VANITAS 4 : TRANSLATION

The fourth issue of VANITAS embarks on the large topic of translation. Translation is always key, as it provides portals and doorways through which we enter intootherwise closed-off regions of human experience. At the current moment of mutual suspicion and intolerance, translation seems to have taken on a new vitality in the worlds of poetry and poetics. We were interested in a variety of takes on the IDEA of translation, and we received a dynamic range of responses.

Translations, versions, adaptations, homophonics, riffs, fragments, experiments by Brunella Antomarini, Tim Atkins, Mary Jo Bang, Lindsey Boldt, Charles Borkhuis, Ted Berrigan, Kenneth Goldsmith, Jack Hirschman, Jen Hofer, Ron Horning, Ron Padgett, Charles A. Perrone, Ed Sanders, Mónica de la Torre, John Tranter, Stephen Vincent, Paul Violi, Anne Waldman, Laura Wright, Bill Zavatsky, and others. The translations are complemented by poems by Sean Casey, Alan Davies, Ray DiPalma, Mark Du Charme, Joanna Fuhrman, Lisa Jarnot, Dean Kostos, Barry Schwabsky, Elizabeth Young, and others.

Critical texts that are also sometimes experimental texts — on translation and also on that rare decade The ‘70s — are provided by Charles Bernstein, Michael Lally, Jonathan Mayhew, Mary Maxwell, Luiza Franco Moreira, Yuko Otomo, Kit Robinson, Raphael Rubinstein, Michael Schorsch, Eileen R. Tabios, and Lewis Warsh.

Art is contributed by that special friend of poetry, Francesco Clemente, with additional visual work by Augusto de Campos and Brandon Downing.

VANITAS 4 : TRANSLATION is available through Small Press Distribution or PayPal (see above).