Solar Throat Slashed: Part Two with Clayton Eshleman

Show description for Sunday 8/28/2011 @ 3:00 PM - 6:00 PM

Our guest today on the 5 o'clock hour, Clayton Eshleman (pictured at right), discussing his most recent work, in collaboration with A. James Arnold, Solar Throat Slashed, the unexpurgated 1948 edition of the masterwork by Aimé Césaire.

Soleil cou coupé (Solar Throat Slashed) is Aimé Césaire’s most explosive collection of poetry. Animistically dense, charged with eroticism and blasphemy, and imbued with an African and Vodun spirituality, this book takes the French surrealist adventure to new heights and depths. A Césaire poem is an intersection at which metaphoric traceries create historically aware nexuses of thought and experience, jagged solidarity, apocalyptic surgery, and solar dynamite. The original 1948 French edition of Soleil cou coupé has a dense magico-religious frame of reference. In the late 1950s, Césaire was increasingly politically focused and seeking a wider audience, when he, in effect, gelded the 1948 text—eliminating 31 of the 72 poems, and editing another 29. Until now, only the revised 1961 edition, called Cadastre, has been translated. The revised text lacks the radical originality of Soleil cou coupé. This Wesleyan edition presents all the original poems en face with the new English translations. Includes an introduction by A. James Arnold and notes by Clayton Eshleman.

“Not only do Eshleman and Arnold give us excellent translations of Césaire’s at times syntactically knotty, etymologically abstruse, and semantically bedeviling verse; they also contextualize the poems—with an introduction by Arnold and endnotes by Eshleman—with crucial historical information and lucid discussions of the complexities of the poems’ language.”—Brent Hayes Edwards, author of The Practice of Diaspora

Missed the Show?

MP3 Stream 192kpbs, broadband
MP3 Stream 32kpbs, broadband

View Past Shows

View Upcoming Shows

	Artist	Song	Album	Label
	Charles Mingus Quartet	What Love?	Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus	Candid
	Mahmood Jamal	A Gift of Blood	An Evening of International Poetry	Alliance Records
	Mahmood Jamal	Silence	An Evening of International Poetry	Alliance Records
	Bud Powell	Blue Pearl	Bud!: The Amazing Bud Powell Volume 3	Blue Note
	Bud Powell	John's Abbey	Time Waits	Blue Note
	Mushtaq Singh	The Respite	An Evening of International Poetry	Alliance Records
========================== Airbreak ==========================
	Mushtaq Singh	4 Lines in Urdu Translation	An Evening of International Poetry	Alliance Records
	Lee Morgan	All At Once, You Love Her	Candy	Blue Note
	Bill Evans	Tenderly	Everybody Digs Bill Evans	Riverside
	Carmen McRae	How Did He Look?	Bittersweet	Focus
	Carmen McRae	Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out To Dry	Bittersweet	Focus
	Carmen McRae	The Meaning of the Blues	Bittersweet	Focus
	Thad Jones	Something To Remember You By	The Magnificnet Thad Jones	Blue Note
	Accabre Huntley	Easter Monday Blues	An Evening of International Poetry	Alliance Records
========================== Airbreak ==========================
	Paul Chambers	Untitled (Bebop Blues)	Bass On Top	Blue Note - Japan
	Billie Holiday	A Fine Romance	All or Nothing All	Verve
	Billie Holiday	Cheek to Cheek	All or Nothing All	Verve
	Charles Mingus	Bugs	Complete Candid Recordings	Mosaic
	Cecil Rajendra	The Animal & Insects Act	An Evening of International Poetry	Alliance Records
	Gil Evans Orchestra	Stratusphunk	Out of the Cool	Impulse
========================== Airbreak ==========================
	Beverly Kenney	A Woman's Intuition	Sings For Playboys	Decca
	Beverly Kenney	You're My Boy	Sings For Playboys	Decca
	Beverly Kenney	What Is Thre To Say	Sings For Playboys	Decca
	Bill Evans	What Is Thre To Say?	Everybody Digs Bill Evans	Riverside
========================== Airbreak ==========================
	Bill Evans	April In Paris (excerpt)	Solo Sessions	Milestone
	Interview with Clayton Eshleman by Justin Desmangles	Interview with Clayton Eshleman by Justin Desmangles	Interview with Clayton Eshleman by Justin Desmangles	Interview with Clayton Eshleman by Justin Desmangles
	Bill Evans	April In Paris (excerpt)	Solo Sessions	Milestone

Rain by Aime Cesaire

After I had by iron by fire by ash visited the most celebrated places in history
after I had by ash fire earth and stars courted with my wild dog and leechlike
fingernails the authoritarian field of protoplasms
I found myself as usual in the old days in the middle of a factory of vipers'
nests in a ganges of cacti in an elaboration of thorny pilgrimages - and as
usual I was salivated by limbs and tongues born a thousand years before
the earth - and as usual I made my morning prayer the one that protects
me from the evil eye and that I address to the rain under the aztec color of
its name

Rain who so gently washes a perverse injection from the earth's academic
vagina
All-powerful rain who on the chopping block makes the fingers of the
rock's leap
Rain who force-feeds an army of worms no mulberry forest could nourish
Rain inspired strategist who pushes across the mirror of the air your zigzag
army of numberless riverbanks that cannot not surprise the best-kept
boredom
Rain wasp nest beautiful milk whose piglets we are
Rain I see your hair which is a perpetual explosion of sandbox tree fireworks
your hair of misinformation promptly denied
Rain who in your most reprehensible excesses takes care not to forget that
Chiriqui maidens pull suddenly from their night corsage a lamp of thrilling
fireflies
Inflexible rain who lays eggs whose larvae are so proud that nothing can
make them mount the stern of the sun and salute it like an admiral
Rain who is a fresh fish fan behind which courteous races hide to watch
victory with its dirty feet pass by
Greetings to you queen rain in the depths of the eternal goddess whose hands
are multiple and whose destiny is unique thou sperm thou brain thou fluid
Rain capable of everything except washing away the blood that flows on the
fingers of the murderers of entire peoples surprised in the soaring forests
of innocence







Aime Cesaire (photo by Denise Colomb)
(translation by A. James Arnold & Clayton Eshleman)
Solar Throat Slashed, The Unexpurgated 1948 Edition, Wesleyan University Press

Homage to Aime Cesaire in Poetry & Jazz

New Day Jazz Justin Desmangles Jazz music for lovers and the lonely. Genre Jazz Miss the Show? MP3 Stream (128kbps, broadband) MP3 Stream (32kbps, dial-up) [View Past Shows] [View Upcoming Shows]

Show Description for Sunday 06/26/2011 This afternoon, a special celebration of Aime Cesaire, honoring his birthday, June 26, 1913. Also, a new essay by Cecil Brown, below. If Racism is Over, Why are Whites Still Kicking Me in the Ass? Next week, Amiri Baraka reviews the new biography, Malcolm X, A Life Of Reinvention, by Manning Marable. Painting by Romare Bearden, 16 Mill Hands Lunch Bucket

	Artist	Song	Album
	Bud Powell	Cleopatra's Dream	The Scene Changes	Blue Note
	JulianAdderley	Alison's Uncle	Somethin' Else	Blue Note
	John Agard	Stereotype	An Evening Of International Poetry	Alliance Records
	John Agard	Grafitti In A British Rail Waiting Room	An Evening Of International Poetry	Alliance Records
	Max Roach featuring Anthony Braxton	Dance Griot	Birth And Rebirth	Black Saint
	Walt Dickerson Sirone Andrew Cyrille	Life Rays	Life Rays	Soul Note
-----------------------------air break-----------------------------
	Walt Dickerson & Sun Ra	Visions	Visions	Steeple Chase
	Mahmood Jamal	A Gift Of Blood	An Evening Of International Poetry	Alliance Records
	Mahmood Jamal	Silence	An Evening Of International Poetry	Alliance Records
	Gil Evans / Steve Lacy	Reincarnation Of A Lovebird	Paris Blues	Owl
	Steve Lacy	Virgin Jungle	The Door	Novus
	Okot P'Bitek	Acholi Song / Song Of The Prisoner	An Evening Of International Poetry	Alliance Records
	Clifford Brown	George's Dilemma	Study In Brown	Emarcy
-----------------------------air break-----------------------------
	Aime Cesaire (read by Justin Desmangles)	Rain (translated by A. James Arnold & Clayton Eshleman)	Solar Throat Slashed	Wesleyan Universtiy Press
	Jackie Byard	Parisian Thoroughfare	The Jaki Byard Experience	Prestige
	Mari Evans (read by Roscoe Lee Browne & James Earl Jones)	This Ain't No Mass Thing	A Hand Is On The Gate	Verve - Folkways
	Sam Rivers	Involution	Dimensions & Extensions	Blue Note
-----------------------------air break-----------------------------
	Aime Cesaire (read by Justin Desmangles)	Secret Society (translated by A. James Arnold & Clayton Eshleman)	Solar Throat Slashed	Wesleyan Universtiy Press
	Aime Cesaire (read by Justin Desmangles)	Attack On Morals (translated by A. James Arnold & Clayton Eshleman)	Solar Throat Slashed	Wesleyan Universtiy Press
	Rahsaan Roland Kirk	Rahsaanica	Natural Black Inventions: Root Strata	Atlantic
	Rahsaan Roland Kirk	Raped Voices	Natural Black Inventions: Root Strata	Atlantic
	Rahsaan Roland Kirk	Haunted Feelings	Natural Black Inventions: Root Strata	Atlantic
	Solar Throat Slashed	Prelude Back Home	Natural Black Inventions: Root Strata	Atlantic
-----------------------------air break-----------------------------
	Max Roach featuring Andy Bey	Members, Don't Git Weary	Members, Don't Git Weary	Atlantic