Aufgabe No. 12
Edited by E. Tracy Grinnell, erica kaufman, Oana Avasilichioaei, Tyrone Williams
$15.00
This title is available as a free PDF.
Read on Jacket2 ReissuesAufgabe is an annual journal of new American poetry, essays, notes, reviews, talks and poetry in translation. Aufgabe 12 features poetry in translation from Québec, guest edited by Oana Avasilichioaei and translated by Oana Avasilichioaei, Daniel Canty, Norma Cole, Ingrid Pam Dick, Katia Grubisic, Bronwyn Haslam, Jen Hutton, Lazer Lederhendler, françois luong, Robert Majzels, Erín Moure, and Cole Swensen. Québécois poetry by Oana Avasilichioaei, Geneviève Desrosiers, Benoit Jutras, Nicole Brossard, Chantal Neveu, Franz Schürch, Suzanne Leblanc, Steve Savage, Philippe Charron, Renée Gagnon, Daniel Canty, François Turcot, Martine Audet, Kim Doré, and Jean-Marc Desgent.
This issue also includes poetry by HR Hegnauer, Raúl Zurita, Emily Abendroth, Susan Gevirtz, Emily Carlson, Nicholas DeBoer, Daniel Rounds, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Lørpsliç Bierkegårt, Steve Dickison, Fabián Casas (trans. Brent Armendinger), Alejandro Mendez (trans. Brent Armendinger), Matt Longabucco, Claire Donato, Mark Dickinson, Edric Mesmer, Jen Besemer, Elizabeth Robinson, Nicole Peyrafitte, Jennifer Kronovet, Cody-Rose Clevidence, Judah Rubin, Karen Garthe, Laressa Dickey, Khadijah Queen, C. Violet Eaton, Mónica de la Torre, Phyllis Rosenzweig, Arturo Ramírez Lara (trans. John Pluecker), Rusty Morrison, James Belflower, Julia Drescher, Joseph Bradshaw, and Sueyeun Juliette Lee. Essays, notes, reviews by: Pierre Joris, Robin Tremblay-McGaw, Judith Goldman, Gregoire Pam Dick, pablo lopez, Dorothy Albertini, J. C. Vischer on Gail Scott, Catherine Mavrikakis and Nathanaël. Artwork by Mie Olise.
E. Tracy Grinnell
erica kaufman
Oana Avasilichioaei
Tyrone Williams
About Aufgabe No. 12
What does it matter now? What matters now? What is the matter now? What is now’s matter? All possible transversions of Jean-Marc Desgent’s questioning title Qu’importe maintenant? The following work of fourteen writers, presented in American and Canadian English translations from the Quebecois French by twelve translators, are possible responses.
The selection of this work is based on which poetries in Quebec’s Francophone literary weather feel vital right now; which works seem utterly relevant and current to this moment (which is always a multiple and refracted moment); which poetries are speaking, calling, urging, moaning, crying to the reader in us; which works, in their lexicons and syntax, their movements and music, wake us up, make us feel excited and alive in language. In short, which poetries give a damn.
The selection is not historical, generational, ideological, chronological. It is expansive, diverse, rigorous, stretching and straying linguistic, poetical and genre boundaries. It is also entirely contemporary, in the way that Giorgio Agamben thinks of contemporariness, where one has an anachronistic and disjunctive relation to one’s time. Therefore, the featured writers (and translators) represent a range of generations and experience, approaches and interests; they are artists with thirty books or one book to their name (even posthumous in one case), and their poetics touch on other fields and medias.
— Oana Avasilichioaei, from the Editor’s Note “Now’s Matter: Work in Translation from Quebecois French”
Out of Litmus Press in Brooklyn, New York, comes the twelfth annual issue of the literary journal Aufgabe, a journal with a deep, critical and abiding love for literary works in translation… Through a hundred pages of translated works, this is an impressive collection of writing, and, unfortunately, highlights the oddity of the fact that it takes a foreign journal to show Canadian work to other Canadians.
— Rob McLennan, Rob McLennan’s Blog