E. Rowan Mena

That Time I Had To Look Up "thot"

January 27, 2015 by E. Rowan

I’ve been called many things by many people. I’ve also been called many things by many people who think I’m this Erica Mena, and not the Erica Mena I actually am. It’s because I have a googleganger. And it so happens that, though I am slightly older than her and so have our name on most social media platforms (from before I even knew about her), she is much more “famous.” I use the scare-quotes because she’s a reality TV […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: erica mena, feminism, feminist, googleganger, reality tv, slut-shaming

Leave a comment

Why Have Children? The Ethical Debate by Christine Overall

January 26, 2015 by E. Rowan

Why Have Children? The Ethical Debate by Christine Overall is a phenomenal philosophical exploration of one of the few questions that everyone at some point, consciously or not, confronts. The decision to procreate, as Overall argues, is one of the most fundamental and important decisions that a person makes in their life. And it’s so rarely treated as anything more than an individual and highly personal preference that this very thorough, rational, moral analysis of the question is simultaneously shocking and […]

Categories: Reviews • Tags: bioethics, childbearing, childrearing, children, ethics, philosophy, why have children

Leave a comment

"All good poetry is experimental"

January 20, 2015 by E. Rowan

I recently had the humbling experience of doing poorly on an interview for something I really wanted. I actually interview terribly, so it’s not really surprising to me, but still disappointing nonetheless. One of the members of the committee interviewing me is a poet I’ve admired for a long time, who’s work I’ve studied and taught, and I’m sure that didn’t make things any easier, nerves-wise. One of the questions posed to me that I hadn’t anticipated, hadn’t even ever […]

Categories: Poetry • Tags: citizen, claudia rankine, experimental poetry, poetry, susan howe

Leave a comment

Diana's Tree by Alejandra Pizarnik, translated by Yvette Siegert

January 10, 2015 by E. Rowan

After reading Diana’s Tree by Alejandra Pizarnik, in Yvette Siegert’s translation, all the way through in one sitting, I wanted immediately to read it again. It’s a slim volume of equally slim poems, but they’re the kind of sparing that is deceptive. I hadn’t read much Pizarnik before, I’d seen her pop up in anthologies and translation workshops, I can’t tell you how many emerging translators I know who’ve started with her work. But, I think mostly because of estate issues and […]

Categories: Poetry, Reviews, Translation • Tags: alejandra pizarnik, diana's tree, literary translation, poetry, translation, ugly duckling, yvette siegert

Leave a comment

What's in a name? If it's The Eternonaut, it's a lot.

November 7, 2014 by E. Rowan

The graphic novel I translated a few years ago is in production, and coming out with Fantagraphics (swoon) next year. It’s an amazing work by the phenomenal Argentine author Héctor Germán Oesterheld, illustrated by the incredible Francisco Solano López. I’m so excited to see it brought out in English, I can barely contain myself. And for the most part, I’ve received some really great feedback on the translation and my advocacy for the work. But there’s this thing that has come up […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: el eternauta, francisco solano lopez, graphic novel, hector german oesterheld, literary translation, the eternonaut, translation

Translation is a Compromised Body

October 23, 2014 by E. Rowan

Some smartening of some stuff I said about translation and poetry and compromised bodies at a poetry-gathering last week in LA made its way onto the Poetry Foundation blog. Amanda says these things way smarter than I think I did, though. “Here is what Erica Mena (of Anomalous) discussed in response to these questions (of course, this is just a summary, and many parts are missing): She wanted to contest the idea of translation as a the idea of equivalence—one […]

Categories: Poetry, Translation • Tags: experimental poetry, experimental translation, poetry, translation

Leave a comment

5 Things That Chester Could Be Listening To That Would Be Way, Way Worse For Us

August 29, 2014 by E. Rowan

We have a new downstairs neighbor. Well, actually, we’re his new upstairs neighbors. Chester. Chester has lived in our building for almost twenty years. Chester is a cab driver in San Francisco, who is almost always at the lovely across the street bar for happy hour. Chester has excellent taste in classic jazz. How do I know that? Because our building used to be sort of a tenement, with all the cheap flimsy materials and thin walls and floors that […]

Categories: Uncategorized

Leave a comment

Moving Wrap-up (I Hope): aka, The Move Part 4

June 21, 2014 by E. Rowan

[Part 1 & Part 2 chronicle the unbelievable nightmare of moving with Fidelity Moving Group. Part 3 has some advice and things I wished I had thought of before moving.] We finally arrived, the day before what was supposed to be our delivery date, in San Francisco, exhausted, sun-burnt, stressed out, and at night. We knew that we should expect a strange, overstuffed couch sitting in our apartment, in addition to what we hoped was all of our own stuff. And there it […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: cross country move, fidelity moving, fidelity moving group, moving nightmare, moving scam

Call for Critical Writing on the Gurlesque

June 21, 2014 by E. Rowan

I don’t usually post calls for submissions on the blog, but this one is too exciting not to. Call for Critical Writing on the Gurlesque In the anthology Gurlesque: the new grrly, grostesque, burlesque poetics (Saturnalia, 2010),editors Lara Glenum and Arielle Greenberg gathered work from eighteen contemporary women poets who are “writing about and through femininity . . .brashly, playfully, provocatively, indulgently.” These poems have “unicorns inthem, and sequins, and swear words, and vomit.” Gurlesque alsoincludes eight visual artists […]

Categories: Call for Papers • Tags: call for submission, gurlesque, poetry

Leave a comment

What I Learned About Moving, AKA, The Move (Part 3)

June 11, 2014 by E. Rowan

[Part 1 & Part 2 chronicle the unbelievable nightmare this move has been in more detail.] Though I’m still in the middle of the country, well, not exactly the middle anymore – now we’re in Arizona – and so the move has not finished because I still have to deal with getting a stranger’s couch out of my apartment when we arrive to San Francisco, I’ve been thinking a lot about this experience. The various other options we had. How […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: cross country move, fidelity moving, fidelity moving company, moving nightmare

← Older posts

Newer posts →