ARCHIPELAGO An International Journal of Literature, the Arts, and Opinion www.archipelago.org Vol. 2, No. 4 Winter 1998/99 Essay: ANNA MARIA ORTESE tr. HENRY MARTIN Where Time Is Another Poems: MARIA NEGRONI tr. ANNE TWITTY from LA JAULA BAJO EL TRAPO/ CAGE UNDER COVER Conversation: WILLIAM STRACHAN About Publishing Three Poems: DANNIE ABSE from ARCADIA, ONE MILE Invention: BENJAMIN H. CHEEVER Come Here, I Want You Endnotes: A Flea Recommended Reading: Susan Garrett, Elizabeth Benedict, Katherine McNamara, Robert Kelly, John Casey Printed from our Download edition ARCHIPELAGO An International Journal of Literature, the Arts, and Opinion www.archipelago.org Vol. 2, No. 4 Winter 1998/99 Contents ANNA MARIA ORTESE tr. HENRY MARTIN Where Time Is Another 6 MARIA NEGRONI tr. ANNE TWITTY from LA JAULA BAJO EL TRAPO/CAGE UNDER COVER 22 A Conversation about Publishing with WILLIAM STRACHAN and the Editor of Archipelago 34 DANNIE ABSE In the Welsh National Museum 57 New Granddaugher 59 Inscription on the Flyleaf of a Bible 60 BENJAMIN H. CHEEVER Come Here, I Want You 62 Endnotes: A Flea 65 Masthead 3 Contributors 3 Recommended Reading 70 Resources 72 Masthead/Contributors ARCHIPELAGO www.archipelago.org Editor and Publisher Katherine McNamara [email protected] Contributing Editors K. Callaway Web Production John Casey Debra Weiss ([email protected]) Production Benjamin Cheever <[email protected]> design and formatting Edith Grossman Cornerstone Networks Internet Host Odile Hellier <[email protected]> Larry Woiwode Assistant Editor Ann Weisensee [email protected] Letters to the Editor are welcomed, by post or via the Internet. All submissions must be typed and double- ARCHIPELAGO spaced and sent by post with SASE or envelope and Box 2485 International Reply Coupon. An e-mail address is Charlottesville, Va. 22902-2485 USA appreciated. No electronic submissions will be E-mail: [email protected] accepted unless Editor is queried beforehand. We encourage Readers to download and distribute this journal in our Download edition, a pdf file, which can be saved and read off-line and printed. Instructions for use – including access to the freeware Adobe Reader –appear on the Download page of the on-line edition. All previous issues are available in the Download/pdf editions. All individual articles are available on-line at Index. Subscription by e-mail to the Download edition is available through our web site. The authors published herein retain copyright and the right to be acknowledged as the moral authors of their work. No original part of this issue may appear in another publication, either electronic or in print, except identified as part of Archipelago and with permission from Archipelago. ©1998/1999 Archipelago. Acknowledgments and Permissions: Anna Maria Ortese’s “Where Time Is Another” first appeared as "Dove il tempo è un altro" in Micromega 5/90, Rome, 1990. Copyright ©Anna Maria Ortese. Translation copyright ©1997 by Henry Martin. Published by arrangement with McPherson & Company Publishers from A MUSIC BEHIND THE WALL, Selected Stories Volume Two. / Dannie Abse, Three Poems ©Dannie Abse 1998. With acknowledgment to Hutchinson, a division of Random House (UK), publishers of ARCADIA, ONE MILE, by Dannie Abse, in which these poems appear. / LA JAULA BAJO EL TRAPO/CAGE UNDER COVER © Maria Negroni 1991. ©Anne Twitty, translation. With acknowledgment of Sun & Moon Press, who in 1999 will publish the dual-language edition. About Our Contributors Dannie Abse's newest book of poems, about to appear, is ARCADIA, ONE MILE (Hutchinson, 1999). He is the editor of WELSH RETROSPECTIVES (with Carey Archard; Dufour Editions) and TWENTIETH CENTURY ANGL0-WELSH POETRY (Seren Books/Poetry Wales, 1998); among his books of poems are REMEMBRANCE OF CRIMES PAST (Persea Books, 1993) and WHITE COAT, PURPLE COAT: Collected Poems 1948-1988 (George Braziller, 1992). Dannie Abse practices medicine in London. Benjamin H. Cheever <[email protected]> is a Contributing Editor of Archipelago. His "Confession of A Lover, Spurned" appeared in our inaugural issue. He is the author of THE PLAGIARIST and THE PARTISAN (both, Atheneum) and editor of THE LETTERS OF JOHN CHEEVER (Simon and Schuster). His novel FAMOUS AFTER DEATH will be published by Crown in 1999. ARCHIPELAGO 3 Vol. 2 No. 4, Winter 1998/99 Contributors Henry Martin was born in Philadelphia and received degrees in English literature from Bowdoin College and New York University, where he also studied Romance languages. He translates contemporary Italian literature and regularly contributes as a critic to a number of international art magazines, including Art News and Flash Art. In addition to his translations of Anna Maria Ortese (THE IGUANA; A MUSIC BEHIND THE WALL, Vols. One and Two) and Giorgio Manganelli (ALL THE ERRORS), he has written extensively about art, including two volumes in collaboration with the Italian artist Gianfranco Baruchello, HOW TO IMAGINE and WHY DUCHAMP, both published by McPherson & Company. Henry Martin lives with his wife, the artist Betty Skuber, and their son, John-Daniel, in the mountains of southern Tyrol not far from Bolzano, Italy. Maria Negroni <[email protected]> was born in Argentina in 1951. She holds a PhD in Latin American literature from Columbia University, and has received Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundation fellowships. Three books of her poems have been published by Libros de Tierra Firme (Buenos Aires): DE TANTO DESOLAR (1985), PER/CANTA (1989) and LA JAULA BAJO EL TRAPO (1991). Two collections of poetry, ISLANDIA and EL VIAJE DE LA NOCHE were published, respectively, in 1994, by Monte Avila Editores (Caracas) and Editorial Lumen (Barcelona). Bilingual editions are forthcoming of ISLANDIA (Station Hill Press) and LA JAULA BAJO EL TRAPO/CAGE UNDERCOVER (Sun & Moon Press). She has also received a National Book Award for EL VIAJE DE LA NOCHE (which also was first runner-up at the Princeton University Poetry Series) and was first runner-up for the Planeta Prize 1997, for her novel EL SUEÑO de URSULA. She directs a poetry magazine edited in Buenos Aires, Abyssinia. A selection from EL VIAJE DE LA NOCHE/NIGHT JOURNEY appeared in our inaugural issue. Anna Maria Ortese was born in Naples, in 1914. Her first book, a collection of stories published in 1937, was acclaimed as the work of a major new magical realist. (The critical phrase “magical realism" was largely the invention of the writer Massimo Bontempelli, who is also credited with having discovered Ortese.) She has written more than a dozen volumes of stories, novels, and essays, and has been the recipient of Italian literary prizes, among them Strega, the Premio Viareggio, and the Fiuggi. Although for fifty years her writing reached relatively small audiences, her most recent works have appeared on the Italian bestseller lists. In 1986, her novel, THE IGUANA, appeared in an English translation by Henry Martin, published by McPherson & Company <www.mcphersonco.com>, who also publish two volumes of Ortese's stories under the title A MUSIC BEHIND THE WALL, the second volume of which appeared in 1998. "The Great Street," a story, appeared in Archipelago, Vol. 1, No. 1. Anna Maria Ortese died in 1998. Anne Twitty’s <[email protected]> translations of the book-length poems of Maria Negroni are forthcoming in the bilingual editions CAGE UNDERCOVER/LA JAULA BAJO EL TRAPO (Sun & Moon Press) and ISLANDIA (Station Hill Press). A selection of her translations from Negroni’s ISLANDIA appeared in The Paris Review (Spring 1994); another appeared in Mandorla. She has also translated the Cuban poet Magali Alabau (HERMANA/SISTER, Editorial Betania, 1992; LIEBE, La torre de Papel, 1993). Anne Twitty was for some years editor of the Epicycle section of Parabola, which published her essays on myth, creation, and memory. A selection from Maria Negroni's novel EL SUEÑO de URSULA/URSULA'S DREAM was published in Spanish and in Anne Twitty's translation, in the journal of The America's Society, Review: Latin American Literature and Arts (Spring 1998). Her translations from Maria Negroni's EL VIAJE DE LA NOCHE/NIGHT JOURNEY appeared in Archipelago, Vol. 1, No. 1. &&&&&& ARCHIPELAGO 4 Vol. 2 No. 4, Winter 1998/99 Contributors In Memorium WILLIAM GADDIS 1922-1998 THE RECOGNITIONS (1955) JR (1975) CARPENTER'S GOTHIC (1985) A FROLIC OF HIS OWN (1994) AGAPE AGAPE (Post.) father of our friend and contributor Sarah Gaddis &&&&&& Other News: Our friend and contributor Janet Palmer Mullaney is editor of TRUTHTELLERS OF THE TIMES, Interviews with Contemporary Women Poets. University of Michigan Press, just out. The next issue of Archipelago, on-line in mid-March, will feature the work of Stella Snead, the English Surrealist painter and photographer. Her spoof, “Early Cabbage,” with digitized photographs, appeared in Archipelago Vol. 1 No. 3. ARCHIPELAGO 5 Vol. 2 No. 4, Winter 1998/99 TESTAMENT WHERE TIME IS ANOTHER Anna Maria Ortese tr. Henry Martin t the beginning of the First World War — the period in which I was born — social discrepancies, in Italy as in many other parts of the world, were not, I Abelieve, as painful as they are today. Above all, they were not so conspicuous. My family, a total of nine persons which included six children, lived a highly modest life, practically in poverty, in the south-central region of the country and was surely no stranger to economic hardship, but we didn’t really notice it. At least the children didn’t. So even in spite of having been born into very uncomfortable circumstances, often sad, and marked above all by a great void of culture and security, I wasn’t aware of it, and perhaps didn’t suffer from it, up until adolescence. And at that point, the center of my life came to be occupied by other problems, which quickly coalesced into a single problem: the problem of self-expression.