THE LAST BOOKS OF HÉCTOR VIEL TEMPERLEY
Translated by Stuart Krimko
December 10, 2011

In his final two books, Héctor Viel Temperley sought to create a complete world, a surreal realm of profound spirituality that would be attained through intensely physical experience. In “Crawl,” the first of two book-length poems included here, a swimmer pulls his body alongside an urban coast, pounded by thunderstorms. His determined strokes establish the rhythm for an ecstatic meditation upon spirit and flesh, a tireless quest for secrets located “between the eye that trembles / and the eye of the abyss.” Viel Temperley’s pursuit would take on even greater urgency in “Hospital Británico,” written as the poet recovered from brain surgery, and named for the facility in which he was treated. This final, kaleidoscopic opus is a radical and literal recreation of his life’s work, a “version” of his present embedded by “splinters” from his past—boxers, pimps, sailors, sharks, and swimmers—that crests toward the future with the inexorable power of prayer.

With an introduction by translator Stuart Krimko, and Viel Temperley’s sole published interview (with filmmaker and author Sergio Bizzio), this bilingual edition introduces the English-speaking public to one of Argentina’s most original and elusive poets.

HÉCTOR VIEL TEMPERLEY was born in Buenos Aires in 1933 and died there in 1987. He was the author of nine collections of poetry, including The Swimmer, Nautical Chart, and Foreign Legion. Though he did not give readings and his books were often published in limited editions, Viel Temperley has become recognized in the Argentine literary community as one of the singular poets of his generation. He is perhaps best known for the spiritual intensity and unusual formal structures that characterize his final two books, Crawl and Hospital Britaánico.

Translator STUART KRIMKO is the author of three collections of poetry, including The Sweetness of Herbert (Sand Paper Press, 2009) and Hymns and Essays (Mal-O-Mar, 2012).

“I wanted it to be like breathing, I wanted each stroke to represent a breath.”

Fernanda Laguna is poet, novelist, visual artist, publisher, and curator. Along with Cecilia Pavón, she founded and directed the multi-media art/publishing endeavor Belleza y Felicidad in Buenos Aires from 1999 through 2007. Belleza, as it is known, completely renovated the literary and art scenes in Buenos Aires, bringing together youth culture, counterculture, and high culture in a do-it-yourself style: guerilla exhibitions were held, photocopied editions (sometimes by major literary figures) were printed quickly and cheaply, and artistic disciplines were mined for all their social potential. Laguna’s novels (written under the pseudonym Dalia Rosetti and published by Mansalva) have been highly acclaimed in Argentina and abroad, and are poised to make her an internationally known figure.

Cecilia Pavón is a poet and translator from English, German, and Portuguese whose work has been published widely in South America, North America, and Europe. She has been awarded prizes and grants from the city of Buenos Aires, the Fundación Atorcha, and the Goethe Institut. With Fernanda Laguna, she was a co-founder and director of Belleza y Felicidad. Her cultural criticism has appeared in major magazines and newspapers, including Clarín and Página 12, and she teaches courses in creative writing and translation at the Centro Cultural Ricardo Rojas at the University of Buenos Aires. Her blog, Once Sur, is an ongoing source of new poetry, cultural criticism, and daily commentary.

THE NEW TOURISM
by Harry Mathews
2010 / Second Printing, 2011
A Times Literary Supplement “Book of the Year.”

In Harry Mathews’s first collection of poetry in nearly 20 years, a legend of the American avant-garde unveils compelling anomalies including the prose sestina, didactic gastronomy, and a haiku sequence—a diary of discrete (if not so discreet) late-night improvisations on the familiar Japanese three-line form. The central section collects poems of terse lyricism devoted to the unpredictable deviations between intention and desire—the landscape of the new tourism.

Born in New York in 1930, Harry Mathews settled in Europe in 1952 and has since then lived in Spain, Germany, Italy, and (chiefly) France. When Mathews published his first poems in 1956, he was associated with the so-called New York School of poets, with three of whom (John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, and James Schuyler) he founded the review Locus Solus in 1961. Through his friendship with Georges Perec, he became a member of the Oulipo in 1972. The author of six novels and several collections of poetry, his most recent publications are Sainte Catherine, a novella written in French (Éditions P.O.L, 2000), The Human Country: the Collected Short Stories (Dalkey Archive Press, 2002), The Case of the Persevering Maltese: Collected Essays (Dalkey Archive Press, 2003), Oulipo Compendium (co-edited with Alastair Brotchie; Atlas Press and Make Now Press, 2005), and My Life in CIA: A Chronicle of 1973 (Dalkey Archive Press, 2005).

“Where is it I came from
And where is it I’m stranded?
Part of the maps is black
And the rest’s in borrowed language.”

FIRE AT THE END OF THE RAINBOW
by Shawn Vandor
2009
Fire at the End of the Rainbow is a candid and discomfiting jaunt through Shawn Vandor’s real life. Here are tales of revolving-door lust gone awry and strange encounters in the homes of Hollywood and Harvard stars. Through paeans to prostitutes, recreational drug use, sphincter failure, and the joys of buying jewelry at Tiffany & Co., Vandor shares a humorous and humiliating look at the quotidian misadventures of a single American man.

Shawn Vandor is currently the Visiting Scholar of Reproductive Ethics in the Philosophy Dept. at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, OR. His afterlife novel Forever Forever is forthcoming.

“A poised and unusual performance… Fire at the End of the Rainbow is uncommonly accomplished and harrowing.”
—Dossier

Stuart Krimko is the author of The Sweetness of Herbert (2009) and the translator of The Last Books of Héctor Viel Temperley (2011), both from Sand Paper Press. His poems, essays, and translations have appeared or are forthcoming in Fence, Maggy, the Poetry Foundation website, Post Road, and Vanitas. His first book from Sand Paper, Not That Light, was published in 2006 and received a grant from the Fund for Poetry. Krimko has worked for many years in the art world, holding directorial positions with Max Protetch Gallery in New York and David Kordansky Gallery in Los Angeles. A third collection of poems, Hymns and Essays (2012), is forthcoming from Mal-O-Mar.

THE SWEETNESS OF HERBERT
by Stuart Krimko
2009
The English poet George Herbert (1593-1633) developed simple, auric figures and parables that chart trajectories of hope and despair. In The Sweetness Of Herbert, his second book of poetry, Stuart Krimko uses a wide range of formal techniques in an attempt to test the efficacy of Herbert’s existential coping methods. The boredom of daily life, the almost-certain entropic effects of the passage of time, and the surprising enthusiasm that is somehow born of these conditions all come under review. No formal rock is left unturned, as Krimko uses and abuses rhyme, enjambment, syntax, and varied diction like grimy wooden playthings. References to Judy Blume, Rogaine, spring break, William Blake, Gabriel, the Commodore 64, and the poet’s own name are made, exemplifying Krimko’s belief that, “Even when the world is menacing, it sings.”

“Stuart Krimko’s poetry is ineffably light, intensely serious, and full of bewitching surprises. Each time I read him, I love the world again.”
—Harry Mathews

JOKER
by Arlo Haskell
2009
Joker presents an imagined world comfortably isolated from the sensibilities of American life. Set in Key West, Haskell’s poems address end-of-the-road promise and frustration marked by dazzling sea and sky, pervasive alcoholism, and an uneasy social hierarchy of tourists, real-estate speculators, and service-industry workers. By turns candid and deceitful, maudlin and maddeningly reticent, Haskell’s masked narratives are full of wry insight into the technological and political upheavals of “this lucky accidental country.”

Arlo Haskell is a poet, an editor, and the publisher of Sand Paper Press. He is the author of the poetry collection Joker (2009); and creator of online content for the Key West Literary Seminar (where he has been media director since 2008), including interviews, brief essays, and an annotated collection of literary audio recordings. He was an adviser on the 2010 public television documentary, Key West: Bohemia in the Tropics, and is completing an edition of Charles Olson’s previously-unpublished Key West Notebooks.

“Arlo Haskell's quietly gripping poems conjure an ambience as temperate and welcoming as ocean air.”
—John Ashbery