Primavera – Fall 2013: Tongue Ties

This first quarterly issue of the Buenos Aires Review boasts new literary works from a variety of tongues—French, Galician, German, Portuguese, Russian, and a touch of Hungarian accompany the Spanish and English of always—and locales ranging from Rio de Janeiro, México, London, Paris, A Coruña, and São Paulo, to Moscow, Los Angeles, Costa Rica, Mar del Plata and New York.

Fiction. We unravel the mystery of Bola Negra, the shapeshifting piece by Mario Bellatin that led to a film and an opera, tap the spirit(s) of Mad Men with James Warner, and winter with Rosario Bléfari on the Argentine coast, while Juan Álvarez gets tangled up with hitmen and supermodels in Colombia and Sacha Sperling—France’s latest enfant terrible—takes on literary glam & doom.

Poetry. We cut a path through Yolanda Castaño’s sensual urban pastorals and Vincent Toro’s lyric maps to wrangle Hoag Holmgren’s paleocreatures and rappel from the precipices of Daniela Lima’s eyes.

Time Regained. We revisit the sublime and fantastic world of Paul Karl Wilhem Scheerbart (1863-1915) through the translations of Mariana Dimópulos and Joel Morris.

Conversations: on Conceptualisms. We listen in as Latin America’s first and foremost conceptual artist Roberto Jacoby sits down with Reinaldo Laddaga, Ubuweb founder and Uncreative Writer Kenneth Goldsmith binds past and present with Michael Romano, and American poet David Shook talks poetry drones with Pola Oloixarac.

Art. We join Ben Merriman in the factory that became Costa Rica’s best museum.

Bookstores we ❤. We visit indie bookstores in Moscow and São Paulo with Marfa Nekrasova and Julián Fuks.

Translator’s Note. Fulbright scholar Adam Z. Levy takes a heady swig of Hungarian and Yiddish.

The images in this issue are curated by Mariano López Seoane of miau miau, the crème de la crème of Buenos Aires galleries. We’re grateful to them for this feast for the eyes. We’d also like to thank Gustavo Pérez Firmat, whose inspired title inspired us in turn (to steal it); Belén Agustina Sánchez, Melissa Kitson, and Arianna Stern, who were so generous with their help; and the writers and translators who collaborated with us on this issue. It’s been a pleasure and an honor to work with you.

Besos!
The editors

“Guerra” (2013) by Rosario Zorraquín, courtesy of miau miau