Martial Artist

MARTIAL ARTIST, Martial's epigrams translated from the Latin by George Held 

31pp. paper. staple-bound Toad Press 2005, $5.00. In English and Latin.

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MARCUS VALERIUS MARTIALIS (A.D. 40-104), or Martial, was born in Spain and flourished in Rome. His greatest achievement remains his 1500 epigrams, in which he depicts, often satirically, the behavior of his fellow Romans and perfects the form in Latin. His influence appears in the work of virtually every epigrammatist since. The poems in Martial Artist collect some of his many epigrams about his own work and his life as a poet. This book includes both the English and the Latin. Excerpt: VII.90 Mathew says my book is unbalanced. If it’s true, Mathew praises my poems. Calvin and Shade write balanced books. A balanced book, Curtis, is a bad book. Iactat inaequalem Matho me fecisse libellum: si verum est, laudat carmina nostra Matho. aequales scribit libros Calvinus et Umber: aequales liber est, Cretice, qui malus est.

Twenty-Five and One Poems

 

poems by Tristan Tzara, translated from the French by Nick Moudry 

 39pp. paper. staple-bound. C

over design by Becky Rosen Toad Press 2004, $5.00 SOLD OUT

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About: Orginally published as Vingt-cinq poèmes (Zurich: Collection Dada, 1918) with ten woodcut prints by Hans Arp. Republished as Vingt-cinq et un poèmes with the addition of “la grande complainte de mon obscurité trois” (Paris: Collection l’Age d’or, 1946). Noah Eli Gordon (in Jacket ) calls Moudry's translation "mind-bendingly fresh". Excerpt: SPRINGTIME to h arp put the child in the vase in the depths of midnight and the wound a rose of winds with your beautiful fingernails thunder in feathers see a horrible water runs down the antelope’s legs to suffer below have you found cows birds? the thirst the venom of the caged peacock the king in exile by the well’s brightness slowly mummified in the vegetable garden sow broken grasshoppers plant ant hearts the salt fog a lamp drags its tail across the sky the little sparkles of glassware in the belly of the fleeing deer on the ends of the short black branches for a cry