Alison Brackenbury and Jehanne Dubrow

SCR/II authors continue to win kudos! Alison Brackenbury's forthcoming book, Singing in the Dark, due out on the 28th of February, has been picked as one of the books to watch this year by Sarah Crowne in The Guardian:

Also worth looking out for this month are new collections from Alison Brackenbury and Jen Hadfield. In Singing in the Dark (Carcanet), Brackenbury employs the seemingly simple English ballad (invented, more or less, by Wordsworth, and later favoured by the likes of Auden and Edward Thomas) to grapple with knotty modernity - a clash of form and content that carries the risk of wistfulness but, at its most effective, throws up compelling antitheses...

—Sarah Crowne, 'From Milton to the Next Generation'

Alison's poetry was part of the Shit Creek Horror and also appeared in the first issue of SCR's lamentably straight offspring, The Chimaera (think of SCR as Edina Monsoon and The Chimaera as Saffron).

And Jehanne Dubrow's poetry collection, also forthcoming (to be published toward the end of 2008), was selected by Peter Pereira as the winner of the 2007 three candles press First Book Prize. Jehanne's 'Fragment From A Nonexistent Yiddish Poet Ida Lewin' appeared in SCR/II's 'Lives' issue.

Go, you good things!

The ripeness is all

Previous Contributor Rachel Bunting's first chapbook, Ripe Again, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. Order by February 8th and receive free shipping! Visit the New Releases section of the Finishing Line Press website and look for Rachel Bunting.

Some thoughts about Ripe Again:

In these tender and searing poems Rachel Bunting explores the landscape of relationship...We climb with her on a ladder of precise, surprising language from loss to a place of watchfulness and hope in this moving, thoughtful collection. —Juditha Dowd

Rachel Bunting, with this remarkable first book, announces herself with stunning noise—inspired sounds that gave rise to deep and fulfilling silence in me. There are real pleasures in every poem. —BJ Ward

Heading in

The Return of The Chimaera

This time The Chimaera is obsessed with Translation.

Traduttore, Traditore? you ask.

The answer is—Found in Translation!

http://www.the-chimaera.com

But there's also general poetry and prose, and a spotlight feature on Tim Murphy's alcoholism poems too: 'A Prayer for Sobriety'.

Poems and prose by L. Ward Abel, Mary Alexandra Agner, Arlene Ang, Neil Carpathios, William Doreski, George Good, Howie Good, Simon Hunt, James Keane, Guy Kettelhack, Don Kimball, David W. Landrum, Ralph La Rosa, Dave McClure, Margaret Menamin, Corey Mesler, Chris O’Carroll, Samuel Prince, Gail White, Peter Wyton, and Donald Zirilli.

Translations by Mark Allinson, Robert Bolick, Antoine Cassar, Catherine Chandler, Debjani Chatterjee, Adam Elgar, B. J. Epstein, Rhina P. Espaillat, Anna Evans, Andrew Frisardi, Susan McLean, Nigel McLoughlin, Chris Mooney-Singh, Aaron Poochigian, Henry Quince, Jennifer Reeser, Wendy Sloan, Janice D. Soderling, Alan Sullivan and Timothy Murphy.

Destination

My Sixties Suitcase

Weathered, for sure,
it makes an interesting table top now
along with stories about baggage handlers
who paused, then carefully handled her.

And even scarred, battered as it is,
it is not as well-traveled as I dreamed
we both would be.

Go for it now while you're young, pals,
see all this earth you can.

And keep in mind, while you're at it,
that we're doing our best to kill her,
to do your part to stop the trend.

Beyond II

Beyond

Nel mezzo del cammin

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
ché la diritta via era smarrita.

Ahi quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura
esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte
che nel pensier rinova la paura!

Tant'è amara che poco è più morte;
ma per trattar del ben ch'i' vi trovai,
dirò de l'altre cose ch'i' v'ho scorte.

Io non so ben ridir com'i' v'intrai,
tant'era pien di sonno a quel punto
che la verace via abbandonai.

Ma poi ch'i' fui al piè d'un colle giunto,
là dove terminava quella valle
che m'avea di paura il cor compunto,

guardai in alto, e vidi le sue spalle
vestite già de' raggi del pianeta
che mena dritto altrui per ogne calle.

Allor fu la paura un poco queta
che nel lago del cor m'era durata
la notte ch'i' passai con tanta pieta.

E come quei che con lena affannata
uscito fuor del pelago a la riva
si volge a l'acqua perigliosa e guata,

così l'animo mio, ch'ancor fuggiva,
si volse a retro a rimirar lo passo
che non lasciò già mai persona viva.

Poi ch'èi posato un poco il corpo lasso,
ripresi via per la piaggia diserta,
sì che 'l piè fermo sempre era 'l più basso.

—Dante Alighieri




Midway in the journey of our life
I came to myself in a dark wood,
for the straight way was lost.

Ah, how hard it is to tell
the nature of that wood, savage, dense and harsh --
the very thought of it renews my fear!

It is so bitter death is hardly more so.
But to set forth the good I found
I will recount the other things I saw.

How I came there I cannot really tell,
I was so full of sleep
when I forsook the one true way.

But when I reached the foot of a hill,
here where the valley ended
that had pierced my heart with fear,

looking up, I saw its shoulders
arrayed in the first light of the planet
that leads men straight, no matter what their road.

Then the fear that had endured
in the lake of my heart, all the night
I spent in such distress, was calmed.

And as one who, with laboring breath,
has escaped from the deep to the shore
turns and looks back at the perilous waters,

so my mind, still in flight,
turned back to look once more upon the pass
no mortal being ever left alive.

After I rested my wearied flesh a while,
I took my way again along the desert slope,
my firm foot always lower than the other.

The Twa Corbies

As I was walking all alane,
I heard twa corbies making a mane;
The tane unto the t'other say,
'Where sall we gang and dine to-day,
Where sall we gang and dine to-day?'

'In behint yon auld fail dyke,
I wot there lies a new slain knight;
And naebody kens that he lies there,
But his hawk, his honnd, and lady fair,
His hawk, his honnd, and lady fair.

'His hound is to the hunting gane,
His hawk to fetch the wild-fowl hame,
His lady 'a ta'en another mate,
So we may mak our dinner sweet,
We may mak our dinner sweet.

'Ye'll sit on his white hause-bane,
And I'll pike out his bonny blue een;
Wi ae lock o his gowden hair
We'll theek our nest when it grows bare,
We'll theek our nest when it grows bare.'

'Mony a one for him makes mane,
But nane sall ken where he is gane;
Oer his white banes, when they are bare,
The wind sail blaw for evennair,
The wind sail blaw for evennair.'

It's Good to Find a Pub With a Hearth

Traveling, You Might Want to Ask for Number Seven

John Whitworth's 'The Examiners'

This just in:

John Whitworth, whose poem 'Naughty, Naughty' was part of The Shit Creek Horror (here), has had another poem of his voted second in the Times Literary Supplement's Foyles poetry competition. That poem, 'The Examiners', can be found in the spawn of Shit Creek, The Chimaera, here.

Some Leave Their Hearts Here

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