Plebella Papel

Plebella Papel

Plebella, revista de poesía actual, a partir de su número 21, puede leerse on line casi por entero.
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Issue #20 of Plebella

Salió Plebella 20

Plebella, revista de poesía actual, publica este mes su vigésimo número y cumple su sexto año, puntual y sin recesos.

Contenidos Plebella 20

Este número 20 de Plebella dedica un amplio dossier a la obra del poeta peruano-argentino Reynaldo Jiménez. El artista, performer, músico, poeta, editor, traductor, responsable entre otros muchos otros proyectos del sello editorial y la revista Tsé-Tsé, publica en este número de Plebella su poema O sea, parte de su libro inédito Esteparia,

En la entrevista Sentidos sin más perseguir, los poetas Emiliano Bustos, Nakh Ab Ra (Anhk) y Romina Freschi, interrogan al poeta sobre sus diferentes sentidos y sentires en sus múltiples actividades. En el ensayo Perseguir el eco que nos precede, el poeta Juan Salzano, realiza un panorámico e iniciático recorrido sobre la obra poética de Jiménez y su ubicación en la poesía contemporánea. Finalmente, los poetas José Kozer y Nakh Ab Ra, realizan retratos literarios de Jiménez, proyectando entre sus recuerdos, el aura de una obra que los ha marcado. José Kozer, con un poema de su serie Actividad del Azogue, y Nakh Ab Ra como Ha Sar Kar, con el breve ensayo Segelín, cerrando un dossier inolvidable, primer documento de esta naturaleza y extensión que se le dedica a Reynaldo Jiménez en nuestro país.

Abren las reseñas con una dedicada al libro La indefensión, también de Reynaldo Jiménez, reeditado este año por editorial Cilc. Otras reseñas en Plebella están dedicadas a obras de Arturo Carrera (Ensayos Murmurados), Daniel Samoilovich (Molestando a los Demonios), Jean Luc Godard (En su poema autobiográfico JLG/JLG), y los jóvenes Rocío Pochettino y Juan Rearte.

Entre las secciones fijas de la revista se cuenta Sembradores de Fósforos, columna coordinada por Emiliano Bustos, en la que los convocados cuentan la génesis de sus libros o poemas. En el número 20 participa Cecilia Eraso.

Otra sección fija es Artes Poéticas /Aires Contemporáneos, en la que los escritores son invitados a responder una encuesta sobre distintos aspectos de su trabajo. La sección se ve complementada por una antología en la web con poemas de todos los participantes. Responden en este número Gael Policano Rossi y Macky Corbalán.

La Fiesta, presentación de Plebella 20 el 15 de octubre en la Estación Alógena

Desde su número 13, Plebella ilustra sus números con referencias a la cábala criolla. Este número 20 es, desde todo punto de vista, una auténtica fiesta.

Para concretar la celebración, el viernes 15 de octubre se presentará en la Estación Alógena, el número 20 de Plebella con la participación de Reynaldo Jiménez, acompañado de Juan Salzano, Nahk Ab Ra, Sergio Uzal y amigos.

Viernes 15 de Octubre, 19:30 hs, Estación Alógena, Bonpland 1183, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Ejemplares del número 20 y de todos los números de la revista serán accesibles ese día.

¿Cuál es el mejor modo de conseguir Plebella?

Por suscripción, por supuesto.

Detalles en www.plebella.com.ar

ACERCA DE PLEBELLA

Plebella, revista de poesía actual, nació en 2004 y desde entonces ha salido puntualmente 3 veces al año en abril, agosto y diciembre. Dirigida por la poeta Romina Freschi e ilustrada por el artista plástico Eduardo Zabala, Plebella pretende ejercer la crítica y reseña de la poesía contemporánea desde el punto de vista de los artistas, sin presiones o poses académicas o periodísticas.

Completamente independiente tanto desde lo económico como desde lo ideológico, Plebella sostiene un espacio único en el campo cultural argentino, dando lugar a contenidos y temas originales e invitando a al ritmo y la razón poéticas que animan la experiencia artística. Plebella no resigna reflexión en pos de la difusión, al contrario, complejiza la difusión – sin dejar de cumplir con ella- ofreciendo miradas críticas, puntos de vista originales, y objetos de pensamiento propios.

A lo largo de estos años Plebella ha realizado a su vez múltiples actividades de conexión entre los artistas de diferentes disciplinas. Entre estas actividades se cuenta, la edición del número 56 de la revista de artes visuales Ramona (o Ramona Plebella, año 2005), una muestra de arte y poesía en la Biblioteca Nacional con motivo de su tercer aniversario y sus primeros 10 números(año 2007), un festival en la Casa de la Lectura de la Ciudad de Bs. As. para su quinto aniversario (año 2009), las convocatorias Poeta Revelación (año 2008 y en curso) y las distintas muestras electrónicas de poesía contemporánea de México, Chile, Uruguay y Argentina (accesibles desde la página web/ver Especiales).

www.plebella.com.ar info@plebella.com.ar 0054 911 5046 5220

Plebella Collection

New plebella, argentine review

Release of Plebella #13

For this issue, we have a wide interview with poet, translator and researcher Delfina Muschietti, and we have an advanced of her unpublished book El Enigma de las Flores.

Emiliano Bustos was invited to the Venezuela Book Convention 2007 (Filven 2007) and we have a beautiful and sensitive chronicle, an interview with poet Richard Montenegro, of group Li Po and a brief anthology of poetry of Venezuela (including poems by Ramos Sucre, Palomares, Gervasi, Wafi Salih and Calzadilla).

Rodolfo Edwards comments in column Sembradores de Fósforos, the spark that generated the poem that gives title to his first book, Culo Criollo, published by Siesta in 1999.

Matías Ayala gives an introducction to his dossier Puro Chile, collection of recent poetry from Chile , with poems by Rodrigo Lira, Diego Maquieira, Tomás Harris, Roberto Merino, Claudio Gaete Briones, Paula Ilabaca, Yanko González, Jaime Luis Huenún, Andrés Anwandter, Juan Cristóbal Romero and Julio Carrasco. Puro Chile will an extended version on line in our site, http://www.plebella.com.ar/, only for readers and suscribers.

Reviews of the latest books by Héctor. M. Ángeli, M.Julia. de Ruschi, Romina Freschi, Denise León and Agostina. L. López.

A comment on festival “Sin pedir permiso” by group Rosa Fuerte, festival we were part of last week.

And basis to Contest “Poeta Revelación” (in Spanish) and recent inauguration of our Journal http://www.plebellabilingue.blogspot.com/.

Subscription options

( 1 year, 3 issues + extras)

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$50 para GBA

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Latin America u$s 30

rest of the world u$s 40.

Subscribe NoW!!! http://www.plebella.com.ar/suscriptores.htm

New Plebella

Feliz año nuevocon una plebella nueva!!!
salió el número 12, a disfrutar!!!
Agradecemos con todo nuestro corazón a nuestros colaboradores y amigos que nos han ayudado en todos los proyectos emprendidos este año 2007 y les deseamos lo mejor para el 2008!!!

happy new year!!!
happy new plebella!!! enjoy!!!

we thank with all our hear to our contributors and friends who have help us in every project we persued this year 2007 and we wish you the best for 2008!!!

Plebella 12, diciembre 2007/ december 2007

Gacetilla de prensa/press clip: click aquí

Salió Plebella 12

entrevistas
Gaby Bex, cantante
Raúl Perrone, cineasta
Inauguramos con un poema de Carlos Juárez Aldazábal la columna Sembradores de Fósforos, por Emiliano Bustos.
Reseñamos el encuentro Poéticas de las Américas, realizado en Texas en 2007 con una crónica de Roberto Echavarren y una introducción de Romina Freschi relacionando L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E y Neobarroco.
Hablamos con Arturo Carrera sobre su proyecto Estación Pringles.
Registramos un debate entre poetas sobre blogs y poéticas de la web.
Como siempre reseñas (Lindo, Prado, Salzano, Rotzait, Páez, Szpunberg) y datos concretos.
Y el lanzamiento de la convocatoria POETA REVELACIÓN para el 2008!!!
Por otro lado, inauguramos un Journal Electrónico para incluir notas e inquietudes urgentes. En la medida de lo posible, llevaremos el journal en castellano y en inglés. Nos va a encantar recibir colaboraciones.
Y para suscriptores postales plebellas de Martín Legón y Magalí Pallero
FELIZ AÑO NUEVO

Plebella 12 has been released!!!
interviews
Gaby Bex, singer
Raúl Perrone, flim maker.
We released with a poem by Carlos Juarez Aldazábal the column Sembradores de Fósforos by Emiliano Bustos.
We reviewed congress Poetics of the Americas that took place in Texas 2007 with a chronicle by Roberto Echavarren and an introduction by Romina Freschi relating L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry to Latin American Neobarroco.
We also talked to Arturo Carrera about his project Estación Pringles.
We published a debate between poets about blogs and web poetics.
As usual, reviews (Lindo, Prado, Salzano, Rotzait, Páez, Szpunberg) and consulting sections.
And the release of spanish poetry contest Poeta Revelación for 2008 (only for works in spanish)
We want to share with you a new tool, an Electronic Journal to include reviews and urgent expressions. We`ll try to keep this journal in spanish and english. We will be very pleased to receive your collaborations.
And for subscribers plebella´s postcards with Magalí Pallero and Martín Legón.
HAPPY NEW YEAR

+ noticias / +news
fin de año/end of the year
postales plebellas/plebella´s postcards
poeta revelación
Rosa Fuerte(art in action)
Sin pedir permiso, rosa fuerte
Carta de Graciela Casabe a la comunidad

Cómo conseguir Plebella (mejor suscribíte)
número 12: 9$ en kioscos y puntos de venta.

Subscriptions(1 year, 3 issues + presents)
$40 para Cap. Fed
$50 para GBA
resto del país $60
Latinoamérica u$s 30
resto del mundo (rest of the world) u$s 40.

FOR SUBSCRIPTIONS OF PLEBELLA 12: Postales Plebellas by artists Martín Legón and Magalí Pallero. As usual, Color Pastel.

Para suscribirse/To suscribe
Puntos de venta

contacto de prensa/ press contact: Sofía Serbin sserbin@plebella.com.

Cadáver Exquisito -Performance

CADAVER EXQUISITO

performance

Roberto Echavarren

Romina Freschi

Adriana Kogan

Jazmín Llovet

Mariano Massone

with poems by Néstor Perlongher

Directed by Romina Freschi

For the release of Plebella #11, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Barraca Vorticista

October 10th

Also

Reading by Gabriel Reches

Videos by Eduardo Zabala

Exhibition of Postcards by Gabriela Messuti, Emiliano Bustos y Walter Álvarez

8th Exhibition of Visual Poetry

more pictures

even more

and more

Plebella, poetry review of Argentina

Argentina Poetry Review Plebella #11

This issue contains:

The Difficult Poem, by Charles Bernstein, translated to spanish

Articles by Roberto Echavarren (Uruguay), Anahí Mallol, Romina Freschi, Emiliano Bustos and Adriana Kogan about argentine poet Néstor Perlongher, his work and his myth, regarding the recent edition of a volume of letters by Néstor Perlongher, Un barroco de trinchera (Bs.As. Mansalva, 2006)

Chronicle about I Encuentro de Poetas Mujeres del Cono Sur (First Reunion of Women Poets of the South), Coquimbo, Chile October 2006.

Poems of the future new book by Gabriel Reches with an introduction by Damián Tabarovsky.

As usual, reviews and consulting sections.

Plebella
Subscriptions

Plebella celebrated its first three years with a visual exhibition in the National Library of Argentina in months june and july this year. Extracts of the review´s articles and illustrations were shown in a very original way. A small Visual Arts show and readings by Plebella´s contributors also were part of the exhibition. You can see a small part here.

Contact: Romina Freschi
rfreschi@plebella.com.ar

The Gift: Poems by Hafiz the Great Sufi Master

Daniel Ladinsky, Translator
The Gift: Poems by Hafiz the Great Sufi Master
Penguin/Arkana, 1999, 326 pages, $13.95

Daniel Ladinsky's The Gift: Poems by Hafiz is an "original" poem masquerading as a "translation." These two readings are irreconcilable, and this fact profoundly mars the book.

As an "original" poem, the book belongs to the tradition of visionary, religious writing, as the following quote from its introduction makes clear: "I feel my relationship to Hafiz defies all reason and is really an attempt to do the impossible: to translate Light into words –to make the luminous resonance of God tangible to our finite senses. About six months into this work I had an astounding dream in which I saw Hafiz an an Infinite Fountaining Sun (I saw him as God), who sang hundreds of lines of his poetry to me in English, asking me to give that message to 'my artists and seekers'"

As God talked to Moses in Hebrew, to Mohammad in Arabic, Hafiz spoke to Daniel Ladinsky in English. Mr. Ladinsky is translating a dream, not a 14th century Persian text. His preparation towards it has the aura of the road to Damascus, "My work with Hafiz began in the fall of 1992, on a early morning walk in the countryside of western India, on a beautiful tree-lined road that leads to the former residence of Meher Baba...."

Incredible as it may seem, there is not a single poem (gazel) of Hafiz of which any one of the poems in The Gift: Poems by Hafiz The Great Sufi Master is a translation or adaptation or extrapolation or deconstruction; no poem in the book is in dialectic relation to a specific Persian text. Nada, besides the obvious fact that Mr. Ladinsky's poems ignore Hafiz's Gazel form. One parable in the book, "The Difference Between," belongs to Indian folklore. Hafiz did not write it; in fact, narrative is alien to Hafiz's elliptic, serialist lyric style. The book's most striking images are Mr. Ladinsky's inventions :

COURTEOUS TO THE ANT

God
Blooms
From the shoulder
of the
Elephant
Who becomes
Courteous
To
The
Ant.

It may be thrilling to discover a touch of Zen in Hafiz, "the Sufi Master"; but Hafiz never said these lines, except in Mr. Ladinsky's dream. Elephants nor, I think, ants appear in his poetry. No "God" blooms from no "shoulder." Once the assumption of a classical 146h century text behind it, which gives it a radiance as the receiver of a prior light, is removed as fictional, one has a new age rip-off. The poem becomes unreadable.

WHAT THE HELL

The
Real love
I always keep a secret.

All my words
Are sung outside Her window,

For when She lets me in
I take a thousand oaths of silence.

But,
Then She says,

O, then God says,

"What the hell, Hafiz,
Why not give the whole world
My
Address."

A witty, mildly shocking poem is putting curse words in Love/God's mouth and comparing "Her" to a courtesan. But, again, Hafiz never wrote these lines. The careful, self-conscious arrangement of words on a line suggesting a precise cadence being reproduced is a fiction. If the poem were by Hafiz, its Sufism would verge on heresy. As a 20th century poem, it is nothing. Its heretical aura is delicious (maybe that's what the author means by light) and virtual, devoid of danger.

In his renderings, Daniel Ladinsky alters Hafiz's text in two ways the combination of which, in my view, is fatal, creating the irreconcilable break between "originality" and "translation." The gazel is an intricate, serial, non-narrative form, often consisting of variations around a theme. Within a given rhyme scheme lines can be rearranged. Hafiz's elliptical and allusive style, reinforced by rhymes, create sound patterns similar to arabesques. Daniel Ladinsky may be forgiven for ignoring the intricate gazel form, particularly if he wants to focus on the clarity of Hafiz's vision –"translate his Light"- which is embodied in his images, his symbols.

Images, symbols are not metaphors, alluding to something outside themselves, in Hafiz; but autonomous. In her book on Sufism, Sufi, Expressions of the Mystic Quest, Laleh Bakhtiar describes this essence succinctly: "[symbols are] 'in suspense' in the place of their appearance... like an image suspended in a mirror. It is a perfectly real world, preserving all the diversity of the sensible world in a spiritual state." Symbols do not reflect or point to, but embody a vision. As spiritual essences, they are possessors of light. In other words, they can not be substituted or dispensed with. That's why Daniel Ladinsky's fictitious renderings are so profoundly wrong, even in the book's own pretended terms, making the poems unreadable as Hafiz translations. My Iranian friends are struck speechless by the clueless nerve of the author's assertions.

Why does the title of the book say, "Poems by Hafiz," and not "based on" or something in that vein? The charitable answer would be that Mr. Ladinsky did not know any better, that he truly believes he is translating Hafiz and The Gift is a visionary labor of love. –He told me as much in a telephone conversation, pointing to how well the book is doing, when I asked him to refer me to one or two specific Hafiz Gazels in the book, which he could not.- The second answer is that "Hafiz" is a marketable brand name. Would Arkana have published this book if its author was merely Daniel Ladinsky? I am also curious if Penguin has ever vetted the nature of these translations.

The Gift may give great delight as a new age religious/inspirational text, decidedly less so, in my view, as a 20th century poem; but one should have no illusion one is reading Hafiz, either his text or his spirit. As such, the book is worse than a failure; it is a deception, a marketing rip-off of his name.

The following are three couplets from two gazels from In Wineseller's Street, Renderings of Hafez by Thomas Rain Crowe. These translations may be imperfect, but the light emanating from them is authentic, revealing perhaps that Holderlin is the poet closest to Hafiz in spirit in the West:

As the Beloved passes by in a open boat, all He sees are strangers,
And this is why He always wears a veil

O lord, tell me how it is that wine sticks in the lip of a pitcher,
Like blood. And yet when it is poured a sweet glugging fills the air.

Help! The Hearstealer has gone away. Through my weeping eyes
The idea of a letter from Him, is like reading words floating on the
water of a rushing stream.

Murat Nemet-Nejat
The Poetry Project Newsletter, 1999

"Semicerchio", n. XXXV (2006/2)

New issue of Semicerchio, magazine of international poetry. Number XXXV (second half of 2006): "The tired troubadour. On the social mandate of the poet". Essays and poems in original languages and/or translated into Italian. The issue hosts works and translations by Francesco Stella, Yves Bonnefoy, Michel Deguy, Jean-Claude Villain, Henri Meschonnic, Dieter M. Gräf, Ulrike Draesner, Lucia Valori, Jesús Munárriz, Rafael Courtoisie, Fernando Pinto do Amaral, Jorie Graham, David Gewanter Albatross, Yusef Komunyakaa, Antonis Fostieris, Haris Vlavianos, Antonis Fostieris, Haris Vlavianos, Jarosłav Mikołajewski, Meena Alexander, Gōzō Yoshimasu, Guido Mazzoni, Massimo Scorsone, Marina Cvetaeva (Marilena Rea), S.S. Prasad (Serena Todesco), Jorie Graham (Antonella Francini), William Shakespeare translated into modern Greek (by Wolfgang David Cirilo de Melo), Caterina Bigazzi, Anna Maria Volpini, Alessandro Raveggi, Stefano Zivec, Cecilia Bello Minciacchi, Fabio Zinelli. Reviews of books: by Pietro Deandrea, Prisca Agustoni, Gianfranco Agosti, Raffaella Castagnola, F.Stella, F.Zinelli, Simone Giusti. Some pages are available as pdf files here. A list of the past issues here.

Semicerchio, Piazza Leopoldo 9, 50134 Firenze

email: semicerchiorpc [at] libero [dot] it
Editor in chief: Francesco Stella
Publisher: Le Lettere, Distribution: Licosa

A City A Cloud / by Workman, Campbell, Brandt. 2006

A City a Cloud is a big sheet of 84x63 cm and is one of the dusie/e-chap project chapbooks. It opens as a poster and you could think to be supposed to hang it on a wall and start a sort of strange journey across the texts and the images spread over this one-page book, forming a kind of chess-board.

Actually, it’s hard to think about A City a Cloud just as a text over a sheet: the typographical and bibliological solution, conceived by Erik Brandt for this short collection by Elisabeth Workman, is something more than a precious and affected layout. On the contrary, it represents a lot of things and every aspect of it is necessary to read and "use" the work. As a review, I would like to point out at least two or three of those aspects.

First of all, this wide sheet, that you unfold as a map, and that actually looks like a map, is an hypothesis about what could be a book today, when technical knowledge permits some unusual choices, and a long training on electric media have taught us many ways of non-linear reading.

Secondly, it’s the adequate counterpart to the cumulative nature of both Workman’s texts and Barbara Campbell’s images, where lists and stratification appear as primary rhetoric strategies. Campbell’s pieces rely on collage techniques to combine different images and parts of images and produce distorted panoramas and uncomplete topographies. On the other hand, Workman’s texts, cumulating details, scenes, statements, produce some kind of multiple interrupted speech on cities, representig them as a sort of huge heap of disjointed, juxtaposed, stray things.

Maybe, and this is the third thing to point out about this fascinating chapbook, A City a Cloud is also a question of where it is possible to set a borderline between literature and art, in a time, as nowadays, in which visual communication is paradigmatic and even printed words are seen as graphic elements.

Gherardo Bortolotti

republished from flux

[ more: on gammm; on slowforward ]

THE READER IS A RADAR / Notes on Leon (and Gleize)

A fundamental element in Jon Leon and Jean-Marie Gleize’s poems is a sort of process of quick fusion and aggregation of materials putting together in strict relatedness words and phrases belonging to different contexts and driven to diffraction.

Leon’s poems consist of broken sentences and of a firmly held syntax-line, as a paradoxical hidden and glowing stream of meaning. The ripped frames of syntax cohere. You may build up and lose a story in images. A concrete flux of meaning remains unexpressed, yet urging. The reader can only argue there’s a flood of links between ruins of sentences but the whole is hidden by doubled and redoubling interruptions, fractal borders. The poem is compact and pulverized at the same time.

Leon often puts numbers as displacing codes inside the poem too. They provide further obstacles in making the lines and statements stop and go — rapidly, in a mad darkening continuum. This strategy causes a constant and almost physical rearrangement of the reading process, in order to catch the real bridge-shaped wandering of our act of reading.

On the other hand, Gleize’s verse is made by single-noun sentences. He organizes a sort of uncommon flashing journal, in which the glances, the flickering of sense and the daily journey notes serve as each others’ allegories. They arrange a mechanism of broken but reassured links. (Broken thus reassured themselves).

In Gleize and Leon’s texts words lie really close to each other. The closeness stands for [possible / imagined] relation. (If things are far from the Self, and far from each other, yet the poem whirls like a black hole sticking things together).

The peculiar disposition of words on the surface of the page creates a kind of 'optical' art that throws extraordinary different things in an extraordinary narrow space — in strict closeness. This fact mimes and creates the appearence of a clearly greater relatedness among constellations of nouns, images, and sounds. The reader is a radar who perceives that vibration.

Does the reader think of things and objects of ordinary life as if they were linked and not wholly meaningless? Nobody knows if they really are. But who reads feels the presence of an arrow pointing to possibility itself.

Marco Giovenale (editing: Alessia Folcio)

Republished from GAMMM, August 2006