{"id":129,"date":"2006-03-09T03:11:00","date_gmt":"2006-03-09T11:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=129"},"modified":"2006-03-09T03:11:00","modified_gmt":"2006-03-09T11:11:00","slug":"check-it-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/check-it-out\/","title":{"rendered":"Check it Out"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It came in the mail recently & is worth checking out:<\/p>\n

Absinthe<\/a>, the magazine of \u201cNew European Writing.\u201d Issue 5 just out. It contains its usual eclectic mix centered on Eastern Europe but also French, Spanish and Swedish contributions of both poetry and prose; authors include<\/span><\/span>
<\/p>\n

Michel Fa\u0457s, Florin Ion Firimita<\/a>, Stefan Mihalev Furnadzhiev,Bettina Galvagni<\/a>, Georgi Gospodinov, Marcin Jagodzi\u0144ski<\/a>, Kostas Karyotakis<\/a>, Niklas R\u00e5dstr\u00f6m, Norberto Luis Romero<\/a>, H\u00e9l\u00e8ne Sanguinetti, Monica Sarsini, Sasha Skenderija<\/a>, and Boris Slutsky<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/span><\/span>Here is the opening poem of the issue (by <\/span><\/span>SASHA SKENDERIJA)<\/span><\/span>:<\/span><\/p>\n

Why The Dwarf Had To Be Shot<\/span><\/p>\n

On June twenty eight, Nineteen hundred and ninety two,
in the basement of the Sarajevo City Hospital we sat
with professor Dz\u02c7evad Karahasan and his wife, who were serving
as hospital volunteers, since the city had been massacred day after day.
They were devastated by their family tragedy, her mother murdered
in her apartment by a grenade, and we came to console them
with conversation, with desperate hope
that military intervention was on its way. But instead,
along with pomp and unprecedented measures of security,
Mitterand came, to give us and our slayers a lecture
in morals and mutual understanding. Horrified starving old women
sobbed beyond consolation, while confused passersby and children
hurried toward international television cameras, behaving
like pandas born by Caesarian section in a zoo
in Indianapolis. The whole world applauded with praise the French
love of justice, the French courage,
French altruism \u2014while Mitterand senilely
smiled at the decor of a destroyed building which had been,
in his honor, renamed L\u2019 hospital France. Murderers did not
bombard us for a few hours, taking their time
to shake his hand, and all went smoothly,
almost like an ecumenical colloquium somewhere in Paris.
A local TV crew came to the basement asking
for an interview with Dz\u02c7. K. What did he think about the surprise
visit of Mitterand, they asked. He said, \u201cDisgusting filth.\u201d
They asked him what he thought, in his opinion, ought
to be done. He said, \u201cto shoot the dwarf dead.\u201d They asked
if he would do it. He said, \u201cIf I had a weapon at hand, for sure.\u201d
TV crew: \u201cWould you do it, professor, to go down in history?\u201d
Dz\u02c7. K.: \u201cWhat history, friend? I would do it in order to reach sense.\u201d
No weapons were at hand, and the interview, unfortunately, has not
until now been published.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/span><\/span>
A bit older (fall 2005) but still on the table near the reading chair & picked up again & again:<\/span><\/span>
<\/span>
<\/span>damn the caesars<\/a> # 3, edited by Richard Owens in Buffalo. Besides old friends like Jerome Rothenberg, Clayton Eshleman, Kristin Prevallet, John Moritz and Dale Smith, it has poems by the excellent but much more rarely spotted Jonathan Greene and Duncan McNaughton, and a most exquisite poem by Tony Tost, called \u201cSquint.\u201d <\/span><\/span>
<\/span>
<\/span>Just in from<\/span> Burning Deck<\/a>, <\/span><\/span><\/span>and in the process of being read by slow, daily ingestions of a couple pages \u2014 sipped, really \u2014 is Gerhard Roth\u2019s The Will To Sickness <\/i><\/span>translated from the German by Tristram Wolff (a very good first translation \u2014 I hope he will go on translating for a long time). Here\u2019s the backcover bl
\nurb:<\/span><\/span>
<\/span><\/span>
<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

\n

\n
\n

Gerhard Roth burst on the German-speaking scene in the early 1970s with three fiercely experimental novels, among them our present DER WILLE ZUR KRANKHEIT (1973). It is here that Roth developed his \u201cobjective\u201d prose, his aggregates of minute observations and impressions. The subjective narrator perceives, notes, thinks. Representation eludes his perspective. The effect is surreal with an undertone of Angst: \u201ci am preparing a slow disintegration of the external world inside my head.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roth was part of the literary group known as \u201cForum Stadtpark\u201d (later renamed Graz Writers\u2019 Collective) where Peter Handke and Elfriede Jelinek also first made their mark. He has continued to explore the Austrian psyche and especially the fragile nature of \u201creality\u201d and the political aspects of what society puts forward as such and what it glosses over. The genres he works in range from children\u2019s books to screenplays, and, most impressively though also more traditionally, to the seven volumes of Die Archive des Schweigens<\/em>. This \u201cArchive of Silence,\u201d which comprises a photographic anthology, a collection of essays, a biography and four novels, is widely considered Roth\u2019s masterpiece.<\/p>\n

Over the course of his career he has been honored with (among others) the Alfred D\u00f6blin, Marie Luise Kaschnitz, Peter Rosegger, and Bruno Kreisky prizes.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It came in the mail recently & is worth checking out: Absinthe, the magazine of \u201cNew European Writing.\u201d Issue 5 just out. It contains its usual eclectic mix centered on Eastern Europe but also...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}