Catbird Press publishes, among other notable books, a number by Czech writers in translation, including Jaroslav Seifert, whose THE POEMS OF JAROSLAV SEIFERT is the first large collection of his poems published in America; a garland of these poems appeared in Archipelago Vol. 2, No. 3. DAYLIGHT IN NIGHTCLUB INFERNO offers Czech fiction from the “post-Kundera generation,” including work by Daniela Fischerová. Her “A Letter to President Eisenhower,” appears elsewhere in this issue. Her volume FINGERS POINTING SOMEWHERE ELSE, the first volume of her work to appear in English, is due out this year. Robert Wechsler, publisher of Catbird, has written an interesting book-length essay, WITHOUT A STAGE; THE ART OF LITERARY TRANSLATION; worth reading.

Chelsea Green Publishing Company  in White River Junction, Vermont, specializes in books about sustainable living, with selections of environmentally friendly, thoughtful, and hopeful books. GAVIOTAS, A Village to Reinvent the World, by Alan Weisman,  has received much attention. The editor in chief, Jim Schley, wrote us about our conversation with Michael and Cornelia Bessie (Vol. 1, No. 4; Vol. 2, No. 1): “As a younger editor who has every intention of emulating such ... predecessors, I find this conversation to be truly illuminating.” This press has high standards.

Columbia University Press  puts up a utilitarian site through which their useful catalog of books and reference works, including CD-ROMS, can be ordered. Two noteworthy CD-ROMs are THE COLUMBIA I CHING and THE CLASSIC HUNDRED POEMS; the latter is very expensive, but delightful. William Strachan, the director, spoke to us about publishing in Vol. 2, No. 4.

The Lilliput Press is an Irish publisher founded in 1984 by Antony Farrell. Some 150 titles have appeared under its imprint: art and architecture, autobiography and memoir, biography and history, ecology and environmentalism, essays and literary criticism, philosophy, current affairs and popular culture, fiction, drama and poetry – all broadly focused on Irish themes. Since 1985 they have brought out four volumes of the essays of the late Hubert Butler. Hubert Butler’s “The Artukovitch File” appears, with their permission, in Vol. 1, No. 2.

McPherson & Co  publishes such writers as the fascinating Mary Butts (THE TAVERNER NOVELS), Anna Maria Ortese (A MUSIC BEHIND THE WALL, Selected Stories Vol. 2, just published), and the performance artist Carolee Schneeman. A beautiful story by Ortese, “The Great Street,” appeared in our inaugural issue, and the writer’s testament, “Where Time Is Another,” appeared in ARCHIPELAGO Vol. 2, No. 4.

Online Originals is an internet publisher of literature who take the position, one we find ourselves much in agreement with, that “Conventional book publishing has changed dramatically in recent years. Most of the world’s publishers are now owned by a handful of media conglomerates, ruled in turn by their finance and marketing departments. To guarantee high profits, they tend to accept manuscripts only by celebrity writers whose output conforms to the conventional mainstream market. ... We believe that the Internet is the way forward for all kinds of publishing. But for the benefit of our authors, we do not prevent them also publishing printed versions of their works at a later date.” They deliver “book-like” texts by e-mail.

Station Hill Press  is a non-profit publisher run by the poet George Quasha. They publish writers of serious and surrealist bent, as very fine poetry and fiction. Among their writers are Maurice Blanchot and Spencer Holst (whose “The Zebra Storyteller” appears in this issue). María Negroni, whose work appeard in Vol. 1, No. 1 and Vol. 2, No. 4, is the author of a beautiful work in poetry and prose, ISLANDIA, which they will publish this year, using print-on-demand; a noteworthy work of literature brought out by an interesting development in publishing technology.

Sun & Moon Press  is a fine, serious, literary press with fine test and a long backlist. They publish classics as well as contemporary fiction and poetry; writers and poets such as Arkadii Dragomoschenko (astonishing Russian poet), Paul Celan, Harry Matthews, Djuna Barnes, Paul Auster, Russell Banks. They will publish Maria Negroni’s LA JAULA BAJO EL TRAPO/CAGE UNDER COVER, tr. Anne Twitty, in a Spanish-English edition; a selection appeared in Vol. 2, No. 4.

Fine Arts

Colophon Page  and Photo Arts  are two handsome sites devoted to the fine arts. Colophon Page reproduces artists’ books, which are displayed in pages as if in a gallery; there is an attendant shop, and review and forum pages. Photo Arts presents and offers for sale the works of fine-arts photographers and photojournalists. The design and quality of reproduction of these sites are excellent. Read Jeanette Watson’s ‘Off the Wall,’ book reviews by the owner of the now-closed Books & Co., Manhattan.

Fray. Strange. Cool. Heartbreaking. A delight.

Octavo  is a digital publisher committed to conserving books, manuscripts, and antiquarian printed materials via digital tools and formats. They make original works available to readers and book lovers through partnerships with libraries, individuals and institutions. As a sample, they offer a PDF download of William Shakespeare Poems. We are always pleased when web publishers use PDF files, as we do for our Download edition.

Sites devoted to Surrealism, in honor of Stella Snead, whose work appears elsewhere in this issue:

The Duchamp Pages  are a thorough and beautifully arranged exhibition of Duchamp’s work.

The WebMuseum of the Louvre   offers a concise overview of the movement (in English).

The Salvador Dali Museum  is operated from a site in St. Petersburg, Florida.

The Magritte Art Gallery  is a well-maintained commercial venue. It curates a virtual museum of 331 JPEG images of works by the painter, and a complete gift shop.

A Texan named Mark Harden runs a well-designed site. He calls himself an “amateur” art critic, but such a designation seems arbitrary in hyperspace, and his pages display more taste and intelligence than most of the “professional” sites. You’ll find here such classics as Leo Steinberg’s critique of modernism in “Other Criteria.” Students of Surrealism will wish to read Rosalind Krauss’s essay “No More Play” lifted in its entirety from her book The Originality of the Avant Garde and Other Modernist Myths. Rosalind Krauss was a founding editor of October; her previous book was The Optical Unconscious. The essay Harden has selected relates the work of Alberto Giacometti to the Surrealists.

Alan Gullette in San Francisco maintains the Internet’s best reference-source of Surrealist literature, including information and links to sites about Surrealists and earlier writers who may have influenced the movement, such as Valery, Rimbaud, Apollinaire, and the Marquis de Sade. The complete text of Andre Breton’s What is Surrealism? is offered.

Stefan Sinclair’s bilingual site OuLiNPo, or the Workshop of Potential Computer Literature might attract those interested in the relationship between Surrealist automatism and computers. The project grew out of the ideas of the French Surrealist Raymond Queneau, who started Ouvroir de Litterature Potentielle or Oulipo.

The Art in Context Center for Communications   is a nonprofit on-line reference library supported by the New York State Council of the Arts and other sponsors. It contains information on galleries, dealers, past exhibitions, and images for the works of thousands of artists. Visitors may search by many methods, but we suggest searching by artist, rather than by subject heading.

Literary Reviews

Arts & Letters Daily  A portal site organized and selected for intelligent readers, directing us to information about books, authors, and commentary worth reading; nothing flashy or ‘entertaining’ here, thank goodness.

The Barcelona Review, Jill Adams, Editor. A fine, multi-lingual offering published in Catalonia by a multi-national group. Intelligent editing; interesting reading.

The Cortland Review  Established in 1997, this publication offers such poets as Charles Simic, Robert Pinsky, Henry Taylor, Mark Doty, Robert Creeley, Mark Jarman, Lloyd Schwartz, Neal Bowers, R.T. Smith, John Kinsella, and others. All poetry and most fiction appear in real audio format. They publish in February, May, August, and November, with Monthly Features in the off-months.

Jacket  was founded and is edited by John Tranter, an interesting Australian poet. “For more than thirty years he has been at the forefront of the new poetry, questioning and extending its procedures,” according to his biographical note. His own work has been published widely and deeply; and in this quarterly literary journal he publishes the work of other writers generously.

London Review of Books  One of the few reviews we read cover to cover; published on paper every two weeks and worth subscribing to. The on-line edition offers a generous selection, including a review by Iain Sinclair of James Sallis, a writer we’ve admired for some years. Among his talents are his translations of Raymond Queneau.

The Richmond Review  received approving notice (along with Archipelago) in the TLS last year. The founding editor, Steven Kelly, “lives and breathes” literature as an editorial consultant for various English publishers. He set up this site in October 1995, “when it was the UK’s first lit mag to appear exclusively on the World Wide Web.” Published ten times a year.

Media

Radio B92 On-line Broadcast from Belgrade; available on-line at the time we published this issue. This radio station was shut down by Milosevic when the bombing began, but continues broadcasting on the web. Update: this site has been closed down by the Serbian government, but the page still exists and ought to be read. See also, recent photographs from Kosovo by Ron Haviv, on PhotoArts.

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