Clarice: The Visitor

In this cahier, American poet Idra Novey explores several notions of translation through two sequences of poems. In the first sequence, “Letters to C,” she addresses the figure and the words of a writer she has recently translated, Brazilian novelist Clarice Lispector. In the second, “Regarding Marmalade, Cognates, and Visitors,” Novey looks at the connections between language, translation, and the hosting of visitors, including her newborn son. Idra Novey’s texts are in conversation with works by the artist Erica Baum—images of books that seem both to invite and resist attempts to read them.