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Issue n° 4
2005
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About this Issue
Mantis was born out of the desire to facilitate
conversation among the variety of writers engaged in
the practice of poetry and poetics today. We believe
that poetic practices — the production,
translation, reading, publication, and critical
reception of poetry — is always too
complicated and multivalent for rigid categorization;
the lines drawn between "creative" and "critical"
poetic practices are too often so starkly made, at
times limiting the possibilities of poetic endeavor.
Mantis celebrates the overlapping and merging
practices within the world(s) of poetry. And, to the
multiplicity of approaches that we see in the world
around us, we want to contribute the richness of a
diverse set of voices responding to specific poetic
concerns. Both Mantis 1: Poetry and Community and
Mantis 2: Poetry and Translation celebrated issues
central to reading and writing; with Mantis 3: Poetry
and Performance, new concerns emerged. Mantis 4:
Poetry and Politics clinches, in many ways, the
previous issue themes, exploring poetry's
indispensable role in upholding critical dialogues in
societies both contemporary and ancient. The
selection in Mantis 4 of poems, critical pieces and
translations offer various ways of reflecting on this
role.
George Oppen once wrote, "It is possible that a
world without art is simply and flatly uninhabitable,
and the poet's business is not to use verse as an
advanced form of rhetoric, nor to seek to give
political statements the aura of eternal truth."
While it is difficult to generalize about the poetry
in this issue —the poems range from Lucia
Perillo's culinary gallop through gender politics to
Nigerian activist Ogaga Ifowodo's lament of
well-known atrocities — we can at least say
that the poems do not wear 'the aura of eternal
truth.' Instead, the poems approach the political
more subtly through particulars and the unexpected,
through lived and imagined experience. Deborah Tail's
"Seraglio" pieces together the history of the harem
in Istanbul's Topkapi Palace ("the most beautiful
prison in the world," in her words) combining careful
observation with a textured language that floats
decorously in its own "zone of separation."
Presenting a certain wariness of beauty and its
underlying violence, the poem, like its "rival
sunset," becomes ravished in an urgency to tell.
Oppen once again comes to mind: "the emotion which
creates art is the emotion which seeks to know and to
disclose." Similarly, Matthew Hittinger's "What Part
of Don't Ask Don't Tell Don't You Understand?" leads
us through a matrix of place, identity, and
intolerance complicating and blurring each. Finally,
Bryan Penberthy, in "Expatriatetown" and "Hometown,"
lends an eerie resonance to the idea of "rootedness"
in a world where such words as 'patriotism' and
'homeland' grow increasingly unsure of their staple
significations. Taken together, the poems selected
for this issue attempt to embody, understand and
rewrite, in ways contradictory and confounding, but
with constant beauty, the particulars of history and
of the present time.
The criticism chosen here reflects a similar
emphasis on the particular and contingent. Once upon
a time the "autonomous" status of art was a precious
value only sullied by political utilization. Niklas
Luhmann notes in his Art as a Social System
(published in its English rendition in 2000), "the
defensive attitude that the autonomy of art ought to
be upheld and protected" is not to be advocated in
our days. He concludes, "modern art is autonomous in
an operative sense. No one else does what it
does."
This remarkably simple way of setting down an old
problem could express quite well the spirit with
which the critical articles made their way into this
issue of Mantis. The critical pieces found here
represent differing approaches to the problem of the
always sensitive relationship between poetry and
politics. At no point, though, do they succumb to an
imaginary confrontation between, on one side, the
partisan usage of poetry sheerly to illustrate a
critical thesis, and, on the other side, poetry as
something that should remain in an absolute pristine
condition, remote from any political reference.
Plurality of approaches and diversity of agendas
characterize the selection of critical essays in this
issue. From Robert Archambeau's vision of Robert
Pinsky's poetry as ideologically appealing to a new
"Bobo" (bourgeois/ bohemian) dominant class in
American society, to Gary Grieve-Carlson's
description of Charles Olson's direct engagement in
classic politics; from Lisa Block de Behar's complex
review of the political dimensions of a brilliantly
pursued translation/ transcreatrion project in the
Brazilian poet Haroldo de Campos, to Holly Zehr's
warnings about the perils of a "rhetorics of
oppositions" in use by both critics and poets since
the 1980s, poetry criticism is understood here as an
exercise of exploration. And such an exercise lowers
the defenses of poetry against social engagement,
making it a citizen of all countries and discourses,
but a captive of none.
In his statement on the relation between poetry
and politics, Vitaly Chernetsky suggests that the
political message of a text "can be encoded in many
unexpected ways" — that is, prysmatically
refracted in the linguistic material chosen. The
translator's art offers here a chronotopic journey
into the land of politically-engaged poetry. As Adam
Sorkin contends about Ioan Flora, in his "web of
poetry, the political is inherently part of a
continuum of past and present, world and psyche".
From the 8th century Chinese poet Du Fu to the young
Romanian poet Ruxandra Cesereanu, Mantis offers a
dense weaving of lyrical engagements into the complex
fabric of the real. And the translator wields the
binding tools of this tapestry.
Outside of any activism per se, the poets featured
here in translation express their existential freedom
against the grain of the "colonial" language, as in
the work of the Uzbek poet Shamshad Abdullaev; they
are resistant subjects against institutions that
neutralize individuality, as in the Polish poetry of
Jacek Podsiadlo; or they poignantly describe
imperialist policy and its aftermath, as in the
Persian poems of Nima Yushij (Ali Nuri). José
Gomes Ferreira writes about the Civil War in Spain
viewed through the eyes of a Portuguese and Yu Jian
finds ways of decoding protest in the simple gestures
of countryside people in China. The act of
translating such poems is an act of flaunting
boundaries — linguistic, cultural,
geographical. Such a transgressive act, though,
echoes the original spirit of the works these
translators have newly rendered.
In the Georgics (as translated here by Kimberly
Johnson) Virgil declares, "I must essay a path by
which I too may rise from earth a triumph fluttering
on the lips of men./ I first, if only life prolong,
into my country returning/will lead the muses from
the Aonian m o u n t . . . " In varying ways each of
the pieces presented in Mantis 4 poses
politically-engaged poetry as a daring attempt to
make the muses follow the poet, and not the other way
around.
Available Online
Adam J. Sorkin and Alina Cârâc - Translation: From loan Flora's Medeea
si masinile ei de razboi (pdf)
Burcu Alkan - Translation: Rifat Ilgaz's
"Beyaz" (pdf)
Bei Doa - Interview: "In my writing, I'm
continually seeking a direction" (pdf)
Issue n° 4 Contents
Deborah Tall - "Seraglio"; "Odyssey"; "The Game
Continued"
Wang Ping and Ron Padgett - Translation: Yu Jian's
"Zhong Tudou De Ren"
Matthew Hittinger - "What Part of Don't Ask Don't
Tell Don't You Understand"; "He Who Lies on the
Promenade"; "Phallic Magic"
Lucia Perillo - "The Ministry of Food"
Paul Sohar - Translation: Sandor Kanyadi's
"Pergamenttekercsekre"; Lajos Magyari's "Mikor
Már . . ."
Bei Doa - Interview: "In my writing, I'm
continually seeking a direction" (pdf)
Brian Penberthy - "Expatriatetown"; "Hometown"
John Mateer - "Industry: Two Kinds"
Contributor's Statements - Poetry and Politics:
Declarations
Iraj Omidvar - Translation: Nima Yushij's "Del-e
Foolaadam"
Steven Bradbury - Translation: Du Fu's "Qianxing"
and "Yu Hua Gong
Holly M. Zehr - "In Search of Better Desires": Lyn
Hejinian, Jorie Graham and the Politics of American
Poetry
Christian Knoeller - "Puppeteer"
Moira Fradinger - Translation: From Estela Alicia
Lopez Lomas's El Fuego Tras El Espejo
Adam J. Sorkin and Alina Cârâc - Translation: From loan Flora's Medeea
si masinile ei de razboi (pdf)
Daniel Morris - A Great Figure of Troubled
Borders: Williams, Demuth, Indiana and the Number
5
Eliot Schain - "Beyond Merchandise"
Laura Carter - "It is Possible"
Robert Archambeau - Identity Politics and the
Modern Self: Robert Pinsky's An Explanation of
America
Kimberly Johnson - Translation: From Virgil's
Georgics III
Brett Cook Dizney - Collaborative Voice: The
Harlem Development/Gentrification Project
Margret Grebowicz - Translation: Jacek Podsiadlo's
"Drugi przeciw panstwu"
Sam Hamill, Carol Muske-Dukes and Deborah Tall -
Panel Discussion On Poetry and Politics
Kolawole Olaiya - "Letter to My Daughter"; "The
Children Are Waiting"
Vitaly Chernetsky - Translation: Shamshad
Abdullaev's "Letniaia Tiazhest'"
Randall Martin - "Election Day"
Lisa Block de Behar - Portents of Paradise:
Haroldo de Campos' Poetic Premeditation
Wang Ping - "Jerusalem, Jerusalem"
Elaine Verdill - "Science as a Second Language"
Gary Grieve-Carlson - Charles Olson's Polis:
Politics and Vision
Ogaga Ifowodo - "Where is the Earth's Most
Infamous Plot?"
Lauren Elena White - "Protest Song", 1-3
Burcu Alkan - Translation:
Rifat Ilgaz's "Beyaz"
Kathryn Kirkpatrick - "Worldliness"
Jean Métellus - Interview: The Shape of
Bread
Ernest Smith - Mapping Post-Reagan America:
Adrienne Rich's "An Atlas of the
Difficult World" and "Alfred Corn's "1992"
Carter Revard - "Memo to the Emperor Zero"
Jason Lee - Translation: Pablo Neruda's "Vienen
por las islas (1493)"
George Reis - Translation: From José Gomes
Ferreira's Heróicas
Republic of Poetry - The Politics of Writing
Poetry with Young People: A Conversation
Laura Smith - "Introduction"; "Quitting"
Nneoma Amadi-Obi - "The Importance of Artistic
Collaboration"; "Did you see the news tonight?"
Becky Cole - "Butterflies"; "I am Not a Poet"
Kenny Carroll - "The Awful Roar of Teen
Writing"
Zahra Gordon - "What Makes It Perfect"; "#17 Ride
On, 4:55p.m. Bus"
Reuben Jackson - "If You Were the Wind"; "a day in
the life"
Ruxandra Cesereau - Self-translation: From Letter
to American Poets
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