Two Lines 26

by C.J. Evans (Editor)

Two Lines continues its two decade–long tradition of excellence, hand-picking the best from translation’s acknowledged masters and world literature’s up-and-comers. This latest issue is back with poetry and prose from nearly a dozen different countries. It includes a never-before-seen piece by Argentine master Rodrigo Fresán, a favorite of Roberto Bolaño, with whom he used to have long conversations about the dystopian sci-fi fantasies of Philip K. Dick. This issue also has new translations of Russian absurdist Daniil Kharms, made by the acclaimed poet Ilya Kaminsky. New fiction from Naja Marie Aidt, new poetry by Nicole Brossard, and much more rounds out this feast for globally minded readers.

156 pages, Paperback

Published March 14, 2017

About the author

CJ Evans is the author of A Penance, forthcoming from New Issues Press in October, and The Category of Outcast, selected by Terrance Hayes for the Poetry Society of America’s New American Poets chapbook series. He co-edited, with Brenda Shaughnessy, Satellite Convulsions: Poems from Tin House, and his work has appeared in journals such as Boston Review, Colorado Review, Indiana Review, Pleiades, and Virginia Quarterly Review. He is editor of Two Lines Press, which publishes contemporary international literature in translation, and a contributing editor for Tin House. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, daughter, and three-legged cat.

Reviews

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

A treasure trove of translations from writers old and new. Plus the new format of the Two Lines journal, in color and larger (6” x 9”) is really attractive and easy to read.

I’ve been buying the journal for fifteen years now, and am never disappointed. You might not love every piece of fiction or poem, but you will admire most of them and discover a few enthusiasms every year. This time, for me, it’s Rafael Courtoisie, translated by Anna Rosenwong. Two Lines presents an excerpt titled El ombligo del cielo or The Navel of the Sky. It’s chapter 1 from his novel of that title. The Two Lines director says he thinks it’s going to be published in full by another house; if I get more news I’ll post it. Courtoisie is a Uraguayan poet and novelist who has won many prizes, but doesn’t appear to have any full length works translated into English. The writing is lush and imaginative, with a strong authorial voice. I’m not sure an excerpt will convey what the full chapter does, but here goes:

There’s one rock in particular, a good two-and-a-half-meter behemoth the locals call “The Devil’s Moon” for its extreme whiteness and the many craters left by time and a meteor, which creep scross it like a nasty case of acne, as palpable, porous, and surreal as social justice, as if the rock’s skin were suffering from chronic illness, a dermatological condition that changes it, makes it absurd, blunt, wasted, but also fearsome, the bearer of signals, of written signs periodically left there by the Devil, who comes at his leisure to make trouble...

It’s true that the Devil plays tricks. Those announcements. He delights in embittering people’s lives and God lets him do it.

God’s like that, strange and enigmatic, a bit capricious and sometimes authoritarian, like a dour patrón, a tata who’s a little mean...

Sometimes he wears dark glasses so we can’t look in his eyes to see what he’s thinking. The tata.

I want more.

Other beautiful/intriguing offerings here:

The Invented Part, by Rodrigo Fresán, translated by Will Vanderhyden, fiction/nonfction about Joan Vollmer and William S Burroughs’ marriage and lives together;

surreal poems by Danil Kharms, translated by Ilya Kaminsky and Katie Farris,

Bills, by Neck Zekâ, translated from Turkish by Erik Mortenson and Idil Karacadag. From the headnote: “His nonconventional poems make extensive use of irony and playfulness. In a faux-naif style, he creates experimental compositions that mock literary and social cliches.”

Did you spread the time that remains on every corner of your body?

Keep Running, Never Stop by Serhiy Zhadan, translated by Reilly Costigan-Humes and Isaac Wheeler, about devastation and young lives in Ukraine,

poems by Zhu Zhu, translated by Dong Li

like clay, we slowly take on human shape,
half-burned in the ashes now cooling down in the kiln.
what on earth is this kind of calendar--
that dictates that our life stays on the cold front?

poems by Jack Dehnel, translated from the Polish by Karen Kovacik, especially "Unearthing a Statue of Antinous in Delphi, 1894”

poems by Edward Sanguineti, translated by Will Schutt

and more.