Zoland Mapquests and a History

Founding Zoland Editor and Publisher Roland Pease works out of Cambridge, MA.

Translation Editor Christopher Mattison recently rooted himself into Princeton, NJ.

Reviews Editor Chloe Garcia Roberts is completing graduate work in Eugene, OR.

Another recent Zoland in-house editor, Erica Mena, is departing Cambridge, MA for Cambridge in the UK.

Other Zoland contributing editors are scattered throughout this thing called globe, and prefer to remain anonymous.

& a Zoland History

Before there was Zoland Poetry, the world knew Zoland Books, the independent literary publishing house founded by Roland Pease, which published literary fiction, poetry and arts-related memoirs for fifteen years before being acquired by Steerforth Press. In that time Pease brought into print a wide range of poets including Ange Mlinko, Bill Berkson, Kevin Young, William Corbett, Lisa Jarnot, Patricia Smith and Anne Porter.

Zoland Poetry is the next incarnation in the Zoland line. It is an annual of contemporary writing from around the globe, consisting of an active web component, and an annual book that is published by Steerforth Press. The first Zoland Poetry annual hit the shelves in March 2007. Each volume is an equal fusion of contemporary English language poetry, works in translation, and interviews with featured poets.

The online arm of Zoland Poetry—www.zolandpoetry.com—includes book reviews of recent poetry collections from here and abroad, original language material for the works in translation, translator essays, and audio clips of select poets.

De faced

For the past roughly 12 years I’ve been involved in the publication of literature in translation—beginning with “Exchanges” back in the mid-90s (a journal of translation at the University of Iowa) up to my current work with Zephyr Press and the Zoland Poetry series. Over these years and long before I was even considered, there are certain practical aspects of the finished product – the book itself – that continue to gnaw on my liver’s liver. This delicacy, for whatever has its teeth in me, can be summed up with a few lines from the Heather McHugh/Nikolai Popov introduction to their book of Paul Celan translations – glottal stop.


“Because first and foremost we value the experience of the poetry, we decided not to print the German texts en face. Both of us were reluctant to encourage, in the process of fostering an international readership’s acquaintance with Paul Celan, too early a recourse to the kind of line-by-line comparison that fatally distracts attention from what matters first: the experience of a poem’s coursing, cumulative power. The serious scholar will have no trouble looking up the poetic originals; the serious reader will have no objection to focusing on a poem’s presence and integrity.” [p.xiii]


So, if I’m a serious scholar, and am going to track down the originals anyway, why not provide me with the material. The absence of Celan’s German seems a palsy traffic hump to provide someone eager to delve into both original and translation. Especially when you consider that this particular book of translations has been roundly and deservedly heralded as a stunning transformation of these particular Celan poems into English. This is by far one of my favorite books of translation/poetry, which is perhaps what makes the translators’ excuse about the monolingual aspect of this volume all the more painful.


They say they want to focus on the “coursing, cumulative power”—as if readers would be somehow or other physically or genetically incapable of reading just the English for the English. There is a verso and recto to each spread – German goes on one, English the other. Perhaps an eye patch could have been included at the back of the book. And if they really are so concerned about the book being relegated solely to a scholarly apparatus, then why are there over 32 pages of notes for just over 100 pages of poems? Some breath is not squaring.


There are several mentions of copyright issues that hung up the project – but if this were the only issue, it would have been simple enough to write in the introduction that Wesleyan University Press didn’t have the funds for the German (or else that the rights holder was unwilling to set the German free) – and based on the scope of other Wesleyan projects, an additional 100 pages of text for the German shouldn’t have been a financial problem, especially with the literary world’s continued interest in Celan’s work.


Which seems to return us to the age-old issue of some translators believing that including the original in a volume of translation will somehow taint the book, that it won’t be considered seriously as a book of poetry in English, and/or that it will appear too scholarly or inaccessible on store shelves, with two languages staring back. There are other translators who are painfully concerned about being accepted as poets (read, not just translators). The thinking goes that if the original is also included, then their words will be considered to be nothing more than translation for hire – a Kodak user’s manual from Danish, which is about as far from the truth as one can be when considering the poetry of Paul Celan.

Both serious scholars and readers would benefit from seeing the estranged and lyrical nature of Celan's German. Celan moved between too many languages to be concerned about today's readers moving both horizontally and vertically on the page, across gutters.

Zoland's Translation Mission

In the world of editing and publishing literary translations, at least within the framework of independent, small- to medium-sized press publishing, one can afford to be concerned with more than the marketing department. You can consider decentering translations away from that nebulous chestnut of simply “adhering to the spirit of the ‘original’, and/or “updating a work (idiomatically or temporally) into contemporary English.” This is vital in understanding our mission.

There is no canonical version of a translated text. It is all an aspect of a palimpsest. And the palimpsest, by nature, refuses inscription, or, more correctly, invites repeated inscription. Even in the case of something as seemingly definitive as the 1,000-page brick of Zephyr’s Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova—this is only one version of certain aspects of Akhmatova’s life in verse (through the lens of the translator Judith Hemschemeyer). It is a very specific project steeped in a variety of intents. As opposed to, say, the small handful of Akhmatova versions that Jane Kenyon poured over for years.

Translation is built on connections and tissues of the unexplained that, as a translator, editor, or reviewer you need to explain--how did you arrive at your version…. For years I have believed that translation is the closest form of reading. After my first editing job of a literary translation through the University of Iowa's International Writing Program, I was absorbed by the extra layers of detail that had to be navigated when editing a translation: original text, translation, translator’s notes, previous publications, voice and tone, dozens of e-mails debating certain aspects of the translation with author, translator, and editors. On top of that, considering design elements, how the translation fits into the previous and forthcoming series. And then the hurdles of keeping translators to a schedule.

As publishers who are also translators, it’s of vital importance that Zoland continues to remind people from the bookshelves that the poems in translation didn't start in English. That there was a language these lines were and remain in. In a very small way, we're doing our best to chip away at the monolith of a monolingual society.

And we like to read.

on Translation Reviewers

As a general rule, as far as general rules allow, translators no longer must consider forfeiting their lives when translating sacred or controversial literature. The strictest punishments are normally parceled out by particular breeds of reviewers who devote 90% of a book review to the cultural and historical import of the author in translation -- reinforcing the "need" for an author's work in English translation. Fine so far. What happens with the remaining 10% of the review is usually one of the following:

1. No mention is made of the work actually being a translation. In these cases one can assume that a majority of the review was pulled from the press material that accompanied the review copy of the book;
2. Any discussion of the translation is relegated to mention of the English sounding smooth, often times without mentioning the actual name of the translator.
3. More aggressive than passive jabs are taken at a translator, citing issues of plural v. singular or adjective/noun placement in terms of the original language. These claims are generally made without concrete examples from the text or taking into account the translator's introduction, which, theoretically, should discuss a basic translation strategy and the very issues that a reviewer might latch on to.

This final category of reviewer should be avoided on the street. They make any soup bad. Some of them are native speakers of the original language in question and have no patience for any sort of mutation of their sacred author's tongue. Others are competing translators who have their own versions of the author (or friends with translations), and yet others are hardcore traditionalists who abhor any variance from word order/sense between languages. Again, if you come upon any in the wild (including Harvard, Union, or Palmer Square), mark them, if possible, so that others will know. With the continually shrinking amount of review space given to works in translation, it becomes ever more vital to write something substantive rather than petty fueled by agenda.

As examples of solid reviews that deal with both author and translator/text and process, check out: Johannes Görannson on Tomas Tranströmer's The Great Enigma (New Directions) and Zoya Marincheva on Lyubomir Levchev's Ashes of Light (Curbstone Press). Then buy the books.

Princeton in Zoland in June

A good day in Princeton means getting strawberries picked at Terhune and in the car just as the thunder falls, then down Carter Road to the Cherry Grove CSA to pick up tatsoi, kale, garlic scapes, radishes, various other green leafy things, then as the rain subsides, out into the Grove fields to pick snap peas. Home. Wash the strawberries, where awaits the final peg in Zoland 2, Eliot Weinberger's finished translations of Bei Dao. We're about six weeks ahead of the schedule of Zoland 1, which will hopefully translate into a slightly more relaxed summer, and starting to consider work for annual 3. For more info on Zoland, check out zolandpoetry.com

In other news, Zoland editor Erica Mena will be departing Cambridge, MA in September for Cambridge, UK. Many thanks to Erica for all her work on book 2. And Reviews Editor Chloe Garcia Roberts has just finished year 1 in the Univ. of Oregon writing program. One more year before Chloe refinds her Allston, MA home.

Zoland Poetry Update

Partways into June and annual No. 2 in the Zoland Poetry www.zolandpoetry.com series is (al)ready to be bound and galleyed. We'll begin reading in earnest, for the third annual, later in August 07.

A handful of book 2 contributors include Bei Dao, Connie Deanovich, Merrill Gilfillan, Deborah Meadows, Elizabeth Robinson, Jennifer Scappettone, and Tony Towle; up next to translations by Forrest Gander, Alexis Levitin, Stephanie Sandler, Lawrence Venuti, and Eliot Weinberger. A complete list of the book's contributors will be up in late July, and the book itself will preview at the NYC AWP conference in late January, 08.

Cover art for book 2 is provided by Darragh Park.