Scenes from The Puppet Oresteia (2011)

[Book design: William T. Ayton]

Scenes from The Puppet Oresteia. Text by Jack Ross / Artwork by William T. Ayton. ISBN 978-0-473-18881-8. Rhinebeck, NY: Narcissus Press / Auckland: Perdrix Press, 2011. 24 ink drawings. 44 pp.

Contents:

I – Iphigenia, or Happy Families

Chorus 1 - Cursed with prophecy
Scene 1: The Palace at Mycenae
Chorus 2 - I ran through the wood
Chorus 3 - Little girl lost

II – Cassandra, or Payback is a Bitch

Chorus 4 - Joy lives with those
Scene 2: The Palace at Mycenae
Chorus 5 - Cursed with second sight
Chorus 6 - See how Apollo

III – Orestes, or Never say Never

Chorus 7 - The labour pains
Scene 3: The Seashore at Tauris
Chorus 8 - There she goes
Chorus 9 - Drops of holy water

Epilogue

Chorus 10 - Noise is like flame

[Back cover]

Blurb:

What would happen if two children decided to put on the Ancient Greek Oresteia in their own puppet theatre? With their (recently divorced) parents as characters? Casting themselves as Iphigeneia, sacrificed by her father for a favourable wind, and Orestes, the murderer of his mother? What kind of bloodbath might come out of that?

This modern retelling of the classic trilogy in words and pictures is a collaboration between New Zealand poet Jack Ross and US-based British artist William T. Ayton.

A Narcissus Press / Perdrix Press co-production

Abstract:

This is a translation project which builds on the framework of Papyri (2007), my selection of poems from Sappho. Here I re-imagined the two Iphigenia plays of Euripides alongside Aeschylus’s Agamemnon to create a new drama with contemporary overtones. The collaboration with Bill Ayton came about from a chance email exchange on my Papyri blog, but has led to an exploration of the burgeoning world of e-books and e-publishing.

Online Texts:

Lulu.com

Papyri

Samples:

Flickr

Perdrix Press

The Imaginary Museum

William T. Ayton Art Blog

William T. Ayton

[William T. Ayton: A Strange Nest]

Available:

Lulu.com
[as a File Download ($US 2.99)
or Print-on-demand publication ($US 15.00)]

Narcissus Press
Rhinebeck
NY
USA

Perdrix Press
6A Hastings Rd
Mairangi Bay
Auckland 0630
New Zealand

RRP: $US 15 / $NZ 20

[William T. Ayton: The Seashore at Tauris]

Reviews & Comments:

1. William T. Ayton, "Scenes from The Puppet Oresteia." William T. Ayton Art Blog (2/5/11):
   

   
   In recent weeks, I've been working on a collaboration with New Zealand poet Jack Ross. The result is a chapbook entitled "Scenes from The Puppet Oresteia", based on the classic Greek trilogy of tragic plays by Aeschylus, updated into a more contemporary setting, that of a play performed by children in their puppet theater, whilst still paying homage to the original. The chapbook is 44 pages, with 24 ink drawings (21 of them brand new for this project) by myself. The book will be available soon, as a co-production between Perdrix Press (Ross) and Narcissus Press (the small press my wife Diana & I founded) ...

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A Bus Called Mr Nice Guy (2005)

Cover photograph: K Ramanathan / Cover design: Jack Ross
(Mumbai, India - 15/1/02)

A Bus Called Mr Nice Guy. ISBN 0-473-10526-8. Auckland: Perdrix Press, 2005. [ii] + 50 pp. [Signed edition of 50 copies].

Contents:

Letter to Gabriel White
Mysore:
- Timekeeper to the nation
- Black eyebrows nose
Bangalore (i):
- It was waiting for me
Bangalore (ii):
- Soon to be full six
- Self-conscious in a chair
Pondicherry:
- Long live classical divine Tamil
- As crêpes they’re crap
Thanjavur:
- Always in a crowd
- Put that pen away
Madurai:
- Once is never enough
- Not knowing where we’re going
Kodaikanal:
- Van Allen Hospital
- Black cow lies in the road
Kodai / Kanyakumari:
- Is this going to stay
- They like to see me writing
Cape Comorin:
- The deer doesn’t enter
- He is not a man
Trivandrum:
- They can make anything
- Haunted eyes
Kathakali:
- A lot of action
- This is my first
Varkala:
- Meine Damen und Herren
- The tank’s refilled
Quilon / Alleppey:
- No-time the expanse
- Helping the Down Trodden
Fort Cochin:
- Harbour full of islands
- How do you like Kochi?
Ernakulam:
- Human contact
- Do I exaggerate?
Kochi / Bangalore:
- Light on the tracks
- One’s the buffoon
Bangalore / Panjim:
- The hooded horror
- Sophie Marceau
Panjim:
- Fishermen
- Inside the cabin
North Goa:
- I’ve caught up with myself
- Palolem Vagatur
Madgaon:
- Is it the moment?
- Ahead of myself
Madgaon / Bombay:
- White herons taking flight
- Life must go on
Bombay:
- That is the biggest
- I can laugh about it now
Auckland:
- New construction Amcare
- An alien species
A B C

Samples:

Perdrix Press

Available:

Perdrix Press
6A Hastings Rd
Mairangi Bay
North Shore City 0630
Auckland

RRP: $NZ 20.00

photograph: Jack Ross
(Bangalore, India - 22/1/02)

Reviews & Comments:

1. Raewyn Alexander. Takahe 57 (2006): 59.
   

   
   Prose, poetry, observations and quotes conjure up through their vivid everyday otherness, a sense of travelling along with Ross through India ... This book speaks of travel, danger, poverty, oddities, commerce and friendship, and in its fractured elegance evokes a picture of one man’s experience in a land quite foreign to him.



2. Alistair Paterson. Africa: //Kabbo, Mantis and the Porcupine’s Daughter (Auckland: Puriri Press, 2008): 52-53, 56-57 & 70.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   Alistair Paterson: Africa (30/6/08): pp. 52-53 & 56-57.
   
   

   
   [p.52]:
   
   *
   Thinking
   of /Kaggan, the eland
   you thank Jack (Ross)
   for the books he's sent you
   & especially
   for his travel book:
   A Bus called Mr Nice Guy.
   
   You read it, study it -
   the book that gives advice
   on how to travel through India
   how to travel through
   
   Asia, Europe, places
   you've never been to, perhaps
   might never visit
   
   except like now
   through reading the words –
   the words you've found
   in Jack's book:
   
   The most beautiful thing
   he says,
   he's seen in India ...
   
   but says nothing about
   Africa, /Kaggen
   the eland
   
   
   [p.53]:
   
   & truly, you don't know
   what it is
   (the most beautiful thing)
   
   whether it's the eland
   'most magnificent
   dark & splendid'
   
   as /Kaggan thinks of it
   or whether it's
   as Jack says …
   
   *
   the most beautiful thing
   is in the room of Ramayana
   in the face
   of Krishna
   
   playing his flute
   or in a picture of Shiva
   with Parvati on his knee.
   
   But of course, the thing
   Jack says is beautiful
   isn't in Africa
   but in India where
   he saw it near Kochi –
   
   where he saw a bus called
   Mr Nice Guy …
   
   *
   It's in a painting –
   in the here, the now.
   
   
   [p.56]:
   
   *
   While Jack –
   Jack sits at a pavement table
   in Ponsonby
   sipping a latte
   thinking of Chantal
   of travelling with her round
   the South Island
   in the New Year
   
   of Richard West
   & his book
   The Life & Strange
   Surprising
   Adventures of Daniel Defoe.
   
   Most remarkable
   to be thinking of both at once
   & remarkable as well
   to be thinking of Genji
   
   
   [p.57]:
   
   of Lady Murasaki
   & 'too many maiden-flowers
   in the field.'
   
   But then, where else
   would you & Lady Murasaki
   expect
   them to be?
   
   
   [p.70]:
   
   And in India, of course
   In India Jack put all those words
   on paper thinking perhaps
   they might make a difference
   might change things
   
   but Africa has come with us
   & it’s impossible to stop
   writing about it – about
   Africa being everywhere.

•

The Britney Suite (2001)

Cover design: Jack Ross

The Britney Suite, by Paul Celan, Wendy Nu & Jack Ross. Auckland: Perdrix Press, 2001. 24 pp. [gift edition of 20 numbered copies].

Contents:

[Paul Celan:] SCHNEEPART, gebäumt, bis zuletzt …(22/1/68)
Snowpart
[Wendy Nu:] keith partridge y yo
[Paul Celan:] ERZFLITTER, tief im … (20/7/68)
Orespark
Nouvelle vague
[Paul Celan:] KALK-KROKUS, im … (24/8/68)
Chalk-Crocus
[Wendy Nu:] mr darling writes to penthouse forum
[Paul Celan:] DAS GEDUNKELTE Splitterecho … (5/9/68)
Dark
It’s always too late …
[Paul Celan:] BEIDHÄNDIGE Frühe … (29/9/69)
Both-Handed

Online Texts:

Perdrix Press

The Imaginary Museum

Available:

Perdrix Press
6A Hastings Rd
Mairangi Bay
North Shore City 0630
Auckland

[out of print]

•
Cover image: Gabriel White / Cover design: Jack Ross

The Britney Suite, by Paul Celan, Wendy Nu & Jack Ross. Auckland: Perdrix Press, July 2003. 60 pp. [gift edition].

Contents:

[Paul Celan:] SCHNEEPART, gebäumt, bis zuletzt …(22/1/68)
Snowpart
[Wendy Nu:] keith partridge y yo
[Paul Celan:] ERZFLITTER, tief im … (20/7/68)
Orespark
Nouvelle vague
[Paul Celan:] KALK-KROKUS, im … (24/8/68)
Chalk-Crocus
[Wendy Nu:] mr darling writes to penthouse forum
[Paul Celan:] DAS GEDUNKELTE Splitterecho … (5/9/68)
Dark
It’s always too late …
[Paul Celan:] BEIDHÄNDIGE Frühe … (29/9/69)
Both-Handed

Online Text:

Papyri

Available:

Perdrix Press
6A Hastings Rd
Mairangi Bay
North Shore City 0630
Auckland

[out of print]

•

[Britney Spears (1998)]

Reviews & Comments:

1. Nick Alexander. "Jack Ross reading (13 March 2001)." Auckland Poetry Website [http://nicholasalexander.com/nda/poetry/aklive/reviews.html] (12/4/01).
   

   
   Jack Ross has the credentials of a modernist, complete with German quotes translating the lines of the poem into a second voice, a second set of meanings, reminiscent of Eliot. Exalting Britney Spears and her pouting sexuality seems dangerous ground. Indeed there were sighs/groans as Jack sellotaped her image behind himself as a very unremarkable diminutive ghetto blaster provided a near complete absence of atmosphere – technical infancy maybe but the poetry was certainly riveting stuff.
   
   An engaging and interesting reading and parody of multimedia. As the NASDAQ bleeds, we may get excited over photocopies to provide a raw visual excitement.

[Paul Celan (1960)]

•

The Perfect Storm (2000)

Cover photograph & design: Gabriel White

The Perfect Storm. Video by Gabriel White, Text by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-07350-1. Auckland: Perdrix Press, 2000. 8 pp. [12 minutes / 100 copies].

Contents:

Fire
Grating your hand …
The Storm
Don’t want no plot …
Fusion
Not the butterfly-collector …
Poetry Live

Samples:

Haibun Today

Online Text:

Perdrix Press

Available:

Perdrix Press
6A Hastings Rd
Mairangi Bay
North Shore City 0630
Auckland

RRP: $NZ 10.00

Reviews & Comments:

•

A Town Like Parataxis (2000)

Cover photograph & design: Gabriel White

A Town Like Parataxis. Text by Jack Ross, Images by Gabriel White. ISBN 0-473-07104-5. Auckland: Perdrix Press, 2000. 22 pp. [100 copies].

Contents:

Swallows and Amazons
Cheating Heart
A Town Like Parataxis:
1 – Winter’s Tale
2 – Walking Home on a Clear Evening
3 – Wysiwyg
At the Warhol Look Exhibition
Stories we tell ourselves: At the Richard Killeen Retrospective

Online Text:

Perdrix Press

The Imaginary Museum

Available:

Perdrix Press
6A Hastings Rd
Mairangi Bay
North Shore City 0630
Auckland

RRP: $NZ 10.00 [out of print]

Reviews & Comments:

1. Mark Pirie. JAAM 15 (2001): 200.
   

   
   This is a photocopied publication of text and images, the text of which is by an author currently establishing himself as an interesting and adventurous contributor to our literature (see for instance his experimental novel Nights with Giordano Bruno [Bumper Books, 2000] or his excellent guest slot in Poetry NZ 22 [2001].

•

Pound's Fascist Cantos (1997)

Cover design: Jack Ross

Ezra Pound’s Fascist Cantos (72 & 73) together with Rimbaud’s “Poets at Seven Years Old.” Trans. Jack Ross. Auckland: Perdrix Press. [ii] + 42 pp. [25 numbered copies].

Contents:

[Ezra Pound]: Canto LXXII: Presences

[Ezra Pound]: Canto LXXIII: Cavalcanti / Republican Dispatches

Samples:

Canto LXXII: Presences

Canto LXXIII: Cavalcanti / Republican Dispatches

Online Text:

Perdrix Press

Available:

Perdrix Press
6A Hastings Rd
Mairangi Bay
North Shore City 0630
Auckland

RRP: $NZ 5.00 [Out of print]

Reviews & Comments:

1. John O’Connor. JAAM 12 (1999): 126-28.
   

   
   … Ross’s versions are alive with Pound’s energy and convictions; they spark and jar ... It is a tribute to Jack Ross and an indication of his capability as a translator that these pieces stand fresh and intelligent even in their perversity, a perversity of which Ross is acutely aware.



2. Massimo Bacigalupo. "Correspondence: Pound’s Italian Cantos." Ka Mate Ka Ora 4 (September 2007): 154-57.
   

   
   … Your final quotation of Cockram doesn’t seem to make it clear enough that she is misguided in faulting the moral stance of these cantos. I find it strange that many readers insist that they are inexcusable, when passages like the Jew-baiting in canto 52 are much worse than anything to be found in them. Written as they were in a turbulent period, they may be said to exhibit moderation. I would also question your calling them ‘fascist cantos’. ‘War Cantos’ or ‘Italian Cantos’ would be more appropriate. Pound’s take on Fascism was very peculiar, in fact he thought he had to explain its merits to Italians! Besides, cantos 31-71 and 74-84 are no less fascistic than these. Anyhow, I find your commentary very astute, especially concerning the opening of the Pisan cantos and Pound’s use of persona.

•

Killing Time (1997)

Cover design: Jack Ross

Killing Time. Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1997. [iv] + 16 pp.

Contents:

Auckland by Night / Brussels by Day
One Version of Pastoral
The Prospect of the Bungy-Jump
On the Occasion of Wet Snow
A Road through Pylons
Killing Time
Morning at a Language School
Recovery
C. P. Cavafy’s The God Abandons Antony
Petrarch’s Laura I-III
Life in a Chinese Novel

Online Text::

Perdrix Press

Available:

Perdrix Press
6A Hastings Rd
Mairangi Bay
North Shore City 0630
Auckland

RRP: $NZ 2.00 [out of print]

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