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Erica Wright's INSTRUCTIONS FOR KILLING THE JACKAL

Nick Ripatrazone

Instructions for Killing the Jackal might not actually be a manual for killing Canis aureus, but it could be a guidebook for poets hoping to write with originality and confidence. The author of a previous chapbook, Silt (Dancing Girl Press 2009), and the poetry editor for Guernica, Erica Wright’s first full-length collection is clever and sleek, a swift read with sufficient gravity. The book is a paradox, and yet so is the jackal: monogamous and loyal, yet fiercely yapping when it discovers carrion. Wright’s collection includes small towns and abandoned TB hospitals, as well as poems set in Europe, where antiquity and myth bleed into the contemporary moment. Violence and pain subtly coexist, to the benefit of both elements.

Being Between

Russell Scott Valentino

Just back from the Pedogogies of Translation conference at Barnard College last weekend. While the title doesn't suggest that people were beating down the doors to get in, it was a full house, with plenty of lively debate and discussion. The event was sponsored by Barnard's Center for Translation Studies and co-organized by center director Peter Connor and translation studies scholar and translator Lawrence Venuti. TIR patrons may recall that Venuti's "Towards a Translation Culture" was the inaugural essay in its Forum on Literature and Translation last year.

Ry Cooder's LOS ANGELES STORIES

Andrew J. Khaled Madigan

The stories of Ry Cooder are a lot like his music: stately, precise, well constructed; they grab you by the throat, quietly, and never let go.

A Tribute to David Hamilton

TIR staff

David Hamilton, English professor, writer, and editor of TIR from 1977 to 2009, is retiring this spring from the University of Iowa. Lynne Nugent, managing editor of TIR, delivered this tribute at a celebration for David held on Wednesday at the Old Capitol Senate Chamber.

George Eklund’s EACH BREATH I CANNOT HOLD

Christopher Prewitt

When one reads Eklund’s poetry, one draws comparisons to Péret with his figurative, associative language, especially as it pertains to Eklund’s metaphors, which at times can also bring to mind García Lorca. From the poem “Burning Milk”:

We’d yet to see a whole city burn
Only waiting for what would leak
From the big eggs of our ideas,
From the palm of a broken hand
Nailed to the sky.

Erica Wright's INSTRUCTIONS FOR KILLING THE JACKAL

Being Between

Ry Cooder's LOS ANGELES STORIES

A Tribute to David Hamilton

George Eklund’s EACH BREATH I CANNOT HOLD

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