Let the Games Begin: Five Roman Writers - Softcover

Valente, Peter

9781584981152: Let the Games Begin: Five Roman Writers

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1584981156 ISBN 13: 9781584981152

Publisher: Talisman House, Publishers, 2015

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Poetry. Interpretive Translation. Classics. Satire. "In LET THE GAMES BEGIN, Peter Valente has borrowed, sampled, excised, and rearranged the canon of Greek and Latin letters to consolidate the extremes which that literature is famous for. Life was just as shitty in Ancient Rome as it is today and for many of the same reasons. Just ask Pliny the Younger. Taking a break from leisurely hunting all morning in the woods of his villa, he sits down to write prose. 'There is so much suffering in the world,' he thinks, and then commences to write. Pliny's cash-rich stoic hygiene is countered by the anonymous cock-obsessed poems of the Priapeia, along with stunning re- visions of Ovid, Catullus, and Lucian. LET THE GAMES BEGIN is a rich, embodied reading of Roman life, which is to say our contemporary life. A life which, like ours, includes not only bloody spectacular violence but a poetry which refuses, beautifully, to 'just accept things as they come and make the best of your situation, whatever it is.'"—Brandon Brown

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About the Author

Peter Valente is the author of A Boy Asleep Under the Sun: Versions of Sandro Penna (Punctum Books, 2014), which was nominated for a Lambda award, THE ARTAUD VARIATIONS (Spuyten Duyvil, 2014) and the chapbook, Forge of Words a Forest (Jensen Daniels, 1998). He is the co- translator of the chapbook, Selected Late Letters of Antonin Artaud, 1945-1947 (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, 2014) and has translated the work of Luis Cernuda, Nanni Balestrini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, as well as numerous ancient Greek and Latin authors. Forthcoming in 2015 is Street Level (Spuyten Duyvil), a series of photos that document his encounters with gang members, former drug addicts and the homeless in New York and New Jersey. His poems and photographs have appeared or are forthcoming in journals such as Mirage #4/Periodical, First Intensity, Aufgabe, Talisman and Oyster Boy Review. In the late 1990s, he co-edited the poetry magazines Vapor/Strains and Lady Blizzard's Batmobile and wrote articles on jazz for the Edgewater Reporter. From 2010-2013 he turned to filmmaking and has completed 60 shorts, 24 of which were screened at Anthology Film Archives.