A Word of Introduction
Reserva Playa de Tortuga, Pacific Slope, Costa Rica. Photo: Bronwyn Mills click on image for more information |
Welcome, Fellow Mechanicals, as one of our editors has addressed us in keeping with our title. The "mechanicals" were the goofy artisans who performed the play within the play in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, stuffing notes to be exchanged between the lovers Pyramus and Thisbe into the niches of their wallish partition and thus transforming it into an edifice of communication—in truth, represented by the parted fingers of one poor sod, Tim Snout, who played the part of the Wall. We extend a welcome to Issue #16 to you all. Oh, and as we banish winter, albeit none of the creatures that have endured its challenges, we also cheerily welcome you to April Fools' Day. Speaking of all of the above, we have begun our sixth year of publication; and, perhaps consequentially, we atWitty Partition once again mull our existence. Our consulting prose editor, Jan Schmidt, has rhapsodised, "We offer a choreography of voices and images...across generations... in a multitude of rhythms and patterns of human endeavors. Then we rest to breathe deeply—the breath |
being the central focus of life and this magazine." Dana Delibovi, our Consulting Poetry Editor notes our "luxuriant landscape of international literature," and adds, "This journal satisfies our literary wanderlust, making every reader an explorer."
One could get drunk on such praise. But, more down to earth, I am oddly reminded of a recent visit to an animal refuge in Costa Rica. The country protects all animales silvestres (wild animals) and does a great deal to care for those who are brought to them injured or confiscated from the illegal pet trade and from "exotic" animal fanciers. Some are too far gone to be returned. Yet for those who must be kept—in ample, but nonetheless, confining cages—many receive visits from their wild cousins in the forest beyond. I could not help but wonder why that is. Species empathy? A special bond between wild and kept?*
Once again the mind turns to our breath, our words, our objective in all this: to seek out and promote good writing. It is this writer's belief that much of the mainstream has become over-domesticated, well-kept perhaps, but dulled, lacking excitement, fearful of risk, of the experimental, the fantastic, even the erudite; whereas we may visit convention, even—ever so briefly—the 10 best this or that, we cannot, will not, enter its cage.
Thus, in this issue we offer you...poetry, poesía, şiiler, hellebeste (Kurdish speakers do correct me if I am wrong), and a wonderful essay on the architecture of poetry, "A Structured Emptiness," by our Consulting Poetry editor Dana Delibovi. It precedes a selection of poetry translations from poets as various as Selim Temo, a Kurdish poet, and Argentine Alberto Mario Perrone, Turkish poets Necsmi Zeka and Bejan Matur—we are honored to have the translation of Matur's sent to us by a no less eminent translator of Turkish than Ruth Christie—and selections from Senegalese Baba Badji's Owls of Senegal. Our fiction includes the second half of B.J. Fukuda's novella, Nice Piano" and an excerpt from Swedish writer, Agneta Pleijel's novel, Double Portrait.
Mind, we exist in a medium which also relies on the visual, and those of you who have followed us have certainly seen our InSights and other images. We continue to offer them to you.
A heartfelt note of congratulations to one of our contributors and supporters, Carmen Firan; who, in her mother tongue—Romanian—has just written and had published her novel, The Lost Shadow, come out, ably translated by Alexandra Carides and published by New Meridian Arts (see our Remarkable Reads section for more.) And also please check our NEWS! for a link to the exhibit of Bill Gubbins' latest work .
Without further ado, then, we give you Witty Partition, Issue 16.
One could get drunk on such praise. But, more down to earth, I am oddly reminded of a recent visit to an animal refuge in Costa Rica. The country protects all animales silvestres (wild animals) and does a great deal to care for those who are brought to them injured or confiscated from the illegal pet trade and from "exotic" animal fanciers. Some are too far gone to be returned. Yet for those who must be kept—in ample, but nonetheless, confining cages—many receive visits from their wild cousins in the forest beyond. I could not help but wonder why that is. Species empathy? A special bond between wild and kept?*
Once again the mind turns to our breath, our words, our objective in all this: to seek out and promote good writing. It is this writer's belief that much of the mainstream has become over-domesticated, well-kept perhaps, but dulled, lacking excitement, fearful of risk, of the experimental, the fantastic, even the erudite; whereas we may visit convention, even—ever so briefly—the 10 best this or that, we cannot, will not, enter its cage.
Thus, in this issue we offer you...poetry, poesía, şiiler, hellebeste (Kurdish speakers do correct me if I am wrong), and a wonderful essay on the architecture of poetry, "A Structured Emptiness," by our Consulting Poetry editor Dana Delibovi. It precedes a selection of poetry translations from poets as various as Selim Temo, a Kurdish poet, and Argentine Alberto Mario Perrone, Turkish poets Necsmi Zeka and Bejan Matur—we are honored to have the translation of Matur's sent to us by a no less eminent translator of Turkish than Ruth Christie—and selections from Senegalese Baba Badji's Owls of Senegal. Our fiction includes the second half of B.J. Fukuda's novella, Nice Piano" and an excerpt from Swedish writer, Agneta Pleijel's novel, Double Portrait.
Mind, we exist in a medium which also relies on the visual, and those of you who have followed us have certainly seen our InSights and other images. We continue to offer them to you.
A heartfelt note of congratulations to one of our contributors and supporters, Carmen Firan; who, in her mother tongue—Romanian—has just written and had published her novel, The Lost Shadow, come out, ably translated by Alexandra Carides and published by New Meridian Arts (see our Remarkable Reads section for more.) And also please check our NEWS! for a link to the exhibit of Bill Gubbins' latest work .
Without further ado, then, we give you Witty Partition, Issue 16.
* Dear god, forgive me! Levi-Strauss' Raw and the Cooked?
— Bronwyn Mills, for the Editors
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A gentle reminder, Dear Friends. If you wish to know more about any of our contributors or editors, do go to the Contributors page at the bottom of our drop down menu.
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