The Blog

Jacques Poulin’s MISTER BLUE

Addie Leak

I am, I confess, a cat person. Cats are independent, intelligent, clean, charmingly capricious, and they don’t love lightly. I’ve always had the impression that when a cat seemed to love me, I’d done something to earn it.

Michael Henry Heim

Russell Scott Valentino

I debated with myself about whether to announce the content of this post in a title, the direct and somewhat implacable name + dates genre convention of memorial resolutions and tributes. It seemed somehow too harsh, especially with the wound this fresh, so let me leave that for the end.

In her recent Translationista post, Susan Bernofsky tells a story of Heim’s generosity, his recommendation of her as a translator for a book he knew she liked, a book he might have otherwise worked on himself. It is a familiar story. He did the same with me (for Predrag Matvejevic’s work), and with others I know, students and non-students alike. His generosity was authentic and deep-seated.

Arthur Krystal's EXCEPT WHEN I WRITE

Brian Libgober

Except When I Write: Reflections of a Recovering Critic is a collection of literary essays by New York-based writer Arthur Krystal, a well-regarded book reviewer, who, over the course of his long freelance career, placed reviews with Harper’s, the New Yorker, and the New York Review of Books. However, fifteen years ago, while still at the height of his powers, Krystal suddenly decided to quit writing literary criticism; in an article published in the Chronicle of Higher Education, he explains the reason for his decision:

Given a book to review, I'd snap on my pince-nez, straighten my waistcoat, and get down to business. I was worse than officious: I was clever.

TIR Argentina!

Alyssa Perry

Today and always, for you: Spanish translation!

“La pistolita” (Benjamin Percy’s “The Rubber-band Gun”), “Toc toc” (Brock Clarke’s “Knock knock”), “Avisos fúnebres” (Susan McCarty’s “Services Pending”), and “El pibe al que no invitamos a la orgía” (David Harris Ebenbach’s “The Guy We Didn’t Invite to the Orgy”)—come to us by way of two translation workshops in Buenos Aires, Argentina, headed by Argentine poet Santiago Llach and American translator Jennifer Croft. We published the English originals in TIR 40/2.

Anne Marie Rooney's SPITSHINE

Rebecca van Laer

If you’ve read the back of a poetry book recently, you’ve probably learned that many contemporary poets are “reimagining the possibilities of lyric poetry,” “challenging the conventional boundaries of poetic form,” or otherwise transgressing and subverting the supposedly rigid limits of the lyric poem. This sort of rhetoric has been applied to prose poetry, to narrative poetry, and to professedly political poetry. The language of subversion has also become increasingly common in discussions of poetry that does not defy our expectations in any obvious way. Now, it is readily applied to first books of poetry as a form of high praise.

Jacques Poulin’s MISTER BLUE

Michael Henry Heim

Arthur Krystal's EXCEPT WHEN I WRITE

TIR Argentina!

Anne Marie Rooney's SPITSHINE

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