LETTER FROM THE EDITORS

What do ye do when ye see a whale?
I sing out.

Joyelle McSweeney, “Still Life w/Influences”

Singing is an act of witness, a signal of delight, a performance, a lyric gesture, a rallying cry against and amidst silence. As the lines of Joyelle McSweeney acknowledge a debt to Melville, so the act of song bears endless traces of the past. As the lyric evolves and grows in relation to society, so too does translation. In this latest issue of eXchanges, song is a political tool for feminist translation, a complex site of terror and destruction, and the nexus of community and language.

“The Sonnet of Dead Owls,” by Novica Tadić, translated here by Steven and Maja Teref, beautifully realizes the complexity of Silence&Song. The poem begins, in both the Serbian and the English:

(O) (O) (O) (O) (O)
(O) (O) (O) (O) (O)
(O) (O) (O) (O) (O)
(O) (O) (O) (O) (O)

The textual pattern indicates both the sound of “O” —the cry of the owl— and a string of empty, isolated holes. A visual representation that silence is always implicit in song. This paradox is reflected in fascinating ways throughout the issue.

Translators also have a special relation to silence. Translation often plays a role in giving a voice to the silence, and as an artistic practice, it has traditionally been silenced in the world of publishing and academia. However, events such as the Graduate Student Translation conference, hosted this year at Columbia University, remind us that the community of translators is large and growing— one that will continue to sing out.

In the spirit of singing out, we’ve reinstated the eXchanges blog. It is our hope that it will continue to foster a community for our readers, keeping them updated about book news, readings and events wherever our translators may be.

It is time for us to depart, but we will be leaving eXchanges to Mary Bryant and Andrea Rosenberg, sharp readers and first-rate translators. It’s been a pleasure working with them to make this issue take form, and we look forward to the direction that eXchanges will take in their capable hands.

Diana Thow
Emily Goedde
Iowa City, April 2008