Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Charles Bernstein: Parsing / Jäsentäen

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.

"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." (Charles Bernstein, from the interview by Nie Zhenzhao)

"[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)

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.

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

Online

kirjantamo.net EUR 20,00 + maling costs

www.lulu.com EUR 13,92 + maling costs