Visible
$19.95
Additional Info
- ISBN: 978-1-949641-37-0
- Size: 7.5" x 8.75"
- Pages: 216
- Publication Date: September 27, 2022
- Distributed By: Publishers Group West
Brimming with enigmatic photographs, future memes, and mud drawings, Visible showcases six genre-defying works from around the world that raise questions about the relationship between how we see, how we read, and how we write in “the age of the calligram.”
In a rewrite of René Magritte’s “Les mots et les images,” Verónica Gerber Bicecci (translated by Christina MacSweeney) considers “images that think” and the internet. Marie NDiaye’s “Step of a Feral Cat,” translated by Victoria Baena, follows an academic, inspired by a portrait of an entertainer, as she walks the slippery space between literary ambition and exploitation. Monika Sznajderman (translated by Scotia Gilroy) assembles a fractured family history through photographs of a time she can never possibly know: “the pre-Holocaust world.” Focusing on those whose stories have yet to be told—the black Cuban singer Maria Martinez, a Polish family murdered in World War II, workers at a noodle shop in Busan, and the tallest man in recorded history—Visible asks us to interrogate the thin traces of shifting meaning we find in and between words and images, and how we can change that meaning for the future.
Table of Contents
Other
Words and Images
Marie NDiaye
was born in 1967 in Pithiviers, France. She is the author of around twenty novels, plays, collections of stories, and nonfiction books, which have been translated into numerous languages. She’s received the Prix Femina and the Prix Goncourt, France’s highest literary honor, and her plays are in the repertoire of the Comédie-Française.
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Christina MacSweeney
Christina MacSweeney has an MA in Literary Translation from the University of East Anglia. Her work has been recognized in a number of important awards. Her translation of Valeria Luiselli’s The Story of My Teeth was awarded the 2016 Valle Inclán Translation Prize and also shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award (2017). Her most recent translations include fiction and nonfiction works by Daniel Saldaña París, Elvira Navarro, Verónica Gerber Bicecci, Julián Herbert, Jazmina Barrera, and Karla Suárez. She has also contributed to anthologies of Latin American literature and published translations, articles and interviews on a variety of platforms.
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Step of a Feral Cat
As boats and buses go by
from “Closed Window”
Robin Myers
Robin Myers is a poet and Spanish-to-English translator. Her translations include Copy by Dolores Dorantes (Wave Books), The Dream of Every Cell by Maricela Guerrero (Cardboard House Press), The Book of Explanations by Tedi López Mills (Deep Vellum Publishing), Another Life by Daniel Lipara (Eulalia Books), Cars on Fire by Mónica Ramón Ríos (Open Letter Books), and other works of poetry and prose. She lives in Mexico City. (Photo credit: Nuria Lagarde)
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from “The Pepper Forgers”
“The beautiful dream that we unfold and extend...”
Eric Fishman
Eric Fishman is an educator, writer, and translator. His most recent translation is Outside: Poetry and Prose by André du Bouchet (Bitter Oleander Press). He is currently translating a selected volume of poetry by Monchoachi. Eric is also a founding editor of Young Radish, a magazine of poetry and art by kids and teens. (Photo credit: Arlette Pacquit)
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Praise
“I’ve loved the Calico series from Two Lines Press since its inception. Visible presents six works from around the world that think about the relationship between how we see, how we read, and how we write. Individually [the pieces] are striking but as a whole, the collection is revelatory. Each image, each word, and the spaces between them, are endlessly fascinating.” —Pierce Alquist, Bookriot
“Visible approaches translation as an act that occurs not only between languages but also between media and disciplines…Thoughtfully curated…Past and present come together in a refreshingly collaborative spirit.” —Brooklyn Rail
“Calico is at it again with its latest, most daring, and dare I say coolest entry yet, Visible. Loosely structured around the theme “Text + Image,” each one of these pieces is a treasure, a grab bag of formal delights and wildly varying styles and presentations (including an essay via sketches an a poetry-filled photo essay, among others), all topped off by a stunning set of translations. Each time I try to settle on a favorite, a new one emerges—what better sort of collection is there?”
—Jacob Rogers, The Center for Fiction (Brooklyn, NY)
PRAISE FOR THE CALICO SERIES
“By turns cryptic and revealing, phantasmagorical and straightforward, these tales balance reality and fantasy on the edge of a knife.” —Publishers Weekly, *starred review* of That We May Live: Speculative Chinese Fiction
“Unbelievably exciting…These are poems to read and reread, repeating the lines as though they were a secret between yourself and the page.” —The Paris Review on Home: New Arabic Poems
“Essential, a gift that opens up the pleasures of new worlds.” —Hugh Raffles on Elemental: Earth Stories
“This eclectic bilingual anthology from queer Brazilian writers, both living and dead, is as expansive and full of life as the country itself…enticing and poignant.” —Publishers Weekly on Cuíer: Queer Brazil
Excerpt
I’ve searched for the book, but I can’t find it. It had thick covers, as far as I can remember, but maybe I’m wrong. The book, in English, contained reviews of horror movies. I’d return to it again and again in the apartment where I lived then. I can see myself setting it down on the rug, opening it wherever the pages fell,. and starting intently at the pictures for a few minutes. I couldn’t make sense of the reviews, but I was transfixed by the photos, two in particular. Today, after nearly forty years, I still look at the face of a girl split by an axe and the figure of a man in a raincoat being eaten by rodents. Some images are difficult to forget; or, better put, they’re recreated again and again in our memories. Some windows change shape.
—from “Closed Window” by Rodrigo Flores Sánchez, translated by Robin Myers