Fiction. Bilingual Edition. Translated from the Russian by Boris Dralyuk. Foreword by Brian Evenson. Calypso Editions presents a new translation of this frequently overlooked classic. In HOW MUCH LAND DOES A MAN NEED, originally published in 1886, Tolstoy departs from the realist mode of his great novels—War and Peace and Anna Karenina—and adopts the markedly oral narrative style of skaz, a language at once rich and easily accessible to the simple folk he now wished to address. While previous translators have smoothed out the idiosyncrasies of the form, Boris Dralyuk's translation retains the color and voice so vital to the tale. "The greatest story that the literature of the world knows."—James Joyce

How Much Land Does a Man Need

TOLSTOY, LEO

Literature & Fiction

Calypso Editions

Poetry. Bilingual Edition. Translated from the Polish by Piotr Florczyk. Foreword by Jericho Brown. "In the same way that memory gave birth to the muses, Anna Swir crafted exquisite mnemonic miniatures thirty years after the Warsaw Uprising, miniatures that allowed human hope to shine through bloody rubble. Reading Swir, one longs to know this heroic poet, who, like Whitman, nursed humans broken by war. Piotr Florczyk translates the poems in BUILDING THE BARRICADE with chilling precision, constructing equations that become magical spells to address the twentieth century and serve as cautionary tales for the twenty-first."—Sandra Alcosser "To translate Anna Swir is to translate a cemetery's stories as nakedly and starkly as any human can. It is to tread on hallowed, stunned ground—the ground of an earth stricken not by its own nature but by our species' own warring, bombarding instincts. Only reverence could lead someone properly into the reaches of Swir's numbed witness of the atrocities of WWII. Piotr Florczyk has the reverence and skill to bring Swir into English verse with crystalline witness and warnings."—Katie Ford "These short poems by Anna Swir, keenly translated by Piotr Florczyk, have the urgency and clarity of a poet staring back at a burning building from which she somehow escaped, except the building is Poland and she is looking back in memory, talking to its war-torn corpses, and to us, the lucky recipients of these explosive poems.—Edward Hirsch

Building the Barricade and Other Poems of Anna Swir

Anna Swir

Poetry

Poetry. Bilingual Edition. Edited and translated from the Romanian by Martin Woodside. Amidst a history of upheaval, from Roman subjugation to the fall of communism in 1989, Romania's fostered a persevering spirit and a strong poetic tradition. "Every Romanian is born a poet," goes a popular idiom, and OF GENTLE WOLVES: AN ANTHOLOGY OF ROMANIAN POETRY aims to bring the very best of the country's contemporary poets together in a single volume."This dedicated anthology is a dynamic and exciting reflection of the voices from contemporary Romania, led by transgressive poems by the father of Romanian surrealism, Gellu Naum. With a slightly different pitch of voice, and a slightly different angle of imagination, these poems offer a journey into the poetry you won't find elsewhere."—Valzhyna Mort"OF GENTLE WOLVES: the paradox of this book's title runs with artful power through every subsequent page. It's a vibrant, chaotic place these days, Romania, and its poets are working at breakneck speed to make up for decades—for centuries—of damage, repression, and silence. Here are Gellu Naum's lyric histories set alongside Chris Tanasescu's hyperactive polyphonies; here the 'helplessness' and 'home' of Angela Marinescu's urgent lyrics serve as counterpoint to the formal dignities (and indignities) of Leonid Dimov. But these juxtapositions are truly Romania itself: ancient mountains-and-plains landscapes yielding to shattered urban hubs; endless political narratives of conquest and recovery; a language bearing the stamp of countless travelers-through from the Romans to the Turks and Russians. Martin Woodside has given us an astute new glimpse into the place. OF GENTLE WOLVES is the best introduction to recent Romanian poetry I know."—David Baker

Of Gentle Wolves: An Anthology of Romanian Poetry

Fiction. When Ash Moone learns that his twin brother Oscar's botched suicide attempt has left him confined to a wheelchair, Ash is forced to leave his life as a writer in Brooklyn for the family's dilapidated emu ranch in a remote East Texas town. At first a reluctant caretaker, Ash must confront the once-familiar faces that inspired his first book, but soon learns the terrible and devastating truths about his family's dark legacy. As his brother Oscar's continued obsession with death threatens to ruin both their lives, Ash must make a choice: abandon his brother or risk his own humanity to create a peace between them."THE MOONFLOWER KING is an incredibly imaginative new book by an exciting young writer. Get ready to for a crazy ride. It's fast-moving and intelligent. Anthony Bonds is someone to watch out for."—Daniel Chacón

The Moonflower King

Bonds, Anthony

Poetry. "Burleson sees what we all see, or are willingly blind to, or cannot bear to see: that we are here for only a moment, that we are meaningless in the very same instant that we are nearly godlike with meaning."—Zinta Aistars"Burleson's poems are engaging because he reaches out to his audience, and the audience he imagines is as lively as any poet could hope to have. The respect which he gives his readers (and listeners) creates layers of meaning, and allows his audience to participate—by which, I mean, there is a feeling as if we are in conversation with the poet."—Mercedes O'Leary

Burleson, Derick

Poetry. Translated from the Romanian by MARGENTO (Chris Tanasescu) and Martin Woodside. One of Romania's most important poets and a key figure in the surrealist movement, Gellu Naum remains almost entirely unknown to English speaking audiences. Sampling some of Naum's best work from a unique literary career spanning over more than 60 years, this collection offers a long overdue introduction to one of the greatest figures in 20th century European poetry.  "In the history of radical modernism and of Surrealism in particular the time has come for a reading of the second generation of Surrealist poets spread over multiple cultures and continents. It is in this sense that the presentation here of the poetry of Gellu Naum both serves this end and allows us to see a work of poesis remarkable enough in itself to call for our total attention. In ATHANOR & OTHER POHEMS, there is a thrill of discovery in the presence of a mind and voice that brings new complexities and tonalities toward the rebirth of something that we thought we knew and that even now astounds us."—Jerome Rothenberg "In the beginning, there were several prizes in the Cosmic Lottery that were won by poets. Gellu Naum won a telescope-microscope made from angel dew that was invisibly inserted behind his eyes. Over the course of a lifetime he viewed love, friends, fruit, weather, and writing through that angelic instrument. The poetry of Gellu Naum is the script that inscribes Romania, the country lucky to have had him, onto the angelic map of the Cosmic Lottery."—Andrei Codrescu  "For those who thought provocatively experimental writing left Romania with the person of Tristan Tzara, in 1915, or Paul Celan, as late as 1947—which is pretty much all of us who read poetry in English—the work of Gellu Naum is a revelation. In these wonderful translations we feel the life of the poetic imagination flowing freely long after Dada, Surrealism, and their discontents had faded into manner or silence elsewhere. Naum is Tzara's truest heir, with the gravity of Apollinaire and the eye of Breton."—GC Waldrep

Athanor & Other Pohems

Naum, Gellu

Poetry. Bilingual Edition. Translated from the Polish by Piotr Florczyk. "At the start of this book you will find one of my favorite poems from contemporary Poland, 'My Wife's Spine.' 'And when my wife's pregnant / her spine is a bough of an apple tree,' Jarosław Mikołajewski begins, innocently enough, and then: 'On nights of animal love / it is the zipper in a suitcase / that won't close, even under a knee' and wow, we say, just about to take a surprised breath, when a poet surprises us again: 'On nights of human love / it is the steel rope / at the highest voltage,' and he goes on, with each metaphor more unpredictable than the previous: 'On the noon walk / my wife's spine is the flag / carried by the pilgrims' guide in a crowded church.' This is contemporary European poetry at its best, I think: tender, unpredictable, a hymn, a love poem, a moment of laughter, of revelation. And, there are many moments like that in this collection, where 'the earth howls loudly / because I've gone upstairs'—reading such lines one thinks of the lineage of Vasko Popa and Miroslav Holub, but there is a new music, too, set 'to the words that have aged / since the last trip / "aeroporto" and "areoporto"'—and there is new wisdom, too: 'how the words age in me,' says the poet. Indeed. 'They are like soft gums / losing teeth.' This is beautiful poetry. One's gratitude is to Piotr Florczyk for bringing this new voice, previously unknown to Americans, and making this poet available in lines that captivate. Polish poets are much beloved in America today, but introducing a new voice is never an easy task. And Florczyk has done this many times over. This generosity of spirit is astounding."—Ilya Kaminsky"Who's Jarosław Mikołajewski? Is he an angry poet? No, not really. Is he pater familias? Yes, he is, but this doesn't tell us much about his poetry. Reading his poems we follow his itinerary, we go with him to Rome—he's at home in the Italian culture though his first home is in Warsaw, we see his wife, his daughters, we remember his father. Mikołajewski's poetry is alive. This is a huge praise, maybe the highest one: it's not an academic enterprise. His poems are kicking, running, appealing to us, readers. His poems live."—Adam Zagajewski

Froth: Poems

Jarosław Mikołajewski

Poetry. Robin Davidson's CITY THAT RIPENS ON THE TREE OF THE WORLD is a cycle of twenty-seven poems emerging out of her time in Kraków, Poland, and conceived as a response to poet Ewa Lipska's figure, Mrs. Schubert, a kind of European "every woman" of modernity. The cycle addresses Lipska's poems, Droga pani Schubert (Dear Mrs. Schubert), as a polestar for Davidson's own verse. Through the creation of an equivalent persona (Mrs. Schmetterling), she explores poetry as the uncertain intersection of personal and historical forces—what Lipska might call the accident or "the spectacle of our lives," which one both participates in and observes as witness."Robin Davidson is the co-translator of the Polish poet Ewa Lipska's The New Century and Lipska's example radiates through her own work. Robin was crucially influenced by her Fulbright in Kraków. She brings an unusual sense of history, especially as it impacts women, into her own very American poetry. Her work is deeply engendered, and she writes of ordinary women—rooted in earth, reaching for light—caught between personal, social, and historical forces. She is a learned poet—her verse rings with the work of photographers, painters, and other poets—who understands the work of poetry to bring light of darkness and music out of silence. She is a poet of harsh luminosity, spiritual alertness, who has been growing into the fully realized artist she was always meant to become."—Edward Hirsch"In Robin Davidson's poems we hear the inner voice of someone who's vulnerable and yet strong, introverted yet keenly observant—these are blessed tensions..."—Adam Zagajewski"Davidson's poetry is masterfully Modernist insofar as it re-envisions a shattered world by projecting new coordinates of order and meaning; it is also importantly historical because it bears witness as a literal bearer—and translator—of the memories and perceptions of a multiplicity of public and private histories; it is world-bound, like a Greek temple, in its amazing ability to illuminate the material reality of the non-human within the human context in which we work, love, suffer, hope, and die; it is finally and insistently spiritual in its deft capturing of the inherently spiritual significance of the sensual world. If Heidegger were alive to review her work, he would say that Davidson is among the rare poets who are able to illuminate the holy by setting the earth into the world."—Tammis Thomas

City that Ripens on the Tree of the World

Davidson, Robin

Fiction. AFTERMATH LOUNGE is a compelling tribute to the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Resurrecting the place and its people alongside their heartaches and triumphs, Margaret McMullan creates a riveting mosaic that feeds our wish to understand what it means to be alive in this day and age. "In AFTERMATH LOUNGE each short story, like a homing pigeon, returns to the Gulf Coast to explore how its people struggle with the ghost of Hurricane Katrina. With riveting prose, Margaret McMullan tracks the weblike connections of family and friends haunted by the storm from Pass Christian, Mississippi, to Chicago."—William Ferris "I love these stories. They're so smart, beautiful, true—and so real—that they seemed like part of my own history. I felt homesick in the best way, flooded with a kind of saddened joy. They snuffed the gimlet-eyed adult and brought to life again, for a while, the wondrous child."—Brad Watson "I like these new stories so much it's hard to know where to start. But a good place to begin would be... well, Place. She brings it to life like few writers can. You can almost feel the heavy air on your skin. As for her characters, they're three-dimensional people who are so real, you feel like they're in the room with you. She's got a great ear, a fine eye, and something else that you can't buy—namely, a very large heart."—Steve Yarbrough "AFTERMATH LOUNGE is a beautiful, compelling collection, the emotions as powerfully charged as the winds of a hurricane. Margaret McMullan writes movingly about those living in and pulling themselves out of destruction and chaos and loss to salvage all they can of love and redemption. From the voices of orphaned children to the least likely man to don a Santa Claus suit, there are moments of devastation, comic relief and grace."—Jill McCorkle "How strange, that the best apocalyptic fiction of the year should come to us, not borne on the maelstrom of nuclear fire or horrific epidemic, but rather in this series of beautifully crafted and masterfully interwoven literary stories. In AFTERMATH, our humanity is not simply swept away by the fury and chaos of Katrina; rather, it is tested, sometimes broken, sometimes intensified, and ultimately renewed by the deluge. A hopeful Book of Revelation."—Pinckney Benedict

Aftermath Lounge

McMullan, Margaret

While Everything Slipped Away From Me is a story about grief, love and loss. It speaks of unbearable tragedy. This is a collection of lyrical poems about the aftermath of 9/11. How can one go on when one loses the love of one's life? This collection delves into that question. Perhaps out of grief something beautiful can grow. 
"In this beautiful and heartbreaking collection, Lutzner reflects upon the experience of the mind when faced with unspeakable tragedy. Each poem is an elegy, a memory, a small and lyrical moment of grief. While Everything Slips Away From Me takes the reader to that place where heaven and hell meet, and illumination begins." 
 --Nin Andrews 
Erika Lutzner is the author of two chapbooks with dancing girl press and has a third coming out with them in 2016. She also has a chapbook with Kattywompus Press.

While Everything Slipped Away From Me

Erika Lutzner

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Calypso Editions publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Calypso Editions