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Parsing / Jäsentäen translated into Finnish by Leevi Lehto
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from the annoucment by Ntamamo, the publisher, in Helsinki:
A seminal early work by the influential, innovative American poet, in English-Finnish bilingual edition, translated into Finnish by Leevi Lehto, and with an interview with the author by Chinese scholar, Nie Zhenzhao, as an appendix.
"[the] publication is based on the insight that a work concentrating on dismantling the context(s) will itself deserve to be detached from its contexts – translated (...) Here the translator, in stead of risking to loose or inadvertently change the ”meaning” or ”sense”, must be careful not to create it where it does not exist (...)"
––Leevi Lehto, from the translator's foreword
"In this work I was interested in repetition as a form of reiteration, insistence in Gertrude Stein’s sense. There is also a relation to the minimalist music of Steve Reich and also his own interest in repetitive and highly rhythmical chanting. (...) I was interested in getting to a basic unit of speech and then using that to make rhythmic compositions. (...) A kind of collective plaint of despair or melancholy or disappointment or separation, which is something that threads through my work and connects it, perhaps unexpectedly, to fado, blues, mourning prayers, or other forms of lament that also use repetition. ...
"There are two sources for [the first section of Parsing] “Sentences,” both oral histories: Working by Studs Terkel and Yessir, I’ve Been Here a Long Time: Faces and Words of Americans by George Mitchell. ... The final poem, numbered 1 & 2 is all first lines of Emily Dickinson’s poems. ... “Roseland” has as its source some phrases from David Antin’s “the sociology of art” from talking at the boundaries, so it’s cut-up from Antin’s transcription of his original “spoken” talk."
––Charles Bernstein, from the interview by Nie Zhenzhao
This is the first publication on Nie Zhenzhao's interview in book form both in English and in Finnish
Parsing / Jäsentäen: 14,82x20,99 cm, 133 p., ISBN 978-952-215-081-3, Graphic Design Make Copies, Cover Art by Susan Bee.
Online
www.lulu.com U.S $/EUR c. 14 + maling costs
kirjantamo.net EUR 20,00 + maling costs
Google books excerpt, including Forward
Sales
Kirja kerrallaan, Mannerheimintie 22-24, 00100 Helsinki, kirja@lasipalatsi.fi, puh. +358-(0)9-612-7798, fax +358-(0)9-6126-5715). EUR 20,00
See also: Ecplise archival edition or the 1976 Asylum's Press book and an Italian translation
Excerpts from the Nie interview, proving some of the source texts for Parsing are on-line here: