Aldus Issue 2 - Web Version

A L D U S , A J O U R N A L O F T R A N S L AT I O N niebla/Geographies of Fog, was begun when the poet was pregnant with her only child, and when the poet’s mother was dying. These facts filter into the poem’s elegiac but resilient tone. Very little of Valerie Mejer’s personal history is specifically evident in this intensely personal work, but as the epigraph by Charles Wright notes, “All forms of landscape are autobiographical.”

Andrei Codrescu has done it all: novels, poems, essays, translations, reviews, journalism. A wonderful cook, he has been a commentator on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered for almost thirty years. His most recent book is Whatever Gets You through the Night: A Story of Sheherezade and the Arabian Entertainments, Codrescu’s own telling of the Arabian Nights. He is a man to admire.

Carmen Conde (1907-1996) was a Spanish writer. In 1967, she won Spain’s National Poetry Award; in 1979, she was named as the first female member of the Real Academia Española. Over the course of her life, she published over 100 books, including nine novels, twenty children’s books, and several plays.

Joseph Delteil (1894-1978) was a French writer and poet.

He comes to the attention of the surrealists in 1922 and participates in the writing of Un Cadavre, but is rejected in 1925 after publishing his novel Jeanne d’Arc (famously adapted by Carl Dreyer). Revealing in an interview that he does not dream is the last straw. He was married to the tamely named Caroline Dudley.

Paul Éluard (1895-1952) was a French poet and surrealist, though he opted later in life to be a communist instead.

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