The Missing Links
London Weekend Television‘s legendary November 1976 punk documentary. * Malcolm McLaren on Serge Gainsbourg. * Chris Power on Boccaccio. * Jacques Derrida on photography. * Dirty Literature. * A Nathanael West gallery. * Geoff Ward on David Foster Wallace‘s legacy. * On Infinite Jest. * White Review co-founder Jacques Testard‘s Week in Culture in the […]
Maintenant #49: Emilian Galaicu-Păun
I would not describe my poetry revolutionary, nor counter-revolutionary but I rather see it as the “east-thetic” effort of an intellectual trained in humanities and who is endowed with a critical rather than a militant spirit. Of course, poems… can be read as an expression of my revolt yet this does not mean that the aesthetic dimension has been sacrificed for the sake of the cause, irrespective of how noble that might be. On the other hand, my writing is first and foremost against the ordinary linguistic material, the author, and the literary environment. Certainly, the oppressive regime can be vanquished in the name of freedom of speech without one becoming a poet… In the same note as Marin Mincu’s metaphor of the samurai I would say that a true poet would sooner commit sepukku in front of his nemesis —and any repressive regime is an enemy of death of the free speech-than accept to work for it or try to overthrow it.
In the 49th of the Maintenant series SJ Fowler interviews the Moldovan poet Emilian Galaicu-Păun.
Two Poems
a poem is – exactly the same as an empire. what is
an empire? exactly the same as the stomach of a bovine – sing
along with us the cow grazes
the grass so green… (‘don’t
be sad,’ father said, ‘you’re leaving
a larger prison for a narrower one’) I built
a fifth of the country–sing
along with us the flowers
flourish in the fields…–and I locked it up in the little larder. we put
guards all around. we put on a dog collar of
electricity and I threw the muzzle away. I sicced it on and
I set it loose at the barbed wire and (‘…but
you won’t be happy when you get out,’ he went on saying, ‘you’ll just change
a narrower prison for a larger one’) in this way
we handed out handouts and we had the upper hand. repeat
along with us: a poem
is–exactly the same as an empire…
By Emilian Galaicu-Păun.
ampere’s and
This week’s visuals: Caustic Cover Critic on Edward Gorey‘s Henry Jameses & Tom Gauld‘s favourite maps & The specimen jars of Frederik Ruysch & Steve Heller on a Nazi graphics standards manual & Fr éd éric Chaubin’s subversive Soviet superstructures & Chuck Palahniuk book covers from around the globe & Peter P. Plasencia‘s illustrations for […]