P.S. I love how the still for this video features me bending awkwardly to pick up my beer. Thanks, PEN/YouTube!

T-33 hours and counting . . .

Anyway, today we’ll go over the five poetry books that are up for the 2011 BTBA. I’m admittedly not nearly as knowledgeable about poetry as I am about fiction, so what I think I’ll do is quote from the “Why This Book Should Win” pieces and base my odds on how convincing the praise is . . .

Here goes:

Geometries by Guillevic, translated from the French by Richard Sieburth (Ugly Duckling Presse) (Why This Book Should Win)

“The cover of the collection says that these poems were “Englished” by Richard Sieburth. They are indeed. Sieburth captures in English the specific spokenness of the poems, their philosophical wit, their pathos (who would have thought shapes could have pathos!), without losing a sense of the inherent playfulness of the project. These shapes are foreign mirrors—yet astounding mirrors nonetheless. These poems are part game, part serious seriousness, and Sieburth stealthily draws the poems down that line into a wonderfully pleasing feeling that something true has been discovered in the oddest of ways.”—Jennifer Kronovet

Love the idea of this book, the fact that it wasn’t translated but “Englished” and that Ugly Duckling Presse is back in the finalists: 3-to-1.

Time of Sky & Castles in the Air by Ayane Kawata, translated from the Japanese by Sawako Nakayasu (Litmus Press) (Why This Book Should Win)

“Not all of them are about blood and veins blowing up, but the sky is a threat in many of these poems, a violent imposition on life, body and nature. The distant blue that is too bright, and cut up, and ominous and penetrating and rupturing, is a spectacularly original feat of imagination. [. . .] Castles in the Air, published in Japanese in 1991, is a dream journal presented as prose poems, and operates within its own hybrid rationale. Operating within a familiar dream-logic, these poems are at once unbearably personal, shamelessly intimate, and frankly grotesque. They unflinchingly reveal the subconscious monstrosity of the speaker, but so bluntly, so unapologetically that the reader too is implicated by the assumed understanding in the tone. These are dreams we all have had, in one way or another, and so no embarrassment is necessary.”—Erica Mena

I would love to see a two-time winner of the BTBA (Sawako Nakayasu won a couple years back), and this does sound monstrously beautiful: 7-to-1.

Child of Nature by Luljeta Lleshanaku, translated from the Albanian by Henry Israeli and Shpresa Qatipi (New Directions) (Why This Book Should Win)

“Case in point, the poem ‘Monday in Seven Days,’ a longish serial poem of ten parts, which I’m only going to quote once because otherwise the whole thing is going to wind up in what is supposed to be a brief review:

Preparing for winter
isn’t tradition, but instinct. We hurl our spare anxieties
like precious cargo from a shipwreck.

Read that again. If you don’t see on your own how good it is, how truly excellent the choice of the word ‘hurl’ is and how excellently true the observation contained in the lines is, maybe you don’t like poetry as much as you thought. Or maybe you need to read a lot more of it.”—Brandon Holmquest

Well played, Brandon, well played. Very intriguing poet (who is currently learning how to write poetry in English) and coming from New Directions, it’s got a really good chance of winning: 5-to-1.

The Book of Things by Aleš Šteger, translated from the Slovenian by Brian Henry (BOA Editions) (Why This Book Should Win)

“The poems in Aleš Šteger’s The Book of Things focus with nearly comic intensity on an array of everyday objects—an egg, a coat, a toothpick, a stomach. Here, a potato recollects the soil it came from. Or a hand dryer speaks a windy language we can’t quite understand. Or a doormat forgives us all. But Šteger’s poems go far beyond mere comic description, personification, or metaphor. Rather, his objects reflect our own strange complexities—our eagerness to consume, our rationalizations and kindness. Our many cruelties and our grandiosities.”—Kevin Prufer

This is the second year in a row BOA Editions has a book on the shortlist, and I like Kevin’s line about “a hand dryer speaking a windy language we can’t quite understand”: 5-to-1

Flash Cards by Yu Jian, translated from the Chinese by Wang Ping and Ron Padgett (Zephyr Press) (Why This Book Should Win)

“In Flash Cards, his first collection to appear in English translation, he writes of frogs that died in 1998 along with their pond, but also of the mosquitoes that remain there, ‘sometimes conversing in English.’ It’s hard to translate humor well, especially in the streamlined language of a poem, but American poet Ron Padgett and Chinese poet Wang Ping do an extraordinary job of getting the tone right every time. ‘Conversing’ is just the verb for a wry, quirky line like this in English.”—Idra Novey

Zephyr Press is a perennial finalist for the poetry award, and this book, translated from the Chinese, has a strong chance of winning the award. But based on Tim Nassau’s slightly less enthusiastic review I’ll put the odd at 10-to-1.

That’s it. Winners announced Friday night. Now off to PEN World Voices . . .

And another reminder: This Friday. April 29th. Bowery Poetry Club. 8:45pm. Lorin Stein. Announcements. Drinks. Cool people.

The Jokers by Albert Cossery, translated from the French by Anna Moschovakis (New York Review Books) (Why This Book Should Win)

Cossery was the only author with two titles on this year’s BTBA, a feat that Bolano accomplished back a couple BTBAs ago. Based on that, he had double the chances of winning the award. Not to mention how well his novels tie in with what went down in Egypt, Cossery’s obsession with laziness, the all-around love for NYRB and New Directions (both of which are publishing other Cossery books later this year), etc., etc.

Because Cossery is the cornerstone of my current favorite anecdote about the 21st century, book discovery, and pretty girls in bars, I feel like he should absolutely win. Not to mention, Anna Moschovakis is one of the most talented writers/translators out there today . . . And she was featured in O Magazine! Odds of winning: 3-to-1.

The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz, translated from the Czech by Andrew Oakland (Dalkey Archive) (Why This Book Should Win)

I remember signing this on—and a few other Ajvaz books—when I was working at Dalkey, but since I haven’t actually seen this title, I can’t really comment on it. I do remember really liking the sample, and based on all the love given it by our panelists, I’m sure it’s rather excellent, but . . .

One of my favorite “age naming” projects was Joshua Glenn’s Josh’s research and data gathering is the very definition of meticulous, and his reasoning behind his categorizations (which tend to be based in the concerns of the artists born in these particular time periods) is fascinating. And I can’t really disagree with his assessment of the which I belong to, and which takes the instantaneous communication of the internet and social networking for granted. I also dig the fact that, according to Josh, we were the first generation to association tech geekiness with coolness/attractiveness.

Anyway, The Golden Age is, in my opinion, a longshot. 50-to-1 odds of winning the BTBA. It would be great for Dalkey—one of the premiere publishers of literature in translation—to win a BTBA, but this book is probably a bit too cerebral to win. Next year!

Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky (New Directions) (Why This Book Should Win)

One of these years, Susan Bernofsky HAS to win a BTBA. She’s one of the best translators ever, is super cool, has great taste in literature (Walser!) and just simply deserves the recognition.

Visitation could be her ticket . . . It’s written by a woman (always plays well), is from New Directions (bonus points), and is innovative without being too daunting. It’s also about a house.

That said, Visitation may also be a bit heavy. There’s Nazi stuff in there, which doesn’t always play well with judges or readers. (WWII books haven’t fared as well in the BTBA as expected: witness Every Man Dies Alone and the lack of Hans Keilson books on this year’s longlist.) Your seesaw of BTBA worthiness has the heaviness of German history on one side, and the vibrance of Susan Bernofsky on the other. Odds: 7-to-1.

The True Deceiver by Tove Jansson, translated from the Swedish by Thomas Teal (New York Review Books) (Why This Book Should Win)

I finished this book not too long ago. I’ve been meaning to read Tove Jansson for a while, since her story—part of the small Swedish-speaking community in Finlad, creator of the who then started writing books for adults, sort of pet project of the NYRB—was pretty intriguing. Booksellers in particular seem to really like her work, but that perception might be based on the fact that booksellers really all the NYRB books.

Nevertheless, this novel is direct, yet subtle and sly in its own way. It’s not as daunting or as overtly complicated as Gerog Letham or Visitation, but there’s something classic-seeming about the novel and the way the plot plays itself out. Intriguing enough that I kept at least one of her other books out on my “to read” shelf (which is literally an entire set of bookshelves) for the next time I’m snowed in . . . which, given this is Rochester, will probably happen in September. Overall, I think the seeming quietness of this book keep it in the game, so 10-to-1 odds that it wins.

Agaat by Marlene Van Niekerk, translated from the Afrikaans by Michiel Heyns (Tin House) (Why This Book Should Win)

It’s very cool, the amount of attention that’s been paid to South African writers over the past year. This book got a ton of good press, as did Ingrid Winterbach’s To Hell with Cronje, which we published in the fall. I can’t tell if this is due to the World Cup (I really miss the World Cup . . . trying to get into the Champions League but I effing hate Fox Soccer Sports and Rochester isn’t really the best soccer-watching place in the world . . . nevertheless, Go Barcelona!), or if there’s just a lot of good stuff coming out of there. I think it’s actually the latter, and that there may be a bit of a run on South African fiction over the next few years. Or at least, I hope so.

Based solely on the make-up of this book—translated from Afrikaans, written by a woman, praised by everybody—and the review that Gwen Dawson wrote for us, I think this has a really serious shot at winning the award, and I’ll give it 5-to-1 odds.

Tomorrow I’ll recap the poetry titles . . .

Taking place at the Bowery Poetry Club at 8:45 and lasting till the wee hours, this promises to be an incredible event—one that was recently made even more incredible when Lorin Stein of The Paris Review agreed to MC and make the announcements . . .

Although my understanding of gambling and odds-making is a bit sketchy—I’m still confused by WTF 117 minus 127 7 ov-120 means in relation to the Cubs vs. Rockies today—I thought it would be fun if I tried to summarize handicap the finalists for the 2011 BTBA. Since I already know the winners (and no, you won’t get this out of me, although YES, I will accept bribes), don’t take any of this seriously, and since this is being written from a college campus I feel like I should reiterate that GAMBLING IS BAD FOR YOUR SOUL and that buzzed driving is drunk driving.

OK, let’s have some fun:

The Literary Conference by César Aira, translated from the Spanish by Katherine Silver (New Directions) (Why This Book Should Win)

On the one hand, I think that Aira’s Ghosts is a better overall book than The Literary Conference. Tighter, more ambitious in scope, more serious. But man, is the Literary Conference fun! There’s hidden treasure, mad scientists, Carlos Fuentes, and cloning. Of all the finalists, it’s one of the shortest and flashiest books. What’s interesting to me about Aira is how he manages to get the reader to buy into something totally batshit, thus opening up a trillion unbelievable possibilities. In Ghosts it’s the ghosts themselves, mentioned first in an offhanded way, as if ghosts at a construction site was the most natural thing possible. With The Literary Conference it’s the Macuto Line. Read that description in the opening pages and then try and draw it: I dare you. But if you buy into that little bit of linguistic trickery, the rest of the book—did I mention the clones? the massive silkworms rolling down the mountain?—is completely believable.

Based on Aira’s sneaky nature, the unceasing flow of publications, and overall readableness, I’m giving him 5-to-1 odds of taking home the trophy this year.

A Life on Paper by Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud, translated from the French by Edward Gauvin (Small Beer) (Why This Book Should Win)

Seeing that the basis for Billy Pilgrim is buried just outside my office window, Kurt Vonnegut/Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud is a bit of a hometown favorite.

That said, as every book buyer in North America has told me, short stories are a tough sell. That probably holds for committees as well as customers, so I’d put KV’s odds at a healthy 12-to-1.

Hocus Bogus by Romain Gary (writing as Émile Ajar), translated from the French by David Bellos (Yale University Press) (Why This Book Should Win)

Hoaxes are way cool. Especially hoaxes played on corporate bastards who always seem to miss the joke/learning opportunity because THEY HAVE NO SOULS. But second to send-ups of society destroyers companies like GE are literary hoaxes. Paul Maliszewski’s is an invaluable source on this topic, and includes the brilliant little game he played with the editors of the Syracuse Business Journal. Totally worth the $24.95 cover price just for that. (Sidenote: I love that Paul got busted for his fraudulent pieces when writing about Watertown, NY, a city that I constantly mispronounce as Water-ton, as if it’s a semi-elegant resort on the lake. According to people who’ve been there, Watertown—emphasis on the “town”—is a shithole. Which is probably why Paul’s invented company—and description of downtown Watertown—was so easy to pick out as fake.)

Since Gary’s hoax was so well constructed and fascinating, and since I have a friend who recently wrote a pilot centering around a publishing hoax, and since all of the judges voted for this to make the shortlist, I’m going all in on this crafty novel and giving it 3-to-1 odds.

On Elegance While Sleeping by Emilio Lascano Tegui, translated from the Spanish by Idra Novey (Dalkey Archive) (Why This Book Should Win)

One of my favorite editorial trips ever was to Buenos Aires. Helps that I absolutely LOVE Argentine literature (Macedonio, Puig, Cortazar, Borges, Arlt, Saer, Chejfec, Piglia, Ocampo, Bioy Casares, on and on and on), but even beyond that, the city is stunning, the weather was spectacular, the people all incredibly beautiful, and the bookstores grander than life. I also bought the only suit that fits me while I was there. At a store near Cortazar Plaza. . . . Glancing over the posts I wrote from Buenos Aires makes me both want to flee Rochester for an extended summer vacation where empanadas are 3 for a $1 and Malbec is easier to come by than clean water.

It also makes me want Tugui’s book to win the BTBA. But given that Idra is on the poetry committee, I’m thinking that this won’t happen simply for political reasons, which is why I think it’s got about a 25-to-1 chance of winning. (Doesn’t help that Dalkey Archive has never once mentioned the BTBA. Not that I expect such a thing, but good god, on their News Page, they linked to a review in the Just saying.)

Georg Letham: Physician and Murderer by Ernst Weiss, translated from the German by Joel Rotenberg (Archipelago) (Why This Book Should Win)

In addition to the books from Aira and Gary, I think Georg Letham is the other truly serious contender from this group. Pros: Archipelago is well-loved by everyone on the committee, it’s long, it’s classic, there’s another mad scientist involved, it’s unique, nice packaging. Cons: Very long, may seem a bit dated to the general reading public, an Archipelago author won a few years ago.

Of the ten finalists, this may be the most “classic” of all the books. And since the committee members are very well-read and love “lasting” books, I really think this could winI’m going to give this 5-to-1 odds.

Last five works of fiction tomorrow . . .

First up is Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud’s A Life on Paper, which just received a very enthusiastic write-up over at

Before the Best Translated Book Award put Georges-Olivier Châteaureynard’s A Life on Paper on its longlist (and now it’s a finalist), I had never heard of this French author, despite his long career (not that this surprises me). I hope to get to know his work much better, though that will require a lot of work from translators. So far, from my slight research online, A Life on Paper (tr. from the French by Edward Gauvin, 2010) is the only work of his to find its way to English. Thanks to Small Beer Press for bringing this one to our attention, and hopefully Edward Gauvin is working on some of Châteaureynard’s novels.

A Life on Paperis a collection of more than twenty short stories compiled from several collections Châteaureynard has published over a thirty-year period. Most of the story are very short indeed. I can’t emphasize this enough: it was a delight to read one or two a day over a month. While writing this review I was often reading a passage to quote and found myself still reading after a few pages.

Categorizing Châteaureynaud seems futile. He’s called a fabulist, but I think this is too limiting; frankly, some of his stories seem to be written just for the fun of it, with no metaphorical intent whatsoever. I would say he’s like Kafka — the bizarre happens in an every-day setting and the characters keep acting like it’s completely sane — only his tone is quite different, reminding me more of Melville’s story-telling style. Well, there’s no reason to categorize him, and I hope some passages from his stories will give a better sense of whether you’d enjoy this collection.

He goes on to quote from a few of the stories, including the titular story, which opens with

The Siegling-Brunet collection no doubt constitutes the most extensive gathering of photographs devoted to a single person. Kathrin Laetitia Siegling was born in London on January 12, 1939. On April 14, 1960, she died in Amiens, where she had moved with her husband François Brunet. She lived, then, some 7,750 days, during which, at the rate of some dozen shots every twenty-four hours, her picture was taken 93,284 times. To the best of my knowledge, the negatives were never preserved, but the 93,284 prints were.

and ends up focusing on Kathrin’s obsessive father, who took all 93,284 pictures.

Châteaureynaud’s stories truly are a delight, and I really hope Edward Gauvin is translating more of his work . . .

Click here for all past and future posts in this series.

Today’s post is by poetry committee member Brandon Holmquest.

Child of Nature by Luljeta Lleshanaku, translated by Henry Israeli and Shpresa Qatipi

Language: Albanian
Country: Albania
Publisher: New Directions
Pages: 108

Why This Book Should Win:

It begins
when she searches in the darkness
for her likeness, a line of verse awaiting its end rhyme

and it goes on from there, and in just about every poem there’s something that grabs your attention. As in the quote above, where the rhythm of the use of the letter S is so nice in the first two lines, establishing a beat which then opens up to let the long I come in, “likeness” “line” then the same S in “verse” and the long I again in “rhyme.”

This is English-language poetry, of course. I have no Albanian whatsoever and the book is not bilingual, something which I generally regard as a minor crime, though this book may have persuaded me to be a little less hard-line about it. As I was attempting to explain to a bookseller friend of mine not that long ago: I want the original even in languages I don’t know because I want to see what I can see. Are the original much longer or shorter than the translations? Are they shaped differently? Do they rhyme and if so, do the translations? And so on. I’m suspicious, in short.

And often, there’s reason to be. But, sometimes, maybe it doesn’t matter at all, because the English is so good I cease to care if it’s even a translation. I just want more of it, whatever it is, however it came to be made.

Case in point, the poem “Monday in Seven Days,” a longish serial poem of ten parts, which I’m only going to quote once because otherwise the whole thing is going to wind up in what is supposed to be a brief review:

Preparing for winter
isn’t tradition, but instinct. We hurl our spare anxieties
like precious cargo from a shipwreck.

Read that again. If you don’t see on your own how good it is, how truly excellent the choice of the word “hurl” is and how excellently true the observation contained in the lines is, maybe you don’t like poetry as much as you thought. Or maybe you need to read a lot more of it.

Well, there’s a lot more of it in this book. Both the above quotes are pulled from the first quarter of a 100+ page book. At about the halfway point we find:

They are dying one after the other;
shoveling earth on them has become as common
as sprinkling salt on food.

I don’t know what anyone could say to work like this except, “Hell yes.” I could go on dropping quotes all day, but I can see no real percentage in aggressively preaching to a mixed congregation of the choir and the uncovertable.

Lleshanaku’s work is in a vein with some other writers from Eastern Europe I’ve run across in the last few years. She reminds me of Mariana Marin with a less severe case of depression, but really most of the good work I’ve seen from Romania or Poland and elsewhere in the region is in the ball park. Lots of images, vernacular language, a tendency to roll around in the lower reaches of the culture, and a level of comfort on the part of the poet with the saying of things, the making of explicit statements about the nature of something, be it the self, the world, or some interaction between the two.

Point being, there’s something going on over there that we’re only just now getting a chance to see in this country, thanks to books like this and translators like Henry Israeli and Shpresa Qatipi. There are literary cultures less dominated by the inane war between boring middlebrow crap and equally boring academic crap. Child of Nature is a book that comes from such a place. Read it.

On a related BTBA note, here’s the display that Jeff Waxman set up at 57th Street Bookstore in Chicago:

If you’ve never been to the (57th, Newberry Library, and Seminary Co-op are all part of the same co-op), you’re missing out on one of the absolute best indie stores in the country. Really is the prototypical university/literary bookshop. Absolutely packed with great books that you’ll probably never see in another store (there is no fluff here), and has that indescribable bookstore allure. (Helps that it’s in a cave-like space within the seminary. So very cool.)

If you’re ever in Chicago, it’s definitely worth swinging by.

Skylight is one of the coolest bookstores in the States, what with their great selection, long history of passionate, literary booksellers, the tree that grows inside the store, and this hipster commercial (which includes a fleeting shot of BTBA 2010 finalist The Tanners):

Posters and shelftalkers for the BTBA finalists are being mailed out a bunch of indie stores today. If you’re a bookseller and would like some of these, please email me at chad.post [at] rochester.edu. And we’ll continue to post pics from bookstores across the country leading up to the grand announcements on April 29th.

Click here for all past and future posts in this series.

Today’s post is by poetry committee member and host Erica Mena.

Time of Sky & Castles in the Air by Ayane Kawata, translated by Sawako Nakayasu

Language: Japanese
Country: Japan
Publisher: Litmus Press
Pages: 144

Why This Book Should Win: Outsiders are cool, two-for-the-price-of-one, 1st ever repeat translator winner, the poetry will explode your brain and send you spinning into dreamspace.

Time of Sky & Castles in the Air are two separate books, collected into this single volume, and their contrast underscores Ayane Kawata’s breadth of poetic talent and Sawako Nakayasu’s impressive range as translator. Time of Sky is Kawata’s first collection of poems, published in Japanese in 1969. At the time of publication, Kawata was (and still is) an intentional outsider in the Japanese poetry world. This remove is perhaps the strongest feature of this first part of the collection: the distance of the observer from the poetic world she engages with.

These sparse, short verses seem at first to belong to the tradition of abstract, imagistic Asian poetry that most Western readers are familiar with. The grammatical minimalism, the intense images, the staccato rhythm of constrained lines, all of these things feel familiar, within the comfort-zone of contemporary Japanese poetry. But there is a dark tension lurking beneath the surface, and in places it bursts through, startling:

19

From the trace of the incontinent blood of an angel walking along
holding some sky cut out with a class cutter, the dawn—

27

Will the lark’s vein blow up
Or will an earful of the distant blue make its way inside

30

At the speed of a reed of blood crawling about the brain
As if to assault—
Sing

Not all of them are about blood and veins blowing up, but the sky is a threat in many of these poems, a violent imposition on life, body and nature. The distant blue that is too bright, and cut up, and ominous and penetrating and rupturing, is a spectacularly original feat of imagination.

There is also a layered femininity in these poems, that builds sexuality within protest and suffering.

37

O naked women letting out screams and passing through the
invisible automatic doors of the blue sky

38

Breasts that hatch
Like music
Mirrors resound and melt
The sky goes missing

50

How long will the women be gasping as they open and close their
arms in the towering forest of mirrors

The reflection of the body in a mirror is a clear gesture toward feminist positioning, but at such cold remove, such seemingly idle wondering, that the violence of the watcher’s gaze is all but undone. This first book is full of startling imagery, more striking for the distanced tone which Nakayasu preserves throughout. This tone, which could become monochromatic or dully repetitive, emphasizes the layers of image and meaning, and hints at innocence and indifference. But if the tone gestures towards indifference, it is even more exciting to encounter the violence and strangeness of these sharp fragments of image.

Castles in the Air, published in Japanese in 1991, is a dream journal presented as prose poems, and operates within its own hybrid rationale. Operating within a familiar dream-logic, these poems are at once unbearably personal, shamelessly intimate, and frankly grotesque. They unflinchingly reveal the subconscious monstrosity of the speaker, but so bluntly, so unapologetically that the reader too is implicated by the assumed understanding in the tone. These are dreams we all have had, in one way or another, and so no embarrassment is necessary.

With an infant

A man is chasing me—so in order to escape I try to have a relationship with an infant. The idea is to drive the man away by having him see me make love to the infant. The infant understands the situation completely.

Throughout this sequence the poet struggles with impossibility – the attempt (often failed) to escape pursuit, to be seen, to be heard. Familiar tropes of an unsettled dreamer, these are transformed into revelations of weakness and strength.

Flute

I have a flute in my hands and try to play it, but no sound comes out. I accidentally breathe in and something like a scrap of silver foil gets left behind in my mouth. As I am wondering what it’s like inside the flute, the thin wooden flute splits vertically like a cicada shell, exposing the metallic scraps and grass seeds mixed inside. The flute sounds because of something inside it. I put it back together and try again to play it. Still no sound comes out.

This collection moves from cold remove to shameless vulnerability, from verse to prose, from imagistic to dreamlike. In maintaining a recognizable voice and preserving the disparity between pieces, Nakayasu created a remarkable translation, deserving of close and repeated readings.