einspruch of The Hooded Utilitarian brings to our attention the abstract expressionist work of Walter Darby Bannard and in particular, his riffs on George Herriman's comix.
posted evening of July 19th, 2011: Respond
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So I am reading some of the pieces in this edition of Two Lines (the one I mentioned yesterday) and it is making me feel very good to be included in this crowd. The quality of selections and of translation is just off the charts. And rereading my piece in this context, I honestly think it holds up, that it is of a like quality to the rest of the anthology. (Although almost the first thing I noticed was a problem of tense, a sentence that would have sounded much better with the addition of the word "had". Oh well, too late for revisions.)
- Chris Andrews' translation of the opening of Varamo, by César Aira, had me laughing out loud on the train this morning, underlining passages ("the sequence was dense with meaning, but threatened from within by the infinite"! "the innocent look of an incoherent letter"! "Light dissolved the worries created by its dark twin, thought"!) and longing to read the whole thing.
- Joanne Turnbull's translation of The Letter Killers, by Sigizmund Krzhinzhanovsky, again makes me want to read the whole book. The inklings of asemia contained in Krzhinzhanovsky's protagonist's method of composition have me dying to know where he goes from here.
- Andrew Oakland translates Martin Reiner's meditation on "The Angel of Destruction" -- the Warsaw Pact troops entering Brno when Reiner was 4 years old, in kindergarten. Extremely powerful and, as Oakland asserts in his translator's note, it does not require much familiarity with Czech history to get the point.
- Harry Thomas and Marco Sonzogni translate two poems by Primo Levi which have me wondering how come I have not read any Levi yet.
posted evening of July 19th, 2011: Respond
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Monday, July 18th, 2011
 My copy of the forthcoming issue of Two Lines -- journal of the Center for the Art of Translation -- arrived in today's mail. A nice feeling to see my name there; my translation of the first chapter of The Art of Resurrection is my first contribution to Two Lines, hopefully there will be more to come.
And -- well, this seems like some kind of sign to me, to me who is always looking for portents: The editor's note from Luc Sante mentions in its second sentence "the late Kenneth Koch, one of my greatest teachers" -- so soon after I'd been thinking about Koch in the context of translation...
posted evening of July 18th, 2011: 4 responses
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La pareja sentada en el vagón del tren soltaba risitas y hablaba francés, discutÃa de lo que miraba en la pantalla del iPhone de la mujer. El hombre era alto y delgado, llevaba traje y corbata, y yo estaba mirando un poco divertido su nuez grande. Me preguntaba de qué hablaban, y me preguntaba si alcanzarÃa Penn Station a tiempo para tomar el tren a la casa. Su cuello largo estaba estirado mientras buscaba la pantalla pequeña que su amiga tenÃa en el regazo.
posted evening of July 18th, 2011: Respond
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Sunday, July 17th, 2011
Midway along last week's ride up to Eagle Rock, I had the thought that this would be a fun way to ride to Montclair, riding up Eagle Rock Ave. to Mountain Ave. and then down Bloomfield. (I normally ride through Orange, along the west side of Rosendale Cemetery, which is a nice ride of about 6 miles with not a lot of hills.) When Ellen said yesterday morning that she wanted to go over to the Montclair farmer's market and get some vegetables for dinner, my ears perked up... I ended up taking the Mountain Ave. route there and riding home through the valley with a bunch of veggies and some sausage and some bread on my back, about a 14-mile round trip. (Got mildly "lost" or off-course only twice, pretty good for Montclair -- I find the street layout there to be among the most confusing anywhere.) This is the first time this summer I had been to the Montclair market, and I always forget how great it is, a bit more fun and lively than any of the other local farmer's markets (which are to be sure all organized by the same group and have many vendors in common) -- just something about the layout of this particular market and the vibe... Lunch today and yesterday was just tomatoes and bread, both bought from Vacchiano Farms -- the tomatoes in particular are the first good tomatoes I've had this season. My impulse is to say that they are the tastiest thing I have ever put in my mouth -- I think overstatement is a natural impulse when it comes to the first good tomatoes of the season. Suffice to say, they are spectacularly good tomatoes. Dinner yesterday was grilled eggplant and sausages, also from Vacchiano; their brocolli rabe sweet pork sausage is very nice on the grill. Dinner tonight will be summer squash and green beans; I am thinking now that I will make a curry with them.
posted afternoon of July 17th, 2011: 1 response
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Friday, July 15th, 2011
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow
He dreamt of his distributed weight
lying hair's-breadth by hair's-breadth this side of collapse
on the springs of his mattress; his linen-clad pillow,
the thousands of hairs on the nape of his neck; dreamt of
covers and sheets and the million thread count, the
mechanics of sleep, of the pale thunder moon, of the
gasp from his lungs as his body escapes
this cold matrix of wakefulness, bitterness, playfulness:
memories of nuzzling close in the arms of the
black grinning spectre of night.
Woke up this morning without much memory of the dream but with the strong impression that I had been dreaming about being asleep. Within a few minutes the poem had assembled itself in rough outline; over the next hour or so it came into a nice sharp focus.The epigraph is from a villanelle by Roethke: one I did not know of until today. I like its sense and its sound. "I learn by going where I have to go."
 Here is a link to several pieces I've posted over the last few months that I've been particularly happy with: Memories and Dreaming -- 7 original pieces plus 2 translations. Maybe if I get a couple more together, I will make a chapbook.
posted evening of July 15th, 2011: Respond
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Thursday, July 14th, 2011
Un hombre flaco y con gafas de carey y una coleta marrón está todos los dÃas de pie por delante de la estación del ferro-carril y vende con entusiasmo ramos mustios, marchitado por el sol del verano. Esta tarde me he pasado por su puesto y le he saludado y nosotros pasábamos unos minutos charlando sobre el calor extraño, intentaba me persuadir comprarte tulipanes cortados... Mataba el tiempo hasta el próximo tren, me habÃa perdido el de siempre. Varios semanas ya ando siempre atrasado... Texteé a tu celular que estuviera tarde; entré en la estación para ver si habÃan publicado ya la pista.
posted evening of July 14th, 2011: Respond
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