TPR Is Lit - April 2013
04.04.2013
Little Girl Asleep Poetry by Bohumil Hrabal
Last week marked the 99th birthday of the great Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal. TPR enjoyed the exclusive privilege of publishing a selection of twenty poems translated by David Chirico from this most lofty of literary titans. It was a printing met with great fanfare, even receiving mention in the pages of the New York Times. To celebrate Hrabal and our own past we have decided to republish these poems. The latest is the lovingly whimsical Little Girl Asleep, because even when a child sleeps the world goes on around her.
08.04.2013
Watergate Fiction by Siegfried Mortkowitz
It happened in the time after Woodstock when the town returned to its pastoral New York roots. Five men had broken into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at Watergate. Nixon was still in office, but nobody could tell for how long. It was summer in the ‘70s and everything was alright…until she showed up. Come enter Siegfried Mortkowitz’s Watergate and discover a world on the verge of scandal.
15.04.2013
We normally imagine a vigil as a slow, silent time, filled with long pauses and considered contemplation. Dave Hardin’s poem describes a different kind of waiting, the rhythmic pace of his long, free-running sentence embodying a kind of loose, kinetic frenzy of the nerves, inherent in the music he references. But at the end of the poem, we are still left with a sense of powerlessness and forced inactivity which all that frantic energy cannot convert to action. It is a Vigil all its own.
22.04.2013
The Heart Has More Rooms than a Whorehouse Fiction by Marius Stankiewicz
It has its own electrical impulse. It will beat a hundred thousand times a day. It will begin four weeks after conception and won’t stop until death. All in all, that is an average of over two and half billion beats in the average life. The heart is alive. The heart is complicated. As Marquez wrote, “El corazón tiene más cuartos que un hotel de putas.” Or simply, The Heart Has More Rooms than a Whorehouse.
29.04.2013
The Coco Poems Poetry by Wayne Holloway-Smith
Virgin or Magdalene, mother or lover, convent girl or whore... Or both, or all? In these three poems, part of a series, Wayne Holloway-Smith introduces Coco, an enigmatic figure who epitomises the female mystery which has transfixed men and artists throughout history. There's an echo of Catullus in the directness of the writing - and in the consistent voice which effortlessly reveals as much about the "author" as the subject. Coco, like a poem, is only known by the audience that perceives her - we see her through another's perception, appreciating her not directly but as a result of what she effects. Meticulously crafted, these disturbing, enthralling poems are the work of one of the UK's most talented new voices.
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