Erica Mena

Poet | Book Artist | Translator

Main menu

Skip to content
  • Visual Art
    • artist books
    • broadsides & prints
    • (k)not work
    • w@nder
  • Literary Art
    • poetry
    • translations
    • essays
  • Editing & Design
    • editing
    • design
  • Teaching
  • About
    • contact
    • blog
  • Fiskars Letterpress Studio

Tag: reading journal

Show Grid Show List

Post navigation

← Older posts

Singularities by Susan Howe

February 5, 2014 by Erica Mena

Since Susan Howe came to read last week, I’ve been thinking that I really must immediately read everything she’s ever written starting now go. Before hearing her read I’d read her major works: The Europe of Trusts (which I’m planning on re-reading because it was almost a decade ago I read it); My Emily Dickinson. Recently, you’ll remember perhaps, I read That This. So I went to my local friendly university library and got every book they had of hers. […]

Categories: Reading Journal • Tags: experimetal poetry, innovative poetry, poetry, reading journal, singularities, susan howe

1

The History of the Conquest of New Spain by Bernal Diaz del Castillo (ed. David Carrasco)

August 18, 2013 by Erica Mena

I just finished the 376 page abridgment of Bernal Diaz del Castillo’s “true” History of the Conquest of New Spain selected, edited and translated by David Carrasco. I stumbled across this book in a reference, an extended quote, from another book I was reading on the history of the feather (Feathers by Thor Hanson). A vivid description of the splendor of the aviaries in Tenochitlan, and their subsequent targeted destruction by burning by Cortés. Though I didn’t find either of […]

Categories: Reading Journal • Tags: bernal diaz del castillo, history, Latin America, mexico, reading journal

1

Personae by Ezra Pound

April 15, 2013 by Erica Mena

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

1

Sleeping with the Dictionary by Harryette Mullen

April 14, 2013 by Erica Mena

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

Leave a comment

Mundo Cruel by Luis Negrón, translated by Suzanne Jill Levine

April 1, 2013 by Erica Mena

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

Leave a comment

The Descent of Alette by Alice Notley

March 22, 2013 by Erica Mena

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

Leave a comment

The Aviary of Voices by Karin Lessing

March 10, 2013 by Erica Mena

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

Leave a comment

Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein

February 12, 2013 by Erica Mena

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

Leave a comment

flare by cole swensen

January 9, 2013 by Erica Mena

I’ve happened to come across this gorgeous limited edition artist’s book with color illustrations by Thomas Nozkowski, and poems by Cole Swensen called flame. I thought I’d read most of Cole’s work, but hadn’t seen this one (from 2009) before. It’s a beautiful sequence of poems that work through the images (abstract, geometric in muted colors) and create a sort of historical-scientific landscape of the body, the sun, the sea and the sky. All of those might sounds like pretty […]

Categories: Poetry, Reading Journal • Tags: Cole Swensen, flare, reading journal, thomas nozkowski

Leave a comment

Slow Reading

November 30, 2012 by Erica Mena

I’ve been reading a lot lately, and unsurprisingly for someone in my field I can read extremely quickly. I’ve read 300+ page novels in a single sitting, no longer than I would spend at a movie. Granted, these aren’t Pincher or anything, but still. But I struggle with the desire to read devouringly, against the self-imposed requirement to read slowly. This varies of course from work to work, and from genre to genre. But I’ve been reading a lot of […]

Categories: Poetry, Reading Journal • Tags: gertrude stein, reading journal, reading strategies, slow reading, tender buttons

1

Post navigation

← Older posts

PATREON
NEWSLETTER

Create a website or blog at WordPress.com
  • Follow Following
    • Erica Mena
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Erica Mena
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...