I am hoping my 2013 AWP goes something like the well-known Raymond Carver quote : “Get in, get out. Don’t linger. Go on.” Assuming that one could put up his or her blinders to the constant pummeling of everything that is AWP, here are ten books that I plan to buy, then rush out of the convention center, take a taxi to Cheers, and read all weekend. And while I might not have read all of these books yet, you should trust me when I say they are going to be awesome.

Aphoria by Jackie Clark (Brooklyn Arts Press)

If foria is the misalignment of the eyes, or when the eyes are unable to concentrate on one object, then what is aphoria? The non-misalignment of sight? Are we looking straight on then, without trouble? The title brings to mind aporia, some impassable path. So what are we seeing then during the  “spacewalk / while fingers / hypnotically roll / invisible balls / back and forth / between / their tips”? That’s so Derrida.

Debts & Lessons by Lynn Xu (Omnidawn Publishing)

A thorough and understanding piece on Xu’s books is here, with allusions to Marcus Arelius (where the book’s title came from), Shakespeare, Eliot, Shelley and O’Hara, not to mention English-Chinese translation. Holy moly, I can’t wait to read this.

The Warmth of the Taxidermied Animal by Tytti Heikkinen (Action Books)

I just found out about this one via Daniella Pafunda and Joyelle McSweeney over at Montevidayo. The translation titles that Action Books puts out never disappoint. There’s a poem in this book called “Fatty XL.” What more do you want? Go to the Action Books table and pick their brains.

Ethical Consciousness by Paul Killebrew (Canarium Books)

I’m still in love with Killebrew’s first Canarium book, Flowers, and the pieces of Ethical Consciousness that I have read solidify my love. This man uses poetry as his philosophical and moral prying stick. Canarium is batting 1.000 in my eyes. Every single book inspires, all while the spine and covers get wrecked from heavy reading. Only a combination of editorial and poetic ass-holes or  geniuses could  put out a book called Ethical Consciousness.

Begging for It by Alex Dimitrov (Four Way Books)

I’ve followed Dimitrov’s poetry for a while now, and cannot wait to have a bound book of his in my hands. It’s going to be intimate, it’s going to be crushing like sledgehammers to the heart, and  it’s going to live up to the hype that is Alex Dimitrov.

Among the Dead: Ah! and Afterward Yes! by Becca Jensen (Les Figues)

I am going to encounter this book with a combination of  fresh eyes and a keen acknowledgment that Les Figues books open my brain up to a new dimension, like every time. I saw these a while back, and was floored. I’m ready for its full context.

Grace Period: Notebooks 1998-2007 by Aaron Kunin (Letter Machine)

My practice as a writer has changed since I was ten years old,” Kunin writes in an interview with Tom Fleischman, “but my notebook has been consistent.” Certain books come along that contain an artist’s mode and structure of thought, the basis of his or her writing. I’m excited to keep Grace Period open and dog-eared as I go back through Kunin’s magnificent group of books already published, especially the rich and challenging language in The Sore Throat & Other Poems.

Five other notable titles that have me excited:

Rise in the Fall by Ana Božičević (Birds LLC)

The Moon’s Jaw by Rauan Klassnik (Black Ocean)

Imperial Nostalgias by Joshua Edwards (Ugly Duckling Presse)

Revenge for Revenge by Christie Ann Reynolds (Coconut Books)

My Dead by Amy Lawless (Octopus Books)

This is the only slightly illuminating welcome note printed on the first page of the inaugural issue of kayak, a poetry journal captained from 1964 to 1984 by George Hitchcock, a poet, a painter, and, most importantly for our purposes here, an avid and bizarrely principled editor.

The above definition doesn’t stray far from the contemporary Concise Encyclopedia entry for “kayak,” which adds: “can be designed for two or three,” and, “Now often made of molded plastic or fiberglass, kayaks are widely used for recreation.” I doubt Hitchcock would have been very fond of three-man fiberglass kayaks. He was a lone oarsman. The Robert McDowell- and Joseph Bednarik-edited George Hitchcock reader is called One Man Boat. kayak—never with a majuscule k—was not operated by committee. Committees, Hitchcock felt, resulted in publications full of poems that hadn’t offended anybody too terribly. Hitchcock harbored not a soft spot, but a hard preference for “surrealist, imagist, and political poems, for “vehement,” and “ribald,” poetry criticism. He hoped kayak could “relieve the tedium.”  He had no manifesto beyond these solicitations, just intransigence and idiosyncrasy. But a singular vision is a singular vision and Robert Bly, in his “attack” of the first ten issues of kayak, commissioned by Hitchcock and printed in the twelfth issue of kayak (1967), identifies and maligns a certain Hitchcock-friendly formula, before deciding that the magazine is “valuable” despite its predilections:

“One gets the feeling that as long as there are a few skeletons of fossil plants in the poem, or some horses floating in the mind, or a flea whispering in Norwegian, in it goes! The images even take on a certain grammatical skeleton of their own. For instance they are often made of a) an animal or object, b) a violent action, c) an adjective (often tiny, dark, or great), and then d) the geographical location. ‘Lighted cigars fall like meteors on a deserted football field in Pierre, South Dakota (III, 17).’”

These disses crack me up. I love them. Luckily, every issue of kayak contains a colorfully-articulated complaint about another publication (they really have it out for the Kenyon Review), poet, school of poetry, or the institution of poetry itself. Being a regular contributor to kayak grants you no immunity.  The 64 issues of Kayak, enjoyed as a group, provide a totally rollicking chronicle of the projects and polemics, relationships and rivalries gripping the poetry world during these years.

Louis Z. Hammer in issue 2: “In reflecting on contemporary American poetry, one is led to wonder sometimes whether anyone, especially poets, wants poetry to exist at all. Poetry isn’t trusted even by poets; many of them would probably rather write novels and often they seem to think of the poem as a sort of penny-candy novel.” (1965)

kayak’s list of contributors.

Charles Simic, in the 13th issue’s critical essay on Lou Lipsitz (acquitted of the crime mentioned below):“There is a simplicity and directness of which poetry is capable that can be truly devastating. It doesn’t seem to lie so much in the actual words and images of the poem, but in an overwhelming presence of a living human being behind it. So many poets are forever deprived of these qualities by a compulsive need to intellectualize their experiences and make them fit into frameworks of various literary theories. The spectacle they produce thus is of someone with heavy mittens attempting to thread a needle.” (1968)

Robert McDowell in issue 48: “It is still an age in which too many poets believe that the best way to be heard is to emit a series of resounding burps.”(1978)

The magazines, which were printed with a charming lack of fastidiousness by the man himself, bound by a ragtag bunch of his comrades, and sold for around dollar a pop, are also thrilling to look at. Professional illustrators were rarely playful enough for Hitchcock, so he illuminated the poems himself, juxtaposing antique medical engravings, catalogue offerings, and technical diagrams snipped from books like Boston’s Main Drainage (1888) and Practical Coal Mining (1879). I’m sure Bly could have codified the one-man-art-department’s combinatorial strategies too. Little Maiden with Hairpieces under a Visceral Sky is an especial favorite of mine.

Most of my Saturdays of late have been spent at the recently reopened, reinvigorated,  wonder-filled (and totally free to visit) John Wilson Special Collections Room, where you can stand on a char in your polka-dotted socks and survey all 64 issues of kayak. Spread out over a large wooden table, their covers form an alluring collage of acrobats, serpents, and deer moose eyeballs-come-covergirls. Located in the main branch library in Portland, Oregon, this must see collections room even comes with its own digital doorbell, which every so often chimes sweetly, as if to says Someone is about to patter up the final flight of stairs into the cave of wonders and ask to see something cool! A first edition of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women maybe, one of two Nuremberg chronicles, or some rare materials on the Timberline Lodge.

On quiet days, Jim Carmin, the keeper of the crypt’s six core collections, “those devoted to the book arts and the history of the book; children’s literature; natural history; Pacific Northwest history; literature with particular strengths of Charles Dickens and D.H. Lawrence; and Native American literature,” provides me with a break from my work. “Check this out!” is the library decibel level exclamation I’ve come to expect from Jim. There’s so often a serious twinkle in his eye—he’s charmed by what he’s about to show you and knows you will be too.

One postcard in particular—sent from Allen Ginsberg in Seattle to William Borroughs (Ginsberg calls him Bill) in N.Y.C in August of 1965—nearly charmed me into a conniption fit:

“Dear Bill, out in Fresno awhile, + visited Big Sur, then spent $2000 and bought a Volkswagen 1964 Camper-like a transistorized trailer-now I’m a householder!-and went up here then Crater Lake + 2 days backpacking on Mt. Rainier + we’ll go on foot 8 days into Olympics or Cascade Mountains-Seattle a lovely 1920’s America City- great Goodwill shops + 2^nd-Hand clothes + Tambourine markets-I’ll weave with Peter [Orlovsky] across states to N.Y. in a month or more. I’m up here with Gary Synder before he goes to Japan again. How long you be around? I see the heat is closing in on me (?)- Love, Allen.”

And in the margins, “We saw the Beatles concert in Portland.”

Jim points out that Ginsberg’s VW camper would have been brand-new and I crack up again. I crack up a lot in Special Collections, say “WOW!” a lot and “Oh my gosh!” As do all SC users. During my first visit Jim handed me a tiny startling something the size of a pop-tart, covered in real fur. Upon closer inspection the varmint in my hands was a first edition of Margaret Wise Brown’s 1946 children’s book Little Fur Family, one of a number of “undersize” books in the collection. Harper skinned 15, 000 rabbits to make that book, but cut out the killing eventually. You’ll find no fur-bound books in the open stacks. Only in special collections (my new favorite motto).

Some of my new favorite poems are also nowhere to be found in the library at large, or on the Internet. They’re only in Special Collections, only in the kayaks collected— specially—by the library. Check out the list of regular contributors thanked in the magazine’s final issue. kayak contains poems you already love, and ones you’ll never see anywhere else. Here’s a teaser from James Spencer’s “A Noise in the Forest,” which I won’t reproduce in full because I’d like you to go visit the collections for yourself (ask for kayak, issue 3):

“My grandmother droned / Of virtue and Armageddon / When all I wanted to do / Was run through the world with a ten-pound hammer, / Smashing coke machines. Nothing seems to help.”

Elizabeth Pusack is a poet and curious person living in Portland, Oregon. She co-hosts the roving poetry reading SLEEP. Visit her at newpertinence.tumblr.com or on twitter @newpertinence.

Photo Credits courtesy of John Wilson Special Collections, Multnomah County Library.

Eyelid Lick by Donald Dunbar

Portland darling Donald Dunbar’s debut book—and Fence Modern Poets Prize Winner for 2012—crosses the blood-brain barrier like a psychotropic. It’s full of apparitions like Angela, who’s really sexy, but also scary, and always-changing, like into a hundred million dollars. Eyelid Lick is full of fevered confessions, fractured tables of contents to undisclosed books, stunts like a whole page stunned speechless but studded with asterisks, and an“Author’s Note” that leaves you exactly where it wants you, less oriented than ever. Thus reads one of Eyelid Lick’s many letters to God in it’s entirety: “Dear God, / You’ve got A) a pinecone B) a A) a pinecone A) a pinecone B) oh. no.”

This book made me feel glitchy, which was a total joy. Dunbar helps you experience erratic circuitry, loans you a freaky new data processor. But the book is not just trippy. I found it also has a lot of beautiful stuff to say about love and lust: “Dearest Bri, the air is twice as deep, and / yet I suck it down, for you, though I know / it drown me,” and also a lot of especially lucid things to say about America. “Dear Bri,” reads yet another letter, “There’s something you should know. I’m guilty of everything. The systematic diminishment of another. Supporting a culture of sadistic and malicious violence. Captured on video kicking a handcuffed inmate in the head.”

You can’t live in agony or ecstasy forever, but you can read Eyelid Lick!

Hider Roser by Ben Mirov

Who to our wondering eyes should show up in Ben Mirov’s latest book of poems Hider Roser, but Ben Mirov, wearing his full name! Each time “Ben Mirov” or his shadow “Ben Mirror” appears in a poem it’s like somebody’s psyche pinching his flesh-and-blood self, but kindly, to be sure it’s still there and doing OK. Ben Mirov is looking out for Ben Mirov, and for the rest of us. The poem “The Poem Addresses Ben Mirov in a State of Inconsolable Grief” it turns out, is an excellent example of how the book consoles even the apparently-inconsolable, often by goofing and teaching in tandem like a wise fool: “Return to your bone./ Park your star in the garage. / Go back in tide and climb into sled. Try not to think about / Amanda’s amputated nest / or the broom where Greg / cradled a nun in his hands.”

“Snowliloquy” claims loneliness isn’t nothingness but “Snowbody / touching your thigh,” or “Snowbody / chopping the peppers.” I loved Snowbody at first sight. Mirov sometimes puns through heartbreak, but he doesn’t void heartbreak, which is important, because his poems also show how vulnerability can be constructive. The vulnerable are sensitive. Heightened awareness sometimes stinks, but sometimes it helps you see something wonderful. “For the Faint of Heart” offers this advice: “When you return from the asylum / be sure to gaze at the trees / covered in snow. / When the train / enters the tunnel ask the waiter / for tea with milk. When in darkness / take seriously the lesson / of fluttering hands.”

The End of Space by Albert Goldbarth

Poet and space-toy connoisseur Albert Goldbarth’s latest work, a ten-part prose poem called The End of Space, is an elegy for the N.A.S.A space shuttle program (1981-2011) and a meditation on human aspiration ad astra. “Up—the compulsion is up,” writes Goldbarth, as he examines humankind’s many storied relationships with the celestial sphere. His dreamers and pilgrims include Nebuchadnezzar, Daedalus, Ray Bradbury, John Glenn, and Buck Rogers, from whom the poet borrows the following sentiment: “The enemy of every boy is gravity.”

Goldbarth welcomes one ordinary little girl at odds with gravity into the work as well. Stella is an infant, sliding “almost effortlessly, on a small wing of birth blood—into this life below a rural Massachusetts sky in which the stars seemed bent as close as apples for picking,” then an aspiring astronaut, later a member of the shuttle mechanical crew, still later an ovarian cancer survivor, a divorcée, and finally a woman standing by the sea at her nation’s edge. She is earth-bound and unmistakably mortal, but awash in the same wonder and quest for knowledge that spurred America’s sending a man to the moon. One of the book’s most important revelations comes as wisdom she carries within her: “there are many ‘frontiers,’ all of them excitingly virgin terrain; and all demanding a valorous heart and a beveled intelligence.” These lines make me remember all the physicists, poets, doctors, and composers, who as children may have wished on stars to grow up John Glenns and whose work on their own frontiers has kept me alive or made my life worth living.

I so admire Goldbarth’s facility in flowing from righteous indignation about Facebook or “the medical industries fatal nincompooperies” to clear-eyed scholarship, from starlit storytelling to the self-reflective “talkiness” he is most famous for, and with which he faces his own frontier as the book nears its close. In section nine he announces the projects towards which the moon propels him. He’s no astronaut:

“When I say that I want to fly to the moon, I mean…what exactly? Not that I want to be strapped inside a tin can shot by blammo-power into the realm of zero-gees and danger. What, are you crazy? There’s not Dramamine enough in the world to entice me…I mean…I want to write a poem that’s good enough to endure beyond my own bodily life; I want to work at a marriage that’s finally larger and more luminous than either myself or my wife as individuals; and I want to live in a country I can be proud of, under leaders who represent me, and who fund a future that’s good enough to endure beyond our own national identity. When I look above Wichita, Kansas, to the nightshine overhead, I find a language for this, beyond English.”

Goldbarth also authored the first installment of Tavern Books’ groovy new subscription series The Honest Pint!

Message to Adolf (Parts I and II) by Osamu Tezuka

First serialized as Adorufu Ni Tusgu in a Japanese newsmagazine in the mid-eighties, manga-legend (God) Osamu Tezuka’s Message to Adolf has long been out of print in an English-edition, but Vertical Inc., which publishes a really wacky range of Japanese pop, literature in translation, including bento cookbooks–now offers this war epic “flipped” to fit an American audience. These two honking, sherbet-toned tomes, the second of which was released in December, are certain to lure eyeballs if you read on public transport (See accompanying graphic). Adolf chases Adolfs Hitler, Kamil, and Kaufmann from the 1936 Berlin Olympics to the grave.

The story chronicles the second world war really well, and its final chapters even carry the intrigue through the founding of Israel and the subsequent Israeli-Palestinian conflict, all the way to 1983. Neither the tyrant, nor the German-Jew exiled in Japan, nor his best friend the German-Japanese Hitler Youth turned Gestapo-officer turned Palestinian Liberation Front fighter are denied measures of both humanity and monstrosity. There’s a lot of love, unfailing hope and self-sacrifice here, but unlike Hider Roser, this one’s not for the faint of heart. It’s also full of sexual violence and Tarantino-style vengeance. The plot is fueled, a little unconvincingly, by the fate of a set of documents which prove the famous Adolf’s Jewish patrilineage, but Tezuka’s drawings and his dizzying swings between tenderness and terror are what really drive Adolf. Still skeptical? The gaming site IGN, which so wisely considers Ocarina of Time a perfect video game, also calls Adolf “The perfect choice for those who don’t normally read manga.” Is that you?

Elizabeth Pusack was born and raised in Iowa City, Iowa. She graduated from Smith College in Northampton, MA in 2009, having studied Comparative Literature and Book Arts. She then spent a year in Vienna, Austria researching long-lost diaries before moving to Portland in 2010. She works at the children’s book store Green Bean Books, letterpress prints, and is a frequent contributor to The Open Bar.

As founding member of The Volta (born on January 1, 2012), Joshua has helped create a juggernaut of a website, packed with an array of new poetry, reviews and interviews from both established contemporary poets as well as the up-and-comers. This mix makes the site seem both present and extremely relevant.

Volta has a complete feel, but the parts that comprise it work extremely well on their own, owing to the fact that there are a variety of features that are curated by different editors. Combined, they allow The Volta to act as one single document of contemporary poetry.

Drew Swenhaugen: So, what made you create Volta? What’s the story of its creation? The poetic term “volta” is the turn in a sonnet, correct? Is there a personal reason why you chose it for the title?

Joshua Marie Wilkinson: I had been editing the poetics journal Evening Will Come for about a year, and I was getting a steady stream of essays and interviews for it, starting with a terrific piece of prose that C.D. Wright trusted me with. Secretly, I began editing a poetry journal called They Will Sew The Blue Sail, and I’d been writing occasional reviews, conducting interviews for Denver Quarterly and other journals, and was losing a bit of steam to keep Rabbit Light Movies going—a journal of video and poemfilms I’d started in 2007. Anyways, I decided to combine all these poetry-related interests. I thought it would be very cool to have a journal where poems took a back seat to the all the other poetry-related things I was interested in. I figured, there are lots of terrific poetry journals; I wasn’t super excited about just doing another one of those. I wanted to add a space for prose on poetry by poets, for video, for roundtables about poetry-related stuff (race, politics, feminism), interviews, questionnaires, etc. When Sara [Marshall] and I were talking about it, somehow it seemed doable. I had no idea what a time suck it would become, but I’m glad we went forward with it. I loved The Volta as a title—the volta of the sonnet, yeah, and also as a turn. It was simple. It was a word I liked and the url was available.

DS: Have you modeled The Volta on any other literary websites or organizations? It is definitely a hybrid of content: new poetry, poetry news, interviews, videos, reviews, etc. Much like Boston Review or Jacket. Where do you feel The Volta lies in that company? Or is there even a point to compare?

JMW: I am a fan of Jacket and Jacket2, as well as the Boston Review. I’m happy to have The Volta in that camp, sure. I think what’s different is we are less interested in publishing critical writing about poetry (a la Jacket2) or political/literary journalism (Boston Review)—which those venues do really well. We are more interested in unique critical approaches by poets, I’d say. Further, I loved stuff like Kareem Estefan’s Ceptuetics, and I loved Here Comes Everybody, and questionnaires—I wanted to do all that: have audio, video, long poems, interviews, conversations, essays, short reviews, in-depth reviews. That, and everything else you mention. I ripped the design of Evening Will Come off of the Flood Editions website. I love their books and their design-sense. So The Volta was sort of designed out of that.

DS: Do you think there is a void in today’s poetry world in regards to poets taking critical approaches on poetics? Not necessarily in terms of a criticism movement, but do you feel something’s missing today that you want to contribute to?

JMW: It occurred to me—perhaps listening to Elizabeth Willis or Tan Lin or John Yau talk on Charles Bernstein’s radio programs—that we need to document ourselves. Nobody’s going to come do that from the outside. Occasionally folks in the mainstream get interested in what Perloff calls Poetry Plus, you know, poetry plus fashion, or poetry plus Mad Men or whatever. But it’s up to us to create a record of what we do and about what we do.  I mean, we can wait til we’re 85 and somebody comes knocking on our door from PBS or whatever, but what about right now? Looking back at the Eileen Myles and Tim Dlugos and Alice Notley Lost Public Access Poetry tapes (now on youtube) from the late 70s—they’re priceless. Just the document as such—I guess that’s part of what I’m interested in. But who wouldn’t want to read Hoa Nguyen or Bhanu Kapil or Catherine Wagner or Cedar Sigo write about what they think about what they’re doing. I love the poetics essay, the manifesto, the interview, the audio conversation—all that. I love seeing poets read on video and hearing their voices, you know, hearing Frank O’Hara say, “I have been to lots of parties / and acted perfectly disgraceful / but I never actually collapsed”! I could listen to that every morning. We’re about to run this extended conversation between Maggie Nelson and Brian Blanchfield, and it’s just wonderful to overhear these two writers, these two minds—old friends—talk at length about what they do, what they think and care about. I want more of that. Yeah, I guess I wanted to create a forum for that.

DS: Compared to certain sites like HTMLGIANT and Montevidayo, The Volta doesn’t seem to have a specific poetic or aesthetic orientation? Is this on purpose? Do you let the content speak for itself in that way? One great thing The Volta DOESN’T have is advertisements. Is an ad-free space important for you?

JMW: Because we aren’t a blog we have to formalize our content with respect to what we want to feature. I love the immediacy and improvisatory and conversational aspects of those blogs—even if things in any blog stream can devolve into petty mindlessness very quickly. Harriet and Silliman used to be great that way, but there’s only so much homophobic, racist hate speech, or even just ad hominem type shit you really want to have to endure before you pull the plug on comments. I want The Volta to have a blog too, I just don’t want to live in the comment box or monitor it like a nanny. As far as advertisements, I like that we don’t yet have any. If I could figure out a way to do it somewhat unobtrusively and get my Managing Editor Afton Wilky paid, then I would. She’s the most integral thing that The Volta’s got going right now, and as far as I can tell she puts a lot of time into the journal because she believes in the work. In terms of aesthetics, I have a lot of likes and even more dislikes—probably like any editor. But I try hard to feature lots of different approaches to poetry. I reject a lot of stuff too, but I try to stay open even to stuff that I don’t love but that I think is valuable for the conversation about poetry.

DS: There are a number of editors and collaborators working on each specific column. How do you all work together to create new content?

“I have been to lots of parties / and acted perfectly disgraceful / but I never actually collapsed”

JMW: Even that is a work in progress. Basically, I try to solicit my contributing editors for content and for suggestions about what or whom we should publish. I use them as ears. It’s a very smart group of folks with different predilections and connections to various poetry communities, small and large. I’m also not on FB or Twitter, which are both good to hear about things that are going on—so the various editors alert me to stuff, pitch ideas, tell me about new books to review, or sometimes they write reviews, make movies, etc. There are two exceptions: one is the dynamic duo of Christopher Schmidt and Andy Fitch. The Conversant is their baby, and they run it incredibly well. The other is the shepherding and editing of reviews for our Friday Feature which Noah Eli Gordon is behind. Somehow all the work trickles in and Afton helps me to keep it in the right column and slate it for whatever week or month. Basically, Afton and I have a lot of 8-word emails back and forth. It’s not pretty, but it works. We’ve never met in person; and we’ve only spoken on the phone once—but I knew in that conversation she’d be perfect. She recently put a whole new issue up (September) from her home in Baton Rouge while the floodwaters of Hurricane Isaac were rising over at her neighbors’. I was lucky and grateful to find her through another of our editors, Laura Mullen.

DS: You’re a poet, teacher and editor. How do you find the time to maintain the site? I’m always interested in how poets manage all their “projects.” Would you rather just write and read poems all day?

JMW: No. I figured out sort of early on (maybe being a reader for Sonora Review many years ago when I was an MFA student) that I wanted to work on other people’s poems, essays, voices, movies, etc. There is something balancing for me about editing, and—while it’s time-consuming and pays nothing—working with writers on something they’ve poured themselves into is still a worthy thing for me. I started feeling self-conscious about just sending my own poems out, and I realized that I feel a lot better if I’m adding something else to the conversation, other than my poems: running a press (Letter Machine Editions) with Noah Eli Gordon; running a reading series (which I did in Chicago) or a poemfilm series (Arroyo Chico) here in Tucson; writing reviews and interviewing poets—all these catalyze me in a way that just reading and writing poems don’t. I mean, it’s selfish too. I want to curate all this stuff and be behind the scenes of creating it. I know it’s not a selfless act of pure giving; there’s ego involved, but somehow the amount of work and the relatively limited audience keeps it in check. If I can balance the week out between teaching, writing, working on collaborations with Noah Saterstrom in his studio, reading poems, working on anthologies, meeting with students, swimming, working on Letter Machine and Volta stuff, walking my dog, reading submissions, planning tours, and bowling with Ander Monson at Cactus Bowl in Tucson (tonight!)—then I’m happy.

DS: What else are you excited about that you’ve got planned for upcoming issues?

JMW: There are new guest-edited issues of Evening Will Come: Sara is editing a feminist poetics issue; TC Tolbert is editing a trans poetics issue; Kate Bernheimer is putting together an issue of prose writers on Marchen; and Cristiana Baik is at work gathering essays on erasure as well. New poems from Fanny Howe and Rae Armantrout; the Greenstreets are sending new videos from Ireland, and we have Douglas Kearney, Martha Ronk, Joseph Mains, many others coming up; a new long series from Mathias Svalina; and new essays from Carla Harryman and CM Burroughs. A lot of other stuff slated well into 2013…

DS: We can’t wait!

Ben Fama, with flowers.

Fama stimulates my brain in a wonderful way; he has made me augment my viewpoints on how I engage with poetry, with language, and with the general clusterfuck of popular culture. His new project is Mall Witch (which you can discover and help fund here), a combination of an experimental gallery installation in New York and a printed book of Fama’s own work, amongst others.

It’s great getting an interview down in writing with Fama, although the conversation could have gone on forever. Since we’ve known each other, we’ve shared a number of intriguing debates about poetry, publishing and popular culture, but they’ve been amongst a sea of people and events. It was nice getting cozy with Ben Fama one-on-one. I recommend you do it too.

Drew Swenhaugen: I first became acquainted with you through your journal Supermachine. You ran a reading series in Brooklyn, published a biannual print journal of really great poetry, and began to publish chapbooks. But then you stopped, which bummed me out a little. What was it with that publishing model that you grew tired with? Why did you choose to quit while you had a decent amount of momentum in the poetry community?

Ben Fama: I loved doing Supermachine. Everything about it was rewarding to me, so it was a melancholy day to have to put it to bed. It’s not so much that I became tired with the publishing model—releasing chapbooks alongside a biannual journal—well it’s a pretty typical model, and for all the work it can be successful. Ending Supermachine was a necessary step for me to pursue my interests in other forms of art. Poetry journals are great for catching up on who is doing what, from high to low, mfa to slam, but in general you do start to see the same types of poems again and again. With Wonder, I will be working with the writers and artists I feel the deepest affinities for. After Mall Witch we will publish The Fashion Issue by Kate Durbin.

DS: The description on Kickstarter referred to Mall Witch as “existing between accessible and inaccessible modes of display and performance.” What makes a mode of art inaccessible? Isn’t the internet, in a way, allowing complete access? Or do I have it all wrong?

BF: The curator of the Mall Witch gallery show, Johnny Sagan, wrote this description, and I believe he’s referring to the goal of his overall project. Simply described, he sets up pop-up gallery shows with specifically curated performances each night. After one of our early meetings about Mall Witch, Johnny sent the Wonder team a quote from Christian Schick that he thought exemplified his desire to create a space that entered “fangirl/fanboyism, the Male Gaze, the Object of Desire, the Model of Aspiration…the worship of the idealized Celebrity Brand.” He wants to recreate these occurrences in the gallery and let people step into so called “tumblr-delic” spaces. Johnny also obsessively talks about creating digital media around physical cultural items (like designer t-shirts) which, by it’s very immaterial as digital matter, is accessible to everyone. I could speculate more but again your question was about Johnny’s gallery philosophy and I don’t want to misrepresent him.

DS: So your next endeavor is Wonder. Can you tell us a little more about it? And Mall Witch. What’s going on with all of that?

BF: Wonder publishes artists books, ephemera, pamphlets, and glossies. It is myself and Andrew Durbin. Our first artifact was released at Crush Party in May. The idea of Crush Party was people could anonymously email in the name of their crush. We would put it online and then hopefully the crush would attend the party and they would meet. The pamphlet we made for that was called This Will End In Tears.

Mall Witch is poetry manuscript wrapped up in an art book. It is also an internet playground in print. We had the good fortune to be solicited by Johnny Sagan (operating under his roving curator name Snowy Wilderness) for a gallery show that will also be called Mall Witch. It’s happening around Halloween. When soliciting artists for the show, we’ve cited the internet, Tumblr, Tavi Gevinson, love, simulation, drag queens, Baudrillard, internet celebrity, Mykki Blanco, pixelation, Second Life, and also life itself.

DS: You’re a published poet. What is it that is making you focus on art and/or poetry that isn’t necessarily on the printed page? Do you think this is a growing movement within the literary world?

BF: I was bored. And the other so called fine-arts seem to be having lots of fun. A lot of Poetry seems to want to sequester itself off to this position that sits in a comfy chair reading quietly by the fire as snow falls outside onto the limbs of pines. That can be wonderfully divine, like xanax, but it’s not the intention within the genre I personally want to pursue. Marjorie Perloff recently describes “a certain kind of prize-winning, ‘well-crafted’” poem—a poem that the New Yorker would see fit to print and that would help its author get one of the “good jobs.” Matvei Yankelevich, who helped me out intensely when I moved to New York so many years ago, did a good job of detailing a more accurate version of what’s happening now in these liminal zones where writers experience a “simultaneous rise in both academic and “art world” contexts, and their popularity among serious or experimental poetry readers.” It’s this I’m most interested in, and it’s what has brought me to create Wonder and Mall Witch.

DS: I’m loving the Yankelevich – Perloff conversation. The debate is an important one, and you are contributing to it. As a poet (me) that doesn’t believe that poetry is a fire-side quiet time, can we talk about form? Form in poetry, as much as it is dynamic and needs to evolve constantly, is a powerful thing. The form of the sonnet holds in it a strong emotional and psychological load. I also completely understand how people get bored of it all. But won’t the internet, wont Tumblr just fall into the category of a boring art media? Especially when attention spans are so short. It’s a battle for relevancy, is it not?

BF: If people are boring, their work, their tumblr, their dog name, their comments on facebook etc, will be boring. You’re right, eventually Tumblr, which describes itself as a social network with a blog platform built in, will become irrelevant, but what we are seeing on there right now from the most interesting personalities is revolutionary.

DS: Who are your predecessors? Whom are you getting your inspiration from?

BF: The digital, simulated world, which is slowly infecting all of culture, is a big source of excitement for me. I recently visited Tumblr headquarters, and it was clear they are sort of oblivious to the avant garde functions their platform is providing people as to these zones of occurrence that are also manifesting IRL. I was asking them about about popular content, which types of posts get the most engagement, and almost half of the total posts were images. They even said that if you post text that you should include an image as a header. I think the way people are using Tumblr is truly “next level.” You could spend hours there as you would walking around a museum.

For all my love of the Internet, social media, and various other things like Instagram, when I’m sort of in a mood for a real printed page experience I like to go to the bookstore Printed Matter in Chelsea. It’s an art book store that does events, and sometimes they have live performances and book releases. The stuff they have there is just insane and I always coming out feeling like there is a lot that can still be done, even in black and white without a lot of design competence. Also I recently visited Ooga Booga in Los Angeles for the first time, which is a similar store selling art books and small run publications. I can’t get enough of this stuff. I am still making real books out of paper and I am glad to have these places that teach me that if you care for, understand and truly love your aesthetic than other people will too.

DS: To me, there’s a glam aspect to a lot of the new work you’re doing. Or a fascination with pop culture. Can you build on this a little?

BF: Certain things just need to be seen in order to be experienced. I’ve written about Brian Eno before, and he is someone who moves from Glam to Zen modes within his career (sometimes on the same album). I used to listen to Music for Airports every morning. I’ve learned a lot from Brian Eno that I’ve applied to my own writing practice. There is the whole glam-rock thing that anchors the other side of his career, and he’s playing on the superficial. As far as less artful version of this, I am interested in what’s popular so long as it is allegorical. It’s bizarre to even think of a time when there was a gap between high/low, or even the “meaningful” and the frivolous. Think of how Kim Kardashian’s celebrity status is basically an end in itself. We’re talking about someone who basically rose to fame just for hanging out with higher profile celebrities like Paris Hilton and then had a sex tape released. I mean come one … she’s chewing gum throughout this sex tape. The superficiality of it is completely obvious to everyone, and yet we still want to consume her. That human desire wants this in particular is what interests me.

DS: What about that human desire resonates in art, in poetry, or in Wonder?

BF: DREW I CAN’T ANSWER THAT IN A PARAGRAPH! Can we delete this one?

DS: It’s such a good one though! I want to round off the interview with a good final question.

BF: It’s too broad! Desire in art. That’s a lifes work!

DS: Perfect. Bingo. Good answer.

In the interim, Drew Swenhaugen, our man on the Small Press Beat, offers up his suggestions for publishers to look up and parties to crash while in Chicago.

Last week, Tin House ran Courtney Maum’s Field Guide to AWP. While I really liked the piece, I think she missed one identifiable and growing population of the incestuous AWP convention – the small press people. I suppose some do fall into the category of lumberjacks without driver’s licenses (admittedly accurate), but they also have a few distinct traits specific to their species.  It’s easy to spot them – there’s an entire row of affiliated presses which calls itself Table X, a Publishing Commune (and subsequently, a Table Y and Z).

Table X began in 2010 (at the AWP held in Denver) with twenty small presses that wanted to band together and share a part of the bookfair’s floor. This year there are over fifty presses participating, and many are sharing tables with one another. They fall short of being able to participate in the business and academically-sponsored events of the convention itself, so they go outside the Hilton and into the city, organizing off-site readings at stuffy bars, cafes and galleries.

The last thing I want to do is pit this small press community against their more landed older brothers & sisters, but it is germane to highlight the growing presence and importance of these small presses in the midst of a convention that is overflowing with more established journals. I’m not asking you to embrace their funny-looking shoes, but you ought to check out their books. Just follow the smell of cheap whiskey to the far corners of the convention center and look for a group of good- looking people peddling interesting wares, especially if you’re a “book as art object” fan. Chapbooks, broadsides, matchbooks, you name it, can be found at Table X, and many of these journals are made via screen printing  letterpressing, or diligently hand-sewn.

If I am able to find the convention center or don’t sleep in, here are some bookfair tables and off-site events that I recommend. I hope to see you there!

Bookfair Tables (with a recommended title from the publisher).

UGLY DUCKLING PRESSE – Thirty-Five New Pages, by Lev Rubinstein.

LETTER MACHINE EDITIONS - Ode: Salute to the New York School, by Peter Gizzi.

1913 – Home/Birth, by Arielle Greenberg and Rachel Zucker.

CANARIUM BOOKS - The Invention of Glass, by Emmanuel Hocquard.

OCTOPUS BOOKS - Dear Jenny, We are All Find, by Jenny Zhang

FORKLIFT, OHIO – The Dark is Here, by Kiki Petrosino

H_NGM_N – Carnavoria, by Laurie Saurborn Young

SUPERMACHINE -  Dear Jenny, by Genya Turovskaya

FACTORY HOLLOW PRESS – Jombang Jet, by Michael Earl Craig

BRAVE MEN PRESS – How to Write a Mistake-ist Poem, by Chris Martin

Outside the Convention Halls

No Baby (Yes Baby) – Featuring Taryn Andrews, Cody-Rose Clevidence, Julia Cohen, Ben Fama, Elaine Kahn, Mark Leidner, Dan Magers, Rob Ostrom, Caryl Pagel, Emily Pettit, Mathias Svalina, Paige Taggart and Michelle Taransky.(Thursday)

An Evening of Intimate Readings in the Bathroom of a Goth Club – Featuring Laura Goldstein, Nick Demske w/ Dolly Lemke, Feng Sun Chen, Johannes Goransson, Kristen Stone, Kate Durbin, Lucas De Lima, Gina Abelkop, Adam Atkinson, Kate Zambreno, Blake Butler, Ben Fama, Ronaldo Wilson Lara Glenum, Lonely Christopher, Carrie Murphy, Ben Kopel, William Burke, Alissa Nutting, Anna Joy Springer and Mike Kitchell. (Thursday)

The Legion – Featuring Feng Sun Chen, Christopher DeWeese, Rebecca Farivar, Peter Gizzi, Thurston Moore, Andrea Rexilius, Zachary Schomburg and Jenny Zhang. (Friday)

GET LIT! - Featuring Darren Angle, Evelyn Hampton, Mark Gurarie, Jeff T. Johnson, Alex Crowley, Farrah Field, Mark Bibbins, Nick Demske, Jaclyn Lovell, Claire Donato, Christian Ochoa, Jackie Clark , Matt Hart, Christie Ann Reynolds, Christine Kanownik and Andrew Gori. (Friday)

Sixth Finch & YesYes Books Present! - Featuring Emily Kendal Frey, Ally Harris, Matt Hart, Mark Leidner, Thomas Patrick Levy, Ben Mirov, Metta Sáma, Nate Slawson, Leigh Stein, Gale Marie Thompson, Phillip B. Williams, Angela Veronica Wong and Matthew Yeager. (Friday)

LITERATURE PARTY – Featuring Jesse Ball, Dorothea Lasky, Tim Kinsella and Mary Miller (Friday)

Table X/Y Party & Reading Experiment – Organized cacophony. Writers from 32 small presses read simultaneously in one space! (Friday)

Gender Balanced as Fukk at Wrigley Field – I’m not sure if this is real, but I’m showing up just in case. Featuring Jesus, Mary Ruefle and Ben Affleck. (???)

It is a perfect time to be talking with Emily, as her first full-length book, Goat in the Snow, was recently published by Bird LLC and is receiving some much-deserved praise.

DS: When I think of Amherst poetry, even East Coast poetry, Flying Object is where I begin. You seem to have a poetry tradition behind you with James Tate and Dara Weir, amongst so many others at UMass. When I was at Flying Object this summer, I saw a signed copy of John Ashbery’s Flow Chart, among a perfect sales room of small press gems. Jesus! From the West Coast, this seems like a poetry paradise. Do you feel like your amidst such a poetry legacy?

EP: I do feel that I am living in an amazing poetry community! An amazing poetry community composed of poets from the past and poets making poems today. Poets making marvelous poems today—Peter Gizzi, James Tate, and Dara Weir—the UMass MFA program poetry faculty—are phenomenal forces of poetry. Past and present UMass MFA students makeup many other fierce and friendly and forward pushing forces! When one looks at the number of incredible poems and books written by people living in the area or who have in the past lived in the area—it is oh so remarkable! Emily Dickinson did her thing in this place. I repeat, Emily Dickinson did her thing in this place.

When one looks at the presses and journals that began or are now being run or helped run by past and present Umass MFA students or people living in the area—it is awe inspiring—for example Agnes Fox Press, Bateau Press, Brave Men Press, Flowers & Cream Press, Minutes Books, Pilot Books, Slope Editions, The Song Cave, Wave Books. Journals I might think of include— Conduit, GlitterPony, Invisible Ear, Jellyfish Magazine,, The Massachusetts Review, Model Homes, NOO Journal, notnostrums, Rain Taxi, SKEIN, and Verse. And I am missing many things right now!

DS: What are your favorite readings or events that you’ve hosted at Flying Object? Is there a memorable poet that read, and you thought, wow, this is magic?

EP: One event that particularly sticks out in my mind is not an event I threw, but one organized by Ben Kopel—a Leonard Cohen Tribute Night of Music. It was magical. Many people who are great writers are also great musicians and the music was magical. Another night that I will never forget—Flying Object’s Opening—October 1st, 2010. If one wanted magic it was there. It was in Amanda Nadelberg and Uljana Wolf’s poems. Christian Hawkey was handing it to us with his work, as was Eugene Ostashevsky and Jono Tosch. It was a wonderful beginning to what has become an ever-evolving imaginative event machine.

DS: Flying Object really is an experimental space for writers, designers and book making. You have a letter press, host workshops, and have a baller storefront. Who makes it happen? How are day to day operations organized?

EP: Flying Object is a space for independent publishing, art and the book. It is a space. It is a collective of people. Flying Object is a gathering space for artists and writers. For doing work. For encountering work. There is a gallery. There is a letterpress studio. There is a kitchen. There are magical readings, book launches, magazine celebrations, art openings and phenomenal music—going on and going on!

People who run events at Flying Object include, but are not limited to—The Boys Upstairs run by the boys who live above Flying Object; CELAN SALON run by Nathaniel Otting; THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF HADLEY FOR IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE run by Heather Christle & Don Blair; LOOT run by Elaine Kahn and Bill Nace; and THE WHENEVER WE FEEL LIKE IT READING SERIES run by Michelle Taransky and myself. Workshops taught at Flying Object include Creative Writing with Rachel B. Glaser, Poets & Poems with Emily Pettit, and Bookmaking for Writers, Small Press Publishers, and Dabblers
with Betsy Wheeler (and sometimes when we are lucky, a Pickling Workshop taught by Jono Tosch is offered!).

Day to day operations at Flying Object are organized and run by Guy Pettit—my brother. Guy is magic and has made a magic space in the space that is Flying Object. Originally the building that Flying Object occupies, was the town of Hadley’s Police and Fire Station. Then it became apartments. Then Guy invented Flying Object. Guy is the most amazing inventor.

Something wonderful that has recently taken place is that members of Flying Object volunteer to put in hours each month helping to run the space. Helping Guy is an amazing group of people ranging from members of the co-op, to interns, to friends.

DS: You help run Factory Hallow Press as well. Mark Leidner’s book Beauty Was the Case That They Gave Me is hands down my favorite book of poetry of the year. Best title, best cover, and it’s so damn funny. Frances McCue’s Bled won The Grub Street National Book Prize in Boston and the Washington State Book Award. I could name more. What is Factory Hollow’s process of taking books? And your titles get out there, to the reading world. Can you tell Tin House readers how you distribute? And what are you looking for in a manuscript? How do you work with the writer in the production of a book? Who is reading your books?

EP: Factory Hollow Press has published both full-length titles and chapbooks of authors with whose work we have been in love with and watching for years. The books and chapbooks we are publishing are by people we love. When people you love are making work that you love–it is a great and moving thing to get to be a part of helping to share this work with the world. And the world is big and the world is small. Some things FHP publishes are reaching places all around the world. Other things that FHP publishes are beloved particularly in a particular place. When I am thinking about work I want to publish, I am thinking about work that I love and have loved and keep loving and work that I know other people that I know will love.

I’ve been reading and loving Mark Leidner’s poems for five years. Old poems, new poems—whenever I encounter them—they spark and sting me and spring me! Again and again. I have read BEAUTY WAS THE CASE THAT THEY GAVE ME again and again and again. Again and again it is good and it makes me have more thoughts and feelings with each reading. Crash Dome by Alex Phillips, the first full-length book that FHP published is also a book that I’d been looking at for years and loving for years. EXPERIEMENTS I SHOULD LIKE TRIED AT MY OWN DEATH by Caryl Pagel and SIGN, YOU WERE MISTAKEN by Seth Landman are two books that FHP will be publishing next year, both of which are books that I’ve been reading and loving for years. When a book keeps being wonderful with reading after reading of it, when each reading engages more discovery, when I want to read something again and again and again and again—that’s when I know it is work that FHP could or should be helping to get into the hands of other people for whom this work will mean so much.

As for working with a writer on the production of his or her book, it is my most great desire to help each author to publish the book or chapbook that each author respectively wants and loves. This is a thing that can be done. Some authors have visions regarding how they’d like their work to appear in the physical form that is the book or chapbook. Some authors like and want to work with us to help them find forms for the physical presentation of their work. I want the authors to be happy. That’s what I want the most.

DS: Then there’s notnostrums, a super fresh online literary journal, and Whenever We Feel Like It, a seemingly occasional reading series. These things being under a couple of umbrella agencies, The Committee of Vigilance and The Meeteetzee Institute. Can you explain them?

EP: notnostrums is an online literary journal run by Committee of Vigilance members Luke Bloomfield, Guy Pettit, and myself. The Committee of Vigilance is a subdivision of Sleepy Lemur Quality Enterprises, which is the production division of The Meeteetzee Institute. There are bricks that mention these things. They are near Emily Dickinson’s house.

The Whenever We Feel Like It Reading Series, has outposts in Philadelphia, PA and Hadley, MA, and is put on by Committee of Vigilance members Michelle Taransky and myself. The Committee of Vigilance is a subdivision of Sleepy Lemur Quality Enterprises, which is the production division of The Meeteetzee Institute. There are bricks that mention these things. They are near Emily Dickinson’s house.

I will also say that The Meeteetzee Intsitute is interested in lemurs. The Meeteetzee Institute loves lemurs.

Then I love too love lemurs.

Imprints upon imprints. All surrounding where Emily Dickinson – the great inventor – dwelt in seclusion. It is still amazing to me that all of these endeavors that Pettit is a part of can be seen and read from all cities, all places, but what stands out is the beauty and design of the book as the flying object.-DS

When I get a new title from Wave Books, a feeling of ecstasy comes over me. Their simple design, their range of styles, all point to something I should know, something I should care about. They challenge me to write better and to be a better reader.

And now, two new bombshells, in translation: Gennady Aygi’s In The Snow & Jorge Carrera Andrade’s Micrograms.

Gennady Aygi, a twentieth century Russian poet who strikes chords with Mandelstam, Celan, and is algebraic like Dickinson with his use of dashes and stops. Gennady wrote during the “Thaw period” in the late 1950s and early 60s when Khruschev loosened the grip on artistic control, allowing the voice of the avant garde to finally be heard. Into the Snow should not be read as direct political language, but rather, as a celebration of the “Thaw,” a reintroduction of the artistic voices unheard during Stalin and the Cold War.

Jorge Carrera Andrade, an Ecuador-born journalist who experimented with the “stripping away of all decoration: the cult of naked and simple expression.” Micrograms was originally written in Spanish and published in Tokyo in 1940 while he was an ambassador for Ecuador. Influenced by the landscapes of haiku, Carrera Andrade utilizes the microgram’s gentle form. Carrera Andrade sums up his own work best : “I try to testify to an ordinary man’s orbit in time. At first he feels a stranger in the midst of a changing world but later receives the visit of love and discovery deep within himself a feeling of solidarity with all men of the planet. I have traversed new countries in different latitudes and have returned to others already known, in a pilgrimage as passionate observer rather than as curious traveler.”

I talked with one of the editors of Wave Books, Matthew Zapruder (Ed. note: Matthew has just signed on to teach at the 2012 TH Workshop!!!), about the nature of capitol “T” Translation, its possibilities and impossibilities, its failures, and its originality.

DS: Translation is a highly discussed genre in contemporary poetry. Many small presses have started translation book series, many of them are excellent  … amazing poets that haven’t been read in English. Which also means the original content of these books in their native language has never been read. Is the ideal of a translation to capture a “sameness” with its original?

MZ: This issue is at the heart of the whole project of translation. Sameness, or accuracy, is part of the equation, but as Walter Benjamin points out in his seminal essay “The Task of the Translator,” complete sameness is an obvious impossibility. It’s definitely a concern for both the reader and the translator (not to mention the original writer). As Benjamin also points out, different texts are more or less translatable. I think people worry a lot about this, maybe too much. Each translation is a compromise, and should be understood as much.

There is a different reason why, beyond some kind of important, yet ultimately abstract ethical responsibility to an impossible ideal of sameness, it is best to stay as close as possible to the text. A translator must be willing to accept an element of strangeness or unfamiliarity or even infelicity in the new text. The worst thing a translator can do is to unconsciously allow his or her own ego — the desire to be seen as a “good” translator or writer — to begin to control the translation, so that subtle “improvements” are made in the text. This almost always results in clichéd, familiar, boring, language in the translation. If a translator finds him or herself saying something like, “that’s what the original seems to be saying, but it seems weird or unusual in the translation,” that is almost certainly the very place where the particular style of the author, what makes this author interesting and challenging and worthwhile as a creative artist, is manifesting, and to take that away and replace it with “acceptable” language in the translation is a disaster.

I heard Richard Pevear (who along with his partner, Larisa Volkhonskaya, are the preeminent translators of Russian prose) express this idea, one that I have had for a long time as well, in a talk he gave recently at UC Berkeley. So I think I’d like to give him the last word here, from an essay he wrote about translating Tolstoy:

“But then, literature is precisely not the conveying of information. It is the making of an image, and through the image of an experience, using all the resources of language — rhythm, sound, texture, tempo, suggestion, intonation. What’s more, every good writer has a particular way of using those resources. That is what the translator must try to follow as closely as possible. The transposition can never be total, and therefore it is always worth trying anew. In this way translation, which is a dialogue between languages, also becomes a dialogue in time, a fresh response to the ongoing life of the original.”

DS: Walter Benjamin and Paul Celan both have rich opinions on translation, lasting arguments, a great deal of presentness and warning. Celan wrote as one translates, the product runs the risk of being language  with “all the syllables standing around.” I think he means that are a multitude of linguistic, historical and cultural aspects of translating that make some things untranslatable. Translation as “carry over” language. A fascinating topic. I borrow this question from Kerstin Behnke, who wrote an essay on Celan’s translations of Dickinson: What does it mean to translate poetry as poetry into poetry?

And of the specific translator of work. Does it matter if said translator is a poet? Must he or she be the poet of the poet? What part of the translator’s personal style and poetic principles come into play? This is a theoretical question, without asking a specific translator the question.

MZ: I guess an alternative to translating poetry as poetry into poetry would be translating poetry as poetry into prose? That is, translating poetry “as poetry” means respecting what is poetic about the poetry above everything else, by saying it is untranslatable “as poetry” “into poetry.” That’s what Nabokov did, out of frustration and respect, with his prose translation of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, which I have read in the original and admit seems as if it would be absolutely impossible to translate into any kind of poetry. Then again, people seem to have done it with Shakespeare’s sonnets, which seem to me to be equally untranslatable.

I think you do the best you can to try to get as much of it over as you can, while acknowledging that it is an inevitable compromise. That sounds really wishy-washy, but it’s true.

And no, I don’t think someone has to be a poet to translate poetry. Maybe translating poetry inevitably turns you into a poet though. Beware!

I think I addressed above a little bit the dangers of allowing one’s own “personal style and poetic principles” to take over the translation. I personally have found that most poets I know who write good poems don’t have any poetic principles other than write poems. And I think that the same could be said for good translators: their principle is, don’t allow their principles to prevent them from making the best translation under the circumstances.

To be specific, a great example of this is Glottal Stop, the Celan book that Heather McHugh and Nikolai Popov translated. In the introduction they talk about how sometimes translating Celan’s syntax in German exactly into English would have given people the false sense that (in those particular poems at least) Celan was some kind of experimental poet. I can imagine a translator who might have been very pleased at that so-called discovery. I think McHugh and Popov showed a great deal of integrity by attempting to find structures in English sentences that were analogous to the ones Celan was using in German, while staying true to the text. They worked on this problem as best they could (and by the way, as they freely acknowledge, discarded the translations where it was not possible to deal with this or other issues), and then acknowledged it in the introduction to the book.

DS: I celebrate a work of translation, especially from a such a carefully edited press such as Wave. How, as an editor, do you help celebrate the work? Is an expansive introduction to the work adequate? Does how you push a work of translation differ from promoting a new title from the Wave cadre of English speaking poets?

MZ: We’re pretty sure people who would read Wave titles would want to read these translations. We think they reflect similar values, while also expanding (just as our authors do, with each new work they produce) our sense of what is possible in poetry. My guess is, it will go quite well, and hopefully bring even more people who don’t ordinarily read poetry, but are interested in the cultural products of these different countries, to poetry. High hopes indeed.

As far as an introduction. I think it depends on the book, and the poet being translated. For an author who is unfamiliar to most English speaking readers, some kind of introduction might be desirable. Certainly it seems adequate. If the poems don’t stand on their own in English, they are not translations we are going to be interested in publishing.

DS: How did the two new books come into being? What was the submission/solicitation process? Are there plans for a translation series for Wave?

MZ: The short answer to this is, there was at the time no submission or solicitation process. We were not particularly looking for translations to publish, though we were not in any way opposed to it. When we came across these works we realized we had an opening to begin publishing translations, which was really exciting to us, so we went forward with it.

While we don’t have any plans to hold an open reading period for translations in the near future, that certainly could change (if it does we will announce it on our website and widely). In the meantime, we will continue to do what we always do as editors (and what most editors I know do as well): read literary magazines, go to readings, look around for things on the web, talk to a wide range of respected writers and readers, and so on. Even though we don’t read unsolicited manuscripts, we are always on the lookout, on a daily basis, for new work. So poets, and translators, can rest assured that if they are doing their job of getting as good at their work as possible, and getting it out there into the world a little bit, we will sooner or later come across it.

DS: Wave’s second annual 3 Days of Poetry Festival is happening soon in Seattle. I plan on taking the train up from Portland to party with y’all. What can I expect?

MZ: I love trains. I’ve never been on that particular ride, but I bet it’s beautiful. Maybe just as an experiment you could think of the train ride as a translation of Portland into Seattle. I don’t know exactly what that means. But please report back!

I mentioned above the inevitable compromises involved in translation. One could therefore rightly say that any translation is a failure. Another way to look at it is, beyond the value and beauty of the new text, the translation itself is an opportunity to bring out into the open these compromises, which if they are discussed and grappled with can help us understand even better the work of the original artist, poetry, and the functioning of language in general.

The many brief lectures we are offering on an hourly basis over the course of three days will give you a chance to go to a lot of different short talks, and our hope is that many ideas about particular translation will resonate with each other to begin to engage with larger questions as well.

We are also pretty sure that getting all these interesting people together in the same place for a couple of days will be fun, and a chance for enthusiasts of translation and of poetry to hang out together. So we’re glad you’re coming up!

Matthew Zapruder is the author of three collections of poetry, including his most recent collection, Come On All You Ghosts (Copper Canyon, 2010).  A 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship, he currently works as an editor for Wave Books, and teaches as a member of the core faculty of UCR-Palm Desert’s Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing.

Drew Scott Swenhaugen co-edits Poor Claudia and co-curates the Bad Blood Reading Series.

I’m not sure who can keep an updated eye on the world of small press poetry. Presses and journals pop up like restaurants do — with hopes of staying alive, innovating, offering a new vision, and becoming a destination with regular patrons. But many cannot, either for financial reasons or an inability to find the content they seek. Without a university or benefactor to maintain cash-flow, distribution, and readership, creating a publishing outfit is extremely hard work. Yet they still keep popping up! — many with editors who are hard-working writers who have careers and families, expecting zero profit, only to maintain and offer something new and to stay small. And the good ones keep their doors open. They last. Their offices are dinner tables, back patios, and basements.

As a lasting defense, I open up Lionel Trilling’s essay “The Liberal Imagination“, published in 1950 by The Partisan Review. Little … such a powerful and important use of capitalization, isn’t simply titular. Trilling defends the plurality of publishing, the “superabundance” of how literature is published, and why. “[S]nickered at and snubbed at times,” Trilling writes, “they keep a countercurrent moving which perhaps no one will be fully aware of until it ceases to move.”

Some sixty years later, thankfully, there is no sign of ceasing.

Beginning as on online journal started by Zachary Schomburg and Tony Tost, Octopus Books has grown into a major destination for poets since being founded by Schomburg and Mathias Svalina in 2006. Octopus continually puts outs attractive and vital chapbooks and full-length titles, with each publication garnering the kind of recognition that publishing houses twice their size can only dream about.

Case in point: Since Heather Christle’s book The Tree The Trees was released in July, it has remained number one on the Small Press Distribution best-seller list. [Ed.note-Heather Christle's poetry will appear in the forthcoming Beauty issue of Tin House]

Octopus’s newest chapbook, At Me, is by Brandon Downing, an amazing collagist-poet-film guru. At Me is Downing’s latest since his collage masterpiece Lake Antiquity published by Fence Books in 2009. He’s the only poet I know that can talk about Doom 4 in a sonnet, or make my brain stir with a line like “all up in my doo.” The man is special. His chapbook will be the same.

A few weeks ago, I was able to sit down with Octopus editor Zachary Schomburg to talk about the new books and latest successes of his publishing house. I tried to make our chat at a SE Portland bar professional; I gave Schomburg a detailed set of questions about Octopus, and about Octopus’s publishing agenda – many of which were answered in earnest. Largely what came out of our discussion was a dialogue about the state of poetry today. About the idea of a post-avant. About the geographic decentralization of the poetry community.  And about the energy Octopus possess right now. It was awesome.

DS: Can you describe for me the aesthetics of Octopus Books? What do you look for in terms of style, form and content? You’ve published such an array of poets throughout your existence. I first read D.A. Powell, Ben Lerner, Matthea Harvey, Matthew Zapruder [Ed. Note-Matthew appears in the latest issue of Tin House], and Aase Berg, among so many more, in Octopus. That’s amazing! Their styles are all so very different. Go.

ZS: From the very beginning, Tony Tost and I made an attempt to keep Octopus from developing any particular recognizable aesthetic, and Mathias and I do the best we can to keep in line with that goal. We’re not interested in Octopus poetry, whatever that might mean. We love too many specific things too much. We’ve published a Ronald Johnson issue, an issue of poets who’ve never published before, a long poem issue, a new sincerity issue (just kidding). I guess what we look for, primarily, are poems that surprise us, that make us feel something, understand something difficult about ourselves or poetry – poems where the floor drops out on us and there are starved tigers at the bottom of the pit, but they don’t want to eat us, they just want us to hold them until they die.

DS: It’s hard keeping a readership, isn’t it? So many things to read from so many different publishers. Yours seems to keep getting larger. Octopus has a pretty good subscription deal. Does that help?

ZS: The longer we publish the magazine and the books, the more people are involved, and when more people have a relationship with us, the readership is healthy. We like to publish poets we’ve published before as a way of establishing a relationship that both they and the reader can watch develop. I suppose, also, through consistency. Through Octopus Books, our readers expect us to publish about two books a year, and we publish at least two each year. We offer two year subscriptions. And we do a good job of giving away things for free. If someone buys a book through our website, they’ll often get an extra book and a few trinkets. When that happens, its more likely that they’ll return to us to buy the next book down the line.

DS: So where does the name “Octopus” come from? Are you into them? Mathias and you do stuff that are divisible by eight. Like Jack White loves the number three, right?

ZS: It’s just a way of organizing our magazine. Each issue of the magazine has a number of contributors divisible by eight. We read manuscripts in the eighth month of the year. It’s just a fun little thing. It has little to do with the animal other than that.

DS: I know so many people who love Octopus. Poet friends, but also non-poetry loving friends. What do you say to someone who’s looking to get published by Octopus?

ZS: I try to avoid the dichotomy of publisher as the holder of power and arbiter of taste, and the poet as submissive to that arbitration. I mean, we’re all in this together. We’re almost all poets and publishers in some way or another. I am. So, I guess I would ask that the poet (when I have my publisher hat on) see it the same way. The poet should have their own relationship with the press beyond what the press can do for them. A relationship that would have very little to do with me. The poet should get something from Octopus beyond publication. With that said, I’d tell him/her to submit poems consistently, and reviews too, and essays and interviews, to get involved, and to love it, beyond themselves, slightly more than food.

DS: In Heather’s new book, I found a few lines that I think sum you guys up: if I silently praise my enemy / give him everything ever he wanted / give him room / then I will be king / an earthworm / making things happen. Isn’t that good?

ZS: It’s perfect.

Upcoming Octopus Events:

Oct 8 : Heather Christle will be reading w/ Ben Lerner and Ed Skoog at the Bad Blood Reading Series, 8pm at ADX.

Oct 9 : Heather Christle will be reading w/ Zachary Schomburg at Nationale, 8pm