{"id":284556,"date":"2011-04-28T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-04-28T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2011\/04\/28\/latest-review-the-book-of-things-by-ales-steger-2\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T14:09:58","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T14:09:58","slug":"latest-review-the-book-of-things-by-ales-steger-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2011\/04\/28\/latest-review-the-book-of-things-by-ales-steger-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Latest Review: "The Book of Things" by Ale\u0161 \u0160teger"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the second time this week, we’re running a review<\/a> of a BTBA<\/span> Poetry Finalist. Up today is Ale\u0161 \u0160teger’s The Book of Things<\/em>, which is translated from the Slovenian by Brian Henry and published by BOA<\/span> Editions. <\/p>\n

David Shook review this for us. He’s a poet and translator in Los Angeles, where he edits Molossus<\/em>,<\/a> the online broadside. (More on Molossus<\/em> in the near future.) Current translation projects include work by Mario Bellatin, Tedi L\u00f3pez Mills, and several other Mexican poets, as well as a portfolio of poems from Equatorial Guinea. <\/p>\n

Here’s the opening of his review:<\/p>\n

\n

The Book of Things<\/em>, published in Slovenian in 2005, is Ale\u0161 \u0160teger\u2019s fourth book of poetry in ten years, beginning with his Chessboards of Hours<\/em>, published in 1995 when he was 22. Despite his many international awards, including the 2007 Ro\u017ean\u010deva Award for best book of essays written in Slovenian, TBOT<\/span><\/em> is his first collection to be translated into English. Translator Brian Henry, best known for his translation of Toma\u017e \u0160alamun\u2019s Woods and Chalices<\/em>, praises \u201cthe philosophical and lyrical sophistication of [\u0160teger\u2019s] poems,\u201d and has achieved that same sophistication in translation. The book is structured in seven chapters of seven poems each, following the strange preface \u201cA,\u201d which Henry calls a \u201cproem\u201d though it is written in verse. The other forty-nine poems are titled after things with no obvious connection to each other, from the first poem \u201cEgg\u201d to the last poem \u201cCandle,\u201d with stops as varied as \u201cStrobe Light\u201d and \u201cCocker Spaniel.\u201d The first set of seven is completed with \u201cKnots,\u201d \u201cStone,\u201d \u201cGrater,\u201d \u201cCat,\u201d \u201cSausage,\u201d and \u201cUrinal,\u201d the last of which completes its well-developed imagery of the urinal as the mouth of a fish embedded in a restroom wall with a haunting testicular threat:<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

“What kind of human voice is on the other side of the urinal?
\nAre people happier, more timeless there, fish Fa?
\nOr there is no other side,<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

Only the visions of drunks, tensed in fear
\nThat you don\u2019t close your thirsty mouth, Faronika,
\nAs fair punishment for grinding your yellowed teeth.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

And castrate us.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Click here<\/a> to read the review in its entirety.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the second time this week, we’re running a review of a BTBA Poetry Finalist. Up today is Ale\u0161 \u0160teger’s The Book of Things, which is translated from the Slovenian by Brian Henry and published by BOA Editions. David Shook review this for us. He’s a poet and translator in Los Angeles, where he edits […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67456],"tags":[37596,15416,37606,39996,37626,1646,37616],"class_list":["post-284556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","tag-ales-steger","tag-boa-editions","tag-brian-henry","tag-david-shook","tag-poetry-reviews","tag-review","tag-slovenian-literature"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284556"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":312246,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284556\/revisions\/312246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}