Publicity

César Vallejo, cuatro paredes de la celda / Four Walls of the Cell

by selliott • June 18, 2015

Today’s Throwback Thursday poem is from César Vallejo’s Trilce, first published in Peru in 1922, the year after the poet spent 105 days in prison for allegedly instigating a partisan skirmish in his hometown, Santiago de Chuco. Trilce is still considered one of the most radical Spanish-language avant-garde poetry collections ever written. Wesleyan’s edition of the book was translated by Clayton Eshleman and published in 2000. Eshleman was awarded a National Book Award for his co-translation of The Complete Posthumous Poetry, and was a Griffin Prize finalist for The Complete Poetry of César Vallejo. A voluminous edition of Vallejo’s writing is newly available from Wesleyan: Selected Writings of César Vallejo. This new collection, edited by Joseph Mulligan, contains some poetry and a vast number of prose pieces translated to English for the first time. There are articles documenting Vallejo’s travels in Soviet Russia, personal correspondences, and excerpts from several of his plays as well as from his his novel El tungsteno / Tungsten, a work addressing the oppression of indigenous Peruvian miners.

From Trilce

XVIII

Oh las cuatro paredes de la celda.
Ah las cuatro paredes albicantes
que sin remedio dan al mismo número.

Criadero de nervios, mala brecha,
por sus cuatro rincones cómo arranca
las diarias aherrojadas extremidades.

Amorosa llavera de innumerables llaves,
si estuvieras aqui, si vieras hasta
qué hora son cuatro estas paredes.
Contra ellas seríamos contigo, los dos,
más dos que nunca. Y ni lloraras,
di, libertadora!

Ah las paredes de la celda.
De ellass me duelen entre tanto, más
las dos largas que tienen esta noche
algo de madres que ya muertas
llevan por bromurados declives,
a un niño de Ia mano cada una.

Y sólo yo me voy quedando,
con la diestra, que hace por ambas manos,
en alto, en busca de terciario brazo
que ha de puilar, entre mi donde y mi cuando,
esta mayoría inválida de hombre.

XVIII

Oh the four walls of the cell.
Ah the four bleaching walls
that inevitably face the same number.

Breeding place for nerves, foul breach,
through its four corners how it snatches at
the daily shackled extremities.

Loving keeper of innumerable keys,
if only you were here, if only you could only see unto
what hour these walls remain four.
Against them we would be with you, the two of us,
more two than ever. And you wouldn’t even cry,
speak, liberator!

Ah the walls of the cell.
Meanwhile of those that hurt me, most
the two long ones that tonight are
somehow like mothers now dead
leading a child through
bromowalled inclines by the hand.

And only I hang on,
with my right, serving for both hands,
raised, in search of a tertiary arm
to pupilize, between my where and my when,
this invalid majority of a man.

CÉSAR VALLEJO (1892–1938) was born in the Peruvian Andes and, after publishing some of the most radical Latin American poetry of the twentieth century, moved to Europe, where he diversified his writing practice to encompass theater, fiction, and reportage. As an outspoken alternative to the European avant-garde, Vallejo stands as one of the most authentic and multifaceted creators to write in the Castilian language.

Wishing Clayton Eshleman a Happy 80th Birthday!

by tsjohnson • June 1, 2015

Today we wish Clayton Eshleman a happy 80th birthday!

Eshleman has been at the heart of American poetry since the early 1960s. His poems, critical essays, and translations of noteworthy poets as diverse as César Vallejo, Aimé Césaire, Pablo Neruda, Antonin Artaud, Vladimir Holan, Michel Deguy, Henri Michaux, and Bernard Bador have earned him international acclaim. Widely anthologized, his work has appeared in over 400 magazines and newspapers and translated into eight languages. He has given readings and lectured to audiences at universities and other venues around the world.

His work is widely known and lauded. Eshleman has been honored with many awards and honors, including a National Book Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, numerous grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, two Landon Translation Prizes from the Academy of American Poets, and a Hemingway Translation Grant. In 1994, he was a fellow at the Rockefeller Study Center in Bellagio, Italy, where he wrote a 50 page poem on Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights. In 2007 University of California Press published his translation of Vallejo’s verse, The Complete Poetry of César Vallejo, a work on which he spent spent over forty years.

Tour director Nancee Clark (Ringling Brother School of Art and Design), Robert Creeley, and Clayton Eshleman.

From 1996 to 2008, Eshleman and his wife Caryl led yearly tours to the Ice Age painted caves of southwestern France, sponsored by the Ringling School of Art and Design, in Sarasota, Florida. These tours featured thoughtful guest lecturers such as Robert Creeley, Gary Snyder, and novelist Wade Davis. Eshleman utilized his research of Ice Age Cave Art from the past 30 years and lectured on six of the some three hundred decorated caves. His book Juniper Fuse is based on this research and experience; it is, as Ronald Gottesman calls it, “a fabulous three-dimensional tapestry of scholarship. Original and intense, it poses serious questions about human nature and its relation to the animal and natural worlds.”

Introducing A Sulfur Anthology

Eshleman was also the founder and editor of two of the most important literary journalism the latter half of the 20th century: Caterpillar (1967–1973, 20 issues) and Sulfur (1981–2000, 46 issues). Sulfur magazine presented an overview of innovative writing from around the world. Forty-six issues were published, totaling some 11,000 pages and featuring over eight hundred writers and artists, including Norman O. Brown, Jorie Graham, James Hillman, Mina Loy, Ron Padgett, Octavio Paz, Ezra Pound, Adrienne Rich, Rainer Maria Rilke, William Carlos Williams, and many more. Each issue featured a diverse offering of poetry, translations, previously unpublished archival material, visual art, essays, and reviews. Sulfur was a hotbed for critical thinking and commentary and also provided a home for the work of unknown and younger poets. In the course of its twenty year run, Sulfur maintained a reputation as the premier publication of alternative and experimental writing. His wife Caryl was the managing editor for the magazine’s entire run. A Sulfur Anthology, containing a generous selection of highlights from the journal’s nearly twenty year run, will be published by Wesleyan University Press in December 2015

The Essential Poetry (1960–2015)

The Essential Poetry (1960–2015) is due out this summer, from Black Widow Press. This definitive collection spans the entirety of Eshleman’s poetic output. It is an essential reference work for Eshleman readers.

Previously Published Collections and Translations

Wesleyan University Press has previously published two works by Eshleman. Companion Spider is a book of essays on poetics, translation, and publishing; and Juniper Fuse: Upper Paleolithic Imagination & the Construction of the Underworld is a groundbreaking collection of poetry and prose that is the culmination of Eshleman’s twenty-five years of research into the origins of image-making via the Ice Age painted caves of southwestern France.

Concerning Juniper Fuse, Gary Snyder wrote:
“Archeologists and artists have written on southwestern European cave art, but none have given us a book like this. Clayton Eshleman has explored and inspected almost all of the great cave art of southwestern Europe including many caves that are not open to the public and require special permission. Now with visionary imagination, informed poetic speculation, deep insight, breathtaking leaps of mind, Eshleman draws out the underground of myth, psychology, prehistory, and the first turn of the human mind toward the modern. Juniper Fuse opens us up to our ancient selves: we might be weirder (and also better) than we thought.”

In the foreword of Companion Spider, Adrienne Rich wrote:
“Clayton Eshleman has gone more deeply into his art, its process and demands, than any modern American poet since Robert Duncan and Muriel Rukeyser. As a poet, Eshleman has wrestled with his vocation and, in some senses, created himself through poetry. He has written on the self-making and apprenticeship of the poet and of the poet as translator as no one else in North America in the later twentieth century. He has written perceptively about visual art in its relationship to contemporary poetics. And he has delivered stinging critiques of mediocrity and cautiousness in the standardizing of poetic canons.”

Eshleman’s work as a translator includes three volumes of Aimé Césaire’s poetry published by Wesleyan. Notebook of a Return to the Native Land, translated with Annette Smith, and 1939 Original Notebook of a Return to the Native Land, translated with A. James Arnold, are both available, as bilingual editions. Solar Throat Slashed: The Unexpurgated 1948 Edition, also translated with A. James Arnold, is the first bilingual edition of the work.

We commend Clayton Eshleman for his impressive contributions to poetry and translation, and wish him the best on this 80th birthday!

Announcing “Why Haiti Needs New Narratives: A Post-Quake Chronicle” from Gina Athena Ulysse

by agansley • May 25, 2015

Mainstream news coverage of the catastrophic earthquake of January 12, 2010, reproduced longstanding narratives of Haiti and stereotypes of Haitians. Cognizant that this Haiti, as it exists in the public sphere, is a rhetorically and graphically incarcerated one, the feminist anthropologist and performance artist Gina Athena Ulysse embarked on a writing spree that lasted over two years. As an ethnographer and a member of the diaspora, Ulysse delivers critical cultural analysis of geopolitics and daily life in a series of dispatches, op-eds and articles on post-quake Haiti. Her complex yet singular aim in Why Haiti Needs New Narratives is to make sense of how the nation and its subjects continue to negotiate sovereignty and being in a world where, according to a Haitian saying, tout moun se moun, men tout moun pa menm (All people are human, but all humans are not the same). This collection contains thirty pieces, most of which were previously published on Haitian Times, Huffington Post, Ms Magazine, Ms Blog, NACLA, and other print and online venues. The book is trilingual (English, Kreyòl, and French) and includes a foreword by award-winning author and historian Robin D. G. Kelley.

Gina Athena Ulysse is an associate professor of anthropology at Wesleyan University. Born in Haiti, she has lived in the United States for over thirty years. A performance artist, multimedia artist, and anthropologist, she is the author of Downtown Ladies: Informal Commercial Importers, a Haitian Anthropologist, and Self-Making in Jamaica. Robin D. G. Kelley is the Distinguished Professor of History and Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in United States History at UCLA.

“Five years after the earthquake that razed Haiti, feminist anthropologist Ulysse reclaims the cultural narrative of her homeland from its simplification and distortion by mainstream news coverage. In her trilingual (English, Kreyòl, French) collection of op-eds, essays, reviews and news articles…Ulysse rejects the colonial framework through which Haiti is often viewed and reasserts the validity of its sovereignty.”
–Ms. Magazine, Spring 2015

The Driftless Connecticut Series is funded by the Beatrice Fox Auerbach Foundation Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, www.wesleyan.edu/wespress/driftless.

Praise for Why Haiti Needs New Narratives:

“Ulysse’s clear, powerful writing rips through the stereotypes to reveal a portrait of Haiti in politics and art that will change the way you think about that nation’s culture, and your own.”
—Jonathan M. Katz, author of The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster

“This is a beautifully written and profoundly important work of engaged anthropology. Gina Ulysse steps bravely into the public domain bringing a nuanced and sophisticated analysis of things Haitian to a large group of general readers as well as to a broad audience of scholars. Publication of this book marks a kind of “coming of age” for anthropological bloggers and public anthropology.”
—Paul Stoller, author of Yaya’s Story: The Quest for Well-Being in the World

“Gina Athena Ulysse’s compilation, Why Haiti needs New Narratives: A Post-Quake Chronicle, is the gut-felt testimony of an insider/outsider that resounds as a thunderclap in the desert. Trapped in the alienating context of sterile academia, neoliberal political economy, populations displaced, shock therapy and general geopolitical shifts, the author’s gift of polysemy opens horizons. Through thought, action, word, poetry, song . . . flow yet unbounded prospects.”
—Rachel Beauvoir-Dominique, professor, Université d’Etat d’Haïti

“Taking us through entangled and liberating possibilities, Gina Ulysse introduces us to Haiti, the kingdom of this world. Embedded in the interstices of words and other aesthetic sensibilities that summon the past into the present, the powerful promise of a people is revealed. Ashe.”
—Arlene Torres, coeditor of Blackness in Latin America and the Caribbean

“The sense of urgency that pervades these essays is palpable. Similar to her performances, Ulysse rings the alarm, fills the room in our head with deafening sound, a one-woman aftershock.”
—Robin D. G. Kelley, from the foreword

#tbt: Brenda Hillman, “world/axis”

by ojonathan • May 7, 2015

Today’s Throw Back Thursday poem is, “world/axis” from Brenda Hillman’s 1997 collection Loose Sugar. Brenda Hillman is an activist, writer, and teacher. She has published nine collections of poetry, all from Wesleyan University Press, including Pieces of Air in the Epic, winner of a William Carlos Williams Award; Practical Water, for which she won the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Poetry; and the International Griffin Poetry Prize-winning Seasonal Works with Letters on Fire.

world/axis

That she would come to meet you
as if to solve the enigma of your being…

The feminine might bend the light–

(It could involve seeming
recognized or sought–)

The visitor comes,
not an invention but
an axis of something already invented–

(even memory is sometimes an invention
as are dreams)

–her left arm curved like a galaxy.

Others sang disarmingly among the stars.

You can learn more about Brenda Hillman at this Reader’s Companion or at her author website.

Gerald Vizenor at AWP

by selliott • April 8, 2015

A Tribute to Gerald Vizenor @ AWP Minneapolis
Friday, 4/10: 1:30–2:45pm
w/ Heid Erdrich, Kim Blaeser, Gordon Henry Jr., Margaret Noodin, & Gerald Vizenor
Room 208 C&D, Level 2

“I am still discovering who I am, the myth in me…I am part crow, part dragonfly, part squirrel, part bear. I kick at the sides of boxes out. I will not be pinned down. I am flying home in words and myths.” –Gerald Vizenor, This Song Remembers

“…his texts are not the end, but the means. They invite the reader to be a party to discovery.” –Kimberly Blaeser, Gerald Vizenor: Writing in the Oral Tradition

“Gerald Vizenor combines ancient American storytelling with space-age technique.” –Ishmael Reed

#tbt: a kaleidoscope of words from Leslie Scalapino

by sgerton • April 2, 2015

Today’s Throwback Thursday selection is an short excerpt from New Time (1999). Celebrating National Poetry Month and Leslie Scalapino, founder of O Books.

wild gap — of dawn, not it — not so much the particular interpret-
tation (of events) — but as (that) it happens at all

filled events (catalyzed in one as physical gap tormenting — is it-
self the break that’s the dawn, in fact) — break — expanded — that are
going on — red flamed trees, leaves sea is the occurrence outside.

~~~

freezing sky — red slice — one, outside, travelling not existing
even — is not not rebelling — gap itself— as choosing the harshest
conditions — is the dawn

that is dusk freezing sky — is gap

grinding negative, as going down that’s dusk sky —per se — one’s
pushing wildly occurring (in one) events — as gap, (that’s dawn)

LESLIE SCALAPINO (1944-2010) was the author of thirty books of poetry, fiction, plays, and essays, including Day Ocean State of Stars’ Night (Green Integer); Zither & Autobiography (Wesleyan University Press); The Tango (Granary Press), a collaboration with artist Marina Adams; Orchid Jetsam (Tuumba); Dahlia’s Iris—Secret Autobiography and Fiction (FC2 Publishers); and It’s go in/quiet illumined grass/land (The Post-Apollo Press). She also authored the introduction for The Collected Poems of Philip Whalen. She founded O Books and taught writing for nearly 25 years at institutions across the country. Her honors include the 1988 Lawrence Lipton Prize and the 1998 American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation.

Wesleyan Film @ SCMS Montreal

by selliott • March 27, 2015

The Society for Cinema & Media Studies‘ annual conference is currently underway in Montreal. Founded in 1959, SCMS is a professional organization of college and university educators, filmmakers, historians, critics, scholars, and others devoted to the study of the moving image. Wesleyan’s film series acquisitions editor, Parker Smathers, will be in attendance this weekend, catching up on the latest news in the field.

The Wesleyan Film series takes a back-to-basics approach to the art of cinema. Books in the series deal with the formal, the historical, and the cultural—putting a premium on visual analysis, close readings, and an understanding of the history of Hollywood and international cinema, both artistically and industrially. Volumes in the series are rigorous, critical, and accessible both to academics and to lay readers with a serious interest in film.

Our new and forthcoming film-related books include:

The Director Within: Storytellers of Stage and Screen

The Cinema of Errol Morris

The Lives of Robert Ryan

View a full list of books in the Wesleyan Film Series here.

On May 31st the Music Box Theatre in Chicago will host a special screening of The Set-Up to celebrate the release of The Lives of Robert Ryan. A Q&A with author J.R. Jones and the late actor’s daughter, Lisa Ryan, will follow the screening. Attendees will be able to purchase a book/ticket combo at a discounted price, thanks to the support of The Book Cellar. Stay tuned for details! For now, you can check out this piece on Robert Ryan, from The Chicago Reader, by J.R. Jones.

#tbt: David Ignatow, “Wherever”

by sgerton • March 26, 2015

Today’s Throwback Thursday poem is “Wherever,” from David Ignatow’s 1996 collection I Have a Name. The book was the winner of the 1997 William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America.

Wherever

Wherever I go,
into food stores,
into the john to piss,
I am haunted by the poem
yet to be written,
that I may live as a poem
when I die as a man.

•

What does he want of himself?
How to write without reservation,
yet without repugnance,
so that to value writing—
teeth, tongue, and terror—
he will accept the terror.

DAVID IGNATOW (1914-1997) was the author of many books of poetry, including Rescue the Dead (1968), Against the Evidence: Selected Poems, 1934-1994, and Shadowing the Ground (1991). He served as editor of American Poetry Review, Analytic, and Chelsea Magazine, as well as poetry editor of The Nation. His honors include the John Steinbeck Award, the Shelley Memorial Award, a Bollingen Prize, and the Frost Medal. He was the president of the Poetry Society of America from 1980 to 1984.

#tbt: Kathleen Fraser, “Les Jours Gigantesques”

by agansley • March 19, 2015

This week’s Throwback Thursday post features Kathleen Fraser’s poem “Les Jours Gigantesques” from il cuore: the heart, Selected Poems 1970–1995. A Tribute to Kathleen Fraser is planned for Sunday, March 22nd (5PM), at California College of the Arts. The event is co-sponsored by the San Francisco State University Poetry Center and Small Press Traffic. Read more about the event here.

LES JOURS GIGANTESQUES

Have you noticed the shadow hovering?
     How when you are in the middle of brushing your teeth
     there is something gathering around the corner?
She is dreaming this thought to a self
awake in the world
when she feels a tug, something like a hand pressing
down upon her thigh
     and she remembers she is naked and alone in the room
     and wishes for her silk blouse
     and the zipper with its three silver hooks at the top.
In her body’s emptiness
a growing sense of intimacy,
the pressure of a shadow in its black suit,
its right hand moving
around her waist, as if looking
for a pocket,
     or the push of a head against
     her shoulder, as though
     this movie from some little light booth
     on the opposite wall was focusing,
     on her, and the image was him,
     his half head
moving towards her nipple,
with the thirst in him, dark
against her white body. She looks down,
     she looks down at, oh, the hand, or is it
     the shadow of a hand
     pressing in on the thigh that is hers.
Her muscles bulge with effort
and become tremendous
in their flex. The color drains
from every part of her, but
     the red mouth,
     holding its shape steadily,
     the scream, at first uncertain,
     enters the air
     and becomes the third,
     the knowing, between them.

Wesleyan UP @ AWP2015—Minneapolis

by selliott • March 18, 2015

Wesleyan University Press @ AWP2015—Minneapolis

Friday, 4/10: 1:30–2:45pm
A Tribute to Gerald Vizenor
w/ Heid Erdrich, Kim Blaeser, Gordon Henry Jr., Margaret Noodin, & Gerald Vizenor
Room 208 C&D, Level 2
Anishinaabe writers will read selections from Gerald Vizenor’s vast body of work and reflect on how this elder statesman of Anishinaabe literature influenced and supported their own work. Vizenor’s political writing, nationalist poetry, and history-steeped novels will be represented in this tribute, fittingly held in his homeland of Minnesota. Panelists will reflect on Vizenor’s role as a mentor and teacher who enabled generations of Native writers to find their voice.
Read more here.

Saturday, 4/11: 10:30–11:45am
Wesleyan University Press Poetry Reading
w/ Rae Armantrout, Sarah Blake, Heather Christle, Honorée Jeffers, and Fred Moten
Room 101 H&I, Level 1
A dynamic reading reflecting the breadth of Wesleyan University Press’s esteemed poetry series. These five poets represent diversity of age, race, aesthetics, and poetic voice, and are among the strongest voices in poetry today. Each engages his or her subject matter in distinct, unexpected ways through the use of language and imagery. Their work contemplates popular culture, history, ethics, race, and politics, as well as their personal experiences.
Read more here.

Book Signings @ WUP booth 907

Heather Christle — Thursday, 4/9: 1–2pm

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers — Friday, 4/10: 11am–12pm

Gerald Vizenor — Friday, 4/10: 3:30–4:30pm

Rae Armantrout & Sarah Blake — Saturday, 4/11: 12:30–1:30pm

Fred Moten — Saturday, 4/11: 2–3pm

Offsite Events

[Not organized by Wesleyan. Wesleyan authors, past and present, are included.]

Wednesday, 4/8: 7pm
BOMB & Two Dollar Radio Present:
Rae Armantrout, Sarah Gerard, Ian Dreiblatt, & Nicholas Rombes
Magers & Quinn Booksellers, 3038 Hennepin Avenue, Minneapolis, MN 55408
More info here.

Wednesday, April 8th, 7:30-8:30pm
Women’s Caucus Reading
Readings by Joy Harjo and Natalie Diaz. Introduction by Heid Erdrich.
Augsburg College, Satern Auditorium, 22nd Ave. South & South 7 1/2 Street, Minneapolis
More info here.

Thursday, 4/9: 6pm
Presenting: Tender Buttons, Black Radish Books, Ugly Duckling Presse, and Station Hill
Lee Ann Brown is reading from Bernadette Mayer’s Sonnets (Tender Buttons)
514 Studio, 514 North 3rd Street Suite 101, Minneapolis
More info here.

Thursday, 4/9: 8pm
Rain Taxi Benefit at Walker Art Center, Greatest Hits Reading
Peter Gizzi, Pierre Joris, Forrest Gander and many others.
Walker Art Center, 1750 Hennepin Avenue, Minneapolis
More info here.

Thursday, 4/9: 7:30pm–1am
VIDA Awards, Motionpoems Film Screening, & Dance Party
Sarah Blake’s poem “A Day at the Mall Reminds Me of America” was used in Ayse Altinok’s short film, included in the Motionpoems screening.
Skyway Theater, 711 Hennepin Avenue, Minneapolis
More info here.

Thursday, April 9: 7:30–9:30pm
Hick Poetics Anthology Release
Forest Gander is among the participants
Patrick’s Cabaret, 3010 Minnehaha Avenue, Minneapolis
More info here.

Saturday, 4/11: 6pm
The Volta Book of Poets
Fred Moten and Evie Shockley are among the sixteen readers.
Harriet Brewing, 3036 Minnehaha Avenue, Minneapolis
More info here.