The Magazine, #1, 180114, Mark Statman and Izzy Oneiric
Magazine

The Magazine, #1, 180114, Mark Statman and Izzy Oneiric

We initiate, this morning, what we hope to make regular weekly feature from Lavender Ink / Diálogos, a mini-magazine with a poem or two, a quick announcement, or other oddments. This morning, two poems.

The first is from That Train Again, by Mark Statman. You can listen to Mark read it as you go. If you like what you see and hear, consider picking up a copy from our website for half price, today only.
Mark has brought to the press two of his own books and a translation, and is one of our consultants in matters of translation and contemporary poetry. Now emeritus from the New School in NYC, Mark lives and writes in Oaxaca, Mexico, with his wife, artist Katherine Koch, who did the artwork for the covers.


fallen

http://www.lavenderink.org/sound/statman_fallen.mp3

Image Not Dispayedfrom heaven
angels, seraphim, oak leaves
this some
company

come to earth
with a wren’s call

five small eggs in
a sparrow’s nest
nest suspended in a young pine

white flowered petals
white, once fallen
with the wind 
around
now rising

Mark Statman, from That Train Again

 


Next we have a poem from Crossing Bryan Ferry, by Izzy Oneiric. You can listen to Izzy read this poem and others from the book at the Soundcloud link also.  And you can also grab a copy from our website for half price, today only.
Izzy lives and writes in New Orleans, where she also works for the New Orleans Public Library and helps us coordinate the New Orleans Poetry Festival.

 

In Manhattan’s Attic

I rush the stairs like a
caffeinated asterisk, rattle 
dinner plates in bas-relief.
This is a room of miniature dioramas: Acropolis, Big Ben,
Valley of the Kings
demurely lit in obsessive detail.

Very few people know it exists.

In this attic I am giant.
This attic has a sky.

With satin hammer, rowdy letters, 
I shatter glass partitions, swinging 
between story and a secret.

Someday the Eiffel Tower will be mine.

Izzy Oneiric, from Crossing Bryan Ferry

https://soundcloud.com/wrbhreadingradio/fos1216izzyonericanddelianakayama-final

 


 

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Reviews

Never Made in America Reviewed on Don Yorty’s Explorations

Don Yorty provides a thoughtful review of both the book by Martín Barea Mattos and Mark Statman's translation, along with video of their joint performance in Montevideo at the Mundial Poetico (shot by yours truly). Certain of Barea Mattos' linguistically playful poems present difficulties in both translation and performance, as does the one you'll see performed in the video there, "La (E) resultó economia de lenguaje" ("The (E) came out of an economy of language"), a poem which resulted from Martín's fascination with the Spanish E, which is not only ubiquitous in the language but also on street signage, as in the "no parking" (ie no estacionmiento) sign. The poem reverses Perec's obsession in La Disparition, as the poem plays on the multitude of Spanish words which begin with E. 

Read the review here.

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