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Helga Novak

1/28/2014

For the past several years, I have been slowly translating the work of a magnificent and strange German-Icelandic poet named Helga Novak. She passed away on December 24th last year. I read a few of my translations for the Bold Italic microhood celebration in Dog Patch a while back and it was captured by the folks at Litseen, so you can view it here. And you can read one of my translations from her first collection below.

Packing Herring
~ Helga Novak

The herring is decapitated and boned. The fillets are as big as a face, even folded together. I bend them up, I press them flat, I pack them. The silver-blue backs belong facing down. The light brown flesh goes up.

I pack the herring in cartons – two forearms long, one forearm wide. I weigh them
out. A package holds ten kilos.

Fish oil the color of old gold collects on the table. The yellow flecks on the backs
of the herring, they blind. They stick in the eyes.

The time does not go by.

Outside, a storm.

Bending the herring up, pressing it flat, packing it, weighing it out. My underarms are
studded with glittering scales. They stick like Scotch tape and leave small
circles behind.

If one doesn’t think of the hour, the time passes.

The storm cries, whines, shrieks. It takes the bars from the windows and pulls the
house apart. The cliff opposite the bay is shrouded. I would like to be in the
sun.

New Type!

7/11/2013

So excited to finally begin printing with this beautiful type from Skyline Type Foundry. I ordered it especially in order to print a series of poems I've been working on for some time--poems written into the lost portions of Sappho fragments, using her original form and meter.

The sample below was published in a beautiful edition of We Still Like. Limited edition print version is sold out, but you can view the previous issue online.

from Negative Fragments

9.
Carry my first drink of the sea in colored
glass, for all this water π]αρκαλειοιτας ε the new waves
seeding wild calm fish in the tide πάμ]παν οὐκεχη so
bright as your ερ ἐόρταν shines
this night μαν [Ἤ]ραι τελε sacrifice tastes of summer
sew my gowns from octopus feathers, fish scales,
bones of eel ἆς ἄ an arm. This water
agitates without
dashing itself out like the birds against the
rock. Then teach me new like the ocean teaches
breaking open, salted, my mouth with tastes of
seaweed and butter

9.
Carry my first drink of the sea in colored
glass, for all this water invites the new waves
seeding wild calm fish in the tide all not so
bright as your face shines
this night for Hera sacrifice tastes of summer
sew my gowns from octopus feathers, fish scales,
bones of eel as long as an arm. This water
agitates without
dashing itself out like the birds against the
rock. Then teach me new like the ocean teaches
breaking open, salted, my mouth with tastes of
seaweed and butter

New Arrival

5/28/2012

Introducing Auden Wilde Haynes Touhy. This tiny guy may succeed in limiting our printing for the next few months . . . or years.

In Memory of Stacy Doris May 21 1962 ~ January 31 2012

4/21/2012

Handset broadside made with friend and fellow poet Laura Woltag, in memory of our dear friend and mentor Stacy Doris, who passed on January 31st. She is so deeply loved and missed by all who knew her. These were distributed at her memorial at San Francisco State University.