by E. Rowan
I’ve begun an experiment in structured time. I wasn’t feeling like I was using my time well, and this year is all about making the most of the time before I go back to school, and well…I wasn’t. So since returning home from my research trip to the Dominican Republic, I’ve been imposing structure to my day, which imposes structure to the week. Tuesday, for example, is my reading blogs in the afternoon day. I signed on to my reader […]
Categories: Uncategorized
by E. Rowan
An important information is contained in this mail.. Body and Soul What do you have to lose A Birds Eye View just stare at the bulge below my belt all the time i am getting used to it the Pied Piper of chicks When girls start disappearing, the Ass Collector became the prime suspect I am for a good mature man. Most women would love to have a larger penis as well.
by E. Rowan
[Delivery to the following recipient] failed permanently: This is a personal email directed to you. You know you are a great lover and your girl craves for you every night without / / No one has claimed our jackpot! Hear ladies scream in bed, the answer to ever man’s woes We will give you $12500 to play your favorite games Your powerful rod will rip their blouses off top quality cheap replicas 4k4s-3ut What really happened on the TONIGHT show carnality as sensual sorority sisters dabble […]
by E. Rowan
So I’m not slacking in my book-a-day goal, though yes, I’m slacking on posting here. The book I finished a few days ago was Martín Espada’s The Lover of a Subversive is Also a Subversive. It was (as I expected it would be) extraordinary. Martín is, for anyone who doesn’t know, an incredibly prolific contemporary Puerto Rican poet who writes in English and teaches at UMass Amherst. He started his professional life as a lawyer, and in the first essay […]
Categories: Poetry, Reviews • Tags: Martín Espada, poetry, political poetry, Puerto Rico, reviews
by E. Rowan
The latest episode of Reading the World is finally up, you can listen on Three Percent or through ITunes. This episode of the Reading the World Podcast, with the wonderful Annie Janusch filling in for Chad Post, features Fady Joudah, Palestinian-American poet, physician, and translator. He won the Yale Younger Poets Competition in 2007 for his collection The Earth in the Attic (Yale) and was just awarded the 2010 PEN USA Literary Award for Translation for his rendition of Mahmoud […]
Categories: Podcasts • Tags: Fady Joudah, Mahmoud Darwish, podcast, poetry, Reading the World, Three Percent, translation
by E. Rowan
I finished reading this morning the anthology Praises & Offenses: Three Women Poets from the Dominican Republic. The poets are Aida Cartagena Portalatin, Angela Hernandez Nunez and Ylonka Nacidit-Perdomo (those names are all missing their accents, because my little cheap portable pc sucks and won’t accept key-commands for accents). The translator is Judith Kerman, the publisher is Boa Editions, it came out in 2009. I started writing what I thought would be a brief summary of the book to put […]
Categories: Reviews, Translation • Tags: Aida Cartagena Portalatin, Angela Hernandez Nunez, BOA Editions, Dominican Republic, Judith Kerman, poetry, review, translation, Ylonka Nacidit-Perdomo
by E. Rowan
Today I did not meet my goal. Today I was not as productive as I intended to be. Today, I went to Los Tres Ojos, an underground cave system in the east part of Santo Domingo. It was amazing. So though no excuse, it did take up the bulk of my day, plus by the time we got back to our neighborhood I was boiling in the heat and humidity. But I did get 1/2 of the way through Praises […]
Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Aida Cartagena Portalatin, Dominican Republic, Judith Kerman, poetry, review, translation
by E. Rowan
PS – WordPress deleted my tilde first time around. I therefore inadvertantly wished everyone a happy new anus. Though I hope all anuses, whether new or old, are happy, that was not my intent. Hopefully the ñ stayed this time around….Happy New Year! This year started out right for me. Now, don’t get jealous, but I spent last week in Puerto Rico with family. Every year for the past 50 years, my family on my father’s side has gotten together […]
Categories: Uncategorized
by E. Rowan
My review of Birds for A Demolition by Manoel de Barros translated by Idra Novay is up on Three Percent. Here’s a piece of it—you can read the full thing here: Birds for a Demolition is a deceptively slight book of deceptively simple poems. Poems that at first glance seem embedded in the natural world, in the landscape of Brazil, in the language of the wetlands. But this is in fact an expansive collection, spanning more than forty years of […]
Categories: Reviews, Translation
by E. Rowan
My review of Cipango by Tomás Harris translated by Daniel Shapiro is up on the Quarterly Conversation. Here’s a bit of it, read the whole thing over there: In this mad, dark history there is nevertheless beauty. In moments of poetic grace, the lyrical skills of both Harris and translator Daniel Shapiro shine. The grimy urban rhythm of the poetry pulses beneath the skin of the poems, surfacing in moments of clarity and concision. The most successful moments in the […]
Categories: Reviews, Translation
E. Rowan Mena