Maria Laina - Rose Fear
Maria Laina
Rose Fear
Translated from Greek by
SARAH MCCANN
$16.00
Bilingual Edition
112 pages
December 5, 2017
ISBN 978-0-9992613-1-6
Distributed by Asterism (US) and Turnaround Publisher Services (UK & EU)
BIOS
MARIA LAINA is an award-winning Greek poet, and the author of six books, including Rose Fear (1992) which received the National Literature Prize for Poetry and the City of Munich Literary Prize. Laina has also received recognition for her theatrical work, including the plays The Clown (1985) and Reality is Always Here (1990). She has translated the short stories of Katherine Mansfield, as well as the critical writings of Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot.
SARAH MCCANN has been a Writing Fellow at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop and has taught poetry and translation around the world. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in such journals as The Bennington Review, Margie, The Broken Bridge Review, Midway Journal, and The South Dakota Review. Her translations from the Modern Greek into English have been recognized by the Fulbright Foundation with a grant, and have been published in such anthologies and journals as Austerity Measures, Words Without Borders, Poetry International, and World Literature Today.
Maria Laina
Rose Fear
Translated from Greek by
SARAH MCCANN
Maria Laina’s first stand-alone English-language collection, deftly translated by Sarah McCann, follows in the Sapphic vein: fragmented, prophetic, and emotionally charged.
The poems in Rose Fear stand out for their lyric precision, carving symbolically rich images drawn from mythology and the natural world. Rose Fear follows in the Sapphic vein: frequently fragmented, vatic, and emotionally charged. In her translations, Sarah McCann deftly captures the music and the vividness of Laina’s scenes, which take their inspiration from regions as diverse as Japan, the Caribbean, and her native Greece. Yet always behind the recognizable world lie the rhythms and lights of the fable, the fairy tale, and the spell.
“A moving, vivid collection of verse … The collection’s strength lies in its ability to challenge the reader, and its study of time offers new ways of imagining the intangible.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Like a grim fairytale, Laina’s silvery lullaby lyricism morphs into beautifully dark chants and hanging, haikulike scenes as it moves between voices and scraps of stories, complicating and recoloring the feeling of fear itself.” —World Literature Today
“There is a tenderness never to be daunted, never to be diminished in the poetry of Maria Laina. Here, truly, is the first poet I have found wholly to forward and entirely to voice the spirit of Cavafy. McCann’s deft, supple translations illuminate that spirit perfectly. This is a wonderful venture!” —Donald Revell
“What a wealth of insight and emotion Maria Laina can pack into just three lines of verse: ‘On arid land / I spread out my garden / until my mouth fills with laughter.’ And in Sarah McCann’s dexterous translation of Rose Fear we discover once again what vitality and power can accrue from the art of compression. ‘Beware of this dark woman,’ the poet warns, ‘for she is galloping before you.’ Reader, follow her!” —Christopher Merrill
“[Rose Fear and Homerica are] excellent new poetry books from Greece, in unusually excellent translation.” —Anne Carson, The Paris Review
BIOS
MARIA LAINA is an award-winning Greek poet, and the author of six books, including Rose Fear (1992) which received the National Literature Prize for Poetry and the City of Munich Literary Prize. Laina has also received recognition for her theatrical work, including the plays The Clown (1985) and Reality is Always Here (1990). She has translated the short stories of Katherine Mansfield, as well as the critical writings of Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot.
SARAH MCCANN has been a Writing Fellow at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop and has taught poetry and translation around the world. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in such journals as The Bennington Review, Margie, The Broken Bridge Review, Midway Journal, and The South Dakota Review. Her translations from the Modern Greek into English have been recognized by the Fulbright Foundation with a grant, and have been published in such anthologies and journals as Austerity Measures, Words Without Borders, Poetry International, and World Literature Today.
PRESS
Bilingual Edition
112 pages
December 5, 2017
ISBN 978-0-9992613-1-6
Distributed by Small Press Distribution (US) and Turnaround Publisher Services (UK & EU)
