“‘Istanbul is an incredible city,’ he said. ‘Here you’ll find the sort of people who’ll share their last crust of bread with you, as well as the sort who’ll cut out your kidneys and dump you in the canal.’ He was looking for the first kind;” From “The Assassin from Apricot City” by Witold Szabłowski, […]
“Why don’t the clouds form shapes anymore? People are like worms. They toe the line, walk the straight and narrow, and swarm like flies… They make me sick. What’s happened to Anets? It’s as if she really is just a wall. I’m not going to work, I hate it. But I hate sitting around at […]
Tonight, November 23rd, B O D Y hosts a Transatlantic Poetry reading featuring JOSHUA WEINER (US) and EMILY BERRY (UK). The reading will be streamed live over the Transatlantic Poetry site, Facebook and from Google+ event page. The reading begins at 8pm GMT / 3pm EST. This is an innovation in poetry readings, allowing poets […]
“It doesn’t exist. There’s no such thing as Italy,” he categorically declared as he made his rounds. He’d dramatically smack his trowel against the clay, keeping rhythm with his own argument. “The whole thing was invented by international swindlers!” “What do you mean?” the educated folks would ask in surprise. “Italy’s right there on the […]
From November 14 through 17 the Slovak capital of Bratislava will host Bibliotéka, the country’s book fair, featuring an array of Slovak and international writers and publishers such as Michal Hvorecký, Péter Esterházy and Pavel Vilikovský. But the name which has the whole city waiting with bated breath – no, the whole country – is […]
“On Thursday, as always, I was awakened by the radio. Listening to the news while brushing my teeth— I have a radio right in my bathroom— I heard about the flood in the state of Pueblo, Mexico in which two thousand people had drowned. Now, I don’t know if that was the first time this […]
It’s all Czech poet Pavel Šrut all week in B O D Y, beginning with Monday’s essay by translator Deborah Garfinkle “Remembering Pavel Šrut’s Worm-Eaten Light” and continuing with her translations of his poetry and a review of his work. Worm-Eaten Light is the work Šrut published in 1969 following the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia […]
“He had always had vague, artistic visions, that is to say, he was a daydreamer. Because of this, at the age of fifty he had no house of his own, no wife (she had divorced him and he couldn’t say that he didn’t understand why), no steady work.” Do you remember that feeling when you […]
“This was a symphony inside the sea, yes, inside the sea, for only now did I realize that we had, in fact, come to the seaside, complete with waves and the wind, that everything around was music and that somewhere in the distance a man was swimming, swimming in the waves and in the music, […]
“Shirting asked her to read her essay aloud: My teacher is some small wildebeest. He is a name John Shirting. My name is Monika. He is the baddest person in this world. I feed him the cats. He is my darling. Dear Monika. The way she pronounced her w’s as v’s, calling him a vildebeest […]
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