At 12:57 AM 12/25/2003 -0700, Trevor Joyce wrote:
>Mark Weiss:
>
>>Re: your car, Leo O'Brien of the Glen of Imaal 26 years ago: "My brother
>>Patrick was always after me to get a motor car. But what use would i9t be,
>>I would tell him, it would only be taking me places I didn't want to go."
>
>Yes, I'm looking forward to being able to use that as an excuse again
>shortly. "I didn't want to go to the pub, but the bloody car insisted!"
Leo of course needed no such excuse, given the amount of poteen he consumed.
>>On Satrurday I expect a slew of mexican poets to dinner, not a one from
>>Baja California, and the translator Mark Schafer. I'm publishing Mark's
>>translation of one of the poets, Gloria Gervitz, in September. Tony's
>>doingv the English edition in July. Gloria's the most difficult poet I've
>>ever had to deal with, but so it goes.
>
>I'd heard that Tony Frazer was bringing out the Gervitz from Shearsman,
>but hadn't registered you were doing it the other side (of the ocean).
>Evidently my brain's rotting. The more I read of Otro Lado, and your Cuban
>mini-anthology, the more interested I am in the model Latin-American
>poetry seems to present, distinct from those of the Anglophone world: led
>predominantly neither by commerce nor the academy, but by a set of
>possibilities which seem open to all to use and to read. The "neo-baroque"
>as I think you named it. Am I summarizing correctly? It seems to enable an
>interweave of passion and intelligence which, when it works, leaves a lot
>of more familiar stuff looking pretty thin.
You've got it about right. It's astonishing how much good stuff has been
unavailable to us. Or available only in ghastly translations.
>>PS--I'm close to a final take on my Australian notebook, which I think has
>>become a long loose poem. I'll send it along by acrobat anon.
>
>Good. You'll at very least set my envy working.
I'd hold the envy till you see the result.
No. 66 (66!) is very fine.
>Trevor
Do something foolish, if you can, for the holidays.
Mark
>*
>
>Some recent writing & tooling (more Ruan Ji, from the Chinese):
>
>66
>
>Polar
> cold
> marks terminus;
>escape,
> even by ocean,
> has its end.
>
>Our sun
> gone out,
> we stand
>alone
> benighted
> and unkinged.
>
>Better
> tend
> orchard
>than forever
> watch
> your back,
>
>yet see:
> even the vulgar
> sparrow
>sits
> in someone's
> sights.
>
>In a trice
> power slips
> the grasp;
>armed men
> defile
> the grave.
>
>Now loyalty's
> exemplars
> all are dead,
>tears
> cancel
> face.
>
>Give me
> a purebred
> from the riverlands,
>let me
> traverse
> my range.
>
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