NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW

OSIRIS 61 is an anthology of Danish, English, French, German and Portuguese poetry. Whilst the majority of the poems are in English there are also translations from Danish, German, Portuguese poets and some poems in French. Visual art is by Robert Moorhead, and additional artwork is by Andrea Moorhead.

In terms of themes, the poems in OSIRIS 61 are a microcosm of society as a whole; thus we have an interest in the extremes of social mores, as in George Moore's prose poem WHILST SOME WERE FINDING WORDS; the skeletal poems by prospero saiz; the toxicity of John Falk's THIS HAND; Steve Borst's lively FISHBOY; the loneliness of Ingrid Swanberg's poems; Pansy Mauer-Alvarez's nature poem PARTICULAR (FOR CLOUDS); Andrea Moorhead's prose poem BACK TO SPRUCE CREEK and Simon Perchik's lyrical poems to end the collection. In addition there are translations that use the silence around the lines to voice what is not for the speaker to say. Working with great skill in this area are translators Thom Satterleee, Gerald Chapple and Alexis Levitin who each display a finely judged reticence in their translations.

That there is a relationship between modern discontinuities in verse and classical reticence is something well illustrated in OSIRIS 61. The best contemporary poetry doesn't nail the connections between images and lines together, but lets the reader's imagination play over the discontinuities, making connections as the imagination sees fit.

One of the surest poems in the book is simply entitled SUBURBAN (Ingrid Swanberg), with its discrete lines moving elegantly towards the final

	alive in the world
	walking at night
	hearing the song.

	Out
	at the center, blood
	home and living tissue
	at an angle gone acute

	Still lowered but slowly
	looking a little bit up
	you smooth your hand over the page
	someplace past the ambivalence of clouds
	colors   the whole way from blue to white

Is it the absence of sky, the narrow slit in reality, the intensity of the current rippling and folding the light all along the woods? Is it the rocks' memory almost visible in the late afternoon, is it the heaviness lifted, the underside of the ridge, the controversy of something people couldn't record?

	The white bird
	tucks its head up under
	its wing

	The black bird
	flies up to the sky

	The steel-blue sky

	Northern lights deathly pale.
	Even the wind has died and rests in peace
	beneath the stock-still grass.
	The unusual becomes
	an event of soundlessness.

Eugenio de Andrade's rhythmic and timbral ideas in his poem RAIN are well served by the translator, Alexis Levitin. The very nature of the poem means that the arrangements are spare: there are no counter melodies, no dense textures, the voice is highlighted, and Levitin relishes the sounds of the words:

	Only with eyes shut do I see
	the city
	where I lose you with them open.
	Thus I fall asleep — the rain
	alight instead of your face.

. The relentless way each poem in OSIRIS 61 adheres to presentation and format makes this book a delight to hold and to read. The poems are unforgettable for their depth and intensity, and for their moments of bleakness and power. This is a hall of mirrors stuff where the reading meets a different face at each turn. For that reason, it would be surprising, if not miraculous, for the reader to be equally moved by all the pieces in this collection; some come off better than others. But it is right to salute editors who strive to bring something new into our field of vision. Few have the independence of mind to perform such a service; the editorial board of OSIRIS 61 deserve our praise.

Osiris is a joy — a beautifully designed and bound journal full of excellent poetry in several European languages, in this issue French, Spanish, Norwegian and Romanian. All bar the French are presented with translation into English. There is a pleasingly wide variety of styles of poetry from haiku-like short poems to prose poems. All the poems are worth reading and savouring, there is no feeling of poems being included just to fill a gap or because they fulfil a particular editorially preferred style. Also the translators must be praised highly. It is often said that the poetry is what is lost in translation but here the translations work beautifully as poems in their own right whilst remaining (so far as I can tell) more or less faithful to the original. This is I think the ideal of poetry translation.

Thematically this issue seems to centre on relationships and nature, with a significant number of poems exploring the relationship between these two themes and literature. Janet MacFadyen explores connections between literature and nature in her beautifully powerful poem STUNG:

	The book that is held    opens itself & bees
	                drop one by one from the pages.

	        Sometimes
	a poem will split open in my hands like milkweed.

	If a jellyfish were to write a book, it would be all about the water.

	.... the hour after hour
	where every word is her name
	wants it down in black and white

	left in the open the way you learned
	to speak through stone, whisper
	as if you were still living.

	..... the nocturnal glow adores an owlet
	its somnolent aura the wave of mystery

Osiris is a small magazine from Massachusetts that publishes poetry in several modern European languages. This issue contains poems in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Romanian. The German, Portuguese and Romanian poems are preceded by facing English translations, but the English, French and Italian poems are untranslated into other languages. Presumably this tells us something about the cultural expectations that the editors and members of the multinational editorial board have of their readers. There are also a few graphics by the editor, Andrea Moorhead, and by Robert Moorhead, who is also responsible for the design and typography.

This is a very precise magazine. It is elegant throughout. The appearance, thanks to Robert Moorhead, is exceptionally elegant. The poems too are elegant. A common theme is capturing a moment which isn't quite as straightforward or simple as it first seems:

	A candle flares at the back of a nervous room

	The farmhouse shutters
	clapping

	The courtyard paved in rough granite-grey stone

	I look out of the window and cannot find the sea

	Blood—perhaps a bloodline
	Deeper than blood

	I ran all alone through a field of pitchforks

Both editorial staff and contributors deserve high praise for this excellent magazine. Osiris has been published since 1972, which suggests that it must have constructed for itself a niche wherein to thrive. I hope that its elegance and excellence will continue for another thirty-five years.

The 56-page journal features work in Chinese, English, French, Italian, Portuguese and Norwegian, and showcases 21 contributors, not quite from A to Z, but at least from Boucebci to Zheng.

Leonardo Cirino, living in Springfield, Oregon, gets the ball rolling with his 12-liner, A BEAUTIFUL OVAL. This poet throws his poetic adjectives around with gay abandon. Well, he's been at it 40 years. Lost in the forest he hears the bird, and then sees the moon:

	its gouged-out skin with a reptile's surface
	and its jagged edge of a file flaring
	like flint.

	...

	the moon, a beautiful disc with painted eyes.

	inside my heart
	rain pours neon calligraphy 
	onto the night street

	...

	inside my heart
	the cold mists rise
	the horses disappear

	and you dream my 
	blue

	we will ride into the city
	of white blossoming trees
	under the night

	From the overlook, the red-cragged sandstone
	obelisk that is Spider Woman Rock
	casts its lengthening shadow.

	What is the measure of a government's fear?

	Baker's Lane and Bread Street substantial
	enough but we don't expect a greeting
	from the man pushing a wheelbarrow
	of wheat up to the old brewery.

Yes, there's quite a lot you can say about Osiris. It's a quality A3 booklet with an elegant cover; it feels good to hold, has a smart layout and contains some interesting material from a variety of contributors.

The only drawback I found was that the Italian and French contributions had not been translated. I suppose I should brush up on these languages, but it's all I can do to get my head around German grammar at the moment.