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Editor's Note
Bombay Gin 36.1, 2010
Bombay Gin has been appearing regularly for thirty-six years and
for the past several years at a clip of two or even three issues per
annum. With a nod to its longevity—and in honor of the legacy
it carries as the journal of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied
Poetics—we are continuing to sharpen Bombay Gin’s focus.
The Kerouac School and the Summer Writing Program at Naropa
University have actively influenced contemporary approaches to
poetry, fiction, hybrid works, ecological thought, and critical discussions
for almost four decades. With this in mind, the journal
will exhibit in each of its issues a theme or consideration close to
the work being done here.
The present issue is dedicated to translation and to an international
approach to poetics. Nearly a century ago Ezra Pound noted
that great periods of innovative writing correspond to eras alive with
translation. This issue of Bombay Gin carries work translated by writers
who teach at The Kerouac School, others who have received degrees
from Naropa, and some who are still in residence at the school.
Two of the writers we have included—Cecilia Vicuña and Zhang
Er—are guest faculty who compose their poems in other languages
than American English. Both appear here with poems in translation,
as well as interviews that get at their distinct experiences of working
across languages & cultures.
We have also included a retrospective selection of poetry by Jerome
Rothenberg, his five translations from “The 17 Horse Songs
of Frank Mitchell” (Navajo). Along with these, we are running the
important essay in which Rothenberg reflected on his method of
working with the Navajo language and with other Native American
traditions. The “Horse Songs”—which helped Rothenberg articulate
an approach to “total translation”—have not appeared together before,
except in a limited artist edition. They have also not appeared
in conjunction with the essay. We hope a volume that brings these
pieces—still relevant after thirty years, and still in conversation with
ongoing experiments in conceptual poetics—into alignment with
recent translations from Chinese, Spanish, Japanese, Sanskrit, Finnish,
and North African French will demonstrate something of the
liveliness of current poetics.
Naropa University’s Audio Archive contains thousands of hours of
historic material dating back to 1973. One ongoing feature of Bombay
Gin is selections from these archives, curated by Kerouac School
co-founder Anne Waldman. To augment the translation portfolio,
we have transcribed brief talks by Anselm Hollo and Gary Snyder—
delivered for the dedication of Naropa’s Allen Ginsberg Library on
July 3, 1997. Both poets reflect with touches of darkness & humor
on the role books and libraries play in Western & Eastern, ancient & modern civilizations.
The cover art for this issue features details from two Paste-Ups by
the San Francisco Renaissance artist Jess Collins (1923-2004). Jess
produced a series of twenty-six paintings from 1959-1971 that he
titled “Translations.” Each was a thickly textured oil painting based
on a photograph, book illustration, or comic strip. Some of the images
he chose were popular & iconographic (The Beatles), some esoteric, drawn from scientific manuals or mystical works. Jess paired
many of his “translations” with texts—from Gertrude Stein, William
Wordsworth, the Popul Vuh. By contrast, his paste-ups, which
we have selected to wrap this issue in, are made of multi-layered
images cut from numerous visual “texts.” They too are translations,
with both density & deep mysterious humor. We’ve chosen images
that weigh popular and esoteric traditions, scientific and magical
languages, and move deliberately on the margins that separate (or
join) species, languages, artifacts, & architecture.
• • •
The upcoming summer issue of Bombay Gin (36.2) will acknowledge Twenty
Years of Eco-Lit. Submissions will be accepted again beginning Fall
2010 for the 37.1 issue. Please write in advance if you would like to submit a book
review or critical essay.
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