Literary traditions

WHAT’S another word for an ill-conceived anthology? Try “cemetery”: a bunch of strangers lined up and stripped of all context, except for a slight headstone -- an editor’s brief explanatory note. “The Writer’s World” series -- “Irish Writers on Writing,” “Mexican Writers on Writing,” “Polish Writers on Writing” (Trinity University Press: $24.95 each, paper) -- defies this sepulchral sentiment. How? The series’ intent, the publisher explains, is to broaden our awareness and understanding of national identities “at a time of international tension and war.” So it’s hardly surprising that Margaret Sayers Peden (a superb translator) includes excerpts from the writings of 17th century nun Sor Juana, Elena Poniatowska and Angeles Mastretta in the Mexican volume.

But midway through, you realize that there’s more than simple geography binding them together. Sor Juana’s burning zeal for writing -- “my inclination toward letters has been so vehement ... that not even the admonitions of others ... have been sufficient to cause me to forswear this natural impulse “ -- resonates in Poniatowska’s restless attitude: “I will die ... still searching, with a question mark engraved on my eyelids.” Mastretta too is joyously tormented by “that beatific world I inhabited while writing ... sleeping fitfully, constantly bemoaning my fate.... “

The organizing thread, then, is about affinities; unifying themes roll through the Irish and Polish volumes as well (edited by Eavan Boland and Adam Zagajewski, respectively). We read Irish writers embracing -- or staggering under -- the weight of literary tradition. Sebastian Barry celebrates his dramatic debt to J.M. Synge. Thomas Kinsella wearily replies to Olympian images of Irish poets with the bitter-funny, irreverent “Prologue”: “ ... there, as usual, lying last / Helped along by blind Routine, / Futility flogs a tambourine. “ And Warsaw-born Boleslaw Lesmian’s 19th century musings on art and reality pulse in the later works of Czeslaw Milosz, Witold Gombrowicz and others who confront a gray, authoritarian world.

A pleasure afforded by “The Writer’s World” series is the hunt for these threads. Sure, nationality is one way to organize an anthology, but unless you also find the deeper qualities that writers share, you’re doing nothing more than digging holes in the ground.

Nick Owchar

nick.owchar@latimes.com