Pub Date : 2023-11-01DOI: 10.1353/wlt.2023.a910261
Michelle Johnson, Jazmina Barrera
7 Questions for Jazmina Barrera Michelle Johnson (bio) and Jazmina Barrera (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Photo by Rodrigo Jardón Jazmina Barrera's first novel, Cross-Stitch, translated by Christina MacSweeney, is an engrossing story of three friends as they come of age in Mexico City and while traveling together in London and Paris. Their interests in literature, art, and, especially, embroidery bind them together. Toggling between the story of the friends and fragments about the history of needlework, Cross-Stitch is an engrossing story bound together by a brilliant use of theme. Q Mila, the narrator of Cross-Stitch, learned to read and write when she learned to cross-stitch. Embroidery works thematically throughout the novel, running through both the story of the three friends and the alternating fragments about embroidery, which often give insight into the history of embroidery as art and protest—even as a coded means of communication. What's one of your favorite stories about embroidery from the wealth of research you've done? A It's hard to choose! I love the story of the Chilean arpilleras, pieces of fabric on which women embroidered heartbreaking stories of violence during Pinochet's dictatorship. Since embroidery seemed such an innocent task, they managed to get away with this form of social protest for a while. And because the fabrics were so easy to hide and carry, they could be taken to foreign countries to display Pinochet's atrocities to the world. Plus, they are just beautiful and moving pieces of art and great examples of the part that textiles have played in the preservation of collective memory. [End Page 40] Q Mila says that she would never take advice from a how-to book on writing but that a novel could be written based on the instructions in a needlework manual. What's the best needlework advice for writers? A I especially like the one I quote in the book, "let the fabric breathe." I believe books shouldn't be hurried. It's best to let them breathe for a while before going back to them, even before deciding they're ready. Q What is your own experience with needlework? A My history with needlework is very similar to the narrator's. My grandmother taught me cross-stitch, and then I perfected that knowledge with my computer studies teacher when I was eleven years old. When I was fifteen, I went to an Otomí town in Querétaro to teach adults to read and write, and the women I met there taught me different techniques. It was there that my group of friends and I started to embroider regularly. Q As a child, Mila, our narrator, was an avid reader: she had a fanatical love of Angela Carter and would memorize whole passages of Great Expectations. What kind of reader were you as a child? What kind of reader are you now? A There again, my reading habits were very similar to Mila's. I used to read every night with my mother until I was about ten years old. Then I started reading a lot of fantasy and nineteenth-century no
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Pub Date : 2023-11-01DOI: 10.1353/wlt.2023.a910282
Tugrul Mende
Reviewed by: A Stranger in Baghdad: A Novel by Elizabeth Loudon Tugrul Mende ELIZABETH LOUDON A Stranger in Baghdad: A Novel Cairo. Hoopoe. 2023. 443 pages. A STRANGER IN BAGHDAD is the literary debut of author Elizabeth Loudon, who lived in Iraq during the 1970s. It is a stirring novel about a family—and their involvement in Iraqi and British politics—who resist difficult times in Iraq, including political changes that have defined and highlighted their lives. "Baghdad's not for the faint of heart," says one character in the novel. Each character will get to know the city through their own personal conflicts and dilemmas that continues to develop throughout the decades in which the story takes place. The novel is an intensive portrayal of the realities in which the family finds itself. Assassinations and personal hardships, including gender inequality, are an everyday issue for the family. Through them the changing political landscape of Iraq is imminent in the novel. The beginning of the book starts with the perspective of the daughter of the family, Mona Haddad, an Iraqi British psychiatrist who lives in post-9/11 London. The US invasion of Iraq has just begun. Both daughter and mother, Diane, deal with the political developments differently. Mona is more of an introvert, while Diane is politically active. While Diane may be the novel's main character, equal importance is given to the myriad of characters who interact with her, living across Britain and Iraq. The reader gets a glimpse of just how connected different cultures can be through the family's eyes. The novel evolves over three parts, each intertwined through the characters that play a role within the family's structure. The story is told from the alternating perspectives of Mona and Diane. They get a visit from an Englishman going by the name of Duncan Claybourne, who was a British diplomat when Diane was a young woman in Baghdad. It is rumored that he was somehow involved in the death of [End Page 67] King Ghazi, but there was no evidence to the claim. The relationship between Diane, Iraqi society, and the British diplomats is carefully depicted, and each of them play an important role in Diane's time in Iraq. While Ibrahim, her husband, doesn't like the fact that Diane is working, she gets the chance to work as a nanny for the royal family in Iraq. She starts to learn Arabic as well. This makes her a target for British intelligence, who try and form a relationship with her. The novel is full of multilayered characters who are part of the family and have their own connection with the main characters and the country they live in. Each hardship that the family witnesses transforms them in a way that they reflect on their lives and their circumstances. The novel takes place within different time frames and timelines, and Loudon uses this device to shed light on issues without resorting to stereotypical characterizations of Iraq. The author realistically depicts Iraq and its people duri
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Pub Date : 2023-11-01DOI: 10.1353/wlt.2023.a910270
Fred Dings
Reviewed by: Last Poems by Thomas Kinsella Fred Dings THOMAS KINSELLA Last Poems Manchester, UK. Carcanet. 2023. 136 pages. THOMAS KINSELLA'S final collection, Last Poems, combines the five pamphlets of Peppercanister poems (that were first presented in 2013 as a collection titled Late Poems) with new poems written in the eight years before his death in 2021. Readers should not expect the arc of coherence found in a collection conceived as a whole; however, Kinsella's repeated concerns with metaphysical and existential issues serve to give the volume a consistency of persistent preoccupation. Each Peppercanister grouping of five to nine poems is loosely gathered around its own focus—e.g., "Man of War," "Belief and Unbelief," and "Love Joy Peace"—providing us with some sense of unity within the sections. Not all these poems have the impact and persuasive effect of Kinsella's earlier work, such as the poems "Mirror in February" or "Ritual of Departure," but it is inspiring to see a poet in his ninth decade still asking difficult questions and exploring the purpose and position of human existence. In some poems, we encounter the interiority of deep solitude, such as when the speaker enters a silent church to pray before exiting back onto the street; in other poems, we encounter far-ranging considerations, such as musings on the development of humankind or the nomadic life of hunter-gatherers. The strategies and points of view vary from poem to poem, from momentary introspection to historical survey, but one consistent feature is a philosophical voice comfortable with long stretches of abstract and conceptual language. This is sometimes a problem, at least for this reader. There are brief passages of imagistic and figurative brilliance, such as in the last few lines of "Retrospect": "Matter and Man / melt in climax: satisfied, from on high, / a raping angel with a playful name / wipes his wings above a bowl of flame." These final two lines bring together sonic texture [End Page 57] in iambic pentameter lines with memorable image and metaphor. Also, compare them to this passage from an earlier poem by Kinsella, "Ritual of Departure": "A stag crest stares from the soft solid silver / And grimaces, with fat cud-lips but jaws / That could crack bones. The stag heart stumbles. / He rears at bay, slavering silver; rattles / A trophied head among the gothic rocks." Both use vividly memorable image, assonance, and consonance while stating—no, embodying—their "ideas." Unfortunately, in these final poems, Kinsella has very few such passages. In poem after poem, Kinsella relies on abstract, conceptual, or general nouns almost exclusively. Whole poems will employ the language of abstraction while also considering conceptual or abstract topics. The effect is poetically enervating. Consider this passage from "Songs of Understanding," selected almost randomly: "Accepting the waste and the excess, / and a fundamental inadequacy / in the structure as a whole / and in
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Pub Date : 2023-11-01DOI: 10.1353/wlt.2023.a910273
Alice-Catherine Carls
Reviewed by: Waiting for Wovoka: Envoys of Good Cheer and Liberty by Gerald Vizenor Alice-Catherine Carls GERALD VIZENOR Waiting for Wovoka: Envoys of Good Cheer and Liberty Middletown, Connecticut. Wesleyan University Press. 2023. 109 pages. THE PROLIFIC AUTHOR of more than forty works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry since 1961, recipient of the 2022 Mark Twain Award, and honorary curator of the American Haiku Archives since 2021, Gerald Vizenor inscribes Waiting for Wovoka into a recent series of novels that focus on the natural motions and cultural transformations which have accompanied the political and cultural encounters between the Anishinaabeg and the American authorities through the main events of World Wars I and II and their aftermath. Blue Ravens (2014) took White Earth Reservation brothers Basile and Aloysius Beaulieu into trench warfare on the Western Front. Aloysius, inspired by Native prison ledger paintings, drew blue ravens on the skyline of Paris, echoing the revolutionary postwar mood. In Native Tributes [End Page 59] (2018), the two brothers and a veteran nurse, By Now Rose Beaulieu, returned to White Earth and joined in the puppet parleys held there in reaction to the predatory culture of the mission school. The group then participated in the Bonus March of 1932. Satie on the Seine (2020) brought Basile, Aloysius, and By Now Rose back to Paris with puppetry to denounce the horrors of wartime Nazism. In Waiting for Wovoka, native stowaways perform puppet parleys at the "Theater of Chance" with the three veterans who have returned to White Earth. The group travels to the 1962 World's Fair in Seattle, Washington. After attending a performance of Samuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot at the fair, they improvise puppet parleys with the Ghost Dance, a counterpart to the endless waiting of Beckett's play. The novel ends with the arrival of Parisian gallery owner Nathan Crémieux, a longtime friend of Basile and Aloysius. Such a tight-woven, cross-cultural set of characters buttresses the creative motion of the storyline. A fire that ravaged the library triggers a reinvention of the classics in haikulike pronouncements that prolong Aristotle, Montaigne, Puccini, and Romain Rolland. In turn, the puppet parleys match historical characters who never met in real life, such as Gertrude Stein and Hitler, Aristotle and James Baldwin, Mother Jones and Andrew Carnegie, Samuel Beckett and Sitting Bull, or Rachel Carson and a bald eagle. They move the affirmation of Native identity from monologues to "an ironic play of characters in a native story" featuring actual quotations. Thus, stories become literary transmotion, "creative or visionary literary motion, the motion of oral stories, the motion of trickster stories." Their linguistic en abîme effect highlights "the chancy art of resistance." The puppet parleys become the source of survivance and solidarity. A fluid escape from pain, they are a safe place where the gains and losses of tra
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Pub Date : 2023-11-01DOI: 10.1353/wlt.2023.a910246
Daniel Simon
Editor's Note Daniel Simon A [literary] journal is the most elegant way to conspire. —J. G. Cobo Borda, "Paz's Workshop," WLT (1982) IN HIS RECENT BOOK Little Magazine, World Form (2016), Eric Bulson makes a compelling case for little magazines' role in the "globalization of modernism," beyond the glittering metropolises of the US and western Europe, not only in the 1920s but well into the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries as a "digittle" form. The story of those editors—Monroe, Anderson, Pound, Eliot—who became the impresarios of anglophone modernism is well known, but Bulson argues that the material form of the magazine itself helped create transnational—and in many cases oppositional—literary networks in such places as Japan, India, Uganda, Jamaica, and Argentina. Bulson lists many of the names that little magazines were known by in these countries, including rivista, revista, periódico, zhurnal, zeitschrift, dōjin zasshi, tidsskrift, samizdat, folyóirat, and patrika. As was the case with books and newspapers, the explosive democratization of print technologies in the late nineteenth century made the globalization of the magazine form possible. In terms of oppositional networks, Bulson contends that little magazines, in particular, were "decommercialized, decapitalized, and decentered," which facilitated their distribution despite the nascent fascisms and Stalinism of the interwar years, and in solidarity with the anticolonial movements that toppled imperial regimes in the 1950s and '60s. As I wrote in my editor's note introducing the July 2023 issue, Norman, Oklahoma, was simultaneously both decentered and transnational when Roy Temple House decided to found Books Abroad here in 1927. It is clear from the pages of Books Abroad and its correspondence archives that Dr. House had his finger on the pulse of other little magazines throughout Europe, the Americas, and beyond and—in his own efforts to establish an enduring editorial formula—found kindred spirits in the work of such editors as Italy's Benedetto Croce (La Critica), Argentina's Victoria Ocampo (Sur) and Jorge Luis Borges (Proa), Senegal's Alioune Diop (Présence Africaine), Mexico's Octavio Paz (Taller), and Cuba's José Lezama Lima (Orígines). From 1927 to 1948, House drew inspiration and enlightenment from his fellow editors to bring the work of foreign writers to Books Abroad's pages and to the attention of its anglophone readership. That inspiration stayed constant throughout the second half of the twentieth century and remains true in 2023: journals from the US and abroad, many of them in deluxe print editions, still make their way to our offices, including the Armenian Review, based in Watertown, Massachusetts; Banipal, a UK publication devoted to Arab lit; Colóquio Letras, focused on Portuguese lit; Jaunā Gaita, from Latvia; the elegant Korean Literature Now, published in Seoul; the legendary Transition, a "magazine of Africa and the diaspora"; and many more. Moreove
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Pub Date : 2023-11-01DOI: 10.1353/wlt.2023.a910287
Daniel P. Haeusser
Reviewed by: Recital of the Dark Verses by Luis Felipe Fabre Daniel P. Haeusser Luis Felipe Fabre Recital of the Dark Verses Trans. Heather Cleary. Dallas. Deep Vellum. 2023. 200 pages. IN RECITAL OF THE DARK VERSES, Mexican poet and critic Luis Felipe Fabre takes the famous sixteenth-century verse of Carmelite mystic Juan de la Cruz (John of the Cross) and uses it as foundation for an insightful novel that pairs history with poetic commentary, the spiritual with the bawdy, and comedic adventures with existential reflections of mortality. A bailiff arrives at a monastery in Úbeda, Spain, to secretly transport the body of Saint John to Segovia with the help of his two assistants, Ferrán and Diego. It is 1592, half a year following the death of the venerated mystical poet, but the exhumed body remains inexplicably well preserved, emitting perfumed aromas now cherished by the deceased's Discalced Carmelite brethren. For the long, clandestine journey across the countryside, the bailiff decides the body will need to be first drained and given time to desiccate, lest decomposition set in during the midsummer journey and attract notice. And so the seemingly simple transfer of a body to its intended final resting place starts with the first of many complications for the bailiff and his assistants. Likewise, thus begins the profane corruption of the sacred and venerated by human desires and greed. The seizure of the body by an agent of politics (the bailiff) soon becomes confounded by a seemingly supernatural heist, perhaps divinely ordained, only to thwart intended theft by yet others: local fervent devotees eager to hold onto the remains of their beloved saint. Or, at the very least, parts of him. Along with the saint's body in tow, mystical visions and delirious confusion accompany the three men on their journey, as well as the lines of the mystic's "On a Dark Night" reciting through their minds, mouths, and circumstances. The thoughts and writings of Saint John of the Cross were dominated by an appreciation for the Song of Songs attributed to Solomon, one of the five megillot in the Ketuvim of Jewish scriptures that also became incorporated into the Christian Bible despite the poem's controversy. The erotic nature of the text became interpreted as the love of Christ for the Church, and the reciprocal love of the Christian for Jesus. The sensual fervor of merging the sacred and profane in that text inspired the euphoria in the verse of Saint John of the Cross. Fabre takes hold of those same qualities in writing Recital of the Dark Verses, structuring the novel to incorporate them into layers of invented plot, historical events, and literary criticism. "On a Dark Night" forms the thematic core of the novel, with the lines of St. John of the Cross's poems being recited in full and in parts throughout the text, including one-sentence prefaces to each chapter that anticipate the events to befall the characters: VIII. Wherein, still sheltered by the night o
评阅人:路易斯·费利佩·法布尔《黑暗诗篇》朗诵会丹尼尔·p·豪瑟路易斯·费利佩·法布尔《黑暗诗篇》朗诵会译。希瑟·克利里。达拉斯。《深牛皮纸》2023。200页。在《黑暗诗篇》一书中，墨西哥诗人兼评论家路易斯·费利佩·法布尔引用了16世纪加尔默罗会神秘主义者胡安·德·拉·克鲁兹(十字架的约翰)的著名诗句，并以此为基础创作了一部富有洞察力的小说，将历史与诗歌评论、精神与淫秽、喜剧冒险与对死亡的存在主义反思结合在一起。法警到达Úbeda，西班牙的一个修道院，秘密运输圣约翰的尸体到塞戈维亚与他的两个助手，Ferrán和迭戈的帮助。现在是1592年，这位受人尊敬的神秘诗人去世半年后，但挖掘出来的尸体保存得令人费解地完好，散发出香气，死者的加尔默罗会的Discalced Carmelite弟兄们现在珍视这种香气。在穿越乡村的漫长而秘密的旅程中，法警决定先把尸体排干，让它有时间干燥，以免在仲夏的旅程中腐烂，引起注意。因此，将一具尸体转移到预定的最终安息地看似简单，但对于法警和他的助手来说，这是许多复杂问题中的第一个。同样，人类的欲望和贪婪也开始亵渎神圣和受人尊敬的事物。一名政治代理人(法警)对尸体的扣押很快就被一场看似超自然的抢劫所迷惑，也许是神的命定，只是为了阻止其他人的蓄意盗窃:当地狂热的信徒渴望抓住他们心爱的圣人的遗体，或者，至少是他的一部分。伴随着圣人的身体，神秘的幻象和神志不清的困惑伴随着这三个人的旅程，以及神秘主义者的“在黑暗的夜晚”的台词在他们的思想，嘴巴和环境中背诵。十字架上的圣约翰的思想和写作主要是对所罗门的《雅歌》的欣赏，所罗门是犹太经书Ketuvim中的五个megillot之一，尽管这首诗存在争议，但也被纳入了基督教圣经。文本的情色本质被解释为基督对教会的爱，以及基督徒对耶稣的相互爱。将神圣与世俗融合在一起的感性热情激发了十字架上的圣约翰诗句中的欣快感。法布尔在《黑暗诗篇朗诵》中也运用了这些特质，将小说结构融入虚构的情节、历史事件和文学批评中。《在黑暗的夜晚》(On a Dark Night)构成了小说的主题核心，在整篇文章中，圣约翰(St. John of the Cross)的诗句被完整或部分地背诵，每章都有一句话的序言，预示着人物将要遭遇的事件。这首诗的最后两行是:“我漫不经心地溜了出去/因为我的房子安静了。”这是一项顽强的任务——试图解释这首诗与下一首诗之间的深渊般的沉默。法布尔还收录了这位圣人另外两首著名诗歌的部分内容:《爱的火焰》和《精神圣歌》。在这些诗中，圣约翰将自己因信仰和写作受到迫害而被监禁和逃亡的个人经历融入其中。这些细微差别预言性地与法警和他的助手处理他死后身体上发生的事件平行。这两个助手Ferrán和Diego是小说的喜剧核心，他们倒霉又笨手笨脚，智商各不相同，试图在一份简单的工作中赚点钱，但这份工作却不断地用莫名其妙的事情刺激他们，提醒他们无能为力和无知的存在。然而，即使在神秘的奇迹中，他们讽刺地放弃了自己，在世俗和淫荡中体验快乐，无论是小便……
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Pub Date : 2023-11-01DOI: 10.1353/wlt.2023.a910291
Kent Su
Reviewed by: Breaking Boundaries and "Making It New": Oriental Elements in Western Modernism by Zhaoming Qian Kent Su ZHAOMING QIAN Breaking Boundaries and "Making It New": Oriental Elements in Western Modernism Beijing. Peking University Press. 2023. 334 pages. TO REMIND HIMSELF of the paramount importance of the philosophical tradition of Confucianism, the ancient Chinese Shang Dynasty's emperor, Cheng Tang, inscribed on a washbasin the Confucian motto, "If you can one day renovate yourself, do so from day to day. Yea, let there be daily renovation." Over time, this core value underwent a process of cultural transmission and eventually found its way into the hands of the American poet Ezra Pound, who reinvented it as a modernist injunction that would become a guiding principle for the avant-garde. Pound's version of the motto, which he referred to as "make it new," encapsulated the spirit of [End Page 74] experimentation and innovation that defined the modernist movement. Breaking Boundaries and "Making It New": Oriental Elements in Western Modernism adapts its title from the ideas of novelty and innovation found in the Poundian clarion call to explore uncharted territories of literature. These sentiments of rupture and revolution were echoed by many other artists and writers who sought to challenge themselves and their audiences to find new ways of expressing themselves and the world around them. Zhaoming Qian, chancellor's professor emeritus at the University of New Orleans, has researched widely in areas of American modernism, interarts relations, East–West comparative poetics, and Asian American literature. This monograph aims to investigate how the influence of Eastern culture on Western art and literature can be seen through the works of eleven writers in the interdisciplinary fields of poetry, theater, film, art, and architecture. It seeks to explore how these eleven creators engaged in an unprecedented level of cultural exchange. The resultant cross-fertilization of ideas and styles had a significant impact on the world of art and literature, transforming the literary landscapes of the twentieth century. One of the book's most significant aspects is its discussion of the interlocutor theory. The interlocutor, as a potential mediator, is instrumental in bridging the gap between two different cultures and in facilitating understanding and communication between people from different backgrounds. Qian points out how the interlocutor in the works allows these themes of cultural diversity and differences to be respected. This monograph is the first to identify that some poets, such as W. B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, or Marianne Moore, had the assistance of interlocutors who could help clarify misunderstandings, translate between languages, and provide information about cultural norms, values, and beliefs. For example, Pao Hsien Fang, a member of the local Naxi minority, contributed to Pound's comprehension of Lijiang, a para
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Pub Date : 2023-11-01DOI: 10.1353/wlt.2023.a910294
W. M. Hagen
Reviewed by: Small Mercies: A Novel by Dennis Lehane W. M. Hagen DENNIS LEHANE Small Mercies: A Novel New York. Harper. 2023. 299 pages. MY MAIN DEFENSE for reading so much mystery and crime fiction is that such books help sustain classic realism. Characters are set in an environment that matters. Quite often the social or natural setting has enough presence to impel certain actions. Knowing the environment is often the best way to understand the characters. With his PI series and best-selling titles such as Mystic River and Shutter Island, Dennis Lehane is recognized as owning parts of Boston and New England. Who better, then, to create a story in the context of the 1974 racial strife in Boston, when two poor districts—one white and one Black—were ordered to bus half their high school students to the other's school? Lehane's focus is on South Boston or "Southie," with characters who seem as much extracted from Commonwealth Avenue and other streets as they are individual. Mary Pat, a single mother, balances two jobs to sustain a life for herself and her daughter. She's no saint, quite handy with her fists, but believes in the code of the neighborhood, [End Page 77] where folks watch out for one another. The code reveals itself as flawed when she begins to ask people about her missing daughter. As a result of asserting herself with neighbors, including members of the local Irish gang, she is warned about breaking the code herself. Most troubling for her is her suspicion that her daughter is somehow connected to the death of the son of a Black co-worker. Not that she is a liberal about race herself—her vocabulary is as racist as any other Southie—but she respects good people and recognizes her co-worker really has a better family situation than her own. Lehane enlarges the scope: Mary Pat visits Harvard Square, to speak to her former husband. Although she has dressed up, she becomes aware of how she is perceived by the students, as "a working-class broad from the other side of the river who came into their world in her laughable Sears-catalog best." She also meets and understands the anger of the Black parents of the young man killed by a group of teens, including her missing daughter. In the midst of stalking a Southie mob member, responsible for whatever happened to her daughter, she phones a sympathetic police detective to try to explain how her own racism, her daughter's racism, and South Boston's racism is fueled by lies told to children who want nothing more than to belong. "And they tell you that's the Way . . . you think, I want to be part of the Way. . . . I gotta live with these people my whole life. And it's warm in there." Mary Pat puts herself outside the Way and the code of the neighborhood, once she realizes how her own family, her son and her daughter, were victimized because of tolerated violations of community standards. Her story, in the context of planned court-ordered desegregation of public schools, protests, and racial violen
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