Sarah Arvio is the author of Visits from the Seventh (Knopf, 2002), her first book, for which she won the Rome Prize and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship. Poems in that volume were awarded The Paris Review’s Bernard F. Conners Prize and Poetry’s Frederick Bock Prize. Her second book of poems is Sono (Alfred A. Knopf, 2006). Sarah Arvio works as a translator for the United Nations. The author’s photo, shown on our podcast, is by Rigel Garcia de la Cabada.
Alistair Ian Blyth was born in 1970 and educated at Bede School, Girton College, Cambridge University (A. B.), and Durham University (M.A.). He is a free-lance translator of Romanian into English, specializing in literature and philosophy. In press are his translations of Constantin Noica, Six Maladies of the Contemporary Spirit and Andrei Plesu, On Angels (Central European University Press, Budapest), and Gellu Naum, Selected Poems, Bilingual edition with a critical introduction by Alistair Blyth (Humanitas Publishing House, Bucharest). Translation His translation of Stelian Tanase’s “The Renegade Istrati” was supported by the Romanian Cultural Institute.
Jared Carter’s fourth collection of poems, Cross this Bridge at a Walk, was published in 2006 by Wind Publications in Kentucky.
Mike Chasar is a Ph.D. student in English at the University of Iowa where he is writing about American poetry and culture. The poems in this issue are from a longer sequence titled “Your Unsteady Freddy,” portions of which have appeared in print in The Antioch Review and Free Lunch and on-line at Valparaiso Poetry Review and Eclectica Magazine. Other recent work has been in Poetry) and Word for/ Word).
Peter Church is a writer and photographer who covers travel and international politics.
Mike Gravel was the U.S. Senator from Alaska (1969-81) who in 1971 read the Pentagon Papers into the Congressional Record. Beacon Press published The Gravel Edition of the Pentagon Papers soon after; his introduction to that edition appears in this issue, on the 35th anniversary of their publication. As senator, he took positions on such issues as the Cannikin Nuclear Tests (opposed); the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 (co-author of the legislation); and the Pentagon Papers:
Daniel Ellsberg attempted to secure the release of the Pentagon Papers through a member of Congress in order to provide legal protection for his actions in releasing this top secret historical study that detailed how the US had ensnared itself in the Vietnam War. Since other Congressional leaders Ellsberg approached had failed to act, he turned to the New York Times and Washington Post, which published excerpts of the study in June, 1971. A Justice Department injunction and a Supreme Court decision at the end of June put the publishers at risk. The day before the Supreme Court decision, in an effort to moot their action, Mike Gravel officially released the Pentagon Papers in his capacity as a Senator communicating with his constituency. Since the Supreme Court had successfully intimidated the Fourth Estate, Senator Gravel sought to publish the papers in book form, but was turned down by every major (and not-so-major) publishing house in the nation - save one. Beacon Press, the publishing arm of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, faced down the Nixon Administration by publishing The Senator Gravel Edition, The Pentagon Papers.
The Justice Department brought legal action against Beacon Press and against the Senator's editor, Dr. David Rotberg. Mike Gravel intervened in the case, using his Senate office as a shield for Beacon Press and Rotberg. Decisions at the Federal Court and the Court of Appeals protected the Senator from prosecution but left Beacon Press and Rotberg at risk, so, against the advice of his attorneys, Gravel took the matter to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court rendered a landmark constitutional decision in the spring of 1972 narrowly defining the prerogatives of an elected representative with respect to the speech and debate clause of the Constitution. Senator Gravel's defeat before the Supreme Court placed him at risk of prosecution, along with Beacon Press and Rotberg. With Watergate afoot, the Nixon Justice Department lost interest in the prosecution of Ellsberg, Gravel and Rotberg. However, the Court's decision did set the stage for its later decision on the Nixon Tapes forcing Nixon’s resignation from the Presidency.
Sen. Gravel is running for the Democratic nomination for president in 2008.
Oliver Abrahim Khan was born in Ohio in 1980. He has studied English and Arabic in America and Syria, and his poems have appeared in Pearl and The Indiana Review. The poems published here are excerpted from a larger work titled The Toll, written while overseas. He is currently translating the early works of the late Egyptian poet Amal Dunqal.
Mat Snapp grew up in Littleton Colorado and studied English Literature, Creative Writing and French at Arizona State University. He now lives and works in Lahaina, HI, where he writes freelance food and wine articles, is learning to surf, and is finishing two longer projects: a novel and a non-fiction adventure bent on demystifying the sport of golf. His future plans include an MFA in creative writing. His work has appeared in Fourteen Hills, The Paumanok Review, and Modest Proposal Magazine. He also does public relations work under the pseudonym Fellson P. Wheatley for a Phoenix-based band named GOODER.
Stelian Tanase was born in Bucharest in 1952. He studied philosophy at the University of Bucharest and defended a doctoral thesis in Political Sociology. He currently teaches political sciences at the University of Bucharest. He published his first novel, The Luxury of Melancholy, in 1982. From 1983 until 1989, the communist regime prohibited the publication of any of his texts. Stelian Tanase was a Fellow at the Wilson Center in 1994 and a visiting professor at UCLA in 1997, having been awarded a Fulbright scholarship. He has been co-president of the Romanian Journalists’ Association since 1990 and vice president of the Romanian Political Science Association since 1994. He has been invited to lecture on political topics in Italy, Norway, Hungary, Austria, and the U.S.A.
Edith Grossman, translator of Gabriel García Marquez, Mayra Montero, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Cervantes, among other noteworthy authors, has been awarded the Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation by PEN American Center. The medal, awarded once every three years, recognizes a lifetime’s excellence in translation. Edith Grossman is a Contributing Editor of Archipelago. Her translation of Victoria Slavuski’s Music to Forget an Island By appeared in Archipelago, Vol. 2, No. 1. Her translation of Cervantes’ “The First Part of the Ingenious Nobleman Don Quixote de la Mancha” appeared in Vol. 6, No. 2. With pleasure, we offer our warmest congratulations.
Matt Madden, some of whose “Exercises in Style” appeared in Archipelago, Vol. 5, No. 2, has published 99 Ways to Tell A Story: Exercises in Style (Chamberlain Brothers, a member of Penguin Group USA, New York, 2005).
Michael Graves, whose poem “Blatnoy and the Lawyer” appeared in Archipelago, Vol. 8, No. 1, has published a new book, Adam and Cain, (Black Buzzard Press, 4705 South 8th Road. Arlington VA 22204, 2006; $15.95 + shipping and handling). In Manhattan, the book is available at the Gotham Book Mart, Left Bank, or St. Mark's Bookshop. The author may be contacted directly for the book, for ten dollars plus shipping and handling, at Michael Graves, 1426 71st Street, Brooklyn, NY 11228.
Michael Graves is a former student of James Wright, at Hunter College. He has published a chapbook, Outside St. Jude’s (R. E. M. Press, 1990), which was reissued as an e-book by Rattapallax. Adam and Cain is his first full-length collection. He is the recipient of a grant from the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, and has read his work to a gathering of The James Joyce Society in New York City. A. Nicholas Fargnoli, the President of the Joyce Society, has adopted some of Graves’ poems in his course on modern American literature at Molloy College. Michael Graves has published poems in a number of journals and magazines, including the James Joyce Quarterly.