In Memorium: William C. Gruben and His "Animals in the Arts in Texas"

>>Read this post on the new platform at WWW.MADAM-MAYO.COM

Mexico City Lit: Agustin Cadena, Patricia Dubrava & Yours Truly, Plus a Note on the Past & Future of the Literary Magazine

What a thrill it is to see the latest from MexicoCity Lit, five stories by Agustín Cadena, all translated by my dear amiga Patricia Dubrava except the last one, "The Vampire," which is translated by Yours Truly (the latter originally published in the Canadian litmag Exile).

> Read the whole enchilada here.

As Mexico City Lit says of Cadena, "since the early 90s, his eerie, brilliant stories have been a major reference point in Mexican literature; Juan Domingo Arguelles has called him one of the best writers of his generation." I most enthusiastically concur.

[AGUSTIN CADENA]

This latest publication in Mexico City Lit had its genesis in my meeting one of its editors, María Cristina Fernández Hall, at the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) meeting last October in Tucson, Arizona.

(See my posts apropos of that conference: "Translating Across the Border" and "Translating Contemporary Latin America Poets and Writers: Embracing, Resisting, Escaping the Magnetic Pull of the Capital". For that conference's Cafe Latino series I also read Cadena's poem "Café San Martín" together with my translation that appears in the anthology edited by Sarah Cortez, Goodbye Mexico. >> Listen in here. )

More Cadena links to surf:

>Visit Cadena's blog El vino y al hiel

> You can find one of Cadena's stories, the haunting "Lady of the Seas" in my collection of 24 Mexican writers, Mexico: A Traveler's Literary Companion. 
> Listen to my interview about translating Mexican literature for NPR here. 
> Read Cadena's "Lady of the Seas."

> More Translating Beyond Borders: Cadena's "Blind Woman" in BorderSenses

Finally, here's a photo of me and Patricia Dubrava from ALTA-- Pat is pointing to Carne verde, piel negra / An Avocado from Michoacán, the Tameme chapbook of Cadena's story together with my translation. Viva!

[C.M. MAYO AND PATRICIA DUBRAVA,
CELEBRATING MEXICAN WRITER AND POET AGUSTIN CADENA,
AT THE AMERICAN LITERARY TRANSLATORS ASSOCIATION CONFERENCE
TUCSON, ARIZONA, 2015]

A NOTE ON THE PAST & FUTURE OF THE LITERARY MAGAZINE

[YOURS TRULY, EDITOR OF TAMEME.
AND VISITING AMIGA PHOTOGRAPHER
MIRIAM BERKELEY AT THE
AWP BOOK FAIR, NEW YORK CITY, 2008]

I always feel an extra pulse of gratitude for literary magazine editors because, having founded and edited a litmag myself, I know how much work goes into not only selecting work, but editing, designing, formatting, distribution, tax reports, schlepping to book fairs, and ye olde PR. 

Notice that I didn't mention fulfillment because-- bring out the Kleenex-- almost no one buys these things. It may appear that people do: there's the splendiferous assortment of litmags at your local Barnes & Noble and also at many independent bookstores, and for US poets, short story writers and creative nonfictioneers, the ever more mega annual AWP Book Fair with its dozens upon dozens of tables of litmags-- many sponsored by MFA programs in creative writing. But alas, with the singular exception of Cenizo Journal, as far as I've been able to ascertain in my two decades of hithering & thithering in this particular village, as far as commercial viability goes, its name is Potemkin. But beyond the merely cosmetic, a Potemkin Village does have its purposes, rarified, noodathipious, and impractical as they may be. (What is noodathipious? Oh, I made that up.) 

But here's the thing: Market for it or not, there is no getting around the immense delight in writing, in reading, and in doing the good work of bringing authors and readers together by curating, packaging, and presenting the wickedly wondrous little package known as a literary magazine. 

(As the Whopper is to the amuse gueule, so is the commercial paperback thriller to the litmag. Is it a scrumptious amuse gueule? You decide. Hmm, I'll take the one with the lobster clawlet on the dab of pesto. Some people will eat mousse des intestins d'anguille. OK, enough with the food analogies.)

[THE THIRD AND FINAL ISSUE OF TAMEME
MAGAZINE. THE COVER PAINTING IS
'THE VISITORS II"
BY DEREK BUCKNER]

My magazine, Tameme, was one of the last in traditional format to come out before the digital tsunami. It was back in the early 1990s, when I first started publishing my own poetry and short fiction and translations of Mexican works in various litmags from the Quarterly to the Paris Review, that I came up with the notion of bringing Canadian, US and Mexican writers and poets and their translators all together in a bilingual journal. (See this note about various antecedents including Botteghe Oscure, El corno emplumado, and Mandorla, and subsequently, the outstanding contribution that is Rose Mary Salum's Literal.)

The first issue of Tameme, made possible by, among many other things and many other people, my dad and his experience in the printing industry, came off the presses-- these were traditional presses-- in 1999. Boxes upon boxes ended up in the garage. We did metaphorical mud wrestling with New Jersey-based distributors. We mailed out piles and piles and piles of review copies. We mailed out press releases. We attended book fairs. We did all sorts of things that me exhaust me now just to think of them. Oh, and one of them was, we maintained one of the very first websites, www.tameme.org. As of about a decade ago, the software to make that site is no longer even available.

Alas, apart from its memorial website, Tameme is no more. I didn't want to continue publishing it without my dad. As his health failed, the project retreated into a chapbook series-- we did bring out two excellent chapbooks, one by Agustín Cadena and the other a collection of poems by Jorge Fernández Granados translated by John Oliver Simon-- and then finally folded. 

All of which is to say, these days I sometimes feel like a Comanche gazing up at an airplane. 

If I were to start a litmag today, it would look something like Mexico City Lit-- electronic, edgy, and rich with visual art. I love-love-LOVE that Cadena's stories are accompanied by the selection of photographs by Livia Radwanski. A cyber shower of jpeg lotus petals upon y'all! It is an honor to have had my translation of "The Vampire" included-- and, dear reader, do check out the short stories by Cadena, they are both rare and delectable. And free! Such is the future of the labor of love in the white-hot cauldron of culture that is a literary magazine. 

Your comments are ever and always welcome.

Click here.

My bananalicious podcast-packed newsletter goes out maybe 

in another month. Should the planetoids align noodathipiously. 

I invite you to opt in.

In Celebration of Literal

Out of the Forest of Noise:

On Publishing the Literary Short Story

A Conversation with Rose Mary Salum

On Making Connections with Literature and Art

Twitter Is

Why Translate? The Case of the President of Mexico's Secret Book

Translating Contemporary Latin American Poets and Writers: Embracing, Resisting, Escaping the Magnetic Pull of the Capital

[Yours Truly and Patricia Dubrava
with a chapbook of my translation of a short story
 by Agustín Cadena. We both translate Cadena.]

For the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) Conference in Tucson late last month, apart from participating on Mark Weiss's excellent panel "Translating Across the Border," I proposed and chaired a panel that addressed a topic that, in truth, could have been considered for translating poets and writers in any of the populated continents:

Translating Contemporary Latin American Poets and Writers:  

Embracing, Resisting, Escaping the Magnetic Pull of the Capital

>>CONTINUE READING THIS POST ON THE NEW PLATFORM AT WWW.MADAM-MAYO.COM

The panelists were Yours Truly (transcript of my talk follows), Jeffrey C. Barnett, Patricia Dubrava, and Clare Sullivan. In the audience: several very distinguished literary translators (lotus petals upon y'all). The Q & A was extra crunchy, and in true ALTA fashion, in the sweetest way. (Seriously, literary translators, and especially the crowd that regularly attends ALTA conferences, are angelically generous and encouraging. If any of you reading this have ever thought of trying literary translation and/or attending a literary translator's conference, my recommendation is, YES!) 

[LAS TRES AMIGAS: 

Yours Truly, Clare Sullivan, and Patricia Dubrava.]

[Jeffrey C. Barnett, C.M. Mayo, Patricia Dubrava]

Transcript of C.M. Mayo's Remarks 

for the panel on 

Translating Contemporary Latin American Poets and Writers

ALTA, Tucson, Arizona, 

October 31, 2015

I started translating in Mexico City in the early 1990s. Mexico City is Mexico's capital, but it's not analogous to Washington DC or, say, Ottowa, Canada. The megalopolis, "the endless city," as Carlos Monsivaís calls Mexico City, is like Washington DC, New York, Boston, Chicago, Miami and Los Angeles, all piled into one. In other words, its the political capital, financial capital, publishing capital, cultural capital, and television and movie capital. Oh, and business capital, too. Yes, there are other important cities in Mexico, and they have become more important in many ways, and some of them have some excellent writers and poets. But Mexico City is MEXICO CITY.

Back in the early 1990s, the ruling party, the PRI or Partido Revolucionario Institucional or Institutional Revolutionary Party was in power, about to enter the last decade of its more than 70— yes, 70—years in power. How did it last so long? There are many answers to that question but the main one relevant for our topic at hand is that the PRI attempted to bring everyone, whether farmers, campesinos, industrialists or intellectuals, and that would include poets and writers, under its own big tent. It had its ways. Stick and carrot— or bone, as Mexicans like to say.

You may be aware that after two consecutive presidential administrations under the PAN or the Partido Acción Nacional, over the past decade, Mexico's Presidency has since returned to the PRI. But it's not exactly a return to the past. Not exactly.

I'm not going to get all political on you, I simply want to underline the fact that back in early 1990s, the Mexican literary establishment, concentrated in Mexico City, was heavily influenced by and subsidized by the PRI government. Just to give you a notion of this: If you were to go into a library and look at some back issues of the leading Mexican literary and intellectual magazine of the time— of course that would be Octavio's Paz's Vuelta— you would see a large number of advertisements from government-owned entities and Televisa, the party-allied television conglomerate. There were literary gatekeepers, as there are everywhere in this world, but in Mexico City at that time, they were ginormously powerful. Octavio Paz was king.

Though Octavio Paz met his maker some years ago, in some ways things remain the same. Mexico City is where it's at. The government still plays an important, though lesser role. Letras Libres, successor to Vuelta, remains a leading magazine of influence, and in fact it does publish some of the best writing you'll find anywhere.

But since the early 1990s there have been political and economic sea-changes in Mexico. Power is more dispersed. Other political parties have become far more powerful. On the right and the left they rival the PRI and on many an occasion, beat the PRI at the ballot box.

And even more than the political and economic changes, the technological changes have been sea-changes. I'm talking about the rise of digital media, from blogging to YouTube, podcasting, Tweeting, FaceBooking, and publishing— and by the way, amazon is now in Mexico with www.amazon.com.mx.

To find a Mexican writer to translate, you no longer have to travel to Mexico City and get chummy with the powers that be who can make recommendations and, perhaps, invite the anointed to tea. Now, say, from Boston or Hong Kong or Cleveland, you can follow any given Mexican writer's blog, and comment thereupon. Or, say, send her a Tweet!

I would love to tell you the story of how, in the late 1990s, I started my bilingual magazine, Tameme, which published many Mexican writers, and my experiences with putting together the anthology, Mexico: A Traveler's Literary Companion— no easy task, since the idea of the TLC series is to provide writing about the whole country— and that would include writing from and about Baja California, Yucatan, Chiapas, Chihuahua...

At present I am translating a batch of Mexican writers: Ignacio Solares, a novelist born in Ciudad Juárez, long based in Mexico City; Agustín Cadena, who was born in the state of Hidalgo and is living in Hungary; Araceli Ardón who was born in San Miguel de Allende and lives in Querétaro; and yet another, Rose Mary Salum, who is from Mexico City and now based in Houston, Texas.

But I don't want to take time from my fellow panelists and what I hope will be a rich question and answer session. The main thing I want to emphasize is that, as literary translators, we can play a powerful role in influencing who and who is not read in English. Who to translate? It's good to ask for advice from the powers that be of the literary establishment in, say, Mexico or Cuba or Chile, and maybe even choose to translate one of them. They might be blast-your-wig-to-the-asteroid-belt fabulous! But we also have to recognize that there are power structures in literary communities, some of them entangled with political structures, and we need to acknowledge and examine, in our own minds, and our own hearts, what part we play in that or choose not to play. And why.

#   #   #

We may have been visiting the southwest this year, but ni modo, after the panel we ambled over to Sinbad's for Iraqi tea and babaganoushe. 

Your comments are always welcome. Write to me here.

Patricia Dubrava's blog post on ALTA

My review of Ilán Stavans Octavio Paz: A Meditation

My talk for ALTA 2014:

Why Translate? The Case of the President of Mexico's Secret Book

Translating Across the Border: 

Transcript of C.M. Mayo's remarks for the panel on 

"Translating the Other Side," ALTA, October 29, 2015.

Goodbye Mexico: Poems of Remembrance, edited by Sarah Cortez
(with my translation of a poem by Agustin Cadena)

Mexico City Melissa Garden 

(30 second video)

Cosecha del FIL: In Celebration of "Literal"

Literally Short Film Awards

For its 10th anniversary, Literal Magazine is holding a short film contest. 

I am a big, big fan of Literal. Having edited my own literary magazine, Tameme, for a mere 3 issues,  I stand in awe of all that editor Rose Mary Salum and her team have accomplished-- and continue to accomplish. I'll be posting a note soon about the latest anthology, a beautiful and path-breaking collection of Arab and Jewish short stories out of Latin America, Delta de las arenas.

PS Check out my latest book reviews in Literal:
*Making a New World and Mexico and Mexicans in the Making of the United States by John Tutino
*Our Lost Border, edited by Sarah Cortez and Sergio Troncoso
*From This Wicked Patch of Dust and Crossing Borders by Sergio Troncoso

And an article, now ancient history: "Twitter Is"

Feria Internacional del Libro, Guadalajara: El último príncipe del Imperio Mexicano

This Saturday November 27th at 6 pm at the Feria Internacional del Libro in Guadalajara, I will be presenting my novel, El último príncipe del Imperio Mexicano (Grijalbo Random House Mondadori), which is the magnificent translation by Agustín Cadena of my novel The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire (Unbridled Books).

(Last year, I presented the English version, and blogged about the fair here and here--- and also about Literal, its editor, my amiga Rose Mary Salum, and a little literary history including about Tameme and El corno emplumado. One of the people I was especially happy to see last year was Spanish and Ladino translator Trudy Balch, who, alas, passed away last month in New York. Read Trudy's fascinating guest-blog post about Mexican activist Gaby Brimmer here.)

The two writers who will be presenting my novel at FIL are Carlos Pascual (author of La insurgenta, winner of the Grijalbo award for best bicentennial historical novel), and historian Alejandro Rosas. (Alejandro also presented the English version of the novel in Mexico City last year.)

P.S. Carlos is also an actor; I think he may read a section of the novel.

The details / Los detalles:
27/11/2010
Presentación del libro
El último príncipe del imperio mexicano por C.M. Mayo
Presentan:
Carlos Pascual, Alejandro Rosas
Horario:
18:00 a 18:50
Salón Elías Nandino, planta alta, Expo Guadalajara

The event is free and open to the public.

More anon.

Roger Mansell October 8, 1935 - October 25, 2010

After a long battle with cancer, Roger Mansell, my dad, passed away early in the morning on October 25. He was a great father and he also left the legacies of his research, archive, and encouragement and example. After a career in business (mainly in the printing industry) he dedicated himself to researching the Allied POWs under the Japanese during WWII. He was never a POW himself; he had served as a lieutenant in Korea in the late 50s. It was his love of history and the opportunity to be of service that prompted him to dedicate more than twenty years to compiling an unprecedented data base on the POWs under the Japanese. He also dedicated many of his days to helping other researchers, both professional and amateur, including many family members of POWs who were trying to find out what had happened to their fathers, grandfathers, uncles, and friends.

The data base, with its camp rosters and much more, is at www.mansell.com.

His forthcoming book, The Forgotten Men of Guam, is being edited by historian Linda Goetz Holmes. It tells the story of what happened to the military men and civilians (mainly Pan Am Clipper crews) who were captured on Guam after Pearl Harbor in 1941.

Over the years he had amassed a magnificent archive of World War II-era research materials consisting of more than fifteen linear feet of documents, including memoirs and interviews with survivors, some fifteen hours of video recordings, and approximately four hundred published titles (many extremely rare), which he donated to the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, last month. (Click here to read about the archive.)

Those of you in the literary and translation communities may know him as the publisher of Tameme, the bilingual literary journal, and later chapbook series, which I edited. Tameme, a 501 (c) nonprofit foundation dedicated to publishing new writing from Canada, the U.S., and Mexico, and its publcations, would not have been possible without his knowledge of printing and his help with the administrative tasks. I'll be posting more about his work for Tameme in another post soon. (I don't know yet what will happen with Tameme; I hope to be able to make an announcement about that early in the new year.)

Please visit www.rogermansell.com, the website I created for him, to read about his work, which I hope may continue to help people researching this period, and to tell this terrible story of the POWs, which had been so long buried in inaccessible archives.

More anon.

Agustín Cadena in Mexico City: Las tentaciones de la dicha

For many years now I've been a big admirer of Mexican writer Agustin Cadena's fiction. One of his short stories, "Lady of the Seas," appears in my anthology, Mexico: A Traveler's Literary Companion (Whereabouts Press, 2006), and another was the first Tameme Chapbook ~ Cauderno, Carne verde, piel negra / An Avocado from Michoacán (Tameme, 2007). A third translation of mine, his story "Parque Murillo," is forthcoming from Small Beer Press, in a collection edited by Eduardo Jimenez Mayo. I strongly feel that many more of Cadena's works deserve to be translated into English. For those of you who read Spanish, check out his blog, El vino y la hiel. And if you're in Mexico City this week don't miss the launch of his new collection of short stories, Las tentaciones de la dicha (Editorial Jus), with presenters Eve Gil, Miguel Couturier, and Luis Bernardo Pérez, this Thursday at 7 pm, address: Donceles 66, Col Centro (entre Rep Chile y Palma). The event is free and open to the public.

Here's the jacket text:

Hay, en las historias de Agustín Cadena, un diálogo con los aspectos tristes de la vida que sin embargo nos arrancan sonrisas y complicidades para envolvernos en la oscura magia de sus desgracias. Los cuentos que componen este libro son una muestra de ello: viejos vampiros en busca de inquilinos, una pareja que al vacacionar en las playas del mar Negro encuentra a un hombre con un misterioso maletín, un castillo convertido en hotel de lujo donde se dan cita personajes excéntricos. Una a una las historias de Las tentaciones de la dicha nos seducen, nos vuelven cómplices, nos hacen reír mientras veladamente asistimos a la pérdida de la inocencia del mundo que nos rodea.

P.S. Cadena, I am truly honored to say, is the translator of my novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, which comes out next month as El último príncipe del Imperio mexicano, with Random House Mondadori.

More anon.

Why Translation Matters

Edith Grossman's new book is on the top on my reading Himalaya.

P.S. I had a little to say about translations and editing translations in this recent post, about Literal, Tameme, El Corno Emplumado and Botteghe Oscure.

More anon.

Cosecha de la FIL, Part 3: In Celebration of Literal: Latin American Voices / Voces Latinomericanas

The other day here at the Feria Internacional de Libros in Guadalajara, I participated on the panel presenting Literal: Latin American Voices / Voces Latinoamericanos, the Houston-based bilingual literary magazine edited by Rose Mary Salum. Here's my slightly edited version in translation:

It's been a few years since I saw the first issue of Literal, and with each one I am only more impressed-- impressed not only that it is exists (for launching and continuing to publish a literary magazine for five years is no minor job); impressed not only that it has such a broad and original vision; but above all, impressed by its extraordinary quality.

Speaking as a writer, I am happy to see a new literary journal, and thrilled indeed to come across one of such style and quality as Literal. Just the mention of few of the Mexican writers and poets in its pages should say more than I ever could: Pura López Colomé, Alberto Blanco, Adolfo Castañon, Tanya Huntington Hyde, Fabio Morábito...

And speaking as a literary translator, I am delighted. We translators should all celebrate Literal, for there are so few publications of quality that are open to, never mind so actively promote literary translation. (It pains me to say this, but this is especially true in the United States, my own country.)

I am a writer and a translator of contemporary Mexican fiction and poetry, and in these two roles I have had the honor of participating in Literal. But in my talk today I would like to put on a different hat, as they say: that of editor.

As an editor, I am a great admirer of Rose Mary Salum. About ten years ago, I founded a journal called Tameme. Tameme had a somewhat different concept--- it was bilingual, everything in both Spanish and English presented strictly side-by-side; it published fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction (no interviews or book reviews); and it only included works by living writers from or residing in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. I don't mean to go on about Tameme; my point is that I know that editing a bilingual literary magazine is a path paved with satisfactions and strewn with surprises, some magical, and many, well, consternating. To launch and continue publishing any literary magazine is not easy. So to Literal, to Rose Mary Salum, my sincere respects.

I recall a conversation we had some years ago about Botteghe Oscure. This was a magazine founded by Marguerite Caetani in Rome (named after the street), and published from the late 1940s through 1960. She published in four languages: Italian, French, German and English and such writers as Dylan Thomas and Guiseppi di Lampedusa. Botteghe Oscure was an inspiration for George Plimpton, an American writer who was one of the founders of the Paris Review. Based for many years now in New York City, the Paris Review is one of the leading literary journals in the U.S. In my case, with Tameme, I can mention as inspirations The Paris Review and El Corno Emplumado / The Plumed Horn , which was founded by Margaret Randall and
Sergio Mondragon in Mexico City in the early 1960s. El Corno Emplumado is perhaps best remembered for publishing Octavio Paz in English, but it has a fascinating history. Another inspiration was Mandorla: New Writing from the Americas / Nueva escritura de las Americas, founded by Roberto Tejada in Mexico City in the
early 1990s. After I founded Tameme (gosh, this was in the days before the Internet took off), I learned about the superb Two Lines, a journal of translations of writing and poetry open to all languages, founded by the California-based translator Olivia Sears. Two Lines has published many of the leading Mexican writers and poets.

I'm not going to go into the detail of the history of literary journals and their founding editors; I mean to say, we are--- as is anyone bold enough to start a literary journal--- part of this tradition. And Literal is a mega-bright star in the not-so-big constellation of bilingual magazines. I don't think it's possible to exaggerate the importance of Literal and the many reasons we have to celebrate it.

As an editor, I'd like to talk a bit about the work, which is so much more wide-ranging and complex than most writers and translators realize. As editor of Tameme, I have learned many lessons, some quite painful. To successfully publish a literary magazine, one needs a range of abilities and while many people have some or a few of these, it is rare indeed to find someone blessed with all of them. First and foremost, one needs the ability to recognize literary quality, to evaluate and select. Second, one needs courage, huge dollops of it, for not only is publishing a journal a public act--- and any public act invites criticism, even ridicule or worse--- one of the key abilities of a good editor is the ability to say, "No." No to friends, no to famous writers, no to wannabe writers, no to, well, all sorts of people. Believe me, when you launch a literary magazine you will find no shortage of manuscripts. If you're an arrogant narcissist, saying "No," is a click of the fingers. (Certainly we all know of some sadists who rather relish it.) But if you have a good heart, having to say, "No," can be one of the least pleasant parts of this work. I know Rose Mary Salum has a good heart, and I know this part of the work cannot be easy. In addition, an editor must also have managerial skills. To work with a board, with assistants, and designers, as with any team, requires such skills but in the case of working with writers and poets, well, are we not like cats? Try herding cats!

Then there are administrative skills. There are permissions to be complied with--- letters, contracts, payments. One has to choose a printer, after taking bids, calculating the cost of certain types of paper-- this thickness or that, acid-free or what. How many to print? Arranging shipment and warehousing.

And one has to be an expert in marketing. (Marketing! Goodness, can't you go to university and get a couple of degrees in this field?) To put it simply: how to bring the magazine to the hands of its readers? We don't want the boxes sitting unopened in the warehouse!

In sum, editing a literary magazine is like trying to juggle a watermelon, a few squealing mice, the aforementioned cats, a hippopotamus or three, and a block of cement. What is the block of cement? Why, distribution. God, distribution. I've been a member of a private e-mail discussion group for editors of literary journals and I can't quote or name names but believe me, I've heard the stories.... distribution... it's an unholy nightmare. But when I go into a Sanborn's, I always see a copy of Literal. And they're doing a fabulous job getting the word out with the website, the blog, and facebook and twitter. Rose Mary Salum, and the team at Literal, my respects!!


I don't have time to comment in more detail about Literal's extraordinary editorial vision. Suffice it to say that if you look at any issue's table of contents you will see the richness and originality of the selections. There are interviews with such outstanding figures as Junot Diaz, Oscar Hijuelos, Hernando de Soto, and Wangari Maathai; essays by Margot Glanz (on the Orient Express), David Medina (on GMOs), Alberto Chimal (on Edward Gorey--- speaking of cats!), John Mason Hart, one of the leading historians of Mexico, Maarten van Delden on Jose Martí, and fiction by Rosa Beltrán, Juan Villoro... I haven't yet mentioned the gallery section, with photography, sculpture, painting, and even an entire issue dedicated to the art of comics. Literal embraces not only Latin America but the world, ideas, art--- it is an intellectual magazine; intellectual in the best sense of the word.

In not only launching Literal but keeping it going stronger than ever for five years is an extraodinary achievement. As an editor, Rose Mary, my heartfelt congratulations to you. As a writer, as a translator and most of all, as a reader, my heartfelt thanks. May Literal have all the success it deserves and long, long life.

Translation of a talk given at the Feria Internacional del Libro, December 1, 2009.


***UPDATE: See my podcast interview with Rose Mary Salum for Conversations with Other Writers

Mexico Connect's James Tipton Reviews Chapbook of Poems by Jorge Fernandez Granados, translated by John Oliver Simon (Tameme, 2008)

James Tipton writes,

Many readers of Mexico Connect have discovered these illuminating words by Octavio Paz: "In the United States the word death burns the lips, but the Mexican lives close to it, jokes about it, caresses it, celebrates it, sleeps with it, it is his favorite toy." Those words are echoed in the translator's (John Oliver Simon's) introduction to Ghosts of the Palace of Blue Tiles, by Jorge Fernández Granados ... READ MORE.

Guest-blogger Francisco Aragón on 5 Books of Latino Poetry

My amigo Francisco Aragón, Washington DC-based poet and editor, has been such an inspiration to me. It was his Momotombo Press's beautiful series of Latino poetry chapbooks that inspired me to bring out Tameme's bilingual chapbooks. The other day we were both interviewed by Grace Cavalieri for her radio program, The Poet and the Poem, at the Library of Congress. More about that anon. In the meantime, herewith Francisco's guest-blog post on what's new and noteworthy in Latino poetry. Over to you, Francisco!

From my perch as director of Letras Latinas, the literary program of the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame, I try to stay abreast of what's new in Latino poetry, particularly among emerging voices. As 2008 winds to a close, I'd like to recommend five titles, stocking stuffers if you will-all published by small presses, where American poetry is at its most vital, in my view. Here they are, with companion commentary:

1. The Date Fruit Elegies (Bilingual Press) by John Olivares Espinoza.
"Espinoza es una espina en el corazón, a thorn in the heart. Gracias Espinoza for writing about our raza with so much sentimiento, so much love. Sometimes the beauty and pain of our stories are overwhelming, and I am grateful when writers like him recognize this responsibility as a privilege."
-Sandra Cisneros

2. Jane-in-the-Box (March Street Press) by Rita Maria Martinez
"Rita Maria Martínez's Jane-in-the-Box is a Rubik's Cube of Janes. Each poem is a smartly annotated hauntingly revisionist homage to Jane Eyre. Martínez's astounding poems are literary, conversational, personal, fun, as she confidently transports her Janes from Moors to Macy's, from Thornfield Manor to the world of tattoos." -Denise Duhamel

3. Please Do Not Feed the Ghost (BlazeVox) by Peter Ramos
"I've lived with these poems for many years-- they've never failed me. Part Plath's black humor, part Stevens's bright obvious, part Hugo's degrees of gray. Please Do Not Feed the Ghost is an exceptional meditation on family, country, friendship, and language-and on the inevitable loves and thefts to which these things give rise" -Graham Foust

4. Little Spells (GOSS 183 / Casa Menendez) by Emma Trelles
"'The beginning should eat the eyes'. With intimate and imagistic language, the start of Little Spells offers a graceful meditation on how to write a poem, drawing us into a poetry collection filled with humor and sorrow and the bright details of a hyphen-American life. Also a journalist, Emma Trelles is a Cuban-American writer accustomed to crossing cultures, and these poems wind with equal ease between a host of settings, and with a lens trained on the magic of the ordinary. Urban hamlets are painted as fables and saints and musicians offer salvation, as do intricate women, the green wilds of Florida and a spry attention to the beauty of words." -Goss 183

5. The Space Between Our Danger and Delight (Beothuk Books) by Dan Vera
"The poetry of Dan Vera is clear, strong, honest and funny. He's the sharp-eyed observer in the corner who doesn't say much, but makes every word count. He handles the political and the personal with equal grace, even as the lines blur. Whether he's ruminating on the perils of bilingualism, giving voice to the bewilderment of his Cuban immigrant family, cursing the censors who tried to repress gay writers over the years, waiting for the late great poet Sterling Brown to turn the next corner in Washington, D.C., or taking delight in things delightful, Dan Vera is damn good company. You'll see. -Martín Espada

--Francisco Aragón

---> For the archive of Madam Mayo guest-blog posts, click here.

Jorge Fernandez Granados y John Oliver Simon

Una nota acerca de su cuaderno en el blog de Malva Fores, Casa nomada.

Guest-Blogger Russell Cluff on Remembering Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

It has not escaped Madam Mayo's notice that one recent and otherwise very fine anthology of 20 Mexican short stories includes work by only three--- count 'em, three--- women. Are the mexicanas literarias all going around in burkhas or what? That's a subject for another blog post; suffice it to say for now that perhaps the greatest of all American literary figures was a woman born in a tiny Mexican town in the seventeenth century-- Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Today's guest-blogger, Russell Cluff, first crossed paths with Yours Truly when he and his colleague L. Howard Quackenbush sent me their translation of an extraordinary flash fiction by Mexican writer Guillermo Samperio (which appeared, in both English and Spanish in the third issue of Tameme, back in 2003). When I heard that he had done something so original as to make a musical CD of the poetry of the greatest of Mexico's poets, I immediately invited him to guest-blog and am honored indeed that he accepted. Over to you, Russell!

Remembering Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: My Contribution

Background: After her death, certain figures in the political world of New Spain (Mexico) exerted a tremendous effort to erase Sor Juana’s memory from the minds of the populace. The principal players in this endeavor were her confessor, Antonio Núñez de Miranda, and Archbishop Francisco de Aguilar y Seijas. Her crime: her one and only foray into the area of theology (an exercise forbidden for women) in the guise of a critical analysis of a sermon by a Portuguese Jesuit by the name of Antonio Vieira. The result was that of the 300 plus years that Sor Juana has been gone, it is believed that most Mexicans forgot her for over one hundred years. However, since her books had been published in Spain, her memory sprang to life anew in the nineteenth century. From that time forward, she and her work only become more important by the day.

Reference: One of the quickest and most accurate bios on this incredible genius from seventeenth-century Mexico City (her dates are 1651-1695) is to be found in Margaret Sayers Peden’s introduction to her translation of Sor Juana’s prose: A Woman of Genius: The Intellectual Autobiography of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, second edition.

Why make the songs: It is Sor Juana’s importance—- and the musicality of her verse—-that inspired me to create a musical album that I call the “Return of the Tenth Muse...” My project might rightly be considered Quixotic, since I currently live in a world vastly disparate in terms of time, distance, language, culture, and musical tastes from that which saw the development of one of the Hispanic world’s greatest poets. Be that as it may, once begun this project was not to be denied…

Retooling: I have often told myself that making a musical CD with the poetry of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s poetry was one answer to a deep-seated need in me for a fresh, complete education. But, really, that would be an untruth! It’s the other way about-- the effect of a particular cause. As all artists know, the creative urge comes first and all subsequent actions required to bring the desired art to fruition present themselves--- each in it’s own time—demanding attention, never taking no for an answer.

Dream Talking: It’s as if a chimerical dialogue had blossomed right in my face: “Well, if you want these lyrics with chords to become a melody that other musicians can play, you’ll have to get a notation program and get it down!” / “But I don’t know notation…” / “Then learn it. You can download a program from the Internet like those sold by Finale, such as PrintMusic. And, of course, there are others. Do your surfing!”

For anyone making an album, this sort of exchange continues from composition to recording to marketing to disc production to placing the product for sale on the Internet-- in lieu of a record contract.

Phase by Phase: My choices for these Phases were the following:

Recording: this was accomplished in Rosewood Recording, a professional studio a block and a half from my house.

Marketing: for the CD front I paid a student computer guru about 300 bucks to morph me into a digital photo of the nun’s most famous painting by Miguel Cabrera (she wearing her robes, I wearing mine). For the back, I had him perch Sor Juana above me while standing in front of a Colonial shrine in Mexico City. In the first instance, I’m sneaking up on her; in the second, she’s observing me observing architecture that persists from her world). Photos of Cabrera’s painting can be found all over the Internet. (Note: that link is also a good place to download errorless Spanish versions of all her writings.)

Disc production: I chose Disc Makers.

Internet sales: CD Baby, now owned by Disc Makers. This was my choice because I can sell the physical disc as well as digital downloads all on the same page. However, let me clarify that the notion of “audience” is much more important to me than sales. Also, my music is downloadable at 18 different places on the Internet, such as DigStation, where the CD brochure can also be downloaded (www.digstation.com/ArtistAlbums.aspx?albumid=ALB000021376.) Beyond that, Google me, Russell M. Cluff.

Why Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz? From my studies as a student of Latin American Literature, I knew that Sor Juana had been a musician who had written a treatise on music (though it is no longer extant), she was the music director (cantora) for her convent for eight years, she has an important poem about music (generally designated as poem #24), and she once said that her music created to be played in the cathedrals had been accompanied by guitar and tabor (small hand drum).

Baroque music for a baroque poet: From start to finish, I intended to create a simulacrum of baroque music, based on the following elements: total respect for the text over the music (so as not to force a word into a space where it does not fit or stress a word in the wrong place), the use of instruments that were feasible for the 1600s in Colonial New Spain (insofar as possible), monody (a single melody), and the use of basso continuo. Tonality-- pitching the melody around the tonic chord-- is also a baroque value that was followed in this body of work. Where I willfully vary from baroque practices is with the use of more recent Latin rhythms, such as the bolero beat (ONE, two-two, One), the rumba, and one tune with a bossa nova beat. Among the instruments used, one will hear: hand drums, flute, recorder, penny whistle, piccolo, clarinet, guitar, mandolin, cello, and the four strings. I broke the rules a couple of times by using the piano (invented in 1711) and one or two other instruments, mainly to thicken the sound a bit.

Reference: For an excellent review of the baroque in music, see Nicholas Anderson’s book, Baroque Music: From Monteverdi to Handel (London: Thames and Hudson, 1994). According to this author, the two most important achievements of the baroque was the establishment of monody and the supremacy of the text over the music—an attempt to avoid the distortion of the words.

Composition: My choice of poems for this first volume-- boldly, I included the words “Vol. 1” in the title so as to goad myself into making Volume 2-- was guided by the knowledge that I would be the only singer on this album, a male baritone. Therefore, I chose (with two exceptions) poems with either a neutral or a male point of view. This will not be possible for Volume Two, since it will mainly be centered on the female point of view and will require women’s voices.

For this album, I used 13 sonnets (11 syllables each) and one romance (ballad: a narrative poem with eight syllables per line). Sor Juana never made titles for her poetry; therefore, I used shortened versions of the first verse as the titles (they will never match with English renditions).

More References: For the best poetically rendered English versions of seven of the 14 poems included in the album-- Regreso de la Décima Musa, Vol. 1. 14 Canciones con Letra de Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz-- consult the following two books:

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Poems, Protest, and a Dream, published in Penguin Classics with an introduction by Ilan Stavans and all texts translated by Margaret Sayers Peden.

A Sor Juana Anthology, published by Harvard University Press, 1988, with a foreword by Octavio Paz and all translations by Alan S. Trueblood.

English versions-- mainly prosaic-- of the remaining seven poems can be found both in print and on the Internet. For the most complete study ever done on Sor Juana see Octavio Paz’s Sor Juana or, the Traps of Faith, published by Harvard University press, 1988, translation, once again, by Margaret Sayers Peden. It has been argued that this work tipped the scales in the decision that gave Paz the Nobel Prize in 1990.

-- Russell Cluff

---> For the archive of Madam Mayo's guest-blog posts, click here.

Beth Bosworth Interviews Yours Truly in the Fall 2008 Issue of Saint Ann's Review

Here. More anon.

Editing the Chapbook: Interviews on EWN

New on Dan Wickett's Emerging Writers Network blog:
an interview with several chapbook editors, including yours truly (on editing the Tameme Chapbooks ~ Cuadernos).

Jorge Fernandez Granados & John Oliver Simon

News from Tameme Chapbooks ~ Cuadernos --- all over the Mexico City press!

Milenio
...Autor de poemarios como Resurrección o El cristal, así como del volumen de cuentos El cartógrafo, Jorge Fernández Granados por vez primera es traducido al inglés bajo el título Ghosts of de Palace of Blue Tiles –Los fantasmas del Palacio de los Azulejos- (Tameme Chapbooks, 2008). “Tengo la convicción de que en un mundo globalizado, donde las fronteras políticas pierden importancia frente a la tecnología y a la comunicación, un texto que pueda ser leído por otros lectores, en otra lengua, permite ingresar a otra dimensión. Y la traducción es un trabajo de coinvención o de segunda creación, que de ninguna manera hay un autor y sus traductores, sino son varios autores que crean el texto en otro código: un buen traductor puede hacer que un texto viva y uno malo lo puede matar para siempre.”
...READ MORE


El Universal El poeta y traductor estadounidense John Oliver Simon estará de visita en México para ofrecer un par de lecturas poéticas, el próximo miércoles en la Casa del Poeta, de esta ciudad, y el viernes en la Casa del Escritor, en Puebla. Oliver Simon también aprovechará su visita para presentar Ghosts of the palace of blue tiles (Los fantasmas del palacio de los azulejos, Tameme Chapbooks, 2008), traducciones suyas del poeta mexicano Jorge Fernández Granados. El libro fue publicado en el prestigiado sello californiano Tameme, dirigido por C. M. Mayo, tras haber sido seleccionado como el mejor manuscrito y traducción de una obra literaria mexicana contemporánea a partir de una convocatoria lanzada por la editorial.... READ MORE


El Universal (another article) A la par de la creación poética, John Oliver Simon es el traductor por excelencia de los poetas latinoamericanos. Lo mismo ha traducido al inglés la obra de Gonzalo Rojas, que la de José Emilio Pacheco, Rodolfo Hinistroza, David Huerta, Elsa Cross y Jorge Fernández Granados. Su aprecio por la poesía lo llevó a fundar en San Francisco el Poetry Inside Out, un programa de traducción literaria entre niños de escuelas primarias, con el que busca valorar el papel de la poesía en la educación... READ MORE


El Porvenir
La antología "Los fantasmas del palacio de los azulejos", de Jorge Fernández, la cual conforma una visión unitaria de la poética de su autor, y el libro "Principio de incertidumbre" serán presentados el 12 de agosto, en la Casa Refugio Citlaltépetl. En la presentación de "Ghosts of the Palace of blue tiles", (Los fantasmas del palacio de los azulejos), primer cuaderno antológico en inglés del poeta Jorge Fernández Granados, participarán María Baranda, Josu Landa, John Oliver Simon, Jorge volpi y el autor. El cuaderno editado por Tameme, es el resultado de una amplia convocatoria lanzada por el sello en Estados Unidos para publicar el mejor manuscrito y traducción de una obra mexicana... READ MORE