Volume 47, Issue 3
FRONT COVER: Condi Nader
2006
MIXED MEDIA COLLAGE
IN THIS ISSUE we present Translation as Resistance, a special section edited by Maria Tymoczko. Translation theory was once an arena for linguistic quib bling and sardonic double-entendres about fidelity But with the postmodern conviction that language and reality are one and the same came the recogni tion that translation marks a borderline where political power—and not mere semantics—is contested. This new and radical view creates a synergy with postcolonial studies, since language has always been a factor in the exercise of hegemony by dominant cultures, as it is a factor in resistance by those they seek to dominate. To complement these speculations we invite you to see Gordon Thome’s visual translation of Condoleezza Rice into Darth Vader—and back again.
Some good-byes: Corwin Ericson, our managing editor for more than five years, is moving on. Cory saw the magazine through its period of tran sition from the mechanical to the electronic age. Beyond reorganizing many of our aging systems, he has also been a wise judge of quality and relevance in editorial matters.
We also mark the end of our four-year adventure in radio. MR2 went off the air at the end of August. It has been a valuable experience, not only because of the wonderful guests we interviewed, but also as a collaboration with WMUA. Thanks go to Roger Fega, whose tireless co-hosting and co producing created a perfect environment for unscripted conversation.
Oxbow Press, printers of MR’s covers, inserts, and broadsides for decades, have closed their doors, casualties of a world that can’t tell the difference between fine art and digital simulacra. All our best wishes go to Gail Alt and Roberta Bannister, whose work could and should fill a museum.
And hellos: Katie Winger, our new managing editor, is a Smith College alumna currently completing an MBA at UMass. At the Northampton design studio Impress she gained wide experience in production, working on projects for Disney magazines, among many others. We also welcome back Bob Dow, poet and peace activist, as Associate Editor for fiction. And finally, for this issue’s cover and insert we begin working with The Studley Press, a well known fine arts printer based in Dalton, Massachusetts.
David Lenson
for the editors
Table of Contents
Contributors
Siobahn Adcock is the author of 30 Things
Everyone Should Know How to Do Before Turning
30, and the forthcoming Hipster Haiku. Her
fiction appears in the Florida Review and in Not
Like I’m Jealous or Anything: The Jealousy Book.
She has an M.F.A. in writing from Cornell
University.
Nista Ben-Ari teaches Translation Studies in
Tel Aviv University, and is head of Diploma
Studies for Translation and Revision in the
TAU School for Cultural Studies. She is the
author of Romance with the Past: The Role of the
Nineteenth Century German-Jewish Historical
Novel in the Emergence of a New National Hebrew
Literature; and Suppression of the Erotic in Modern
Hebrew Literature. She has translated twenty-five
books from English, French, German, and
Italian into Hebrew, among them an annotated
Goethe’s Faust, Toni Morrisons Beloved and
Jazz, Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark,
Alfred Doblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz, Patrick
Siiskind’s Das Parfum, and Natalia Ginzburg’s
All Our Yesterdays.
Brian James Baer is an Associate Professor of
Russian Translation at Kent State University.
He is co-editor with Geoffrey S. Koby of
Volume XII of the ATA Monograph Series
Beyond the Ivory Tower: Re-Thinking Translation
Pedagogy. He is also the founding editor of the
journal Translation and Interpreting Studies
(TIS).
Mona Baker is Professor ofTranslation Studies
and Director of the Centre for Translation and
Intercultural Studies at the University of
Manchester, UK. She is author of In Other
Words: A Coursebook on Translation, editor of
the Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies,
founding editor of The Translator: Studies in
Intercultural Communication, editor of the forth
coming Critical Concepts: Translation Studies, and
editorial director of St. Jerome Publishing.
Daniel Coudriet lives with his wife and son
in Richmond, Virginia, and in Carcarana,
Argentina. His poems appear in Verse, Denver
Quarterly, the Iowa Review, Fulcrum, and elsewhere.
Several of his translations of Oliverio
Girondo are forthcoming in American Poetry
Review and Fascicle.
Rusty Dolleman was raised in rural Maine
and attended the University of New Hampshire.
He is currently the Wallace Stegner
Fellow at Stanford University. His work has
appeared in the Marlboro Review, the Greensboro
Review, and the Beloit Fiction Journal.
Oliverio Girondo (1891-1967), a major
figure in Argentina’s literary scene, founded
the journal Martin Fierro in 1923, which he
used to launch a new poetics impacting the
world of letters in Latin America and Europe.
Girondo and his wife, the novelist Norah
Lange, maintained close friendships with
Federico Garcia Lorca, Rafael Alberti, Pablo
Neruda, Jorge Luis Borges, and visual artist Xul
Solar, to name but a few. This poem comes
from his first book, Veinte poemas para ser leidos
in el tranvia (1922), and this marks Girondo’s
first appearance in English in a literary journal.
Nate Haken is a fiction editor at the Baltimore
Review. His own work has been published in
Kaleidoscope: Exploring the Experience of Disability
through Literature and the Fine Arts, The Raven
Chronicles, Potpourri, Modern Haiku, Frogpond,
Men of the Global South, an Anthology (Zed
Books, 2006), the Carry On Journal, and elsewhere.
Selections of his work can be found at
www.natehaken.blogspot.com.
David Huerta is considered by many critics
to be one of Mexico’s major living poets. He
has won many grants, awards, and honors,
including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the
Carlos Pellicer Prize, and membership in
Mexico’s prestigious Sistema Nacional de
Creadores de Arte. His poetry has been translated
into French, Portuguese, Finnish, and
Polish, in addition to English.
Holly Iglesias is a poet and translator whose
work includes Hands on Saints and Boxing
Inside the Box: Women’s Prose Poetry (both from
Quale Press).
Galway Kinnell is the author of ten books of
poetry and translations of Francois Villon,
Reiner Maria Rilke, and Yves Bonnefoy, a
children’s book, and a book of interviews.
John Milton teaches English Literature and
Translation Studies at the University of São
Paulo, Brazil. He is the author of O Clube do
Livro e a Traducao (The Clube do Livro and
Translation), and Images of a Trembling World. He
has also edited Emerging Views on Translation
History in Brazil, and, with Marie-Helene
Catherine Torres, Traducao, Retraducao e
Adaptacao (Translation, Retranslation and
Adaptation).
Marilyn Nelson‘s recent books are Fortune’s
Bones: The Manumission Requiem (Front Street
Books, 2005), A Wreath for Emmett Till
(Houghton Mifflin, 2005), and The Cachoiera
Tales and Other Poems (L.S.U Press, 2005).
Emeritus professor of English at the University
of Connecticut, Nelson is founder and director
of Soul Mountain Retreat, a small writers’
colony, and Poet Laureate of the State of
Connecticut.
Author and translator Inge Pedersen, born
in Bronderslev in 1936, has published four
collections of poems, two volumes of short
stories, and two novels. This poem is from a
collection forthcoming from Oberlin College
Press, called The Thirteenth Month.
Allan Peterson’s manuscript All the Lavish
in Common won the 2005 Juniper Prize from
the University of Massachusetts Press. Recent
publications include Prairie Schooner, West Wind,
Bellingham Review, Natural Bridge, Perihelion,
Stickman Review, Marlboro Review, and Tar Wolf.
Audrey Petty was born and raised in
Chicago. Her stories have been featured in
Gumbo: An Anthology of African American Writing
(Doubleday Press) and such journals as Story
Quarterly, Nimrod International, and Callaloo. She
lives and teaches in Urbana, Illinois.
Mark Schafer is a literary translator, visual
artist, and anti-racism activist living in
Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 2005, Schafer
received a National Endowment for the Arts
Translation Fellowship to complete his
translation of selected poems by the Mexican poet
David Huerta. His most recent translation,
Migrations /Migraciones, a bilingual edition of
the Mexican author Gloria Gervitz’s epic
poem, was published in 2004 by Junction Press.
George Shelton lives in Tucson and works
as an editor at the University of Arizona. His
poems have appeared in Mockingbird, the Iowa
Review, and elsewhere.
Gordon Thorne was born in 1941 and
ended a totally undistinguished academic career
in 1966 with an MFA from The Yale School of
Art & Architecture. He has worked since 1974
in Vermont and Northampton, Massachusetts,
on an evolving series of studies dealing with
the meeting of heaven and earth. These studies
fall into five categories: The Burning Woman,
The Burning Suit/Man, The Burning Boat,
The Burning House, and The Portfolios.These
categories often overlap, and have spawned
work in a wide range of materials. In his
recent studies of Condi for MR, Thorne draws
together elements from memories of the
Burning Woman and the Portfolios, and uses
the computer and scanner as drawing tools for
the first time.
Maria Tymoczko is Professor of Comparative
Literature at the University of Massachusetts;
trained as a medievalist, she is a specialist in
Irish Studies. In addition to Translation in a
Postcolonial Context: Early Irish Literature in
English Translation, she has published widely in
translation theory. Her most recent study,
Enlarging Translation, Empowering Translators, is
forthcoming from St. Jerome Publishing.
Ellen Wehle has new poems in Poetry
International, Poetry, Southern Review, Gulf Coast,
and Best New Poets. In 2005 she received four
Pushcart Prize nominations and was writer
in-residence at The Poetry Center in Chicago.
She lives in Winthrop, MA, where she walks
the beach every morning with her cocker
spaniel, Mickey.
Marlys West received her M.EA. from the
Michener Center for Writers. The University
of Akron Press published her book of poems,
Notes for a Late-Blooming Martyr, in 1999. She
was a Hodder Fellow at Princeton University
and an NEA grant recipient in poetry.
Abe Louise Young is a documentarian and
poet living in Austin, Texas. Her new poems
appear in Bloom, New Letters, and Hawai’i
Review. She’s also co-editor of the forthcoming
Hip Deep: Opinion, Essays, and Vision from
America’s Youth (Next Generation Press).