CLH in Scotland

On Brexit lit

My contribution to the Daniel Dragomirescu's Contemporary Literary Horizon compilation of statements on the Brexit vote:

In many different ways and in different periods of history, the writer stands beyond the needs of any individual state or nation. We, as contributors to literature everywhere, know that a single day's vote, a "Brexit," cannot capture all of the nuances of all of the literatures to come out of, pass through, or in otherwise relate to England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, or elsewhere. Indeed, literature will remain a transient, and we will celebrate it for that reason, whether we are thinking of James Joyce's discovery of Italo Svevo's novels in Trieste or all the famous migrations before or after--Kundera in France, Hemingway in Cuba, Bolano in Spain, or some of today's great European writers--Aleksander Hemon, Joseph O'Neill, to name a couple--who make part or all of their lives in the United States. The state may demand of us everything--our time, allegiance, taxes, prayers, and more--but, as writers, we always live beyond such temporal concerns, recognizing the humanity we share. Best to England, best to Europe, and, of course, best to Daniel Peaceman, living beyond the borders as always.

Alex Kudera, American novelist of Fight for Your Long Day and Auggie's Revenge

 

 

(Although I did not return to Ha Jin's The Writer as Migrant to prepare this statement, I read Ha Jin's  extended essay in 2009 and would consider it an influence among many other books on my thinking about Brexit and how it relates to literature and the lives of literary writers.)

Kafkas in Spanish

The Spanish translation of Over Fifty Billion Kafkas Served will go to press soon and features an English-to-Spanish rendition of the title story from Dr. Raquel Anido of Clemson University. Many thanks as usual to Dr. Daniel Dragomirescu of Romania.

Romanian hit

Over Fifty Billion Kafkas Served, with cover art by Nathan Holic, managed to sneak into the back cover (page 68) of a Romanian literary journal (left middle), but no one from the Carpathians has come to anoint, kill, or otherwise congratulate me on this success. . . so, tentatively, I'm uncertain of what this means or whether I should lay low, smile high, or merely continue with life's daily routines.

Kafkas arriving soon

I'm excited to announce that my bilingual short story collection, Over Fifty Billion Kafkas Served, is in the mail, and I'll soon receive 10 paperback copies.

jose kozer

Daniel Dragomirescu of Contemporary Literary Horizon sent me this poem:

JOSE KOZER

(CUBA - UNITED STATES)

MY FATHER, WHO IS STILL ALIVE

  

My father, who is still alive,

I don’t see him, and I know he has shrunk,

he has a family of brothers burned to ashes

            in Poland,

he never saw them, he learned of the death of

           his mother by telegram,

he didn’t inherit even a single button from his father,

what do I know if he inherited his character.

My father, who was a tailor and a Communist,

my father who didn’t speak and sat on the

            terrace,

to not believe in God,

to not want anything more to do with men,

sullenly withdrawing into himself against Hitler, against Stalin,

my father who once a year would raise a glass

              of whisky,

my father sitting in a neighbour’s apple

              tree eating its

              fruit

the day the Reds entered his village

and made my grandfather dance like a

           bear on the Sabbath,

and made him light a cigarette and smoke it

          on a Sabbath,

and my father left the village for ever,

went away for ever muttering his anger against

         the October revolution,

for ever hammering home that Trotsky was a

         dreamer and Beria a criminal,

abominating books he sat down on the

            terrace a tiny speck of a man,

and told me that the dreams of men are

           nothing more than a

           false literature,

that the history books lie because paper

         can take anything.

My father who was a tailor and a Communist.

*When I followed the Jose Kozer link above, I noticed that he is the age my father would be (b. 1940), and both had immigrant parents from Czechoslovakia.

My Father's Great Recession

My print copy of Contemporary Literary Horizon arrived last week, and it included the first half of "My Father's Great Recession," a fiction based upon visiting the old man in Ponte Vedra, Florida when he was living in a studio by the beach but only had forty bucks in his pocket because a "backer" wanted him to have pocket change while his son was around. Perhaps it's not my best short story, but it's most meaningful to me, and it was great to see it printed on good paper in original English and Romanian translation. 

It will appear as the first story in the collection, Over Fifty Billion Kafkas Served.

Thank you, as always, Daniel Peaceman.

cover art by Nathan Holic

coming soon

Sonnets, Riggs, and Roll

Don Riggs is dynamic on video here for his book party for Bilateral Asymmetry, his first bound collection of sonnets. They are selected from his morning's work, the sonnet he writes daily before he does anything else. When you have a spare thirty minutes, watch until the end to see Dr. Riggs perform his signature closing poem, "Dialogue of the Hands." I happily received my inscribed copy of the book earlier this week.

Letter from China

I'm happy to report that Contemporary Literary Horizon has included "Letter from China," published online as "First Impressions of Xi'an, China," in its 2013 print anthology of poetry and prose from around the world. As always, I'm wishing Dr. Daniel D. Peaceman the best this year.

orizont, encore

A few days after I read that Philadelphia poetry will be well represented in a future issue of Contemporary Literary Horizons, my current print issue arrived from Romania. It features poetry and prose from Chile, Romania, England, Germany, America, and beyond.

Thank you, Dr. Daniel, for your contribution to global literature.

washing dishes

I'm pleased to note that "Awash in Barach & Bolono" will appear in CHM's July-August 2013 special print edition on Chilean poetry. It's yet another story of mine with a dish-washing scene, and it's one I've fiddled with on and off for almost my entire six years teaching at Clemson. Originally inspired by seeing President Obama give his stump speech on campus in late winter or early spring of 2008, it also concerns pounding the pavement in Paris, searching for restaurant work or any employment I could get. With Roberto in the title, it feels right to find it in an issue dedicated to Chilean poetry.

I also noticed online that editor Daniel D. Peacemen has recently translated some Amy Tan into Romanian.

new issues, new horizons

The September/October print issue is out and about, sporting "A Scottish Dizzen," and much, much more! Thank you, Dr. Daniel Peaceman for everything you are doing in this transcontinental literary world.

In my own literary way, I've been living vicariously through The Paris Review's interview with the Italian writer and publisher Roberto Calasso. If only all of our writing lives could be as charmed as his. Here's an excerpt from Calasso on a Kafka in his library:

And this is the first book that Kafka ever published, Betrachtung. There were eight hundred copies. In one of his letters, he mentions having gone to a bookshop to see if anyone had bought the book and realizing that, of the eleven copies sold, only one had been bought by someone other than him.

I hope everyone has a relaxing and healthy weekend.

Contemporary Austerity Horizon

This essay on austerity and the illegal consolidation of power in Romania in included in the latest print issue of Contemporary Literary Horizon. That would be the one that arrived in my mail over the weekend, and it also features a Romanian translation of "The Bicentennial with Grandpa Andy."

April 13 (Daniel Peaceman and his CHM entourage)

Literature is on the horizon in sunny Romania. Fight for Your Long Bucharest!

"No Returns" in Romania

I'm very pleased to report that Dr. Daniel D. Peaceman, the international emissary to all things whole and healing, chose "No Returns," an excerpt from The Book of Jay for inclusion in the second annual Contemporary Literary Horizons anthology. As rough draft, it has already appeared here.

On the topic of Dr. Daniel's global excursions, I happened to find Philly's own Don Riggs smiling back at me from a Tunisian blog by poet, teacher, and translator Chokri Omri.

Haiku on the Horizon

I returned home from another tired Thursday.

She was happily munching on snack and bottled water in her car seat, so I stopped at the mailboxes to retrieve whatever still gets sent, and low and behold, there awaiting me was the most pleasant surprise, the next issue of Contemporary Literary Horizon.

Busy, tired, fountains, playground, doggy, tired, boats, water boiled or bottled until further notice, and then late at night, I dove into Don Riggs's essay on haiku. It comes with plenty of fun samples and the inside dope that he demands 250 of those 5/7/5 [redacted]ers, 25 per week, when teaching a 10-week creative-writing class. I can hear Don's voice in my head, where with some irony, he is introducing the students to the possibility of writing all 250 the night before the quarter's homework is due.

Thank you, Dr. Daniel Peaceman, for another wonderful issue of your transcontinental, trilingual project.

Thank you, Don for adding a touch of Nicole Kline's haiku, and allowing my nostalgia for past schools and itinerant appointments to blend in with the mix.

Philadelphia, when you're looking for your Poet-in-Residence, and if you're bold enough to consider someone on the margins of the short list--with apologies to all the other less recognized Philly poets, and I'll blog you all up soon--be sure to stop by any class taught by Don Riggs, and you'll see we are dealing not just with a poet but with a scholar who speaks a foreign language and would have a wonderful voice for leading us all further into poetry.

Or, if you prefer, just try the lesson Don mentions in the essay, the one about sitting for a half hour and writing haiku about anything you see. And yes, you're encouraged to choose the same subject twice.

I might just try that
right now. If you don't mind this
rather weak haiku.

European Horizons

Don Riggs's review of Fight for Your Long Day can be read in Romanian and English at our favorite bi- to trilingual literary blogspot (and print journal).

At the end of his journey, perhaps Cyrus Duffleman will rest easy, sigh aloud, but in a pleasant way, acknowledge his great debt to not just Romania but all of Eastern Europe.

Dr. Daniel Daniel, you are floating in a most mysterious way--with the Flying Duffler!

Contemporary Literary Horizon

It'll only set you back a few euros if you want to read a review of Fight for Your Long Day in Romanian.