Three Poems (Ned Balbo)

Red Eft

                   A helicopter hovers

toward white sky, along the shore,

in close surveillance of the beach

on which we lie among so many,

with not much left to say, sand rippling

toward us from the sea.

What do you see, not see? If I open

my eyes again, I’ll find you

lying still, or reading, sea glass

gathered in a heap, sunglasses

hiding what you’re thinking. And while

swimmers call out to friends who rise

to shake the sand from blankets,

this darkness—almost a deep red—pulses

slowly, like the surf.

Somewhere in a Golden Guide,

I read about Red Eft,

salamander mountain-spawned,

a small life, streak of blood.

Never seen one, never will. And now

the helicopter’s back, black shadow

drowning out the ocean

—Crumpled Styrofoam, dried kelp,

a horseshoe crab’s unlucky armor.

How long will we lie here, struck dumb,

paralyzed by heat, unwavering

sun and pulse of waves, so much

unsaid, withheld between us?

Nothing gained, I change position, find

my arm is touching yours.

I may just open up my eyes.

I may just say a word or two.

Instead, I only drift away

and think about red eft, red eft,

small life, a fading coolness

that you lift, cupped in your palm,

as you walk across white dunes, and paper

blows up toward the sky—

                                             A mirage,

a shimmer of heat above white noise.

Suicide of an Old Man

                       New York Times, December 7, 1879

The facts are few. It happened in Elmira.

The laborer, well-to-do—an immigrant,

or not, we’ll never know—was touched by fire,

a fit (what else to call it?), that turned saint,

sinner, or soul between, David Fitzgerald

toward his end. What labor had been his?

What symptoms or behavior had been herald?

To what force did he finally answer, “Yes,”

seeking the means—smashed bottle, carving knife,

straight razor freshly rinsed—to cut his throat

to-night from ear to ear, taking the life

he must have valued once? (Or maybe not.)

Insanity’s no answer, though the text he

features in records his age: Near sixty.

Previously unpublished

The Yankee Clipper

       For my adoptive father Carmine, Southside Hospital, October 2000

I tilt your chin, blade gliding in its pass

across smooth skin, tracks edged with shaving cream,

bed raised, your pillow white, smeared window glass

bleached by October sunlight. Razor’s rim

dabbed clean, I trim your mustache, tiny fleece-

hairs falling. Outside, dead leaves—copper, flame,

brass, verdigris—still cling to branches high

over the cars of 27A,

Main Street, Bay Shore, no ocean-view in sight.

I towel off your face. You look years younger,

i.v. measured digitally, your weight

past guessing, weeks since fortified by hunger.

Can I swing the tray out, switch the light

off, on as day wanes? Don’t you lift a finger.

“Can’t wait to get out.” Your iron-gray hair’s

gone white, all white as snow. By now, the cars

flick on their headlights, traffic thinning out.

The Yankee Clipper was an s.o.b.,

Newsweek informs us as I read aloud

excerpts for entertainment. Skeptically,

you listen, straw-slurps, shake your head, or nod

when I recount heroics, Italy

his father’s birthplace, struggling fisherman

who found the day’s catch sickening a son

meant not for boats but bats. Eyes hard, he’d stub

the dirt with one foot, step up to the plate.

He wasn’t perfect, either?  Join the club.

But now, you’re tired and need to sleep—at eight,

all visitors must leave, and in the Sub-

way Series soon to come, the Mets will bite

the dust in five games. Gore will win and lose.

DiMaggio? “No one could fill his shoes.”

From The Trials of Edgar Poe and Other Poems  (Story Line Press, 2010)

Ned Balbo’s third book, The Trials of Edgar Poe and Other Poems (Story Line Press), received the 2012 Poets’ Prize, and the 2010 Donald Justice Prize selected by judge A. E. Stallings. Lives of the Sleepers (University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), received the Ernest Sandeen Poetry Prize and a ForeWord Book of the Year Gold Medal. Galileo’s Banquet (Washington Writers’ Publishing House, 1998) shared the Towson University Prize for Literature. The recipient of three Maryland Arts Council grants, Balbo has received the Robert Frost Foundation Poetry Award and the John Guyon Literary Nonfiction Prize. He is co-winner of the 2013 Willis Barnstone Translation Prize for his translations of Baudelaire’s “Le Mort joyeux.” More poems in Iowa Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and Poetry. 

-- Ned Balbo

Three Visual Poems (Márton Koppány)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Translation (2009); Dream (2007); Still Life—for Carmen Racovitza (2012) [latter from Addenda]. 

My inclinations have always directed me towards the (actual, ever-changing) limits of verbal communication. But I don't distrust/need/enjoy words more or less than the empty spaces between them, the sheet of paper they are written on, the rhythm of the turning of the pages, unknown and forgotten symbols, fragments, natural formations like clouds—each of them and any combination of them may be an invitation. When I feel easy and ready to make something, I experience their complete equivalence.

Márton Koppány (b. 1953) lives in Budapest, Hungary. He started writing "visual" poetry at the end of the seventies and since then his work has been widely published and exhibited. His latest book in print is Addenda, Otoliths, 2012. Two other books from Otholits are Endgames and, with Nico Vassilakis, From the Annual Record of the Cloud Appreciation Society. His poems were included in three recent anthologies of visual poetry and language art: The Last Vispo (Fantagraphics, 2012), A Global Visuage (edition ch, 2012), and The Dark Would (Apple Pie Editions, 2013). Read interviews with him in Very Small Kitchen and 3AM Magazine.

-- Márton Koppány

Two Poems (Halvard Johnson)

Operative Light

1.

Facing the music snatches of dialogue he said,
"Does your head hurt?" she said, "No"
moments when everything seems personal summery clothes
make me nervous sweet defilements something wholly primitive
       
2.
Carrying my scrapbook giving in to nothing killing people
because I like to woken by a sudden shock of pain
nobody gives us anything hair combed back from her forehead
coming to our rescue shining water under the streetlights
       
3.
Plunging downward drifting down beside her familiar,
troubled world wanting to say it out loud living on credit
extending one hand toward the sun a little like standing
on the corner shaving the dog for the summer
       
4.
Slapping the surface of the table having been dead
for years now jumping up to see if you were really there
sitting on the church steps balancing the dream against
the falling light glad that you're okay
       
5.
Sitting with the gun across his knees massaging his knuckles
moonrise white over water listening to her pretending
to listen to him flights to some distant cities true, but separate
clear as could be in the silent air thinking of the evening coming up

Old Man in Sky

On the chosen day, September 22, at precisely 8:44 GMT,

the old man appears just where the sun would normally be.

The earth--its surface--unfurls itself from its globe and perks

up its ears, waiting . . .

Looking something like a Mercator projection, but without

the distortions, the edges lean forward making the whole thing

sort of concave like. The old man explains that he, looking

just a tad like George Carlin, but with more hair, has finally

found the time to come around and see what wonders he hath

wrought here. He says things seem pretty much okay, on a planetary

scale. Folks are being born and dying in pretty much the right

proportions. All in all, he says, he is pleased with his handiwork.

But, he asks in conclusion, Vas you effer in Zinzinnati?

Halvard Johnson's newest, Remains To Be Seen, is just out from Spuyten Duyvil press. Older, Changing the Subject, is with Red Hen Press (2004). Older still, Eclipse (1974,) was the third of four originally issued by New Rivers Press between 1969-1979. Another recent two, are with Hamilton Stone Editions,, where he is on the editorial board. He lives, and writes, with Lynda Schorr, in San Miquel de Allende, Mexico, and is our fearless leader/dispatcher of Truck (I feel privileged to have had his ear at the conception of this "self-propelled vehicle".

--Halvard Johnson

Dear Abby (Lynda Schor)

Dear Abby:

Every time I ask my friend Sally if she wants to hang out she says she has something else to do.  A few weeks ago she said she had to go out.  About an hour later while walking around the block I noticed her car was there.  I knocked on the door.  Sally said she was getting ready to leave and besides she was on the phone.  Does it take an hour to get ready to go out?  I don’t want to lose an old friend, but I’m not sure she really is a friend anymore.  If she is why does she keep ditching me?  My husband Lyle and I have a fourteen-month-old child together.  My two children from an earlier relationship and Lyle’s son make up our family of six.  Lyle and I make good money and we both collect child support from previous partners.  What bothers me is Lyle won’t let me see his paychecks or combine our joint incomes in a joint account.  I contracted herpes-2 after a one-night stand ten years ago.  Since the age of seventeen I have times when I feel really happy and I’m talking to friends on the Internet all of a sudden I feel a wave of sadness.  And I remember bad things, like when my best friend died when I was little.  I don’t know why this happens all the time.  What do you think?  My husband thinks my herpes-2 is a constant reminder of my promiscuity.  I get very angry at this, but then I remember that stress can trigger an outbreak.  I try to remember that the virus doesn’t change who I am inside.  I don’t think I’m a bad person, do you?  I didn’t say anything about his gonorrhea, did I?  I was in the parking lot of a shopping center when I noticed a woman two cars away yelling and hitting a little girl.  The girl seemed to be about six or seven.  I wrote down her license number.  I checked with several state agencies and fund out that although slapping may be legal in Virginia the state policy is open to interpretation.  Should I report her?  I got into my car, pulled up alongside them and called out, Are you okay?  The little girl was crying and straightening her dress.  Yes, she’s okay, the woman snapped.  This kind of behavior really bothers me.  I frequently see adults slap, pinch and berate their children—sometimes babies in strollers.  These adults seem to be out of control and everyone ignores them.  Sometimes I walk slowly by these people to let them know I see what they are doing.  One time I reported a woman who was slapping and scolding her Down syndrome daughter, who kept yelling, I’m your friend.  My mother died when I was seven.  She suffered bad depression toward the end of her life.  I actually scare myself sometimes.  But I don’t think my depression is bad enough to see someone about.  Do you?  My best friend Sheila was recently married and I was a bridesmaid.  About two months before the wedding Sheila called to say that the junior bridesmaid dress she had selected for one of her attendants was too small—size 8 for a girl who was size 12.  She wanted to know if there was anything I could do to alter the dress because it was too late to get another one.  After a lot or work and many long hours over a four-week period I finished the alterations.  Neither Sheila nor the junior bridesmaid offered to pay me for the work so I thought it was because I said I’d do it as a favor to Sheila.  A few days before the wedding I was still deciding what to give her as a wedding gift but everyone I asked said that altering the dress was enough.  Well Sheila didn’t see it that way.  On her wedding night she called me several times demanding a gift of money.  Even after her honeymoon she called and said I’d been disrespectful not to give her a gift.  Was I wrong not to give her a separate wedding gift?  My husband’s mother wants to spend a lot of time with him.  She likes us to have dinner at her apartment only a mile away.  If we can’t then she still likes my husband to.  If he can’t or doesn’t want to she gets very hurt.  She tries to make my husband feel guilty.  I tell him that’s what she’s doing but he still feels bad.  At my job I get hit on right and left by men in their fifties.  I’m not talking about cute or even simply annoying remarks, but constant lewd suggestions and requests for my phone number.  Would it be right to report these guys?  I don’t want to risk my job.  And here is an embarrassing problem:  My job requires me to make public appearances and often I am “dressed to the nines.”  I admit for dramatic purposes I sometimes apply too much makeup.  I have always been told I am beautiful and have even done some modeling.  The problem is people think I’m a man.  Once I was cornered at a festival by an angry group of people who had been fired up by one drunkard’s insistence that I was a drag queen.  You know I’m a woman—I have kids for heaven’s sake.  The first few times it happened I tried to brush it off and regain my composure—once I stopped crying.   But lately it’s getting ridiculous.  I am mistaken for a cross-dresser even when I wear very little makeup.  At five-foot-seven and a hundred and twenty pounds I’m hardly manly.  A week doesn’t go by without this happening.  My husband says I should just blow it off that people are just jealous.  But my confidence is in the cellar and I’m at my wit’s end.  I’d like to cower somewhere but my job won’t let me.  The other night my Lyle brought home a male friend for dinner without letting me know beforehand.  They both drank a lot of wine.  Then my husband wanted me to go to bed with the two of them.  Of course I declined, but I was really put out by this new wrinkle.  And neither of them even offered to do the dishes after I did my best preparing a nice meal for them.  If my husband’s mother hadn’t called to berate him for not visiting her who knows where this could have gone.  My son wants a dog, but my husband says, No way.  He becomes enraged when I bring it up.  I said it would be good for our son and he said he’d rather have a dog around than my son (who is my child with a previous husband).  Then he said it’s either him or the dog.  Now I feel I must get a dog as my first priority is my son, isn’t it?  It isn’t right for him to keep bringing up my herpes—2, either.  The other day I found my son in bed with my husband in my son’s bed.  I don’t usually walk right into his room but I needed to get something.  He said my son hadn’t been feeling well and he was just taking a nap with him.  My son seemed upset.   He asked if this meant he couldn’t have a dog.  I don’t know what to believe Dear Abby.  What would you think?

Lynda Schor's most recent book, Sexual Harassment Rules, and an older one, Seduction, are out with Spuyten Duyvil press. A half-dozen of these are here, on the Truck. Her interview with Carol Novack can be found in The Mad Hatters' Review 7. Prints of her artwork are at Hamilton Stone Review, where she also serves as Fiction Editor. She lives, and writes, with Halvard Johnson, in San Miquel de Allende, Mexico.

-- Lynda Schor

Two Poems (Kateri Lanthier)

MAKESHIFT MEMORIAL

How to “pack light”? Darkness overflows from every carry-on.
While you live, you’re packing heat. And then the cold sets in.

Gather ye rosebuds, rock star. Go on, sword-swallow the pretties.
Fringed skirts flash in the prison-yard lights of the used car lot.

The dog attends His Master’s Voice; the cat’s a turntablist.
Yes, yes, rain looks like tears. It sounds like laughter in the gutter.

My pattern of behavior is obvious? Then solve my Rubik’s mood.
Run down that clock, little mouse, and whisker ‘1 am.’

Toes off the sustain pedal. Bass back in the case.
We had to cut our love tour short at the wistful terminus.

We tore the gauze of the ozone, ripped the veil from the butterflies.
The screen is our eternal flame, our festive firelog channel.

The walls have ears now deafened by the soundtrack of our lives:
The adenoidal buzz of the house fly and the faltering storefront sign.

I’m speaking from dead centre of a southbound arctic air mass.
Warm, warmer….Bye, ice floes…They left on a jet plane.

When you left, I took my temperature to peace talks in Geneva.
Oh, to be your split second! Not your makeshift memorial.

NIGHT SCHOOL

I started school at Immaculée-Conception, if you can believe it.
If you believe that, just step this way into my chalk drawing.

The freckles splotched on bamboo are the tears of a jilted wife?
Each day I find new beauty spots emblazoned by the sun.

He loves me not, he loves me past the melting point of steel.
Every streetlight’s a fixed star, a star burnt out at dawn.

Battledore and shuttlecock, hobbyhorse and peepshow.
I was a self-righting toy until you changed the rules.

Inside the glassy-eyed greenhouse, flowers amp up the heat.
Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose. Jeunes filles en fleur taunt teacher.

The view from here to the earth’s core is quite spectacular!
The light will slow-dance on those leaves whatever day you’ve had.

Beds of roses end as bubbles in the claw-foot tub.
It only takes one burning bush to set the hills on fire.

Mary Mary, quite contrary, labour movement leader.
I’ll say it: Mariolatry left gorgeous stains on glass.

Maids with centre-parted hair, knights-errant in distress.
The temple is a wreck, but just think what we learned from this.

They are madcap pseudo-ghazals, very much in the vein of my poem in The Walrus, "The Coin Under the Leftmost Sliding

Cup". A book of poems, Reporting from the Night, was published in 2011 by Iguana Books. An interview with Kateri is at

Toronto Poets. In a joint interview forthcoming in Boxcar Poetry Review with the American poet Dan Chelotti, Kateri in part 
addresses the "continental divide" between American and Canadian, British, and other English-language poetries:

"I read contemporary British poets quite closely for years – perhaps from a vague sense of Commonwealth connection  – 

and formed friendships with some on trips to London. I confess I had something of a bias against American poetry. It seemed

a vast, self-confident and self-absorbed place that hardly needed my attention. I’ve reformed, though! I’m a fan of the work 

of many contemporaries.... Poems travel the world at lightning speed now, and some of my closest Poetry World connections

are with poets in the States." Her other poems appear in Leveler and Canadian Poetries. Her website, katerilanthier.com is 

in the works.

-- Kateri Lanthier

“The Regular Program” (1975) (Lev Rubinstein, translated from Russian by Philip Metres and Tatiana Tulchinsky)

Paragraph One,

Speaks for itself;

Paragraph Two,

Outlines the basic concepts;

Paragraph Three,

Continues to outline the basic concepts;

Paragraph Four,

Continues to outline the basic concepts;

Paragraph Five,

Where the basic concepts continue to be outlined;

Paragraph Six,

Already operates with some basic concepts;

Paragraph Seven,

Demonstrates the sudden effect of recognition;

Paragraph Eight,

Secures the sudden effect of recognition by introducing it into the circle of basic concepts;

Paragraph Nine,

Grants the real possibility of getting oriented in the newly outlined circle of concepts;

Paragraph Ten,

Where there is time to think;

Paragraph Eleven,

Notifies about the prematurity of some initial conclusions;

Paragraph Twelve,

Points to the deficiency of the existing cosmogony;

Paragraph Thirteen,

Points to the necessity of defining the circle of alternative concepts;

Paragraph Fourteen,

For the first time urges one to concentrate and think;

Paragraph Fifteen

Paragraph Sixteen

Paragraph Seventeen

Paragraph Eighteen

Paragraph Nineteen,

Where the Author is ready to give some preliminary explanations;

Paragraph Twenty,

Where the Author confirms his readiness to give some preliminary explanations;

Paragraph Twenty-one,

Testifies to the decision of the Author to name the present text “The Regular Program”;

Paragraph Twenty-two,

Testifies to the decision of the Author to date the Regular Program: December, 1975;

Paragraph Twenty-three,

Testifies to the decision of the Author to include the Regular Program in the Program of Activities;

Paragraph Twenty-four,

Testifies to the decision of the Author to dedicate the Regular Program to the German Romantic poet Novalis (1772-1801).—Notably, this decision is accompanied by the Author’s decisive refusal to give any comment;

Paragraph Twenty-five,

States the necessity of a new way of action. —Notably, the Author refuses to give any kind of preliminary explanation about the nature of the new way of action, announcing his lack of preparation to do so;

Paragraph Twenty-six,

Testifies to the decision of the Author to consider everything referred to in Paragraph Twenty-five as “The First Preface to a New Way of Action.” —Notably, here he declines again any explanation in this regard;

Paragraph Twenty-seven,

Where the Author answers with silence to the entirely possible accusation of the vagueness of the Author’s position, as well as to various rebukes of both a professional and personal nature.—Notably, it  remains unclear whether he accepts them or not;

Paragraph Twenty-eight,

Where the Author confesses to certain things, but not to the rest;

Paragraph Twenty-nine,

Where the Author complains for the first time about the lack of time, about his poor physical state, and his periodic declines of energy.

Paragraph Thirty,

Where the Author immediately lets it be known that everything referred to in Paragraph Twenty-nine is a purely compositional tactic/trick;

Paragraph Thirty-one,

Where in a state of extreme nervous agitation, the thesis of “the impossibility of future existence” is discussed and recommendations of an obviously non-functional nature are offered;

Paragraph Thirty-two,

Where the same thing is said about Paragraph Thirty-One as was said in Paragraph Thirty about Paragraph Twenty-nine;

Paragraph Thirty-three,

Where nothing happens;

Paragraph Thirty-four,

Where nothing happens;

Paragraph Thirty-five,

Where nothing happens;

Paragraph Thirty-six,

Also marked with the absence of any kinds of events;

Paragraph Thirty-seven,

Where even the most insignificant event aptly acquires importance and significance;

Paragraph Thirty-eight,

Where the Author finds it possible to listen to a whole series of associated observations related to the preceding Paragraphs of the Regular Program;

Paragraph Thirty-nine,

Where the Author expresses his agreement or disagreement with a number of observations and lets it be known that the text of the Regular Program is uncompleted and subject to finishing touches and revisions;

Paragraph Forty,

Where the Author explains in passing that the order of the Paragraphs in the Regular Program is determined not by a sequence of corresponding events, but rather by a sequence of authorial decisions about the inclusion in the Regular Program of possible events and their verbal descriptions;

Paragraph Forty-one,

Where it becomes clear that the utmost orientation toward the object is the foundational principle of the authorial position, so that certain corresponding misunderstandings should be considered inevitable;

Paragraph Forty-two,

Where the Author experiences a series of doubts about the veracity of some postulated positions, but doesn’t intend to express these doubts;

Paragraph Forty-three,

Where the Author experiences a series of doubts directly related to the Regular Program, but once again doesn’t intend to express these doubts;

Paragraph Forty-four,

Where the Author complains  one more time about the lack of time and the compulsory necessity to be content with only the necessary.—Notably, he hardly believes that what he considers the most necessary is in reality the most necessary;

Paragraph Forty-five,

Where the Author states his intention to participate in various activities.—Notably, it remains unclear in what kinds of activity and by what means of participation;

Paragraph Forty-six,

Where the Author tries to grasp the character and degree of his participation in the ongoing events;

Paragraph Forty-seven,

Where the Author decides to participate in a certain pursuit;

Paragraph Forty-eight,

Where the Author experiences the necessity to understand what’s happening here;

Paragraph Forty-nine,

Where the Author asks us to wait for him a couple minutes. - In so many words, “Wait for me…”

Paragraph Fifty,

Where the Author asks us to begin without him.  – In so many words, “Begin without me…”

Paragraph Fifty-one,

Where the Author joins with everyone else.  – In so many words, “I’m with you...”

Paragraph Fifty-two,

Where the author asks us to talk with him.  - In so many words, “Talk with me…”

Paragraph Fifty-three,

Where the Author asks us to call him on the phone;

Paragraph Fifty-four,

Where the Author asks us to write him a letter;

Paragraph Fifty-five,

Where the Author asks us not to ask him any questions;

Paragraph Fifty-six,

Where the Author asks for forgiveness.—In so many words, “Forgive me…”

Paragraph Fifty-seven,

Where the author confesses that he doesn’t know anything at the moment. – In so many words, “I don’t know…”

Paragraph Fifty-eight,

Where the Authors asks if he is right;

Paragraph Fifty-nine,

Where it seems to the Author that he’s right.—In so many words,“It seems I’m right…”

Paragraph Sixty,

Where the Author rhetorically doubts in his rightness. – In so many words, “Perhaps I’m not right—I don’t know…”

Paragraph Sixty-one,

Where the Author confesses that he doesn’t feel well. – In so many words, “I don’t feel very well…”

Paragraph Sixty-two,

Where it’s asked: “Why?”

Paragraph Sixty-three,

Where the Author asks us again not to ask any questions;

Paragraph Sixty-four,

Where the Author asks us again to forgive him;

Paragraph Sixty-five,

Where the Author begins to understand what’s happening here;

Paragraph Sixty-six,

Where the Author again confesses to certain things but not to the rest;

Paragraph Sixty-seven,

Where the Author asks us to go on without him;

Paragraph Sixty-eight,

Where the Author proposes that we spend time without him;

Paragraph Sixty-nine,

In which the Author doesn’t participate in anything;

Paragraph Seventy,

Where just about anything happens.

Paragraph Seventy-one,

Where just about anything happens.

Paragraph Seventy-three,

Where just about anything happens.

Paragraph Seventy-four,

Where just about anything happens.

Paragraph Seventy-five,

Where just about anything happens.

Paragraph Seventy-six

Where just about anything happens.

Paragraph Seventy-seven

Where just about anything happens.

Paragraph Seventy-eight,

Presumably the penultimate;

Paragraph Seventy-nine,

Presumably the last;

Do Not Read This Poem.

The following translation of contemporary Russian poet Lev Rubinstein, “The Regular Program,”—what he terms “poetic texts” — should rather be engaged, installed, staged, and performed. His poems are scripts, tatters of speech, the ruins of discourses, set into conversation with other ruins.

Rubinstein, a former librarian at the Lenin Library in Moscow, began composing these poetic series on library index cards in the 1970s, influenced by avant-garde traditions, Zen, and postmodernism.  What I love about his version of conceptualism is that his poems can be read either as a parody of discourses or as the renovation of the fragments of truth which they attempt to illuminate; in other words, I find the poems to touch on utter banalities which nonetheless contain elements of truth, even as they expose official truths as banal.  He’s a lot of fun, dancing between “high” and “low,” but in the way that Frost believed poetry should “play for mortal stakes.”  He’s been translated into nearly a dozen languages and is known as one of the crucial experimental poets in world poetry.

We are now expanding our selected poetry edition of Rubinstein’s work, Catalogue of Comedic Novelties (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2004), to include all his texts—a “Compleat” edition, due out in 2014.  Since the late 1990s, Rubinstein has been writing weekly essays for various Russian publications, and recently has been involved in the democratic movements against Vladimir Putin.

Philip Metres is the author of a number of books and chapbooks, most recently A Concordance of Leaves (Diode 2013), abu ghraib arias (Flying Guillotine 2011), winner of the 2012 Arab American Book Award in poetry, To See the Earth (Cleveland State 2008).  His work has appeared in Best American Poetry and has garnered two NEA fellowships, the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, four Ohio Arts Council Grants, the Beatrice Hawley Award (for the forthcoming Sand Opera), the Anne Halley Prize, the Arab American Book Award, and the Cleveland Arts Prize.  He teaches literature and creative writing at John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio.  He blogs at Behind the lines Poetry.  

Tatiana Tulchinsky has translated many works of fiction, poetry, drama and non-fiction, among them Leo Tolstoy's Plays in three volumes, Anna Politkovskaya's A Small Corner of Hell, Anthology of Russian Verse, Selected Works of Venedict Erofeev. She received a Best Translation of the Year Award of the American Association of Slavists, a Winner-Brenner Foundation for the Poetry Grant, and a Creative Writing Translation Fellowship from the NEA. Currently, she works on a project translating and promoting English-language drama for the Russian theater stage.

-- Lev Rubinstein, Philip Metres, Tatiana Tulchinsky