No. 07
Walter Murch translates Curzio Malaparte; Anne Carson's variations on the right to remain silent; a portfolio on Saadat Hasan Manto, Bombay's watchful son; Peter Orner on Illinois politics; Tom Drury's signs of Los Angeles; Amy Leach looks at outer space; fiction by Janet Frame, John Haskell, Mary-Beth Hughes, and Clare Wigfall; poems by Mary Jo Bang, Arda Collins, Gillian Conoley, Tom Yuill, and others.
If You See Something
Lincoln in His Grave
No. 07 • Peter Orner
When U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said the other day that “Lincoln would roll over in his grave” if he knew what Governor Blago was up to, I had to scoff at Fitzgerald’s lame insight into Lincoln’s character.If You See Something
A Valentine to Darwin
No. 07 • Jillian Weise
Dear Darwin, I have a crush on you.If You See Something
La Plata Perdida
No. 07 • Leslie Jamison
This is how you visit the silver mines of Potosí, the highest city in the world: First, take an airplane to El Alto, where some peoples’ hearts collapse under the altitude as soon as they step off the plane.If You See Something
Brown Loafers
No. 07 • Sven Birkerts
Some years ago, before the big operations for heart and cancer that undermined him, long before he took his life, my great sad friend discovered the obsessive pleasures of fine clothing.If You See Something
You Have to See This
No. 07 • Ian Chillag
When I was eight years old, my father returned from a walk and announced he had “found something.”Fiction
Double Happiness
No. 07 • Mary-Beth Hughes
The outer office was much the same as she remembered it.Feature
Sail On, My Little Honey Bee
No. 07 • Amy Leach
There is an altitude above every planet where a moon can orbit forevermore.Fiction
Dot
No. 07 • Janet Frame
A mixture of mother and kindly aunt, she invited the confidence of children throughout most of the South Island, and even from farther north in the foreign places beyond Cook Strait.Feature
Murdered
No. 07 • Curzio Malaparte
The Academy Award winning film editor and sound designer Walter Murch is known for his work on such films as The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, and The English Patient, but over the past decade he has also been at work translating the Italian writer Curzio Malaparte, who served in a voluntary brigade of Italians fighting alongside the French during World War I, and worked as a war correspondent during World War II.Fiction
Are You Ready?
No. 07 • John Haskell
Los Angeles has been called the City of Dreams; also the City of Angels; Jim Morrison called it the City of Lights, but to me it was just a city.Art
Signs of LA
No. 07 • Tom Drury
I've been taking pictures of Los Angeles and putting them online since May 7, 2007.Poetry
Two Poems
No. 07 • Tomasz Różycki
When I began to write, I didn’t know / each of my words would bit by bit remove / things from the world and in return leave blank / spaces.Poetry
Incivilities (“Thick”)
No. 07 • Barbara Claire Freeman
Thick lines of trees bind the adjacent shorePoetry
Two Poems
No. 07 • Timothy Donnelly
Thereafter it happened there would be no future / arrangements madePoetry
It Is Daylight
No. 07 • Arda Collins
I called my house from a pay phone / down the street before I went home.Poetry
Two Poems
No. 07 • Tom Yuill
One cannot love more than one other / With the fierceness of the love one torn / Half has for another.Poetry
Barrack Hill
No. 07 • Brandon Shimoda
Liberation sounds the first trees / The wind encountersPoetry
Anguilla
No. 07 • Eugenio Montale
Anguilla, eel, sea-siren / That, making its way from those / Cold Baltic seas to get to ours, / Our estuaries, deltas, / And into our streams, and from / The profound beneath the river rises up, / Against the downstream impetus of flow, / Upstream from branch to branch and into ever / Smaller capillaries, seeking ever / Evermore to enterPoetry
Two Poems
No. 07 • Martin Edmunds
Stars & spurs & Spain, / and she wants a bed off the floor!Poetry
From Bohr's Model
No. 07 • Noah Eli Gordon
About the image of ourselves we like / To project over the rest of the world suppose / The rest of the world were imaginedPoetry
The Critic Natkira
No. 07 • Eliot Weinberger
According to the sixteenth century Indian poet Dhurjati, there was a king of Madurai who offered a thousand gold coins to anyone who could compose a poem that would be praised by the critics in his court.Fiction
The Parrot Jungle
No. 07 • Clare Wigfall
Chicka-chicka-chicka-chicka sing the numbers on the counter as they rotate in the late afternoon sun.Focus
Focus: Saadat Hasan Manto
No. 07 • Matthew Reeck
Few names are more revered in the world of Urdu letters than that of Saadat Hasan Manto.Focus
Rude
No. 07 • Saadat Hasan Manto
When I left Delhi to return to Bombay, I was upset because it meant parting with good friends and a job my wife approved of—stable, easy work that netted us 250 rupees the first of each month. Nevertheless I was suddenly overcome by a desire to leave, and not even my wife’s crying and carrying on could dissuade me.Focus
Siraj
No. 07 • Saadat Hasan Manto
Dhundhu was outside the Iranian restaurant across from the small park near the Nagpada Police Station, and he was leaning against the electricity pole that he manned from sunset until four in the morning.Feature
Variations on the Right to Remain Silent
No. 07 • Anne Carson
Silence is as important as words in the practice and study of translation.Order A Public Space
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