Poetry |
“13 by 13 — things that are left and lucky” & “He Asked and We Married Twice”
“the math involved, of scant numerology / for example / exact time of birth / 6:21 PM — that’s two threes / recombine them all and divide and add shape”
Poetry |
“Donald listens to the whole pitch sheet” “Helena already knew how to knit” “Does Samantha have children herself?” & “Wanda’s mother worked in the toll booth”
“Her very next call, she soberly / read through the things / she’d been given to say. Bowling, / tires, chicken, paint. All of it / ten percent off. The only rule / she broke was pausing …”
Poetry |
“Great Egret”
“I’m returned to the old story / of the swan maiden — // that bird-girl, wife, mother, / then bird again when she reclaimed / her feathered cloak …”
Poetry |
from the “Monpeyroux Sonnets”
“A rainy Monday, everything is shut. / It could be late October; it’s mid-May. / Lights on at noon, outside, rain drums on gray / paving stones, drainpipes, voices.”
Interview |
“A Kindred Feeling”: a Conversation with Matthew Buckley Smith
“I think a lot about art having a double or triple life. One of those lives is an experience or an idea or an imagined something. Another is the potential pleasure or meaning that can be made out of that. They live together.”
Poetry |
“Trophy,” “Pond,” “Oh” & “Fare Thee Well”
“What a thought — it / sounds almost childish, so / simple, as if the sun / had given itself / a trophy when a blue jay / flew from a tree …”
Literature in Translation |
from Victorious
“Those three days were my gateway into the soul of the military. After that, I went out into the field many more times. I didn’t wait for them to come see me on the verge of collapse.”
Lyric Prose |
“a treat”
“We played together until she was called home for dinner. She told me to visit her any time and gave me the number of her flat, pointing to the door that led to her section of units.”
Literature in Translation |
“Labour,” “Piano Factory” & “Without tears the eyes spill by themselves”
“Today I am clutching Mandelstam’s poem like a broken glass, / though it seems not of today, or yesterday, or tomorrow. / A poem explains nothing, / it’s like an orchestra wandering lost in the fields …”
Poetry |
“A Zoom Reading in Which Fanny Howe’s Computer Dies”
“Fanny begins to read, and through / the screen of her screen to mine, she says / she’s wearing the wrong glasses. Oh technology — // just failure made more efficient.”
Poetry |
“Awakening from a Dream” & “What the Migraine Said”
“The sleep of reason produces monsters — / this we know from art and the news: / murder and sham leaders shooting themselves / in one foot and chewing on the other.”
Poetry |
“The Mothers”
“The mothers watched us, / and we watched them, my mother working clay, / Barbara’s mother, long at her easel, Jean’s mother, / swimming and sketching.”
Literature in Translation |
from No Way in the Skin without This Bloody Embrace
“The sirens’ song provides an abridged idea of your / voice. You’re still this broken shimmer tormenting / the mirror of the banality of men.”
Poetry |
“Translating the Body”
“Our organs sing in different keys / like sirens in a sea of blood. / The body feels before it knows.”