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Lasting Art: A Review of Cole Swensen’s Art in Time
Art in Time is a book that resists the idea of it ever becoming a “timeless work of art.” For poet,
translator, and academic Cole Swensen, the very notion of a “timeless work of art” not only implies a
refusal to engage with the present moment, but also exposes a fundamental problem in our viewership:
our tendency of looking at rather than from within. In this collection of lyric essays, Swensen studies
the work of twenty artists, all of whom have “found ways through landscape to become an active
element in the view and its viewing.”The book itself remains neatly tied to its own present moment.
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“Kind of a Short-length Letter for a Full-length Film” by Luis Miguel Rivas (translated from the Colombian Spanish by Valentina Calvache) Artwork by Daniela Moreno Ramirez
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This story is from Rivas’ debut in the Latin American fiction industry: an anthology of short stories written from one of Colombia’s literary outcasts — he didn’t gain recognition until the Guadalajara Book Fair named him one of Latin America best-kept secrets, and his works went through the roof, with translations in French and the signing of his latest novel with Sony Pictures.
“Kind of a Short-length Letter for a Full-length Film” is a magnificent story that encloses and discloses — at the same time — Colombian reality seen through the eyes of a sharp writer,
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“Elisa” excerpt from the novel The One We Adored by Catherine Cusset (translated from the French by Armine Kotin Mortimer) Artwork by Ilan Averbuch
“Elisa”
excerpt from the novel
The One We Adored
by Catherine CussetIn this novel, Catherine speaks in the first person and addresses Thomas in the second, as if telling him the story of his life.
At the dinner I arrange for my husband’s birthday at the end of February, you meet Elisa. You are astonished to discover that this name, with its exotic sonorities, is simply spelled “Elisa,” not, as if it were French, “I-Laïza.” Even more surprised to see that this exotic Elisa I’ve been telling you so much about is so beautiful.
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“The Salvage Yard” by Emma Burcart
The highway cut through the center of town and continued out into the country, wherewide expanses of grass and trees were dotted with the occasional mobile home, gas station, or church. Not much to do or see and most people drove through fast on their way to somewhere else, without looking out their windows. When outsiders came, it wasn’t on purpose and they never stayed long. Directions, a tank of gas and a cup of coffee, and they were gone. That was how everyone in town liked it; not being on the map was a point of pride for most. -
“Artemis” by Peter Warzel
The old dreams of hunting, the moon. Deep in the blood, memories of poets and kings asking for and receiving stories of the first and the last. The sanctuaries of Artemis are spread throughout the groves of the Mediterranean and she shape-changes by location. She, Artemis Diana, had come here, to my backyard.
On a Friday evening two years ago, the night of Zozobra burning when I refused to attend but could hear the groaning from Fort Marcy Park and the annoyance of the helicopters keeping order on the crowd, I was standing in the yard having a cigar and a beer and called my son Zach to remind him of the annual auto-da-fe,
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“By Bread Alone” by Danny Bellinger (wil’um)
When I was a young boy I learned that you could shoot a man for disrespecting your sister, even if he was her husband and your brother in law. All you had to do was trick your kids into believing the weapon was a cap gun by putting caps in the hammer, before you fired into the night air at the man who’d limp for the rest of his life for reasons unbeknown to me. That’s what my father did. My brother tells me years later that the fake cap gun is the reason why my uncle limps like he does.
