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Pif Magazine
ISSN: 1094-2726
Published by:
Pif, LLC
PMB 248
4820 Yelm Hwy SE
Suite B
Lacey, WA 98503-4903
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| PAST ZINE REVIEWS | MORE ZINES |
Transcendental Friend
Reviewed by Tom Hartman
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In the words of editor Garret Kalleberg, Transcendental Friend is "a place of cultivation of literary thought rather than a curation of contemporary literary works." For now, TF is a zine and it's quite a good one but, if things go according to plan, that may change. According to Kalleberg's "mission statement," TF has been conceived primarily as a sort of collection point or repository of material for "several books in progress," the idea being that once enough material has been accumulated from each of the 'zine's various sections, individual print volumes will be published under the auspices of Morning Red Dot Com, TF's umbrella or "sponsor" organization. |
Transcendental Friend |
Devoted, in the broadest sense, to contemporary world poetry and poetics and curated with an eye on recent developments in critical theory, TF's sections, 10 in all, "revolve" from issue to issue, appearing only as material dictates. They include, among others, "Critical Dictionary" (modeled after Bataille's dictionnaire critique et historique, "The Bestiary" (pieces by contemporary writers about or including animals), "Mote" ("inspired in part by the Spanish form of response-in-verse"), "Idiosyncratica" ("writing that has only come into its time within the present moment"), and "Report from Afield" (translations of contemporary poetry from around the world). Additionally, TF publishes (or seeks to publish) multimedia works and sound installations (although only one of these has been added to the site so far).
Overall, my favorite TF department is probably "The Bestiary," which Kalleberg describes as "the odd combine of bestia and anthropomorphizing (perhaps presaging a possible or eventual 'bestanthropy')." While not in the strictest sense a surrealist project, "The Bestiary" is clearly indebted to the idea of the "surrealist zoo," in which, traditionally, emotions or ideas are reborn as zoomorphic figures. Accordingly, in much of the poetry here, surrealist "leaps" abound; take, for instance, Nikolai Gumilev's marvelous "Giraffe" (translated by Katharine Gilbert):
Giraffe
Today, I see, your gaze is particularly forlorn,
and your hands particularly thin, embracing your knees.
Listen: far away, far away, on Lake Chad,
a refined giraffe is roaming.
His proportions are harmonious and his legs are long,
and a bewitching pattern adorns his skin;
nothing dares compare with it, save the moon,
fragmented and flowing on the liquid of broad lakes.
He juts out like the many-colored sails of ships,
and his gait is floating, like joyous birdflight.
I know this earth has seen many wonders
when at sunset he hides in a marble grotto.
I know the happy stories of secret lands,
about the dark maiden, about the passion of the young chief,
but you have breathed in the heavy mists for too long
you will believe in nothing, except rain.
And how I would tell you about tropical orchards,
about elegant palms, about the scent of extraordinary grasses...
You're crying? Listen... far away, on Lake Chad,
a refined giraffe is roaming.
