Every Good Heart Is a Telescope

Every Good Heart Is a Telescope

poems by Victor Rodríguez Núñez

translated by Katherine M. Hedeen

cover image "Corazón con razón" by TONEL

29 pages, paper, staple-bound

Toad Press, 2013, $5

You can purchase a copy of Every Good Heart Is a Telescope here

& add this book to your Goodreads list here
& read a review over at Three Percent, here.

About:

Víctor Rodríguez Núñez (Havana, 1955) is one of Cuba’s most noteworthy contemporary writers. He is a poet, journalist, literary critic, translator, and scholar. Among his books are Cayama (1979), Con raro olor a mundo (1981), Noticiario del solo (1987), Cuarto de desahogo (1993), Los poemas de nadie y otros poemas (1994), El último a la feria (1995), Oración inconclusa (2000), Actas de medianoche I (2006), Actas de medianoche II (2007), tareas (2011) and reversos (2011). His Selected Poems has come out in many countries, most recently Todo buen corazón es un prismático (2010) in Mexico, and has been translated into English, French, Italian, and Swedish. In addition, a wide selection of his poems has appeared in another twelve languages. His poetry has been awarded major prizes, such as the David (Cuba, 1980), the Plural (Mexico, 1983), the EDUCA (Costa Rica, 1995), the Renacimiento (Spain, 2000), the Leonor (Spain, 2006), and the Rincón de la Victoria (Spain, 2010).  During the eighties he wrote for and was the editor of El Caimán Barbudo, one of Cuba’s leading cultural magazines. He has compiled three anthologies that have defined his poetic generation and published various essays on Spanish American poets. Among his translations are books by John Kinsella, Margaret Randall, and Mark Strand. He divides his time between Gambier, Ohio, where he is Professor of Spanish at Kenyon College, and Havana, Cuba.

Katherine M. Hedeen is the National Endowment for the Humanities Distinguished Teaching Associate Professor of Spanish at Kenyon College. She specializes in Latin American poetry and has researched and translated numerous contemporary authors from the region. She has published her translations extensively in prestigious American and British literary journals. Her book-length translations include collections by Juan Bañuelos, Juan Calzadilla, Marco Antonio Campos, Juan Gelman, Fayad Jamís, and Ida Vitale. She is an associate editor of Earthwork’s Latin American Poetry in Translation Series for Salt Publishing and in 2009 was a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Project Fellow.

Eduardo Milán: Poems

Eduardo Milán: Poems 

translated from the Spanish by Leora Fridman 
33 pages, paper, staple bound
in English and Spanish on facing pages

Toad Press, 2012, $5

You can purchase a copy of Eduardo Milan: Poems here
& add this book to your Goodreads list, here
& read an excerpt from this book at Two Lines, The Center for the Art of Translation, here.

About: 

Eduardo Milán is a Uruguayan-born poet who left Uruguay in 1979 for Mexico due to political persecution. He has published over a dozen books of  poems, as well as essays and literary criticism. He is the recipient of the Premio de Poesía Aguascalientes.

Leora Fridman is a writer, translator and educator. An Assistant Director of the Juniper Institute and co-curator of the Jubilat/Jones Reading Series, she lives in Massachusetts.

The Flying Head

The Flying Head

poems by Ioan Flora

translated from the Romanian by Adam J. Sorkin and Elena Bortă

33 pages, paper, staple bound.

Toad Press, 2012, $5.00

You can purchase a copy of The Flying Head here
& add the book to your Goodreads list, here.

Read a couple poems in this book online, at eXchanges, here.

About:

Ioan Flora was the award-winning author of twenty books and anthologies, most recently Lecture on the Ostrich-Camel (1995), which won prizes from the Bucharest Writers’ Association and the Writers’ Union of the Republic of Moldova; The Swedish Rabbit (1997), honored with prizes from both the Romanian Writers’ Union and the rival Association of Professional Writers in Romania—aspro; Medea and Her War Machines (1999); and Luncheon Under the Grass (2005).

Flora was born in Yugoslavia in the Romanian-speaking region of the Serbian Banat between the Danube River and the border with Romania. He attended the Romanian school in Vârșeț, graduated from the University of Bucharest in 1973, and began publishing books of poetry with Waltzes (1970) and Ivy (1975). Other titles include Poetic Records (1977), The Physical World (1977), Work Therapy (1981), The State of Fact (1984), A Young Owl on its Deathbed (1988), Assassin Memory (1989), and Violet Soles (1990). In 1993, after having been an editor for sixteen years, he moved to Bucharest, where he worked for the Museum of Romanian Literature and the Romanian Writers’ Union.

Ioan Flora died unexpectedly at the age of fifty-four in February 2005, only a few days after the publication of his last book of poems.

Adam J. Sorkin is a translator of contemporary Romanian literature, and his work has won The Poetry Society Corneliu M. Popescu Prize for European Poetry Translation. His recent books include three collections from the University of Plymouth Press, all translated with Lidia Vianu: Ion Mureșan’s The Book of Winter and Other Poems (2011); Ioan Es. Pop’s No Way Out of Hadesburg (2010); and Mircea Ivănescu’s lines poems poetry (2009), which was shortlisted for the 2011 Poetry Society Prize. Sorkin is main translator of Carmen Firan’s Rock and Dew (2010), in collaboration with the  author. In 2011, he published A Path to the Sea by Liliana Ursu, translated with Ursu and Tess Gallagher, Ioan Flora’s Medea and Her War Machines, translated with Alina Cârâc, and My Dog – the Soul/Câinele meu – sufletul by Floarea Țuțuianu, translated with Irma Giannetti. Sorkin is Distinguished Professor of English, Penn State Brandywine.

Elena Bortă is a free-lance literary researcher and translator who has contributed translations from English and Scandinavian languages to various literary and cultural  periodicals. The recipient of a travel grant from the Soros Foundation, she is working on a book-length manuscript on Mircea Eliade’s fiction, parts of which have been   published in Romania, the U.S., and the U.K.

• Also translated by Adam J. Sorkin: The Factory of the Past (Toad Press, 2008)

Suite Prelude A/H1N1

suite prelude a/h1n1

a poem by José Eugenio Sánchez

translated from the Spanish by Anna Rosen Guercio

23 pages, paper, staple bound.
Toad Press, 2011, $5.00

SOLD OUT

You can purchase a copy of Suite Prelude A/H1N1 here
& add the book to your Goodreads list, here.
It's recommended by Molossus, after all.
psst... Craig Dworkin read it!

• You can read an excerpt of Suite Prelude A/H1N1 here, published in Words Without Borders.

About:
José Eugenio Sánchez is the author of four collections of poetry and coauthor of several more, as well as being a well-known performer and the recipient of numerous awards. His book, galaxy limited café, was a finalist for the 2010 Jaime Gil de Biedma International Poetry Prize. Originally from Guadalajara, he lives and writes in Monterrey, a couple hours drive from Mexico's border with its neighbor to the north. Sánchez identifies himself as an "underclown," and his aggressively playful work eagerly engages both pop and high culture with irreverence and insight.

Anna Rosen Guercio is a translator and poet. She lives in Los Angeles and her literary work has appeared in or is forthcoming from journals such as The Kenyon Review, Pool, Eleven Eleven, Faultlines, Painted Bride Quarterly, eXchanges, and Words Without Borders, as well as several anthologies. She holds a BA from Brown University, an MFA from the University of Iowa, and is a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Irvine, writing a dissertation on translation studies, poetry, and world literature.

An Evening in Europe

An Evening in Europe
poems by Jörg Fauser
translated from the German by Mark Terrill


22 pages, paper, staple bound

Toad Press, 2011, $5

You can purchase a copy of An Evening in Europe here
& add this book to your Goodreads list, here.

About:

Jörg Fauser, born in 1944 near Frankfurt/Main, broke off his academic studies to work and travel, with longer stays in Istanbul and London, working as a casual laborer, airport baggage worker and night watchman. He supported himself as a journalist, wrote several novels, short stories and poetry collections, and was acquainted with Charles Bukowski. Fauser died in 1987 in an accident on the autobahn near Munich.

Mark Terrill’s writings and translations have appeared in over 500 literary journals and anthologies worldwide, a dozen chapbooks, several broadsides and three full-length collections, including Kid with Gray Eyes (Cedar Hill Books) and Bread & Fish (The Figures). A native Californian and ex-merchant seaman, he currently lives on the grounds of a former shipyard near Hamburg, Germany, with his wife and a large brood of cats.

• Read a short review of An Evening in Europe here. Thanks, Prague Post!

• Also translated by Mark Terrill, Rolf Dieter Brinkmann's Some Very Popular Songs (Toad Press 2009)

Finally! Arctic Poems

Arctic Poems

a selection from Arctic Poems by Vicente Huidobro

translated from the Spanish by Nathan Hoks

24 pages, paper, staple bound

Toad Press, 2010, $5

You can purchase a copy of Arctic Poems here
& add this book to your Goodreads list, here.

About:

Vicente Huidobro (1893-1948) was one of the first South American avant-garde poets. Born in 1893 in Santiago, Chile, Huidobro moved to Paris in 1916 where he met Guillaume Apollinaire, Pierre Reverdy, and many other Cubist poets and artists. At this time Huidobro continued to develop his theory of poetry, "creationism," which advocates writing "a poem the way nature makes a tree." Arctic Poems dates from this period.

Nathan Hoks has published poems and translations in Lit, Verse, Crazyhorse, Circumference, and many other journals. His first book of poetry, Reveilles, will be published by Salt in fall 2010.

•  Molossus recognized Arctic Poems as a "Weekend Gem." Wonderful!

• In Galatea Resurrects #26, Monica Manolachi identifies Arctic Poems and the act of translation as "atemporal breach, an opening towards interpretation."

Excerpt: