James Broughton (1913-1999), poet, filmmaker, man of joy, was the author of, inter alia, PACKING UP FOR PARADISE, SELECTED POEMS 1946-1996 ( Black Sparrow Press), MAKING LIGHT OF IT, THE ANDROGYNE JOURNAL, COMING UNBUTTONED, and 23 films. He received lifetime achievement awards from the National Poetry Association and the American Film Institute. A tribute to his work, with a selection of his poetry, exists on the web.

Isabel Cole, translator of Christine Wolter and other German writers, has lived in Berlin since graduating from the University of Chicago in 1995. Her website contains her portfolio and curriculum vitae.

Martin Goodman  is the author of IN SEARCH OF THE DIVINE MOTHER (Thorsons), a frank portrayal of the life of the Indian holy woman Mother Meera, a prominent figure in the last years of James Broughton’s life. Goodman’s next book, I WAS CARLOS CASTAÑEDA, is due from Harmony, Spring 2001. His story “When Toffee Apples Turn to Juice” appears in Richmond Review.

Susan Garrett is currently at work on a memoir about photographers in the early 20^th century. She is the author of TAKING CARE OF OUR OWN: A Year in the Life of a Small Hospital (Dutton) and MILES TO GO: Aging in Rural Virginia (University Press of Virginia). She is married to the novelist, poet, and man of letters George Garrett, who spoke about publishing in Archipelago, Vol. 3, No. 2.

Lucy Gray lives in San Francisco. “Naming the Homeless” opened for the second time, in September 1999, at City Hall. She is working with Mayor Willie Brown to enlarge the project. Simultaneously, 55 of her photographs of Nevada, taken to accompany IN NEVADA: The Land, the People, God and Chance, by David Thomson (Knopf), opened at Jernigan Wicker Fine Arts. She is at work on a book and exhibition called “Mom Is a Ballerina,” about which she writes: “Most of us assume prima ballerinas cannot be mothers, too – not while they are dancing. It is a rare occurrence. But in San Francisco we have three. When I began I imagined I would be illustrating the clash between the dancers’ personal and professional lives. Instead, I am finding more and more ways in which being a ballerina is just the right training for being a mother.” Her photographs are represented by Jernigan Wicker Fine Arts 161 Natoma Street San Francisco, CA 94105, (415) 512-0335: and on the internet by nextmonet.com. She is married to the writer and film critic David Thomson. They have two sons.

Sándor Kányádi was born in 1929 in Transylvania, Rumania. His parents belonged to the sizeable Hungarian minority, among whom he received his education and has spent his working life as a writer, poet, and editor of Hungarian-language publications. His volumes of poetry and translations (from Rumanian, German, and French) are more than two dozen. His poetry has appeared in translation in the Scandinavian countries and Germany, France, and Austria. In 1995 he was given the Herder Prize in Vienna. “A Song for the Road” is from his book for children, THE LITTLE GLOBE-TROTTING MOUSE, is to be brought out in English by Holnap Publishing (Budapest; tel. 361 365-6624). “All Soul’s Day in Vienna,” the poem considered his masterpiece, appeared in Archipelago, Vol 3, No. 4, for the first time in an English-language publication.

Paul Sohar (translator) was born in Hungary and educated in the U.S. He works full-time as a literary translator. His poetry and translations can be read now in, or in future numbers of, Chelsea, Hunger, Long Shot, Malahat Review, Seneca Review, and will appear in Antigonish Review, Kenyon Review, Many Mountains Moving, Sonora Review. etc. His translation of THE LITTLE GLOBE-TROTTING MOUSE, a book for children, by the Transylvanian Hungarian poet Sándor Kányádi, is due out in English from Holnap Publishing (Budapest; tel. 361 365-6624). A selection of his translations of Kányádi and Arpad Farkas is to appear in Peer Poetry Review, England; his own poems will appear in a later issue. His translations of poems by Kányádi appear in Zimmerzine.

Larry Woiwode’s fiction has appeared in The Atlantic, Esquire, Harper’s, The New Yorker, and many other publications. His first novel, WHAT I’M GOING TO DO, I THINK, received the Faulkner Award; his second, BEYOND THE BEDROOM WALL, was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and he was honored in 1995 for the art of the short story by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is also the author of INDIAN AFFAIRS, SILENT PASSENGERS, and WHAT I THINK I DID; the latter will be published in April by Basic Books. He lives with his wife and family in North Dakota. He is a contributing editor of Archipelago.

Christine Wolter, author, publisher, and translator, was born in 1939 in Königsberg, East Prussia, where her father, the architect Hanns Hopp, constructed important public buildings in the spirit of the New Objectivity. The East Prussian landscape of her early childhood on the Samland coast left an indelible impression. After fleeing East Prussia the family lived in Radebeul (near Dresden), then in Halle. In 1950 they moved to East Berlin, where her father took part in the planning of the “Stalinallee,” the “first socialist street.” Christine Wolter studied Romance Languages and worked as editor, interpreter, translator and publisher. In 1978 she left the GDR and settled in Italy. In the GDR, Christine Wolter was known for her feminist stories, which were published in 1973 under the title Wie ich meine Unschuld verlor (HOW I LOST MY INNOCENCE) and were reprinted many times. Cult book for women and yachts(wo)men, Die Alleinseglerin (THE YACHTSWOMAN ALONE) became an insider-tip in the GDR. Read superficially (and as filmed by the DEFA), it was an ironic fable about the everyday life of a yachtswoman and single mother; on a deeper level, it is a declaration of free individualism against all official and unofficial dogmas. Italy is a central theme of many of Christine Wolter’s books. Living near Milan and still describing herself as a Berliner, the author travels the Appenine Peninsula with an impressionistic and ironic gaze. Strasse der Stunden (STREET OF HOURS), published in 1988 (appeared in Italian as VIA DELLE ORE, Rubettino Editore, 1999), collects glimpses by a “flaneuse” of the hidden sides of Milan. She has translated works by Leonardo Sciascia, Claudio Magris, Alberto Savinio, Eugenio Montale, Vittorio Sereni, Giovanni Raboni, Patrizia Valduga into German.

Moshe Benarroch has just published a novel in Hebrew, and participated in a discussion on social matter and art in Salon d’arte. His poems appear in Archipelago, Vol. 2, No. 1.

Daniela Fischerová is the author of “A Letter to President Eisenhower,” which appeared in Archipelago Vol. 3, No. 1. A collection of her stories, FINGERS POINTING SOMEWHERE ELSE, tr. Neal Bermel, has just been published by Catbird Press, who have a remarkable list of Czech writers in translation.

The poet Maria Negroni (EL VIAJE DE LA NOCHE/Night Journey; LA JAULA BAJO EL TRAPO/Cage Under Cover) announces the founding of Abyssinia, a journal of poetry and poetics, published in Buenos Aires. A subscription costs US$20; postage from Europe costs US$12 more, and from North America, US$9.

Subscribers should send check and name, address, city, state/province, country,

phone, fax, and e-mail address, to this address:

“Abyssinia,” Ceudeba, Av. Rivadavia 1571/3, C.P. 1033 Capital Federal, Argentina.

Suscríbase a la Revista de Poesía y Poética ABYSSINIA.

Enviando este cupón con el cheque or giro postal correspondiente a nombre de

Ceudeba

Av. Rivadavia 1571/3

C.P. 1033 Capital Federal Argentina

Nombre:

Dirección:

Ciudad/País:

Teléfono:

Fax:

Correo Electrónico

Precio de número: US$20.-

\Más gastos de envío (aprox.) US$ 12.- a Europa, US$9.- a América

Another letter so soon & I’ll tell you why, had a special day yesterday really perusing Archipelago for the first time. A wonderful thing sometimes to have time on one’s hands. So I read first “Letter from Surrey”: “the road from Leatherhead to Dorking” “at the foot of Boxhill.” To my mother and me, living in Sutton, Surrey, these places were our extended backyard. We both had our own cars, my mother’s was rather large & yellow, mine an Austin 7 sports model, tiny & red. Of a Sunday morning my mother liked me to accompany her for midmorning coffee to a “small hotel.” No I don’t believe it was Juniper Hall (dammit I cannot bring up its name) but it was almost certainly on the above mentioned road & it was where Nelson & Lady Hamilton spent some of their nights. What a fascinating piece & the author found part of it in a “wonderful antiquarian bookstore” in Nova Scotia. Then I went fastforward to “the Double” by you. I’ve never been to Vienna, not had much interest in it & you bring it alive with ideas and comments far & wide, even Alaska. It makes me wish I’d had a double. Perhaps you usually write the Endnotes – I’ll look & see & read them all.

P.S. The yellow envelope perhaps about the color of my mother’s car, but it was not shiny paint but of some matt material.

George Rafael  replies by e-mail:

You might also wish to mention Linda Kelly’s book [JUNIPER HALL: AN ENGLISH REFUGE FROM THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, n.d.], a source I used. The most important source, however, was JUNIPER HALL [Constance Hill, JUNIPER HALL, A RENDEZVOUS OF CERTAIN ILLUSTRIOUS PERSONAGES DURING THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, London: John Lane, 1904], which my wife got for me out of the Kensington branch library; Kelly takes a lot from that one. (The book also has a chapter on a character I like to think was a distant relation of mine, Samuel Crisp, better known as Daddy Crisp, Fanny Burney’s mentor).

I just came across the reminiscence of Lee that you sent some time ago and I read it again. Looking at the list of writers at the end of the piece I’m prompted to wonder what happened to some of them. Lee went away: I guess that’s what happened.

Best,

18 Mar 2000

I have been thinking about on-line journals. Since appearing in Archipelago, I have been published, or soon will be, in several others. Frankly, it feels not quite real, publishing electronically – as evanescent and insubstantial as cyberspace. And I dislike being dependent on a utility – the electricity, the media. If a dark age of technology comes, what then? (Though I confess I do not believe anything of mine has lasting value.) And the lack of portability is a problem. I’m 50 next month and have been slow “to embrace the technology,” liking the feel and smell of paper, book shelves, bookstores – all that olfactory stuff Duchamp railed against, in art.

I will tell you this: Archipelago is the best I’ve visited. The things you do publish have importance, have literary value; the standards are high – and I like the international commitment very much. I feel the presence of an editorial intelligence in the selection of the works on view. I like that Archipelago feels like a traditional print journal (despite its single concession to the new media: the surf sfx).

Regards,

Norman Lock  

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