Category Archives: Translations

Behold the Fan

Posted on February 16, 2011 by Francois Lachance

Janine Beichman. Embracing the Firebird: Yosano Akiko and the Birth of the Female Voice in Modern Japanese Poetry Discussions on what form we should translate tanka into have focused until now on tanka in its printed forms. One argument for … Continue reading →

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Before Rock Musicians Smashed Guitars

Posted on February 9, 2011 by Francois Lachance

Yosano Akiko (1878-1942) River of Stars: Selected Poems of Yosano Akiko translated by Sam Hamill and Keiko Matsui Gibson. The gods wish it so: a life ends with a shatter — with my great broadax I demolish my koto. Oh, … Continue reading →

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Regressions and Leaping

Posted on December 31, 2010 by Francois Lachance

Helen Humphreys “Postscript” in the “Souvenirs” section of Nuns Looking Anxious Listening to Radios — these are the concluding words pointing to an event or space beyond words… When language has abandoned us and we can say perhaps just one … Continue reading →

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Hartshorn

Posted on December 27, 2010 by Francois Lachance

Penguin has a series called Great Food in which is Gervase Markham The Well-Kept Kitchen which is collection of excerpts from The English Housewife (1615). Advice is dispensed on keeping the kitchen garden. In February, the new of the moon, … Continue reading →

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Matériel

Posted on December 19, 2010 by Francois Lachance

Monique Wittig on the challenge from “One is not born a woman” (1981) in The Straight Mind and Other Essays This operation of understanding reality has to be undertaken by every one of us: call it a subjective, cognitive practice. … Continue reading →

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GMO Enviro

Posted on December 4, 2010 by Francois Lachance

Next entry will be devoted to translation as trafficking This is the next entry. In her Translator’s Preface, Catherine Porter indicates that Avital Ronell had a hand in revising the English-language draft. She “frequently made small changes in the language.” … Continue reading →

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Word and Ding

Posted on November 30, 2010 by Francois Lachance

Avital Ronell intro to Verso edition of Valerie Solanas SCUM Manifesto. Valerie Solanas, who took no prisoners, took pleasure in the injurious effects of language and, with Lacanian precision, understood that words are bodies that can be hurled at the … Continue reading →

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Apprivoiser: to call a scan a facsimile

Posted on November 21, 2010 by Francois Lachance

I recently found myself writing about the various versions of Archibald MacLeish’s “Ars Poetica” and described the Poetry Foundation’s digital image scan of the June 1926 Poetry magazine pages as a “facsimile”. I realize that is technically inaccurate — page … Continue reading →

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Past Smoldering

Posted on October 31, 2010 by Francois Lachance

My paternal grandfather smoked a pipe. Perhaps this is why the empty bowl leaves a trace in my mind of a clear image of not only emptiness but coolness as well as the lingering aroma. We take the poem beyond … Continue reading →

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Jouissance

Posted on October 19, 2010 by Francois Lachance

Documenting its entry into English, thanks to Naomi Schor from whose Breaking the Chain: Women, Theory, and French Realist Fiction this note is taken. To footnote “jouissance” is at this belated poststructuralist moment to perform a highly ritualized gesture. This … Continue reading →

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