Monica Carter has just published a love letter to Archipelago Books on the Three Percent blog!

“What sets Archipelago apart from most publishers is not only their impeccable taste, their faith in their writers and their translators, but it is this magical element – they have faith in readers out there, in you and me. I don’t know about you but I feel underestimated by most American media, including publishers, and I appreciate that someone doesn’t assume I will run screaming from the bookstore because a book is over 300 pages.“

You can read the whole post here.

In honor of Breyten Breytenbach’s birthday (September 16), hear the complete audio version of Voice Over: A Nomadic Conversation with Mahmoud Darwish:

BOMB Magazine has just published an interview between our own Jill Schoolman and Bibi Dietz:

BD Every translation is a delicate dance between writer and translator. What must be in place for that dance to be graceful?

JS There’s a third dancer involved as well, one that for the most part remains invisible: the editor. The translator is dancing with the author—reinventing, transporting, and transforming the author’s words and spirit, rhythms and tones. And an editor offers his or her eyes and ears.

You can read the full interview on the BOMB website, here.

 

We are mourning the loss and celebrating the life of Deborah Pease (1943 – 2014), a dear and devoted friend. The people Deborah cared about were at the very center of her world. Her kindness, her gentle humor, her uncanny insight and perceptiveness, her intimate connection with words (and sensitivity to the world), her groundedness, her integrity, her quiet guidance (Deborah had a beautiful way of guiding by questioning and by voicing her reflections—much like her poems, and she was a great listener), her enthusiasm for our books (she was a maternal – or big sisterly – figure for the press, and for me personally), her inner strength, her keen eye and ear, her vision, her generous spirit, her presence and light will be deeply missed.

 

Jill

 

At Ease with Mystery

“Come to me, come away with me,” he says.

“But we are away,” she says.

“Further, much further away,” he says,

Undeterred by her infirm

Determination.

 

They reach white temple ruins––

Fluted blue columns encircled

By hillsides filled, she fears, with artillery.

She spies on tiny crustaceans

Strangely out of place.

 

Out of her pack come the guide books,

Cumbrous, distracting.

“Put back the books,” he says.

She resists, then for once

Does as she is told.

 

They reach the wine-sweet sea––

Black cove of sifted volcanic glass.

In the heat, he is deliriously happy

In the sun, the sea, the precious sand,

Happy she is with him, this woman

Often moody and difficult, she watches

Him plow his walrusy swath

Toward the shore, toward her, he laughs

At his doggy aquatic self, laughs

Gently now as she approaches.

 

Take an Object

Take an object

And allow it

To be more

Than it is, much

 

Everything in this room

Has a history

Even if it is new.

If it’s new

I bought it

Because it reminded me

Of someone I once

Loved, and love still.

 

As for gifts—

They break

My heart.

I would keep here

In these cramped quarters

A red wheelbarrow

If given

With love.

 

My Father

One evening last fall

On a clear, crisp night

I entered this hotel,

Shoving through the revolving door

(Always slightly hazardous)

And as I was being revolved

Into the grandiose lobby

I glanced through the glass partitions

Of this bizarre invention for human traffic

And saw you, my father, being revolved

Out onto the sidewalk.

We came within inches of colliding

In a (slightly hazardous) hug.

But the inexorable feature

Of revolving doors

Is that the revolution cannot stop.

So there we were—

You pushing (and being pushed) out,

Me pushing (being pushed) in,

At the very same moment.

As we hurtled past each other

I felt the whirl of centrifugal force:

Shock/Love/Pity/Fear.

For less than a second

I saw a hurried stranger,

Too tall for this contraption,

Pleasantly distinguished,

A bit awkward with two big shopping bags.

Then I saw you,

A dramatic metamorphosis

That did something to my blood.

I saw your whole self

As I have always known it

(And after an interval of years).

I saw, too, that we were trapped

In this whirligig predicament.

Unaware, you strode into the night

While I went helplessly around

A second time, and then a third.

Finally inside, I grasped for air and froze.

I couldn’t move for such spun wondering.

 

So Like Leaves

So like leaves

These feathers seem

They might have fallen

From a tree

Devised of sky.

 

Two blue feathers

With black bands

And white tips.

Leaves still

Clinging

To the ineffable.

 

Flight in its True Aspect

The hummingbird, stunned,

Throbs like a heart in my palm.

It came at the plate glass

With its winged roar

Headed straight for the floral armchair.

Grouse do it too, and doves, and the moths

Battering in blizzards at night

Against our undefended glare.

 

I’m afraid of its beak

But more fearful of its jeweled death,

Its diminished sheen.

My hands are icy with trying

Too hard to warm

This bumblebee bird, its hum

Uniquely attuned to air,

A palpability of soul.

 

Cautious as a novice, I lift

Between fingertips

A condemned rainbow, the slightest

Misplaced pressure

Capable of murder.

I lean close to its secret, when sudden

As a heart’s leap

It’s free.

 

––Deborah Pease

Sarajevo Marlboro by Miljenko Jergović, translated from the Croatian by Stela Tomašević, has been nominated as one of “25 Books that Inspired the World (1989-2014).” Vote for it among three of your favorites on the World Literature Today site here!