New England Review

Ellen Hinsey

Polish Poetry in Translation: Bridging the Frontiers of Language

Torn Posters III Rue Ordener Paris, by Roger Camp

Translation is a mysterious, imperfect art. Its impetus often arises out of unforeseen circumstances: impromptu voyages, a book’s accidental discovery, or the punishments and revelations of exile. These chance factors mean that, despite the increasing so-called globalization of the world, one can never definitively be sure that a text, no matter how important it is for one culture, will make its journey across the frontier of silence to another language.

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Gregg Williard

Move

New nonfiction from NER 40.2

Image by StockSnap from Pixabay
I

  can’t go to the meeting tonight because I’m working. In the dark he whips his head around and cringes when cars go by. I have to stand up again because the motion sensor in the empty classroom shut off the lights. The active shooter drill in the office is scheduled for Wednesday. He’s from Afghanistan and marked for death. The new apartment buildings are very beautiful.

I wave my arms in the dark with him, my only student. Last week was the meeting about what to do if ICE comes to the door. I stand up and wave my arms, but I don’t need to go that far in this classroom because the sensor is more sensitive. New apartment buildings are going up. Sometimes we jump up and down in the dark. My only student in that classroom is a former military translator. 

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Alisa Koyrakh

Tomorrow We Travel

New nonfiction from NER 40.2

1. Prague: The Distraction Is the Thing Itself

I’m more interested in the lives of the Kafka sisters than in the life of Franz.

Three sisters:

Ellie, 55
Vallie, 51
Ottla, 51

Franz and his youngest sister, Ottla, were very close. For a while, they lived together in a tiny house near Prague Castle. Ottla married a non-Jewish man against the wishes of everyone in her family except Franz. Her husband’s name was Joseph David and they had two children, Vera and Helene. When the Nazis arrived, Ottla divorced Joseph to protect him. I can’t find the names of their daughters on any lists. I don’t know if they lived with the father or died with the mother.

My boyfriend, Colin, is not Jewish. If we got married and today was 1944, I would divorce him to protect him. If we had children and we could hide that I was their mother, I would divorce him so that he could protect the children. And then, in the camp, would I be bitter that he left me, or would I be comforted that he was somewhere, alive?

I’m almost always more interested in girls. But are these girls a waste of my time?

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Ioan Marc Jones

To the falling London rain

New nonfiction from NER 40.1.

1.

Louis MacNeice was a fire watcher during the Second World War. He sat on top of buildings across central London and surveyed the landscape, waiting to report on blazes growing out of control. MacNeice smoked his pipe, watching the shimmering rooftops and the glare of the Blitzkrieg. My nan’s old estate lay to his east, my childhood home resided to his west. 

My nan was raised in Fulham, but she used to tell people she was from Chelsea, the same way folks from Peckham sometimes say they are from East Dulwich. My nan admired the grander aspects of London—flash cars, fancy houses, bright-light boutiques—but she never experienced much of that world. She put on a posh accent, mimicking perfect pronunciation, but she would let her vocal mask slip during impulsive moments. Out would pour West End cockney. She sounded like Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion, in a state of perpetual transition. 

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