As Archipelago ends its fourth year of publication, we pause to remind ourselves of where we come from. In “Little String Game,” our contributing editor K. Callaway traced the meaning of the word through history.

“I’ve looked up ‘archipelago’ in the OED and my Eleventh Edition (1910-11) of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and found it is pronounced arkipelago, and that the Italian word it came to us from, arci-pelago, is pronounced archie. Thus, at least two pronunciations are in use. To my surprise, though, I see the word doesn’t mean ‘islands’ but the sea in which they are found in number. The etymology is much disputed. The OED says it comes from the Italian arcipelago, from arci (chief, principle) and pelago (deep, abyss, gulf, pool). The medieval Latin is pelagus, the Greek pelagos, sea. In most languages the word had at first the prefix of the native form: OS. arcipielago ; OPg. arcepelago; M.E. archpelago, arch-sea. All except Italian now begin archi; according to the OED….” “Little String Game,” Archipelago Vol. 1, No. 2.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. A reminder of our rights and our responsibility to those whose human rights are endangered, at home and abroad.

Hubert Butler (1900-1991), the Anglo-Irish essayist who is now recognized as a writer of international stature, was honored at a celebration of his centenary in Kilkenny, Ireland, on the weekend of October 20-22, 2000. Among the distinguished guests and speakers were John Banville, John Casey, Roy Foster, Neal Ascherson. The site devoted to him is being developed as a resource for readers and scholars. Hubert Butler’s disturbing essay “The Artukovitch File” appeared in Archipelago, Vol. 1, No. 2. John Casey is a Contributing Editor of Archipelago.

Etel Adnan An Interview with Jane Miller.

________ An interview with Al Jadid about the novel THERE.

The Post Apollo Press

Simone Fattal A Rain Taxi Interview with the publisher of Post Apollo Press.

The Maly Theatre Company. The excellent Russian acting company from St. Petersburg, written about elsewhere in this issue. A sampling of reviews appears in an Australian newspaper, and New York:

“Ultimately, however, the Maly Theatre is a social theater, and Dodin’s often-harrowing stage compositions have been designed as instructional tools. Addressing his fellow Russians, the director utilizes Brothers and Sisters to demonstrate that after his countrymen defeated fascism in Germany, they participated in the even more ruthless destruction of themselves. He credits their misguided belief that an imminent Communist paradise would compensate for all of their suffering for this unholy phenomenon. Dodin’s six-hour display of this devastation is his attempt to urge finally to learn how to live more beneficial lives.”

Ardis is the small publishing company founded in 1969 by (the late) Carl and Ellendea Proffer, who published the great Russian writers we needed (still need) to read, when no one else was doing it. Mrs. Proffer is still the publisher; her lovely essay “About Ardis” is worth reading. It is – she was – living history. The Ardis picture archive is extraordinary: images of Akhmatova, Bulgakov, Platonov, Nabokov, and so many of the remarkable writers of the 20th century.

Catbird Press publishes, among other notable books, a number by Czech writers in translation, including THE POEMS OF JAROSLAV SEIFERT; 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 in Vol. 3, No. 1, from FINGERS POINTING SOMEWHERE ELSE, just published. New, also, is CITY SISTER SILVER, by Jáchym Topol, considered the best Czech novel of the last decade, by a writer worth watching. We heard him read, were fascinated, and will read this long, complex book. See the web site of the Czech Embassy, Washington, for their cultural calendar in the capital city.

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 Archipelago 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), 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 Vol. 2, No. 4.

Mercury House is an estimable non-profit literary publisher, some of whose authors are Alfred Arteaga (Archipelago Vol. 1, No. 3), Robert Louis Stevenson, Joseph von Sternberg, the Italian fabulist I.U. Tarchetti (PASSION; FANTASTIC TALES), and a number of personal writings about the Holocaust. In March 2001 they will publish NARROW ROAD TO THE DEEP NORTH, by Katherine McNamara. A short excerpt is available; a chapter, “The Repetition of Their Days,” appeared in Archipelago Vol. 2, No. 2.

Rattapallax  is a first-rate electronic/digital publisher, directed by Ram Devineni, who named the press after Wallace Stevens’s word for the sound of thunder. The press publishes poets and poetry. It offers e-books and books on paper, with CDs. The literary review Rattapallax, which comes with a CD of poets reading their work, is available only through bookshops. We talk about this press in our conversation with Calvin Reid about electronic publishing, in this issue.

Station Hill Press is a non-profit publisher run by the poet George Quasha. They publish writers of serious and surrealist bent, as well as very fine poetry and fiction. Among their writers are Maurice Blanchot and Spencer Holst (whose “The Zebra Storyteller” appeared in Vol. 3, No. 1). María Negroni, whose work appeared 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.

Salmon Poetry lives in County Clare, Ireland. The editor, Jessie Lendennie, is pleased to publish not only her countrymen, including, she tells us, the largest list of women poets of any Irish publisher, but also Alaskan poets, among whom are several old friends of ours. She wrote to say she liked our “The Repetition of Their Days,” Vol. 2, No.3.

Sun & Moon Press is a fine, serious, literary press with 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 Archipelago Vol. 2, No. 4.

Turtle Point Press. This intelligent press, led by Jonathon Rabinowitz, Helen Marx, and Jeanette Watson, is reviving several books by the marvelous Iris Origo, including her LEOPARDI: A STUDY IN SOLITUDE. Another necessary book published here is Hannah Green’s profound THE DEAD OF THE HOUSE. Jeanette Watson’s Books & Co. News is posted, as well. (An excerpt from Lynne Tillman’s BOOKSTORE, about Watson and Books & Co., once one of the cultural resources of Manhattan, appears in Vol. 3, No. 3.)

Twisted Spoon Press, publishing in Prague, offers works in translation by Central European writers, in handsomely-made paperbound books. Among their authors: the great Czech writer Bohumil Harabal (his TOTAL FEARS, as it is called in English, being a selection of periodic writing, is a great book), Tomasz Salamoun, fine Slovenian poet, Peter Nadas, Hungarian novelist, and other writers we will want to know about. The Prague Links are particularly useful if you are going there or are interested in the city.

<i>iola</i>. This perfectly eccentric site is like the dinner party of artists, thinkers, above all, talkers you want regularly to be invited to. Its host-redactor is Robbin Murphy, who is worth looking up. Of particular delight: The Little Window.

Kamera –  came to us via the Richmond Review and is its pictorial mirror-image. Lively, hip, devoted to the cinematic arts, with features and reviews of movies and exhibits currently on in Britain.

Utopia, the fascinating exhibit on “The Search for the Ideal Society in the Western World,” on till January 27, 2001, at the New York Public Library, and co-curated by that library and the Bibliothèque national de France, has both physical and virtual installations. Beautiful books about a beautiful, or terrifying, subject of Western thought and social experiments are handsomely displayed; but the web site offers another dimension entirely. Handsome flash art; serious, even profound matter; marvelous resources including bibliographies and links. A research site to bookmark.

Work in Regress. This vertiginous site is by Peteris Cedrins, author of “The Penetralium,” an excerpt of which appears in Archipelago Vol. 3, No. 3. Here also are two images of dark, thrilling paintings by Inguna Liepa; descent into the psyche.

The Barcelona Review, Jill Adams, Editor. A fine, multi-lingual (English, Castilian, Catalan) offering published in Catalonia by a multi-national group. Intelligent editing; interesting reading of younger writers from Europe and America.

Big Bridge. Edited by Michael Rothenberg, editor of OVERTIME, selected poems of Philip Whalen (Penguin, 1999), and Wanda Phipps, who bring an open-armed, ‘60s generosity to this “webzine.” “We think walls are good for keeping out the cold and rain,” they write: “They’re useless in the creation and propagation of art.” Big Bridge Press publishes chapbooks and handsome botannica. 

Blue Ear. “Global Writing Worth Reading” is their motto; well done. The publishers of this international web journal, from Washington, D. C., publish thoughtful journalism, sponsor articulate forums, link to articles and publications (such as Central European Review and the New York Review of Books) that we read regularly. They are forthright about their views; they are (properly) doubtful about hyper/turbocapitalism and are smart to trust their readers’ intelligence.

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. All poetry and most fiction appear in Real Audio format. They publish in February, May, August, and November, with monthly features.

The Drunken Boat is a new journal founded by the poet Rebecca Seiferle. Her recent collection, THE MUSIC WE DANCE TO, was a Pulitzer Prize nominee, and her translation of Vallejo's TRILCE was the only finalist for the 1992 PenWest Translation Award. Look for new translations of Robert Desnoes and Leah Rudnitsky, a poet in the Vilnius Ghetto, poems by Ruth Stone, new translations of Paul Celan by Heather McHugh, translations of the well-known Israel poet, Robert Friend, and more. A very welcome, serious journal of poetry as necessary as breathing.

Feed is often lively and smart, sometimes frantic and too smart; all in all, probably the most bearable of the daily news/entertainment sites. The recent Book issue (July), still available, has a fascinating session with the fine translators Lydia Davis, Jay Rubin, Christopher Logue, and Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, on what is lost and found in translation (of course).

George Meyers Jr.’s LitKit bills itself as a “non-commercial zine and archive” and “a larkabout for readers with brains, and for writers with lightbulbs blazing in their heads.” That’s close enough; it’s an experience.

The Hungarian Quarterly, the respected literary journal, offers an essay by Sándor Kányádi in No. 152, Winter 1998 (linked from the cover page) An essay about Kányádi and poems by him, translated by Adam Makkai and Bruce Berlind, appear in No. 138, Summer 1995. Kányádi’s great poem “All Soul’s Day in Vienna” appeared in Archipelago Vol. 3, No. 4; his charming, heartbreaking “Song of the Road” is in this issue.

Illuminations. The web site advertises this printed literary journal appearing normally in July/August of the year. We look forward to it. Its editor, Simon Lewis, writes, “You might just call us an international magazine of contemporary writing devoted to publishing new and up-and-coming writers alongside already established ones; very open to writing from around the world and in translation; mainly poetry but carrying some short prose pieces and some art work. This summer's issue will include an interview with Tim O’Brien and poems by Vietnamese and Vietnamese-American writers, also a couple of poems by Sándor Kányádi translated by Paul Sohar, as well as some of Sohar’s own work.. The 2001 issue should showcase Cuban writers.”

Jacket was founded and is edited by John Tranter, a Australian poet whose work is published often in the TLS. “For more than thirty years he has been at the forefront of the new poetry, questioning and extending its procedures.” In this quarterly literary journal he publishes the work of other writers generously. A new collection of his that should be read, LATE NIGHT RADIO, is published by Polygon & Edinburgh University Press. It can be ordered there (tel. 0131 650 8436), or through Columbia University Press.

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 of the current and past editions.

Poetry Daily. A daily necessity.

The Richmond Review received approving notice (along with Archipelago) in the TLS. Its staff is drawn from about twenty-five young persons-about-London-publishing. The founding editor, Steven Kelly, is the author of THE WAR ARTIST, a chilling moral thriller about a man called Charles Monk, an artist who “only during wartime feels truly alive.” It was published in the U.K. by Simon & Schuster.

Web del Sol is the invaluable old stand-by we’ve consulted for years, configured gorgeously into an almost dizzying assemblage of literary web sites (we couldn’t do without the Links page), portal to vast riches of poetry residing in distant nodes of the web or right under our fingertips. (It plays music, too.) The editor, Michael Neff, was kind enough to write of Archipelago: “You have a superb magazine, and it elevates all who engage in online publishing of serious work.”

Zimmerzine, edited by Martin Grampound, is an ‘e-zine’ with a flashy cover opening onto serious literature, including two poems by Sándor Kányádi, translated by Paul Sohar, at http://www.nhi.clara.net/z59.htm. Kányádi’s great poem “All Soul’s Day in Vienna” also translated by Sohar, appears in Archipelago Vol 3, No. 4.

Organizations

Academy of American Poets has revised its site and made it a useful one for poets and those wishing to find poets, books of poetry, links to other sites, and a reaffirmation of the necessity of poetry in ordinary life.

Council of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP) has long been a useful source of advice and information for small presses and literary magazines. They are developing a new web site and hope to expand their membership to publishers on the web.

Poetry Ireland Éigse Éirann  is a fine resource for Irish writers and the best way for readers at home and abroad to find poets and novelists, their works, and other necessary information. They publish a fine review and sponsor an excellent program of translation, pairing international and Irish writers to bring remarkable poetry into English; and they publish the volumes resulting from these collaborations. They are located in the Dublin Castle: superb way of turning that ancient seat of imperial power into a benign center of the word. They are funded by all thirty-two counties.

Places

Center for American Places is an estimable non-profit organization “dedicated to fostering knowledge of the places we work, live [in], and explore.” A founding director is the great geographer Yi-Fu Tuan, who wrote: “Americans are woefully ignorant of geography and of place–ignorant, that is, of the natural and humanly constructed worlds that have nurtured us, inspired us, and, sad to say, too often frustrated us. It is hard to imagine concretely how we can envisage the good life (the humane life), and plan for the future, unless we have some clear idea as to the sort of places that we wish to exist.” The Center sustains itself by its fine publishing program, which offers a range of books about place, and places, and its other educational projects. This is good work.

Good Deed

The Hunger Site, United Nations: A friend e-mails: “Quite clever of the U.N. to do this. Go to the Hunger Site on the U.N. webpage. All you do is click a button and somewhere in the world a hungry person gets a meal at no cost to you. The food is paid for by corporate sponsors. All you do is go to the site and click. You’re allowed one click per day.” It’s true, and worth doing.

The E-text Center, University of Virginia offers an expansive collection of books and other writings, formatted in SGML, though not all departments are open to non-subscribers. With pleasure, we found Mandelstam’s TRISTIA, tr. Bruce McClelland, in the Russian collection. And now, if you download the free Microsoft Reader (available for PC’s, not Macs), you can then download a library of e-books available without cost, including classic British and American fiction, major authors, children's literature, American history, Shakespeare, African-American documents, the Bible, and much more. In August, 347,224 e-books shipped from this site. People are reading. We knew that.

Dialog Among Civilizations. Rattapallax Press is organizing a “Dialogue Among Civilizations Through Poetry,” with readings at the U. N. featuring Yusef Komunyakaa, Joyce Carol Oates, and others, and in more than one hundred cities and international sites, hundreds of poets. A literary conference at the U. N. will be moderated by John Kinsella, and organized by Poetry International Rotterdam.

Art and Literary Sites

Alt-X Publishing Network is Mark Amerika’s smart, sharp performance-artist/publishing/writing/cultural-critical scene. His PHON-E-ME virtual installation at the Walker Art Center, for instance, is brilliant. We talk about his work in this issue with Calvin Reid. See, also, Joe Tabbi’s challenging, thoughtful review of Mark Amerika’s writing and why we ought to read it well.

artnet.com - The art search engine.

The Puppetry Homepage, is good news for devotees of the art, artifice, and folk-traditions of the marionette theater.

Graphic Novels. Fantagraphics  is a good entry-point if you are looking for more work by graphic artists and writers like Chris Ware (JIMMY CORRIGAN), Dan Clowes, Jessica Abel, and others whose work is worth watching. We read graphic novels for their complexity, intensity, and edge-of-despair wit. We began with Franz Masreel (1898-1972) (PASSIONATE JOURNEY, A Novel Told in 165 Woodcuts with an introduction by Thomas Mann, Penguin; LANDSCAPES AND VOICES, Schocken), and haven’t stopped finding new artists.

Béatrice Coron is a paper cutter of exquisite sensibility and the steadiest of hands. Her books are worth collecting. Her motto is “Papercutting in Action.”

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