CruelestMonth.com

Sharp Teeth now on sale!

I went ga-ga about this book back in the dizzle like six months ago.  Now it's on sale, living, breathing, changing out in the market place.  So keep an eye out for Sharp Teeth by Toby Barlow.  And check out the video.

Signed book giveaway at www.olivereader.com.

Center for the Art of Translation...Party!

This Friday from 6:30pm-8:0pm the Center for the Art of Translation will host a "celebration of global voices in Times Square with acclaimed authors and translators from 15 years of TWO LINES: World Writing in Translation."  Readers will include:

Suzanne Jill Levine reading JORGE VOLPI (from Spanish)
Geoffrey Brock reading GUIDO GOZZANO (from Italian)
Alexis Levitin reading ASTRID CABRAL (from Portuguese)
Susan Bernofsky reading YOKO TAWADA (from German)
Trudy Balch reading MATILDA KOEN-SARANO (from Ladino)
Douglas Basford reading JEAN SENAC (from French)

Also, there will be a tribute to special guest Gregory Rabassa.  (He was unable to attend A Tribute to Robert Fagles a little while ago, to my disappointment, so fingers crossed.)

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Also, I'm very happy to read that the University of Michigan's department of English is holding a conference March 6-7 called "Writing in Public: A Celebration of Karl Pohrt," who is founder and owner of Shaman Drum Shop, Ann Arbor, MI.  Read more about the even and Karl here.  I've been lucky enough to work with him on Reading the World.  This celebration is much deserved.

Seven Notebooks by Campbell McGrath

I am bad.  I should have shown you this sooner.  Here is Campbell McGrath's newest collection Seven Notebooks.   According to a close colleague at Ecco, Seven Notebooks is, "formally, unlike any other book of poetry, by McGrath or anyone else (almost a novel in verse). It is his most remarkable, and best, achievement to date."

Zbigniew Herbert Book Club at Words Without Borders

Words Without Borders has dedicated the month of January to a discussion of Zbigniew Herbert and the recently published Collected Poems: 1956-1998 (which will be coming out in paperback next month).  So far, features include an introductory essay by James Marcus and an interview between Cynthia Haven and Peter Dale Scott.  Other notable writers/poets/translators such as Anna Frajlich, Andrzej Franaszek, William Martin, and Alissa Valles will contribute over the course of the month.  I'm so pleased that the spotlight remains bright on Herbert since the publication of his Collected.  If you haven't yet familiarized yourself with this great poet, here's a wonderful opportunity.

"Snow-Flakes"

The Academy of American Poets sent a very nice poem along with their season's greetings.  It's just too perfect; I hope they don't mind if I share it as well:

"Snow-Flakes"

Out of the bosom of the Air,
     Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,
Over the woodlands brown and bare,
     Over the harvest-fields forsaken,
        Silent, and soft, and slow
        Descends the snow.

Even as our cloudy fancies take
    Suddenly shape in some divine expression,
Even as the troubled heart doth make
    In the white countenance confession,
        The troubled sky reveals
        The grief it feels.

This is the poem of the air,
    Slowly in silent syllables recorded;
This is the secret of despair,
    Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,
        Now whispered and revealed
        To wood and field.

-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Poems and Other Writings, Library of America, 2000.

As it so happened, Outre-Mer: A Pilgrimage beyond the Sea by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1835) was the first book Harper ever published.