E. Rowan Mena

Poet | Book Artist | Translator

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Category Archives: Translation

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Voices from the Bitter Core

February 17, 2011 by E. Rowan

Voices from the Bitter Core by Ursula Krechel, trans. Amy Kepple Strawser (Host Publications, 2010). Ambitious in scope, and stunningly executed. The voices that blur together and pull apart are simultaneously sympathetic and horrific, the collage technique at once jarring and unifying. This is a work of paradoxes, of dissonance and contradiction, an utterly human work. In its examination of the voices of war it implicitly questions the rationale for killing, without falling into propaganda. The work collapses time, moving […]

Categories: Reviews, Translation • Tags: experimental poetry, poetry, political poetry, review, translation

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say song you say

February 13, 2011 by E. Rowan

My review of engulf — enkindle is up at Three Percent. I really liked this book. As Chad said: But today, Erica is gushing rather than screeding . . . Based on the first paragraph alone, I think Erica kinda sorta likes this collection . . . (And be sure to scroll to the bottom to hear a recording Erica did of one of the poems): engulf — enkindle is a stunning book of poetry. It literally stunned me into […]

Categories: Reviews, Translation • Tags: Anja Utler, experimental poetry, Kurt Beals, poetry, review, Three Percent, translation

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Praises & Offenses

January 12, 2011 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

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Poetry is to flap without wings

December 13, 2010 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

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This world is a horror movie

December 9, 2010 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

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This is not a translation, or the homophonic fear

December 7, 2010 by E. Rowan

Remember, this is not a translation. So reads the ‘disclaimer’ on a number of phonetically translated music videos, part of a meme explained pretty well here at KnowYourMeme.com. These videos, which subtitle a non-English music video with English lyrics based on the sounds of the words, engage in the experimental literary practice homophonic translation, which translates a text based on sound relationships rather than meaning relationships, mapping a text by sound into a new language. Zukofsky’s Catullus is the oft-cited […]

Categories: Translation • Tags: exchanges, experimental translation, homophonic translation, meme, new media, phonetic translation, Silliman, translation, Zukofsky

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Mis-translated

November 7, 2010 by E. Rowan

Some mistranslations from a recent working session that could make great band-names: Collective Damage (a cuddle-core band) The Damned Automatons (cover-band, in which all members dress as robots. covering only Flight of the Conchords songs.) Labyrinth of Dustbunnies (this might be better as a low-budget horror film. “trapped forever in….the LABYRINTH OF DUSTBUNNIES!) The Devil’s Honda (this actually isn’t a mistranslation, it’s literal. and awesome) Savory Hips (chick-pop, obviously) Cleopatra Jones and the Wobbly Boobs (also not a mistranslation, but […]

Categories: Translation • Tags: mistranslation, translation

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