E. Rowan Mena

Personae by Ezra Pound

April 15, 2013 by E. Rowan

File this under the category of things I shouldn’t say aloud. Opinions I’ve been crucified (metaphorically) for having. I don’t like pie. Or free jazz. I don’t care for The Beatles. Salinger irks me. Not a fan of Junot Diaz. Still trying to figure out what is worth reading in Whitman. And Pound. First section – untitled, “The Tree” to “Au Jardin” “—the thing is banal.” Pound says to Williams of the fourth poem in Personae, and so far as […]

Categories: Poetry, Reading Journal • Tags: ezra pound, modernism, personae, poetry, reading journal

Sleeping with the Dictionary by Harryette Mullen

April 14, 2013 by E. Rowan

Language is a tricky thing, any translator will tell you. You think you know it, and then you miss. A mis-heard word, a mis-read phrase. Expectations aroused and thwarted. The work of the poet. This book explores with delight, despair, and demanding the slipperiness of the English language in the American idiom. An abcedarium of intentionally misdirected language, it is playful and political. She employs a range of techniques, from the occasional (and recognizable) N+7 to some far subtler slidings around in […]

Categories: Poetry, Reading Journal • Tags: experimental poetry, Harryette Mullen, language poetry, prose poetry, reading journal, Sleeping with the Dictionary

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Anomalous Press on Goodreads

April 13, 2013 by E. Rowan

The Anomalous Press books are now up on Goodreads. If you’ve had a chance to read them, or if you’re dying to, please take a minute to rate/review/add them to your to-read list. Believe it or not, this actually helps support us! The Continuing Adventures of Alice Spider: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17713493-the-continuing-adventures-of-alice-spider An Introduction to Venantius Fortunatus for Schoolchildren or Understanding the Medieval Concept World through Metonymy: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17728410-an-introduction-to-venantius-fortunatus-for-schoolchildren-or-understand Ghost: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17728432-ghost The Everyday Maths: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17728451-the-everyday-maths Mysterieuse: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17728456-mysterieuse

Categories: Publishing • Tags: Anomalous Press, goodreads, publishing

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Is Amazon Worth It for Indie Publishers?

April 2, 2013 by E. Rowan

Last month we launched the first of the Anomalous Press chapbooks at AWP and it was a huge success. The next step, after all the AWP madness wrapped up, was to get our online store up and running, and after working out a few bugs that is now live. And next was to fulfill all our amazing Kickstarter backers rewards. So while in the midst of all that, one of our lovely authors’ family members emailed to ask if we […]

Categories: Publishing

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Mundo Cruel by Luis Negrón, translated by Suzanne Jill Levine

April 1, 2013 by E. Rowan

I don’t read very much fiction nowadays, or at least not very much ‘literary’ fiction, that is, unless I’m translating it. It’s the sad reality of being an overstretched graduate student that I’ve had to narrow my reading down to poetry, contemporary poetry, contemporary innovative poetry, contemporary primarily women’s innovative poetry and even then I have a stack of books I’m unlikely to get through in the next year. Well, sad and exhilarating. But when the advance proof for Mundo Cruel […]

Categories: Reading Journal, Translation • Tags: fiction, luis negron, mundo cruel, puerto rican literature, Puerto Rico, reading journal, seven stories, short stories, suzanne jill levine, translation

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The Descent of Alette by Alice Notley

March 22, 2013 by E. Rowan

A strange thing happened to me yesterday while I was finishing The Descent of Alette: I fell asleep. To be fair the carbon monoxide detector had gone off with it’s out-of-battery warning very late the night before, and I have a hard time falling asleep so getting interrupted set me back an hour or two. And it’s been surprisingly cold so I had the heat cranked up and was lying on my bed in front of the space heater where it was warm. […]

Categories: Poetry, Reading Journal • Tags: alice notley, contemporary epic, descent of alette, epic, erica mena, feminist, narrative poetry, poetry, reading journal

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The Aviary of Voices by Karin Lessing

March 10, 2013 by E. Rowan

What especially interests me about Karin Lessing’s In the Aviary of Voices is that it is exceedingly sparse on the page, and nonetheless has such emotional complexity. The poetic vocabulary Lessing uses seems almost anticipatable. Shadows and nights abound, light and ghosts and stars and heavens, trees, leafs and seeds. A lot of description of night and light. And the love-relationship that exists seems almost too easy (“breath / our breath”, “your / life / branches / to choose among” “in sleep / […]

Categories: Poetry, Reading Journal • Tags: in the aviary of voices, karin lessing, lyric, poetry, reading journal, sentimentality, shearsman books

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Thoughts on Length and Translation

February 19, 2013 by E. Rowan

So I’m not even sure I’m supposed to be writing about this, but I think it’s ok because I’m not talking about specific books. I once again have the privilege of being on the judging committee for the Best Translated Book Award in Poetry. This is my third year, and this year we’ve gotten the most submissions for poetry that we’ve had so far. Which I take to be an excellent sign that more and more publishers are taking the “risk” and […]

Categories: Poetry, Translation • Tags: awards, collections, poetry, short books, translation

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Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein

February 12, 2013 by E. Rowan

I’ve been very, very sick this week, and decided it was the perfect state of mind to read Tender Buttons, one of those classics I’ve kept on my shelf for years and flipped through without ever sitting down and really reading. As poets.org says of it: “the book is perhaps more often written about than actually read.” Perhaps. And I’m not sure I can add anything significant to the extraordinary body of scholarship, translations, and creative responses to it. So here are some […]

Categories: Reading Journal • Tags: gertrude stein, poetry, reading journal, tender buttons

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Oreithyia

January 30, 2013 by E. Rowan

I’ve been researching for a new project, and it became clear to me that I needed to think a little about ekphrasis for this. So I spent the better part of the day compiling a collection of visual works engaging with Oreithyia, who in Ovid’s Metamorphoses is abducted and raped by Boreas, before becoming his wife, and bearing him four children for which he gives her immortality. Though not comprehensive (there are many more engravings as illustrations to editions of […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: boreas, ekphrasis, oreithyia, orithyia

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