Random Photos

It has been a long while since I've posted random photos. Here's a small sampling, from this past spring.

The Commons at the Atlantic Center for the Arts,
Stetson University MFA of the Americas 

Kameelah Janan Rasheed reading
at home field school day 2018,
MoMA PS1

The audience at the home field
school day reading 2018,
MoMA PS1 

home field school day 2018,
MoMA PS1 

home field school day 2018,
MoMA PS1

Poet Mai Der Vang, Rutgers-Newark
MFA Reading Series, February 2018

Marcus Samuelsson's B&P
Restaurant, Newark  

Portland, during my visit to Reed
College and Portland State University 

At Portland State

Near Portland State University

Spring in downtown Jersey City 

Irène Mathieu and Desiree Cooper at
the Jack Jones gathering, AWP

Fence-stallation, Jersey City 

Modeling, Warehouse Cafe,
Jersey City

Robert E. Lee's (yes, that one!) former bedroom,
where I participated in an interview with students
at Washington & Lee University; the aura
was almost unearthly, but the visit
was a wonderful one

The chapel housing Robert E. Lee's tomb,
Washington & Lee University (a site
of pilgrimage, as you can imagine, for
pro-Confederates); it was closed when I was there 

Washington state, Washington & Lee University

At South Station, Boston

On the street, Newark

Birds gathering, Penn Station, Newark 

Emerson Hall, Harvard Yard

Tercentary Theater, Harvard Yard 

Before the reading with Fanny Howe &
Eden McCutcheon Tirl, at Harvard 

Before the reading with Fanny Howe &
Eden McCutcheon Tirl, at the Woodberry
Poetry Room, Harvard University
(the great Jamaica Kincaid is in the far back, at right)

Fanny Howe, Vocarium Reading Series
at the Woodberry Poetry Room, Harvard 

Eden McCutcheon Tirl, Vocarium Reading
Series at the Woodberry Poetry Room, Harvard 

Fanny Howe (at right), with her grandson

Tree-cutting, Jersey City

Tribeca Film Festival, New York 

At the Tribeca Film Festival, New York

Heading towards the George Washington Bridge

At Arthur Jafa's show opening,
Gavin Brown's experience, Harlem

At Arthur Jafa's show opening,
Gavin Brown's experience, Harlem

Swizz Beatz, outside Arthur Jafa's
opening, Gavin Brown's experience, Harlem

Irises in bloom, Jersey City

Waiting for the PATH train, Newark

Changing the announcement chalk
board, Jersey City

53

53!

*Essays On Hilda Hilst* Now Available

Thanks to the dedication of editors Adam Morris and Bruno Carvalho, Essays on Hilda Hilst: Between Brazil and World Literature, the first English-language scholarly volume dedicated to the work of one of Brazil's most singular and path-blazing authors, is now available for purchase. Published by Springer this month, the book opens with an insightful introduction about Hilst (1930-2004) and her relation to the category of "World Literature," by Morris, a gifted translator and scholar who produced an exceptional rendering of Hilst's 1986 novella Com os meus olhos de cão (With My Dog Eyes, Melville House, 2014), as well as works by Jõao Gilberto Noll, Beatriz Bracher, and other major contemporary Portuguese-language writers, and Carvalho, a Princeton professor of Spanish and Portuguese, whose scholarly interests span an array of topics and whose study Porous City: A Cultural History of Rio de Janeiro (2013), received the Brazilian Studies Association Robert Reis Book Award in 2014. Other essays in the volume explore different aspects of the late author's oeuvre, ranging from her plays (Tatiana Franca Rodrigues Zanirato), fiction (David William Foster), poetry (Alva Martinez Teixeiro), and broader theoretical, political and ideological readings (Deneval Siqueira Azevedo Filho, Eliane Robert Morães, Morris, and Nathanaël).

For my part, I contributed a revision of a talk I delivered in at the New York Public Library back in 2014, "Translating Brazil's Marquis de Sade," which explores the complexities of Hilst's Cartas de um Sedutor (Letters from a Seducer), for which Carvalho wrote the introduction, and the challenges I--and anyone--might face bringing it and her work in general into English. (In "Derelict of Duty, "Nathanaël also discusses some challenges faced co-translating Hilst's A obscena Madame D (The Obscene Madame D, Nightboat and A Bolha Editora, 2013). It is especially exciting to see this essay in print and in this volume, which I hope will serve as an enticing overview and introduction that I hope sparks more studies in English about Hilst, and spurs more translations of Hilst's work. I believe a translation of Hilst's Fluxo-Floema is on its way soon, and this year, Hilst's Of Death: Minimal Odes, translated by Laura Cesarco Eglin, will be published by co•im•press.

Please consider getting a copy of this volume, or at least suggesting your nearest library do so. And please, read Hilda Hilst!