Every good translator (and appreciator of international literature) knows that a work in translation carries more than the weight of a language’s technical nuances and abnormalities. Like an immigrant to a new nation, it grapples in a no man’s land between the culture in which it was born and the
Sarah Underwood— It’s small, it’s lightweight, and it’s a quick read (so you might think) except it’s about “miserable people in miserable families leading miserable lives full of misery” (according to NPR, which, despite the joke, recommends the playwright). This observation about Eugene O’Neill’s Exorcism: A Play in One Act is
Earlier this year, the publication of Yves Bonnefoy‘s Second Simplicity: New Poetry and Prose, 1991-2011, translated from the French by Hoyt Rogers, brought the French poet’s latest writings to an audience of English readers. Included in this translation were two unpublished fantasias on Hamlet— each a succinct tour de force that vividly
Continuing the discussion of Uruguayan poet Delmira Agustini, author Cathy L. Jrade explores the rebellious side of this Spanish American poet as she attempted to operate in a man’s world in this excerpt from Delmira Agustini, Sexual Seduction, and Vampiric Conquest. For Agustini, the eroticism and overt sexuality of her verse place her at
In January 1916, Gabriele D’Annunzio was flying a dangerous propaganda mission as a fighter pilot in the First World War when his plane was shot down by enemy fire. Suffering extreme pain from a detached retina in his right eye, the eminent Italian poet and political activist was forced to
There are two types of powerful books. There are those with weight, carried around for weeks, a physical labor of intellectual love. These end in catharsis, followed by a twinge of sadness. And then, there is the rare 80-page wonder that is Virginia Grise’s blu, a play that reads in
In response to a question about her most famous line, “A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose” Gertrude Stein once replied “Now listen! I’m no fool. I know that in daily life we don’t say ‘is a…is a…is a…’” Like many modernists, Stein was looking to
Norman Manea is one of the world’s foremost contemporary writers on émigré life and the many nuances of political, cultural, and personal reality it engenders. While his moving prose has the unmistakable mark of creative excellence, it is also marked by his personal experience. Manea is a survivor of Holocaust
Robert Frost holds a coveted position in the category of Poets that (Almost) Everyone Knows. Many first recited “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” in grade school. Its use of chain rhyme and simple imagery provide a nice introduction to poetry, even for the youngest readers. And really, no
Thanks to the BBC’s hit TV series Sherlock, “I Am Sher-Locked” is the latest “it”-phrase among admirers of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s brilliant madcap detective, Sherlock Holmes. Yet Doyle himself was never quite so locked on Sherlock as his fan-base. In his celebration of novel history’s giants, Lives of the