I believe that each of us is given one sentence at birth, and we spend the rest of our life trying to read that sentence and make sense of it.
—
Li Young Lee
Two Poems by María Negroni
- Sol LeWitt by Saul Ostrow
- Vera Lutter by Peter Wollen
- Rikki Ducornet by Laura Mullen
- Edward St. Aubyn by Patrick McGrath & Maria Aitken
- Jon Robin Baitz by Stephen Gaghan
- Gina Gershon by Stewart Wallace
- El-P by Matthew Shipp
- Suzanne Farrell by Emily Fragos
Interviews
- Incognito with My Brother by Karen Shepard
- The Fatalist by Lyn Hejinian
- Coda by Romulus Linney
- A Latin from Manhattan by Edgardo Vega Yunqué
- Two Poems by María Negroni
- Excellence by Quentin Rowan
- Two Poems by Todd Grimson
- Two Poems by Edward Bartók-Baratta
- Four Poems by Miranda Field
First Proof
- Mark Dion by Nell McClister
- David Humphrey by Elliott Green
- Tran Luong by Joe Fyfe
- Wave Music by Clifford Ross
- Mark Lombardi by Devon Golden
Artists On Artists
- Shen Wei Dance Arts by Guy Gallo
- Black President: The Art and Legacy of Fela Anikulapo Kuti, New Museum of Contemporary Art by Snigdha Koirala
- Sherif el-Azma’s Pilot for a Soap Opera about an Egyptian Air Hostess by Lawrence Chua
- Daniel Pinchbeck’s Breaking Open the Head by Aric Mayer
- Mark Essig’s Edison and the Electric Chair: A Story of Light and Death by Caleb Smith
- Kenneth Goldsmith’s Days by Lucy Raven
- The Triplets of Belleville by Nell McClister
- Martirio’s Mucho corazón by Ned Sublette
- So by Andy Gensler
- Robert Wilson’s The Temptation of St. Anthony by Howard Fishman
Editor's Choice
IV.
(musiklexicon)
Vous cherchez trop à comprendre ce qui se passe, cher Monsieur.
C’est un grave défaut.
—Jean Cocteau
into certain kisses
as winter arises
better not enter
you see too much
or too little
do you know who I am?
yes an idea a leafy prison
a big black wolf
what kind of wolf?
my little sun of that place
those fogs
that’s how it is
everything has its shadow
its half-finished
body
once upon a time a time
a time
anybody there?
a little girl
from here to there
from there to here
never beyond
between what doesn’t happen and what you can’t
even hope for
everything and nothing
the absolute demand
of life
into certain chills
certain loose shadowed kisses
better not enter
there’s nothing to say
no way not to mention
what’s missing
once upon a time
there was a here
there was a here
there
do you know who I am?
yes the history of the word never
spark of one night rubbing against another
what kind of night?
a betrayal of childhood
that’s how it is
everything has its basket
of red signifiers
those fogs
where grief embroiders
the poem’s motionless trek
and Desire sings
far away
so far
the unfinished body
of existence
V
(accidentien)
Buenos Aires is not
the city of lovers
on their way
arrows grow absent-minded
autumn
arrives at the wrong place
or doesn’t arrive
the ships
like little flotillas
between one word and another
drink wind hatred
the sad sexual rose
hard to match
the riddle of self
naturally
the perplexity of living in a body
never emigrates
at worst
Buenos Aires dies
like a sloping city
the ships are afraid
they won’t be able to leave
won’t want to leave
the obscene cage of language
actually
nothing has begun yet
nothing can ever begin
while we search for the absolute
and find only absent-minded
arrows
it’s like this
not so temporary (jail)
not so temporary the cadaver
of the sexual rose
to get out you have to go in
not from the left
but from the left
the ships lie when they write
lie when they don’t write
decisions take on an air
slightly
tragic
besides that
little birds sing
there are worse things in the world
than the word death
Anna Karenina for instance
Oh Socrates
make music
a riot
in the home of fear
doesn’t solve the riddle
of fear of home
at worst
like those arrows that arrive
and never existed
words
die as they should
light blocked out
city I will fail to write
Anne Twitty has translated the work of the Cuban poet Magali Alabau and other Latin American writers. Her translations of María Negroni’s poetry include Night Journey (Princeton University Press, 2002) and Islandia (Station Hill Press, 2001), which received the PEN Prize for Poetry in Translation.
—María Negroni was born in Argentina. Her work as a poet includes six collections of poems, including Islandia (Monte Avila Editores, Caracas 1994), El viaje de la noche (Editorial Lumen, Barcelona 1994; Argentine National Book Award, 1997), Camera delle Meraviglie (Quaderni della Valle, Italy 2002), and La ineptitud (Editorial Alción, Córdoba 2002). She has also written two books of essays (Ciudad Gótica, Ediciones Bajo la Luna Nueva, Buenos Aires 1994; Argentine National Book Award, 1996, and Museo Negro, Grupo Editorial Norma, Buenos Aires 1999), and a novel, El sueño de Ursula (Seix-Barral Biblioteca Breve, Buenos Aires 1998; first runner-up, Planeta Prize, 1997). Her poems, essays, and translations have been widely published in literary magazines internationally. Negroni received a Guggenheim fellowship for poetry in 1994 and the Fundación Octavio Paz fellowship for poetry (Mexico 2001–2002). She codirects Abyssinia: A Review on Poetry and Poetics, published by University of Buenos Aires Press. She presently teaches Latin American poetry at Sarah Lawrence College.
Related
Staging historical justice in Hernán Ronsino’s Glaxo
“A writer worried about reception is cooking a dead book. A writer’s job is to produce the best possible book in absolute freedom, so the category ‘acceptable’ does not play in the process at all.”
From the train I could look out onto the infinite blue of the sea. I was still exhausted, wakeful from the overnight transatlantic flight to Rome, but looking out at the sea, that Mediterranean sea that was so infinite and so blue, made me forget it all, even myself. I don’t know why.
Originally published in
BOMB 85,
Fall 2003
Featuring interviews with Sol Lewitt, Vera Lutter and Peter Wollen, Rikki Ducornet and Laura Mullen, Edward St. Aubyn and Patrick McGrath & Maria Aitken, Jon Robin Baitz and Stephen Gaghan, Gina Gershon and Dave Stewart, EL-P and Matthew Shipp, and Suzanne Farrell.
