Issue 27 - Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art

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Now the husband and wife rise, light-headed, from the table. The wife holds herself erect with difficulty, choosing her words carefully. "We can never repay you for what you did for us over all these years, but we wish to give you a token of our esteem," and she slips the thin brown paper packet under a vase on the mantelpiece. The caretakers smile and blush and look down at the floor and attempt to mumble their thanks. Outside the husband says, "You did the right thing darling. They are good people. They deserved every bit of it." TRANSLATION Translation is a form of travel. —GWYNETH LEWIS
Liliana Ursu, a native of Bucarest, produces a weekly literary program for Romanian National Radio. She has published six books of poetry and a book of short stories. Adam Sorkin has written that, when he met Ursu in 1989, "conditions in Romania were tense and awful in every conceivable way." When Ursu met Tess Gallagher at the 1990 International Poetry Festival in Barcelona, it was less than a year after the overthrow of the Romanian Communist government, and it was only the second time Ursu had been permitted to leave her native country. Political and social conditions have affected the work of Liliana Ursu, and it is across these barriers as much as differences in language that Sorkin, Gallagher and translator Bruce Weigel have brought Ursu's poetry to the English-speaking world. LILIANA URSU TRANSLATED BY TESS GAU_AGHER AND ADAM SORKIN Ancient and Beautiful as the Mist I dreamed I was home in Bucharest. All day I've lived inside this dream, clung to it, wrapped myself in it, let myself be loved by a landscape. How am I to convey my dream beyond the night woods and not lose it to another dream? Close by the stove you read Cavafy while outside, the grass yellows under my feet. The sea has turned white, almost a prisoner in this poem. Only you and those books of poetry have not grown weary. From the garden you brought me an apricot and a butterfly drowned in the lake, sad, dreaming of its death on the back of my hand— on my hand that knows you so well though it has never caressed you. The tenderness of your smile when you open a book— the perfume of a ripe strawberry near which I want to kneel.
Page 1 and 2: TRANSLATION SECTION TRY COAST TO CO
Page 3 and 4: Editor-in-Chief LORI SODBRLIND Exec
Page 5 and 6: ELIZABETH MACKLIN SAMN STOCKWELL DA
Page 7 and 8: IO her with broken locks on pill ca
Page 9 and 10: o a: ID u. O >- IT 0 in on his face
Page 11 and 12: 18 or his daughter. He said north o
Page 13 and 14: in charge of the lifted-up-spirits
Page 15 and 16: The wife says, "Oh, shut up, won't
Page 17 and 18: then sits down, clutching the baske
Page 19: 34 They all drink. The wife's head
Page 23 and 24: De la fereastra Ingerului Fan, iarb
Page 25 and 26: The Key to Mystery Hot is my body a
Page 27 and 28: 5° Everything Kobo Abe ever wrote
Page 29 and 30: T. 54 "How ironic," the man said, l
Page 31 and 32: GWYNETH LEWIS Whose coat is that ja
Page 33 and 34: o < s 0 o In his poem, "Strange Mee
Page 35 and 36: O o 66 So this is the man you dream
Page 37 and 38: ELIZABETH MACKLIN The Secret Note Y
Page 39 and 40: When a woman loves a man, they have
Page 41 and 42: TERESE SVOBODA At the Castle To say
Page 43 and 44: JUDITH BAUMEL Hot One moment it was
Page 45 and 46: JEAN MONAHAN The Concert —Isabell
Page 47 and 48: One of the Last Days As through a d
Page 49 and 50: only to lift their branches for one
Page 51 and 52: 98 always looked at curating as col
Page 53 and 54: 102 structure versus vertical, hars
Page 55 and 56: LINDA BIERDS The Breaking-Aways —
Page 57 and 58: KAY RYAN Weakness and Doubt Failure
Page 60 and 61: DANIEL TOBIN At the Egyptian Exhibi
Page 62 and 63: NATALIE KUSZ After Bedtime At night
Page 64 and 65: Q. Z 3 ID 124 me to visit a squat i
Page 66 and 67: 128 VII. Somehow I knew not to tell
Page 68 and 69: 132 It was an illustrated history o
Page 70 and 71:
i36 day might have been some kind o
Page 72 and 73:
3 140 XIV. He must have been there
Page 74 and 75:
o z 111 o 144 smiled; she even got
Page 76 and 77:
I48 Mostly things are quiet on the
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152 the grass. I imagined him still
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156 other on a mother's shoulder. I
Page 82 and 83:
o X < If) 160 us from behind. It wa
Page 84 and 85:
(tt> RK60T IB/ER EVEN PTWWNmoW XTSH
Page 86 and 87:
Dykes To Ulatch Out For AS THE RE W
Page 88 and 89:
"IF OMUY HE HAt> ONt \NTo THE WU «
Page 90 and 91:
working on Hula in story form, you
Page 92 and 93:
i8o Cinematically, there is the req
Page 94 and 95:
WINTER COMPETITION MICHELLE MITCHEL
Page 96 and 97:
and she looked at him for hours, an
Page 98 and 99:
u in O cc a. H LJ D. o a hi 192 "Co
Page 100 and 101:
IT < < o 196 I heard the car door s
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Issue 27 - Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art

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