Another issue, another record broken: Asymptote’s Fall 2019 issue features work from an unprecedented thirty-six countries. Looking for a point of entry? Consider our blog editors your guides. Their selections here, which range from Korean poetry to Russian drama, will set you off on the right foot.
“Why do I think October is beautiful? / It is not, is not beautiful.” So goes a poem by the late Bill Berkson. It is not—as we know when the grey settles and looks to stay—a particularly delightful month, but if all the poems featuring October attests to something, it is that this time, its late and sedate arrival, is one that enamors poets. So it is that a vein of poetics runs through our Fall 2019 issue, and the poetry section itself is one of tremendous artistry and vitality. From the stoic and enduring lines of Osip Mandelstam to a brilliant translation of Sun Tzu-Ping’s strikingly visual language, Asymptote has once again gathered the great poets from far reaches.
A piece that stood out especially was Alberto Pucheu’s “Poem to be Read on Inauguration Day,” brought into English by Robert Smith, which launches immediately into action and pursues its pace with an immense scope and attention. In Smith’s translator note, he points out that Pucheu was inspired by Elizabeth Alexander’s “Praise Song for the Day,” and reading the two proximally, one may note the similar notes of multiplicity, volume, equal parts communion and estrangement, the individual and the mass. Where Pucheu’s poem stands on its own, however, is its sheer force. Incorporating a daily experience of routine, apathy, idleness, and violence, this poem is a defiant refutation of what politics has become in our age of appeasement. Take these stunning lines:
Going up or going down a street,
we attest to this hiatus of unknowing
between the abandoned body and the different lives
that try to colonize it, between the naked life
and the living garments that cover it,
between raw life and whatever part of it is cookable,
between open life and lived life.
A second remarkable selection is “Brain and Me” by the Korean poet Moon Bo Young, translated by Hedgie Choi. Equal parts fascinated, sterile, and corporeal, it is also, at times, tremendously funny:
Those people who have hands but still
go out of their way to buy hands and
wave them.
And precise during absurdity:
The desire that drives you to see what can’t be seen by blowing it up 5 billion
times, that’s a mean desire.
The various sections of the poem address pain clinically, detaching the brain from the body in an examination of physical versus mental pain, in a briefly mentioned instance of heartbreak. “The brain doesn’t feel pain,” Moon tells us, so where is this hurt coming from?
Poetry is in constant interrogation with the world. Through these sublime works, we are brought forth to the expansive results that comes with the many instances of noticing, in many languages, in the great many worlds.
—Xiao Yue Shan
The atmosphere of Julia Lukshina’s “Nervous” is lush and vapid, like an early aughts reality show produced by Tennessee Williams. Translated from the Russian by Anna O. Fisher, the one-act play circles an emerging mother-dyad: Katya, a wealthy Muscovite, is the recently-appointed foster mother to Ilona, a thirteen-year-old orphan from the provinces. Mutual disorientation precludes any direct communication between them—Katya and Ilona speak only in self-protective monologues, directed at their interrogators (real and imagined)—but not insight. The monologues are products of obsessive, threatened, awed attention to each other, and their erotically-tinged observations are apt and compelling.
“She’ll sit down next to me and look in my notebook, and the room will fill with perfume,” reports Ilona of her new guardian. “She dresses like the movies. Lilac trousers and a lilac sweater, that’s just a little tighter than the trousers. And a raspberry scarf like water.” And, of Ilona, Katya tells us, “She examined everything, smelled everything, like some kind of little animal. . . . Her skirts barely cover her privates, and they’re spangled, too. A panda right on the ass. She’s surrounded by pandas.”
—Rachel Allen
I love the most recent issue of Asymptote because it’s so diverse, and the microfiction special feature is really fun, but my favorite piece has to be “City Unknown” by Arelis Uribe, translated from the Spanish by Allison Braden, for its raw emotion and relatability. The narrator of the story tells us about her extremely close friendship with her cousin when they were young: they shared all of their milestones, from the chicken pox to their first period. When their moms got into an argument and stopped talking to each other, they grew apart. Years later, they meet again at college rediscover their childhood connection on a class trip to Bolivia.
The way the narrator describes her relationship with her cousin really makes this story shine. She portrays the innocence of childhood through simple language. Moreover, she sees the things a kid sees and tells them as they are: “I don’t know, but they got mad at each other, and what always happens in a family like mine happened: Instead of resolving their problems, they quit speaking.” Even when talking about their relationship during college, the directness of the prose is moving, and made me think of my own close friendships and how they have matured over the years. The women in the story reconnect through painful experiences which unfortunately shows the difficulties of being a woman in any part of the world, while also underlining the power of friendship to heal.
—Andrea Blatz
Amongst the wonderfully diverse contributions in our Fall 2019 Issue, the piece that most stood out for me—that I was most moved by—was “Tyre, The City of Stone.”
Nikola Popović’s “Tyre, The City of Stone,” translated from Serbian by Jelena Ćuslović, is at once an intriguing genre that melds travel writing, memoir, history, politics, and myth. Incorporating his many experiences of Tyre, yet focalizing them through the particular memory of his two-year old son’s first visit with him, Popović reflects on the city past and present: what has been lost, what has remained, what has changed, what has persisted. Time is the anchor of this text, and our perspective is continually cast off again: to Tyre’s Phoenician origins, its re-building under Roman rule, its mentions in the Bible, through the Crusades, the construction of refugee camps for displaced Palestinians, to its take over by Hezbollah. Yet, this account is as deeply personal as it is historical. Individuals, such as taxi driver Khalil and fisherman Paul weave their own narratives, memories, and daily life into the city’s history. The result is an intense, moving tableau, similar to what Popović similarly created for Beirut with “Stories from the Barbershop,” published in our Summer 2018 issue.
The observant, measured prose allows the city, with its vivid images and inhabitants, to speak for itself and one is almost reminded of W. G. Sebald. Indeed, like Sebald, Popović is carefully attuned to the relationship between image and language, to storytelling, and to listening for the language present in all things—from Tyre’s etymology, to Paul’s customary address to him, through to the first words spoken by his son.
“Tyre, The City of Stone” succeeds in communicating issues of great importance concerning time, memory, displacement, and human experience. Here, all tenses exist simultaneously: what happened, what would have happened, the legends of what may have happened and, quietly yet forcefully, what could happen.
—Sarah Moore
*****
Read more news on the Asymptote blog:
- Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature (October 18, 2019)
- Our Fall 2019 Issue Is Here!
- Blog Editors’ Highlights: Summer 2019