Poetry
Two
translated by A. James Arnold and Clayton Eshleman.


A Note On The Two Aimé Césaire Poems
Aimé Césaire published Soleil cou coupé (Solar Throat Slashed) with K éditeur in Paris in 1948. The collection contained 72 poems. Over the following decade, as he became more and more politically focused he apparently came to distrust the dense animistic, erotic and blasphemous richness of this collection and in the late 1950s eliminated 31 poems, and edited (either lightly or severely) another 29, leaving only 12 poems from the original edition untouched. To the edited version of the book, he added the 10 poems that make up the short collection Corps perdu (Lost Body), and now entitled Cadastre this new collection was published in 1961. For years Cadastre has represented Soleil cou coupé. When Annette Smith and I published Aimé Césaire: The Collected Poetry (University of California Press, 1983), we included a translation of Cadastre. A little over a year ago, A. James Arnold and I decided to translate the unexpurgated Soleil cou coupé and we have now completed our translation which will be published in 2011 by Wesleyan University Press. A.James Arnold is the author of Modernism & Negritude / The Poetry and Poetics of Aimé Césaire (Harvard University Press, 1981). Besides The Collected Poetry, Clayton Eshleman has co-translated with Annette Smith Lost Body (Braziller, 1986), Aimé Césaire / Lyric and Dramatic Poetry 1946-1982 (The University Press of Virginia, 1990), and Notebook of a Return to the Native Land (Wesleyan, 2001).
Contributor
Aimé Césaire
RECOMMENDED ARTICLES

José Olivarezs Promises of Gold/Promesas de oro
By Chris CampanioniSEPT 2023 | Books
Even the idea of a collection of poetry as a stringing together or collation of poems problematizes ideas about the binary of or divisions between beginnings and endings, openings and (en)closure, repetition and variation, unity and multiplicity, which is to say: affinity, connectivity. Entering the chat is José Olivarezs Promises of Gold/Promesas de oro (Henry Holt and Co., 2023), published dos-à-dos in English and Spanish, whose audio version begins with applause.

Giovanni Bellini: Influences croisées
By Joyce BeckensteinJUNE 2023 | ArtSeen
Giovanni Bellini, Influences croisées presents an extraordinary selection of Giovanni Bellinis paintings alongside those of the Venetian masters mentors and students, Giorgione among them. Its a natural project for the museum because Édouard André (18331894) and his wife, Nélie Jacquemart (18411912), were great fans of Venetian art and bought many paintings, including a Bellini, for the collection, said Pierre Curie, Chief Heritage Curator at the Jacquemart-André Museum and co-curator of the exhibit.
Janne Sirén with Joachim Pissarro & Jennifer Stockman
JUNE 2023 | Art
Janne Sirén is the director of the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, a 161-year-old institution with one of the most important collections of American Abstract Expressionism. He was named director in 2013 and guided the organization through a major building project in which the concept of partnership was the cornerstone of the process. Sirén joined Guggenheim President Emeritus Jennifer Stockman and Rail Consulting Editor Joachim Pissarro for a conversation about the history of the Buffalo AKG, the fascinating career path Sirén created to arrive where he is, and the visionary work that goes into building a venerable collection.
Exposé·es
By Norman L KleeblattMAY 2023 | ArtSeen
While recently in Paris, I saw a curious, complex, and riveting exhibition titled Exposé·es at the Palais de Tokyo. It was inspired by and named after art historian, critic, and activist Elisabeth Lebovicis highly personal book What AIDS Did to Me (Exposées: Dapres Ce que le sida ma fait dElisabeth Lebovici).