Winter 2017-18 at Calypso
My Mother, Resurrected
Fabián Casas, Trans. Adriana Scopino
Poetry · English · Translation · Bilingual · Spanish
2017
$15.00
Acclaim for My Mother, Resurrected
This remarkable translation of Fabián Casas’ poems by Adriana Scopino takes us down the hallways of the poet’s consciousness— the painful absence of his late mother; his frank observations of family, friends, lovers; the desolation of urban material culture during the 1960’s; and above all, the poet himself, his body, his habits, his simple yet profound realizations (epiphanies), in the midst of the oddest or most prosaic of circumstances. Thanks to Scopino’s sensitivity to the philosophical quality of the poems, her translation is able to convey, in a stark yet poetic manner, Casas’ feelings and observations about the presence of everyday objects and situations, about living and dying, and about passion and the indifference to (and from) life. Scopino’s insightful translation brings to light the author’s exploration of the meaning of human existence and our efforts to understand death and the inscrutable nature of reality.
~ Myrna Nieves
That Fabián Casas’ work is so little known in America baffles. A magnificent welder of tonal registers, of the mundane and the philosophical, Casas teaches us, with humor and self-deprecating nonchalance, how ‘not to live in fear,’ co-habit with the departed, ‘bed with the flowers in the mouth of the wind,’ experience the darkness as ‘resplendent/against the red Coca-Cola machine.’ In his epigrammatic celebrations of mortality and the ethereal, gritty urban details orient the self, stir desire, push against farce. How fortunate we are to be delivered My Mother Resurrected in poet Adriana Scopino’s exquisite translation. Each poem sears with undiluted intensity.
~ Mihaela Moscaliuc
About the Author
Fabián Casas (b. 1965) belongs to an influential group of writers in Argentina known as the Generation of 1990. He has written children’s books, novels, short stories, essays, screenplays as well as poems, and for many years he has been a journalist. In 2007, he received Germany’s prestigious Anna Seghers Prize for his poetry. His collected poems, Horla city y otros, was published in 2010 by Emecé Cruz del Sur. His work has been translated into German, Portuguese, Armenian and other languages. He is known in Argentina as a poet that is read by people who don’t read poetry.
About the Translator
Adriana Scopino is a graduate of Drew University’s Master of Fine Arts in Poetry and Poetry in Translation. A chapbook of her poetry, Let Me Be Like Glass, was published by Exot Books. She lives on the Lower East Side in New York City.
Speak, My Tongue
Carrie Meadows
Poetry
2017
$15.00
Acclaim for Speak, My Tongue
Carrie Meadows’ Speak, My Tongue is a wholly original and unforgettable debut that combines poems of family trauma with poems in the voices of visionary artists who see the world through the lens of the spiritual and spectral. In this book, the corporeal and the divine cohabitate with each other, intermingling with violence, poverty, race, and the landscape of the American South in all its history, glory, complexities, and shame. These poems are luminous, tight, wondrous songs that give voice to artists who were outsiders of all kinds—self-taught, on the margins of society, often perceived as crazy—and limn their prayers, confessions, declarations, stories, and exclamations with force and grace.
~ Erika Meitner
Carrie Meadows’ debut collection of poetry, Speak, My Tongue, imaginatively engages with a wide range of the American South’s best-known self-taught artists. In poems that are as tender, moving, disturbing, and original as the art and artists they explore, Meadows reads the American South through the eyes of those privileged with talent and vision, if not money and power. This is a gritty, soulful look at the South in conversation with its artists, among whom Carrie Meadows herself must be counted.
~ Ed Falco
In Speak, My Tongue Carrie Meadows gives voice to the last vestiges of Old Weird America that still live and breathe in the South, an America of Bible thumping, speaking in tongues, outsider artists who paint their revelations on Street corners and church walls. This is a land of men with fists like hammers, women who turn to Jesus, and children who see it all. Is it heaven or the end of the world? Hard to tell, but you could ask the angels in the cornfield. They have a gospel to declare as does Meadows in this incandescent collection.
~ Barbara Hamby
About the Author
Carrie Meadows grew up around leather workers, doll makers, quilters and tall-tale tellers who taught her the importance of straight stitches and good stories. She teaches writing at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
Houston’s Favorite Poems
Edited by Robin Davidson
Poetry
2018
$21.99
About Houston’s Favorite Poems
Houston’s Favorite Poems is an initiative of the City of Houston Poet Laureate Program and the Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs and is modeled on former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky’s Favorite Poem Project and his national anthology, Americans’ Favorite Poems. In spring 2016, the Houston project—with the support of Mayor Sylvester Turner’s office—made a call for favorite poems to those living in Greater Houston, and received approximately 400 poems in response. One hundred eighty-five poems, submitted by 233 Houstonians, are included in the volume to be released by Calypso Editions this November.
Of the Houstonians who shared favorite poems, you will see occupations as varied as a biostatistician, a cattle rancher, and a woodworker—as well as accountants, attorneys, bankers, clergy, engineers, electricians, health care professionals, museum attendants, musicians, visual artists, and many writers and teachers. Contributors range in age from 18 to 85 and live throughout Greater Houston within more than 100 zip codes. The volume’s contents is as diverse as Houston itself—including 119 poets from across the globe from such national and cultural origins as Canada, Chile, China, Czech Republic, Greece, El Salvador, England, Germany, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Palestine, ancient Persia, Poland, Puerto Rico, Russia, Scotland, Somalia, and Wales. Further, many American poets are represented—ranging in ethnic background from such African American poets as Maya Angelou, Lucille Clifton, Nikky Finney, Langston Hughes, and A. Van Jordan to Asian American poets Amanda Huynh and Claire Kageyama-Ramakrishnan, Mexican American poet Juan Felipe Herrera, Native American poet Joy Harjo, and Sudanese American poet Safia Elhillo.
About the Editor
Robin Davidson, editor of Houston’s Favorite Poems, was named Houston’s second Poet Laureate by Mayor Annise Parker in 2015 and served through April 2017 under the leadership of Mayor Sylvester Turner.
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