Mea Roma ? A Meditative Sampling from M. Valerius Martialis

Poetry. Translated by Art Beck. "My project started with a 'dissenting' translation of Martial's Book of the Spectacles. I use that term, not because I'm adapting or appropriating the text, but because the Spectacles sequence has a history of being dismissed as sub-par, early work commemorating the opening of the Colosseum. Current scholars, including Kathleen Coleman, who's made the sequence somewhat of a specialty, increasingly seem to be challenging that dismissive view. Coleman also considers the dating purely speculative. I'm not attempting to join a technical and arcane historical debate. But strictly from a literary standpoint, her views on the dating free a poetic translator to exploit the same irony, double-entendre and polyvalence that imbues the greater Martial canon. The Spectacles' extended theme--the animal fights, blood sports and execution entertainments of the Arena--is, as far as I know, unique in Classical poetry. Even the over-the-top adulation of the un-named, games-presiding 'Caesar' can take on its own cynical undertone when read in the context of Martial's 'hare and lion' relationship with the self-styled Dominus et Deus Emperor Domitian."--Art Beck

Art Beck's Luxorius Opera Omnia (versions of the 6th century CE Latin epigrammist, published by Otis College) won the 2013 Northern California Book Award for poetry in translation. His poems, essays and translations have appeared in a number of lit-journals, anthologies and small press volumes. From 2009 through 2012, he was a twice-yearly contributor to the Los Angeles poetry magazine Rattle's e-issues with a series of essays on translating poetry under the byline "The Impertinent Duet." An earlier version of the manuscript for MEA ROMA was one of two finalists awarded Honorable Mention in the American Literary Translators Association 2018 Cliff Becker Book Prize in Translation.