Pre-publication sale on Jonathan Stalling's LOST WAX from Tinfish Press

Poetry in translation is a trust exercise; reader must rely on translator to turn words into other words, while preserving the larger meaning of the original. Jonathan Stalling’s book is for those readers less inclined to trust, and/or for those more fascinated by the playfulness of language(s). In Lost Wax, Stalling presents a sequence of poems about his wife’s work as a sculptor. Those poems are translated into Chinese and back into English by members of a “workshop” of eight fellow translators. Each poem is then presented in a) the original; b) the Chinese; c) the new English version. An additional workshop page illustrates choices made by translators on both sides of the English/Chinese divide. Lost Wax is a marvelous book of poems that also presents an argument for translation as process, as variation. This book, as well as Stalling’s fine introduction, will prove of interest to readers of contemporary American poetry, poetry in Chinese, as well as readers and practitioners of translation.

For more, see:

http://tinfishpress.com/?projects=lost-wax-translation-through-the-void

Please help us pay our bills by ordering directly from Tinfish Press. List price: $20. Until the books arrive, the price is $16.

Video! Two Counterpath Events in June: Tinfish Press & Singing Horse Press

Counterpath has a wonderful space in Denver, right near the corner where the bus to Mexico stops. They host readings by presses. As the editor of a press who wishes everyone could buy all of our titles, the better to understand our press's argument, I love this practice. In June I was there with several Tinfish authors (Margo Berdeshevsky, Ya-Wen Ho, Janna Plant, Eric Paul Shaffer, and Maged Zaher) to launch Jack London is Dead: Euro-American Poetry of Hawai`i (and some stories), as well as the new volumes by Ya-Wen and Maged.  You can watch the reading here.


Singing Horse Press was featured the next evening (watch video here). Paul Naylor, Andrew Schelling, and I read from our work. If you wonder why my reading starts with music going on, that was deliberate--I was reading from work that takes place in an Alzheimer's home, so I asked the Counterpath person to play some Frank Sinatra in the the background.


I'm very grateful to Counterpath (especially to Julie Carr, Michael Flatt, Ariella Ruth), not only for sharing their space with all of us--and with so many other presses--but also for preserving a record of our having been there to read. They also publish amazing books. My favorite has been Jonathan Stalling's Yinglishi,  but there's a whole catalogue of wonders.

l-r: Maged Zaher, Susan M. Schultz, Janna Plant, K. Lorraine Graham (guest!), and Margo Berdeshevky, after the reading. Photo by Ya-Wen Ho. Missing: Eric Paul Shaffer.

Design for all the Tinfish books launched is by Allison Hanabusa.

Temporary change of venue for Tinfish Editor

For the next three months, most of my blog posts will be available at Jacket2.

My commentaries will appear here, but I'll also announce them when they're posted.

And so the first is titled, "Gizelle Gajelonia, Timothy Yu, and Jonathan Stalling in Conversation: No Intertexts!  But Inhabitations!"  You can take a look here.

This space will remain reserved for more argumentative and more personal posts, but most of my words will appear in the virtual Philadelphia of our imaginations.