Health and Literature: Celebrating Interim’s Volume 37.1
Seldom has a single issue of Interim presented such a varied mitzvah! Curated during our collected home quarantine from COVID-19, Volume 37 .1 features a company of poets, translators, and essayists that we are especially proud to include in our magazine, as together their projects represent the health of our literature, circa 2020.
New to our online issues is a special features section, where you will see the very first English-language translations of a unique corpus of poems from medieval France, the fatrasies and fatras. Vying between the dream grammar of the “possible” and the “impossible,” the poems present, as translator Donato Mancini writes in the preface “Blinded by a Burst of Laughter: Translating the Impossible” an “unfolding like the fevered hallucinations of a diligent, torturously overworked grammar student.” In their semantic and thematic hijinks, these poems are also remarkable in how they seem to prefigure French Surrealism and Dada. Almost 690 years ago this past Easter Sunday the poems were performed for King Philippe VI, in Paris, in 1329 or 1330. As resurrection is the fervent hope of the world in this period of confinement, we feel certain somehow that this anniversary is no coincidence in the cosmic scheme of things! If it is indeed true that every great period of literature is also a period of translation, then Bryne and Mancini’s introduction to the fatrasies and fatras serve as proof that now is such a time, as do renowned poet Carolyn Forche’s translations of Fernando Valverde’s poems on immigration, which are also included in this extraordinary issue.
We are especially pleased to include two poems by Carl Dennis, Pulitzer Prize winner for his beautiful Practical Gods (2002). “Another Sabbath” and “Two Chapters” offer readers narrative poems that are parables grounded in vatic insight—an insight direly needed in the rapid-fire sound bites of our contemporary life. In keeping with our decades long commitment to publishing emerging writers, we’re pleased to introduce Eliot Smith’s poems to Interim readers. We’re thankful that he chose Interim for his first appearance in print, and we have no doubt, based on the quality of the writing shown here, that his work will continue to find a home in many venues. We include also a selection of poem from the manuscripts of the Test Site Poetry finalists. While vastly different in method and scope, all share a connection to the oldest purpose of poetry—a desire for truth—which is evident throughout the range of their artistic experiment.
Finally, we are sure readers will also enjoy the innovation in Micah Jeffrey’s essay, “The Modern Prometheus.”
We send out wishes for health and happiness, and hope for the day coming soon when we’ll go outside again, happy for our return to the daily exchange with friends and strangers, wiser and full of further gratitude, for our time spent without it.
Editor, Interim
Las Vegas
8 April, 2020