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#tbt: Adélia Prado, trans. Ellen Watson, “With Poetic License”

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If you’ve spent any time on the Internet lately, you already know about Throwback Thursday—an occasion for Tweeters, Instagrammers, and Facebookers to share with their audiences a glimpse of their past, a funny memory or a cute childhood photo.

We at WesPress thought we’d hop on this trend. After all, we have a long history—founded in 1957, with our first book published in 1959, we’ve been publishing great books for over half a century. So in honor of #tbt, we’ll be posting poems every Thursday drawn from older Wesleyan titles, including some author favorites.

This week’s selection is Adélia Prado’s “Poetic License,” translated by Ellen Watson, from The Alphabet in the Park: Selected Poems of Adélia Prado (1990). We would also like to congratulate Prado on her Lifetime Recognition Award from the Griffin Poetry Trust.

 

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With Poetic License

When I was born, one of those svelte angels
who plays a trumpet proclaimed:
this one will carry a flag.
A heavy load for a woman,
even nowadays such a bashful species.
I accept the subterfuges that fit;
no need to lie.
I’m not so ugly that I can’t get married,
I think Rio’s a real knockout, and—
well, yes and no, I believe in childbirth without pain.
But what I feel, I write. I make good on the prophecies.
I establish lineages, whole kingdoms
(pain is not bitterness).
My sadness has no pedigree
but my longing for joy—
its root goes back a thousand generations.
It’s man’s curse to be lame in life,
woman’s to unfold. I do.

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ADÉLIA PRADO has authored eight volumes of poetry and seven volumes of literary prose in Portuguese. The first in her family of laborers to see the ocean or go to college, Prado has lived all her life in the provincial industrial city of Divinopolis in Minas Gerais, Brazil. She has degrees in Philosophy and Religious Education from the University of Divinópolis, and she worked for many years as a schoolteacher.

ELLEN DORÉ WATSON was hailed by Library Journal as one of “24 Poets for the 21st Century.” Her collections of poetry include Ladder Music and We Live in Bodies (Alice James, 2001 and 2002), This Sharpening (Tupelo, 2006), and Dogged Hearts (Tupelo, 2010). She has also translated a dozen books. She is the Poetry and Translation Editor for The Massachusetts Review and the director of The Poetry Center at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Gerald Vizenor on the road in support of Blue Ravens and Favor of Crows

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Gerald Vizenor, arguably the most prolific Native American author of our time, is on the road sharing his knowledge with audiences far and wide. After events in New York City and Minneapolis, he is gearing up for a series of readings and lectures that will take him to several European destinations and Japan in support of his new books: Blue Ravens, a groundbreaking, fact based novel of Anishinaabe soldiers in WWI,  and Favor of Crows: New and Collected Haiku. 

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First he will visit King’s College of London, where he will lead a masterclass on Native American Indians in the First World War and give a public lecture on Literary Transmotion: Native American Indian Literature of Survivance. Then, Gerald will be off to Paris, reading from his new books at Galerie Orenda, where artwork by Tony Abeyta (Navajo) and Brenda Kingery (Chickasaw) is on display in an exhibit titled “Rhythms and Colors of Native America.” The next stop is the University of Vienna, for the conference “Native North American Survivance and Memory: Celebrating Gerald Vizenor.”  This is the first gathering of its kind, offering a systematic look at Vizenor’s poetic, fictional, theoretical, and juridical writing.  Finally, Gerald will spend time in Japan, presenting his work in a series of lectures for audiences at Keio University and at the American Center Japan. We thank Kinokuniya Bookstore for providing books at these events. 

Stay tuned…when Gerald returns to the United States he will make some stops in New England. Those details are forthcoming. 

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Photographs from Vizenor’s visit to NMAI in New York City. Clockwise from top left: in Central Park; with esteemed artist Robert Houle, who provided artwork for Favor of Crows; signing copies of his books after the panel discussion; with his wife, Laura Hall.  Photographs courtesy of Laura Hall.

For Mothers Day: Two Connecticut Women

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Happy Mothers Day! Wesleyan University Press is celebrating two new books about fascinating Connecticut women.

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In her book Tempest-Tossed: The Spirit of Isabella Beecher Hooker, Susan Campbell tells the story of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s younger half-sister. Isabella Beecher Hooker was a curiously modern nineteenth-century figure. She was a leader in the women’s suffrage movement, and a mover and shaker in Hartford’s storied Nook Farm neighborhood and salon. Tempest-Tossed is a breezily written, fast paced biography that reveals Isabella’s more unusual traits. She was an ardent Spiritualist who could be off-putting, perplexing, and tenacious, yet wonderfully charming. Many of her contemporaries found her unapproachable and difficult to maintain a relationship with. Her “wild streak” was especially unfavorable in the eyes of Hartford society at the time, which valued restraint and duty. Pulitzer Prize winner Susan Campbell, also the author of Dating Jesus: Fundamentalism, Feminism, and the American Girl, brings her own unique blend of empathy and unbridled humor to the unique story of this unorthodox woman. Tempest-Tossed reveals Isabella’s evolution from Calvinist daughter, wife, and mother, to one of the most influential players in the movement for women’s suffrage. This long overdue story has found its perfect storyteller in Campbell, who captures the liveliness and spirit of this daring individual.

You can read a new short piece by Susan Campbell, “Can Mothers Get it Right? Experts Disagree,” (in which another Beecher sister, Catherine, is discussed) in this Sunday’s edition of the Hartford Courant.

Hot off the press is Connecticut state senator Donald E. Williams’s Prudence Crandall: The Fight for Equality in the 1830s, Dred Scott, and Brown v. Board of Education. Crandall was a Connecticut school teacher dedicated to the education of African-American girls–a goal unheard of in the racist landscape of the United States of the 1830s. She ignited a firestorm of controversy when she opened Miss Crandall’s School for Young Ladies and Little Misses of Color, in Canterbury. Residents of the town refused to supply Crandall with the goods necessary to run her school, even going so far as to poison the school’s well water. She was ridiculed and arrested, but only closed her school upon the realization that the safety of her girls was at risk. Striking a balance between careful research and lively storytelling, Williams tells of Crandall’s push for justice and how her struggles helped to set legal precedent. He explains the relationship between three trials brought against Crandall, for her violation of Connecticut’s “Black Law,” and other notable legal cases: the Amistad case, the Dred Scott decision, and Brown v. Board of Education. Williams also discusses how Crandall v. State impacts our modern interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Happy mother’s day, and happy reading!

The British Raid on Essex

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At 7:30 pm last night, as the sky grew dark, a bonfire lit  the water-side green at the Connecticut River Museum in Essex. Jerry Roberts, author of The British Raid on Essex: The Forgotten Battle of the War of 1812, recounted the story of the infamous raid on the town, in commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the battle.  ‘Light Up the Night’ was the first in a series of celebrations as Essex takes its place in history and is formally recognized as a battle site in the War of 1812. Roberts is the official historian and special project coordinator of the Bicentennial Committee for Battle Site Essex. You can catch Jerry Roberts presenting from his book on April 24th, 7:00 p.m., at Acton Public Library, 60 Old Boston Post Road, in Acton, CT. Read about more events here.

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New Poetry, for Poetry Month

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Spring is here, and so is Poetry Month. Please Check out Wesleyan’s new poetry titles.

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Peter Gizzi’s In Defense of Nothing, Selected Poems 1987–2011 represents close to twenty-five years of work. This generous selection strikes a dynamic balance of honesty, emotion, intellectual depth, and otherworldly resonance. Haunted, vibrant, and saturated with luminous detail, Gizzi’s poetry enlists the American vernacular in a magical and complex music.

The Tatters is Wesleyan’s first book with Brenda Coultas; she’s known for her investigative documentary approach. Here, she turns her attention to landfills and the unusual histories embedded in the materials found there. The poems make their home among urban and rural detritus, waste, trinkets, and found objects. She enables us to be present with the sorrow and horror of our destructive nature.

Gerald Vizenor’s Favor of Crows: New and Selected Haiku follows two artistic traditions: Japanese haiku and Anishinaabe dream songs. He unifies vision, perception, and natural motion into concise poems—creating a sense of presence while acknowledging naturalistic impermanence. The book has an outstanding introductory essay by Vizenor, addressing his early influences while stationed in Japan as a soldier.

Endarkenment: Selected Poems, by Arkadii Dragomoshchenko and edited by Eugene Ostashevsky, presents the imaginative, fragmentary work of this Russian L=A=N=G=U=A=G-E poet in a bilingual edition. The book covers the time from perestroika through Dragomoshchenko’s recent death. Ostashevsky brings together revised translations by Lyn Hejininian and Elena Balashova, from long out of print volumes, and translations of newer work carried out by Genya Turovskaya, Bela Shayevich, Jacob Edmond, and Eugene Ostashevsky.

The final writing prompt from Annie Finch… win a book!

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Wesleyan University Press and Annie Finch invite you to participate in a friendly writing challenge. Take a chance at winning a copy of Annie’s new book, Spells: New and Selected Poems, while creating your own poetry.

Finch - Spells R-72-3

Throughout the coming weeks, we will post poems by Annie Finch, along with related writing prompts from Annie. We invite you to respond to each prompt with a poem of your own. Annie will select the poem that moves her most. The author of the poem will win a free copy of Spells. Please feel free to reply to each prompt with a unique poem of your own. We ask that you reply to each prompt only once, with a single poem.

Prompt for Brigid: Write a poem to a mythological being. Try writing it using cross rhymes, a style in which the end of each line rhymes with the middle of the next.  

Please send your poems, along with your with name and mailing address to spellspoetryprompts@gmail.com.

This is our final prompt from Annie Finch. We hope you’ve enjoyed and been inspired by this series!

Happy writing!

Brigid

Ring, ring, ring, ring! Hammers fall.
Your gold will all be beaten
over sudden flaming fire
moving from you, the pyre. Sweeten
your cauldron, until the sun
runs with one flame through the day
and the healing water will sing,
linger on tongues, burn away.

Courtesy of Annie Finch, from Spells: New and Selected Poems (Wesleyan, 2013)

Traditional and experimental music meet in northeast Brazil

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We are pleased to announce a new book by Daniel B. Sharp, Between Nostalgia and Apocalypse: Popular Music and the Staging of Brazil.

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Between Nostalgia and Apocalypse is a close-to-the-ground account of musicians and dancers from Arcoverde, Pernambuco—a small city in the northeastern Brazilian backlands. The book is a study of samba de coco families, considered bearers of traditional music and dance, and the band Cordel do Fogo Encantado, modern performers whose sound incorporates traditional music. Sharp’s study becomes a revealing portrait of performers engaged in new forms of cultural preservation during a post-dictatorship period of democratization and neoliberal reform. Sharp explores how festivals, museums, television, and tourism steep musicians’ performances in national-cultural nostalgia, which both provides musicians and dancers with opportunities for cultural entrepreneurship and hinders their efforts to be recognized as part of the Brazilian here-and-now. The book charts how Afro-Brazilian samba de coco, born in the slave quarters of Brazil, became an unlikely symbol in an interior where European and indigenous cultures predominate. Sharp also discusses the modernization of folkloric elements, chronicling how the popular band Cordel do Fogo Encantado draws upon the sounds of samba de coco, ecstatic Afro-Brazilian religious music, and heavy metal—making folklore dangerous by embodying an apocalyptic register often associated with northeastern Brazil.

For more details, click here.

To listen to the sounds of Cordel do Fogo Encantado, click here.

Also available as an ebook—check with your favorite ebook retailer.

Fourth writing prompt from Annie Finch… win a book!

by  • 

Wesleyan University Press and Annie Finch invite you to participate in a friendly writing challenge. Take a chance at winning a copy of Annie’s new book, Spells: New and Selected Poems, while creating your own poetry.

Finch - Spells R-72-3

Throughout the coming weeks, we will post poems by Annie Finch, along with related writing prompts from Annie. We invite you to respond to each prompt with a poem of your own. Annie will select the poem that moves her most. The author of the poem will win a free copy of Spells. Please feel free to reply to each prompt with a unique poem of your own. We ask that you reply to each prompt only once, with a single poem.

Prompt for Letter for Emily Dickinson: Write a poem as a letter to a poet you love. 

Please send your poems, along with your with name and mailing address to spellspoetryprompts@gmail.com.

The final prompt will be posted on Friday, February 14th.

Happy writing!

Letter for Emily Dickinson

When I cut words you never may have said
into fresh patterns, pierced in place with pins,
ready to hold them down with my own thread,
they change and twist sometimes, their color spins
loose, and your spider generosity
lends them from language that will never be
free of you after all. My sampler reads,
“called back.” It says, “she scribbled out these screeds.”
It calls, “she left this trace, and now we start”—
in stitched directions that follow the leads
I take from you, as you take me apart.

You wrote some of your lines while baking bread,
propping a sheet of paper by the bins
of salt and flour, so if your kneading led
to words, you’d tether them as if in thin
black loops on paper. When they sang to be free,
you captured those quick birds relentlessly
and kept a slow, sure mercy in your deeds,
leaving them room to peck and hunt their seeds
in the white cages your vast iron art
had made by moving books, and lives, and creeds.
I take from you as you take me apart.

Courtesy of Annie Finch, from Spells: New and Selected Poems (Wesleyan, 2013)

Another writing prompt from Annie Finch… win a book!

by  • 

Wesleyan University Press and Annie Finch invite you to participate in a friendly writing challenge. Take a chance at winning a copy of Annie’s new book, Spells: New and Selected Poems, while creating your own poetry.

Finch - Spells R-72-3

Throughout the coming weeks, we will post poems by Annie Finch, along with related writing prompts from Annie. We invite you to respond to each prompt with a poem of your own. Annie will select the poem that moves her most. The author of the poem will win a free copy of Spells. Please feel free to reply to each prompt with a unique poem of your own. We ask that you reply to each prompt only once, with a single poem.

Prompt for Summer Solstice Chant: Write a poem in the form of a chant, to be performed aloud by an individual or a group of people. 

Please send your poems, along with your with name and mailing address to spellspoetryprompts@gmail.com.

Happy writing!

Summer Solstice Chant

June 21

The sun, rich and open,
stretches and pours on the bloom of our work.

In the center of the new flowers,
a darker wing of flower

points you like a fire.

Point your fire like a flower.
Courtesy of Annie Finch, from Spells: New and Selected Poems (Wesleyan, 2013)