Automanias

by Sara Tuss Efrik, Paul Cunningham (Translator)

The winner of the 2015 Chapbook-in-Translation Contest, "Automanias" turns autobiography into a one-way mirror. When Efrik digests the work of Lars Von Trier, Alejandra Pizarnik, or Shakespeare, she transforms herself into a valve, collecting the violences of influence into a self that is aggregate, submerged, subversive, and emergent. Paul Cunningham's English translations have masterfully preserved Efrik's disturbing, and captivating, diary-like manias into language that is both hallucinatory and without boundaries.

Bilingual English/Swedish

Genres: Womens

28 pages, Unknown Binding

Published March 1, 2016

Reviews

[Ryan Bollenbach · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enjoyed this take on ekphrasis. Not familiar with all the source texts, but with the ones I was familiar with came through like the speaker was there on the ground level inside the text, and then, in the next sentence, some fragment of a missive escapes.

The order also really worked bring me in to the mutual engagement happening here. Ending to the last poem, "Ophelia's Death,"

"She is a mermaid. She has always been, though she has hidden it from everyone including herself, until this moment. She sings false psalms, she hums isolated stanzas, disjointed melodies. The water carries her, she floats away, with her dress as her only life preserver. She travers her own peril. Soon her dress will be so heavy it will pull her into the water. In a cage of her own songs, she travels down into death an dune, into a violet world of silver and sap. Her descent is a gilt ball, a funeral for All."

[Madison · Rating 5 out of 5]

A florid, lurid, and unforgettable text.