THE BITTER OLEANDER PRESS
for 2011
Proudly Announces
Two New Bilingual Additions to its Library of Poetry
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Afterglow/Tras el rayo
a bilingual edition of poems by
Alberto Blanco
translated from the Spanish by Jennifer Rathbun
Who Is Alberto Blanco?
Alberto Blanco, considered one of Latin America's most outstanding poets, has published twenty-seven books of poetry, books of essays on art, poetry in translation and award winning books for children. A chemist by profession, he has studied philosophy extensively and Asian studies with a specialization in Chinese culture. He has been a scholar for the Centro Mexicano de Escritores, the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, the Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes and the Sistema Nacional de Creadores. His books of poetry include Cromos (1987), which won the Carlos Pellicer Poetry Award, and Canto a la sombra de los animales (1988), which won the José Fuentes Mares National Prize. San Diego State University awarded him, in 2002, the "Alfonso X el Sabio" for excellence in literary translation. Blanco has not only been writing for many years about Mexican art, but has taken an active part as a well-respected artist in the Mexican art community. In addition, he has produced fascinating books and portfolios in collaboration with some of Mexico's best known artists of our time: Gunther Gerzso, Francisco Toledo, Vicente Rojo, and Rodolfo Morales to name only a few. In 1991, he spent a year as a Fulbright scholar at the University of California at Irvine where he assembled and completed a sizeable anthology of contemporary American poetry, and has since been an invited and distinguished professor at the University of Texas at El Paso, San Diego State University, the University of San Diego, Middlebury College and The University of California at San Diego. Two bilingual anthologies of his poems have been published in the U.S.: Dawn of the Senses (City Lights, 1995: San Francisco, CA) and A Cage of Transparent Words (The Bitter Oleander Press, 2007: Fayetteville, NY). In 2008 he was awarded a Guggenheim Grant for his poetry and in 2010 he enjoyed a retrospective exhibition of his artist books at The Athenaeum, in La Jolla, California. His poetry has been translated into more than a dozen different languages.
In Afterglow Alberto Blanco brings creation to the forefront of all possible inspirations; the creation of life, of art, of love and pain. This volume represents the first full work of Blanco's Tras el rayoin a bilingual edition. Previous books in translation have been selected from his more than numerous amount of works, but this stays within the framework of one cover. Reading it, one is immediately taken with the simplicity by which his expression of his perception is full and abundant. It draws you in and it makes you feel at home in a world where only what happens is alive. Here is one example, in English only, of this gifted Mexican poet's work selected from Afterglow.
MARCH SHEPHERDESS
Once by fortune
and beauty, one morning
alone, like love demands:
(Precisely there
after sunrise)
With the silver chain
and a perfect undulation
your passing by consoled me.
I saw your light rise
among anonymous heads,
the echo of your profile...
And that blue shadow
that looks so much like the sky
over your eyelids.
&
Of Flies and Monkeys / de singes et de mouches
a bilingual edition of poems by
Jacques Dupin
translated from the French by John Taylor
Who Is Jacques Dupin?
In the field of contemporary French poetry, Jacques Dupin (b. 1927) is a leading figure in a remarkable generation that also includes Yves Bonnefoy, Philippe Jaccottet, and André du Bouchet. In comparison to the aforementioned poets, however, Dupin's work has been little available in English. A single volume, Selected Poems (Wake Forest University Press, 1992), translated by Paul Auster, Stephen Romer, and David Shapiro, collects early work, but none of the poets recent verse has appeared in English-speaking countries.
This book rights this situation. Gathering Dupin's important recent volume, Coudrier (Hazel Tree), as well as two earlier volumes, De singes et de mouches (Of Flies and Monkeys) and Les Mères (The Mothers), this new translation forms a stimulating collective introduction to the poet's writing. As the critic Jean-Pierre Richard has pointed out, "the territory of words, sensations, and images that is invented through Dupin's poems . . . belongs to no other poet today." His stark poetry brings forth opposites, fosters paradoxes, suggests potential narratives that are left unrecounted, and could perhaps be called "cubist" in its juxtaposition of fragments and in its rejection of natural or logical transitions. Not least, his writing is humorous, especially in its wry quips, ironic transformations of well-worn expressions, or playful imagery.
Born in 1927, JACQUES DUPIN settled in Paris in 1944. His first book, Cendrier du voyage (1950), was prefaced by René Char. From the 1950s to the present day, Dupin has been a major figure not only in French poetry but also in the contemporary art world, as a critic, expert (notably of Miró's painting), catalogue editor, and publisher (at the Éditions de la Galerie Maeght). Along with André du Bouchet, Yves Bonnefoy, Michel Leiris, Gaëtan Picon, Louis-René des Forêts, and Paul Celan, Dupin founded and edited the important review L'Éphémère, beginning in 1966. His poetic oeuvre is one of the most profound and challenging in contemporary French literature. He was awarded the French National Poetry Prize in 1988, and the Grand Prix de Poésie (attributed by the French Academy) in 2010.
from Jacques Dupin's Les Mères
Theirs stretch out when they paint up their faces. In clawed scents of hypnosis. The droppings of sea birds. The seaweed, the yeasts. . . Gentle angles. A powdery haze of refinement to hone the chopper. . .
In turn arching their backs and then prostrate, mine scream in the grime. Groan in the mud. And call for ransacking. Bring upon themselves the hooves of the horde. Dream of a word that would make them destroy themselves, dissolve themselves in another voice. . .
But nothing of their dream takes place. Only amputation, getting stuck in the sand, discord. . . Meaninglessness adrift. The heartbreak of coming back. . . To darkness. To dryness and loose rocks, where the light re-immerses itself. To cankers of color. . .
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