Literary Matters - Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers

From The Editor (continued from page 1)Armed with a mastery of both Russian andPolish scholarship and a bracing style of argument,Cavanagh’s important and enthrallingbook illuminates the creative biographies andworks of writers who from about 1917 to thedissolution of the Soviet bloc experienced,documented, tested, challenged and sometimessurvived the confrontation with the State [...] 1As she follows Mayakovsky, Akhmatova, Szymborska,Milosz, and others through the 20 th century, its poeticdevelopments and political polarizations, Cavanaghpoints out, as Kahn puts it later in his review, “the valueof lyric poetry in sensitizing perception to detail andspecificity, and in sharpening our sense of individualagency and responsibility.” 2Fast on the heels of this acclaimed work of scholarshipare two works of literary translation by Cavanagh—one just published and another forthcoming. WisławaSzymborska’s Here, which Cavanagh co-translated withStanislaw Baranczak, is out from Harcourt this October;and her translation of Adam Zagajewski’s latest book ofpoems, Unseen Hand, will be released in the spring of2011 from Farrar Straus & Giroux. This last includes thepoem “Piano Lessons,” which Zagajewski and Cavanaghcontributed for the beautiful broadside that is the first inthe ALSCW’s new Broadside Series.Another past ALSCW president, Christopher Ricks,has been characteristically prolific this year. In Marchof 2010, Yale University Press published Ricks’ TrueFriendship, a study of Geoffrey Hill, Anthony Hecht,and Robert Lowell in relationship to T. S. Eliot and EzraPound. Taking its title from William Blake’s declaration“Opposition is true Friendship,” the book examines thecritical responses and poetical affinities among thesethree poets and their Modernist predecessors. Duringthis year Ricks has also published a new edition ofHenry James’ What Maisie Knew (Penguin Classic,August 2010) and the anthology Joining Music withReason: 34 Poets, British and American, Oxford 2004-2009 (Waywiser Press, October 2010). Compiled fromreadings that took place at Oxford during Ricks’ tenurethere as Professor of Poetry, Joining Music with Reasonincludes work from several poets affiliated with theALSCW as members, officers, or contributors to LiteraryImagination: Greg Delanty, David Ferry, Mark Halliday,Saskia Hamilton, George Kalogeris, Marcia Karp,Ted Richer, Don Share, John Talbot, Harry Thomas,Rosanna Warren, and Rachel Wetzsteon.In addition to appearing in Ricks’ anthology, GregDelanty, who will officially take the reins as President1 Andrew Kahn, “Causework.” Times Literary Supplement. 10September 2010.2 Kahn, p. 14.of the ALSCW at the annual conference, has a numberof publications to add to our list. In June of 2010,Delanty published the poetry collection The New CitizenArmy with The Combat Paper Press, which forms partof the Combat Paper Project. Through the CombatPaper Project, war veterans participate in papermakingworkshops to convert their used uniforms into works ofart. The New Citizen Army is hand bound, with coversmade from “combat paper.”Several poems that originally appeared in Delanty’sCollected Poems, 1986-2006 (Carcanet Press, 2007),were included in The Penguin Book of Irish Poetry(September 2010), edited by Patrick Crotty. In addition,Delanty is also currently preparing an anthology, TheWord Exchange: Anglo-Saxon Poems in Translation, dueout in December 2010 from W. W. Norton & Company.There is one more presidential publication tomention: that of our current (for a couple of days still)ALSCW President. Susan Wolfson, who during thislast year has worked with unsurpassable energy anddedication to lead, to sustain, and to promote ourAssociation, has just published Romantic Interactions:Social Being and the Turns of Literary Action (JohnsHopkins, October 2010). In this book, Wolfson turns toa variety of texts by women and men of the Romanticperiod to examine how their conceptions of authorshipwere formed through exchange between readersand writers. Moving from the political and culturalengagement of Charlotte Smith and Mary Wollstonecraftto the relationship of mutual interpretation betweenWilliam and Dorothy Wordsworth, and finally to Byron’scelebrity and its reception by several women poets, thebook qualifies the Romantic emphasis on individualityby revealing the complex artistic interactions underlyingthe idea of authorship.In presenting the Romantic conception of“interaction” in the introductory chapter of her book,Wolfson quotes a bemused Isaac Tayor, commentingin the 1830s on the reciprocity and exchange “whichat present is going on between readers and writers.” 3Jumping to the early 21 st century, I can’t help but think ofthe ALSCW as another site of this kind of “interaction”—if one that finds itself in a very different social realityfrom that of the British Romantics. I hope that, in thisbrief rundown of works published by ALSCW presidents,past and future, you find something that catches yourattention, creating and sustaining the Association’scommunity of readers and writers that thrive on literaryexchange. We look forward to extending and deepeningthese “interactions” at the conference in Princeton. Seeyou there! a3 Wolfson, Romantic Interactions, p. 3.- Leslie HarkemaLITERARY MATTERS | VOLUME 3.4 | YEAR-END 2010 3