A port­fo­lio of recent trans­la­tions of mine from the Ital­ian is fea­tured in the spe­cial Trans­la­tion issue of Cam­bridge Lit­er­ary Review.

The selec­tion is titled “Four Gen­ovese Poets,” and con­tains an excerpt from Labor­in­tus by Edoardo San­guineti, the late lumi­nary of the neo-avant-garde in Italy, and shorter pieces from younger poets who bear the stamp of his influ­ence: Piero Cad­e­mar­tori, Paolo Gen­tilu­omo and Mar­cello Frix­ione. (My attempt to invoke the Cam­bridge School in a short note therein may be strained but is apt.)

By Martin Tyler and Ally McCoist, with Luke Dempsey, from today’s Brazil-​North Korea group stage match. Just as much dry wit as real found poetry, but with more irra­tional exu­ber­ance and elation.

Via The Lede, Iran’s state-​sponsored Press TV seeks to prove that the iconic death of pro­tester Neda Agha-​Soltan hap­pened just like the plot of one of the worst movies of the decade:

The con­spir­acy theory pre­sented in the doc­u­men­tary sug­gests that Ms. Agha-​Soltan first sprayed fake blood on her own face, while pre­tend­ing to have been shot as part of a ruse intended to dis­credit Iran’s gov­ern­ment, and then was later killed by the two men who seemed to be trying to save her life, a doctor who has since fled Iran and her music teacher who remains there.

Next time, guys, maybe people will believe you if you choose a better plot. Chi­na­town? Get Carter? Twin Peaks, maybe?

I’m a bit late track­ing this one, but former David Foster Wal­lace stu­dent Amy McDaniel (and, inci­den­tally, a col­lege class­mate of my own) has pub­lished a gram­mar quiz at HTML­GIANT that the late master once pre­sented to stu­dents of his cre­ative writ­ing work­shop. The quiz is titled, omi­nously (or is that humorously?):

IF NO ONE HAS YET TAUGHT YOU HOW TO AVOID OR REPAIR CLAUSES LIKE THE FOL­LOW­ING, YOU SHOULD, IN MY OPIN­ION, THINK SERI­OUSLY ABOUT SUING SOME­BODY, PER­HAPS AS CO-​PLAINTIFF WITH WHOEVER’S PAID YOUR TUITION