Literature in Translation |
“The Brave Ones” & “The Scientists Are Wrong”
“It’s my opinion that the world is created everyday / from all kinds of matter, each unrelated to the other / and their only correlation some quantitative relationship.”
Poetry |
The Poets of Martha’s Vineyard, part 1
“And the moon looked down upon this unintelligible muck / With not a thought for geraniums, nor madmen, nor landladies / And sighed.”
Poetry |
“Lapsed Priest”
“Today, as a gift, / I gave my mother a book / on angels. / That was a mistake. / We sat there / looking at the wings in the paintings.”
Poetry |
“Initiation”
“The idea / was to hold my breath / and relax, limb to limb, / until someone, ideally / my mother, looked / up from their weight / loss magazine / in horror …”
Poetry |
“Where To Perish”
“Use rusty nails and shells for toenails. / Spiderwebs move into her stitches. // Blend bamboo and voodoo for the updo. / Baleen etched on iridescent abalone.”
Poetry |
“Turning In”
“And how to write to you who would never read this, / to limit the language so that I might reach you on earth and also in this pretend.”
Poetry |
“Exodus,” “Rubies,” “We Were Supposed to Share” & “Slowness”
“But I’m now tattered sliced / assaulted. / The gulls cry as if they miss / water yet it’s near. / What if you’re the water I miss?”
Poetry |
“Requiem,” “Breviary” & “Causa Sui”
“At the funeral mass, my father asked me to tie his tie. / A parishioner approached, and asked him who died. / My wife, he said, every word an elevation to climb.”
Poetry |
“Sometimes It’s Good to Stop Talking”
“I solved all the problems, all / the road blocks // to world peace, yesterday, while / under the influence // at the dentist.”
Literature in Translation |
“Beyond Time”
“Life descends, we can walk / The footstep illuminates / The immense fear of being oneself in time // Our two almond hands are steel gates // And, look, how all the love of forests was needed / To adopt the eyes of the invisible.”
Poetry |
“Self-Portrait as Sarcophagus with Nail File and Anger,” “The End” & “Body Language”
“It felt so stupid to be afraid / of you. Still does. / Thinking I would be safe / if I became the place to hide.”
Literature in Translation |
on Translating Robert Seethaler’s The Café With No Name, with an excerpt from the novel
“I’d like to see a more diverse field where people join the translation profession from many different backgrounds, rather than only via academia or publishing contacts.”
Poetry |
“Hotel-Dieu,” “Fine” & “The Mockingbird Was Doing the Jay”
?I’m addressing you, invader of my dream, / with your guns-and-God tattoo, your slow car // driving over the day lilies, circling back / to mock my lawn sign’s love …”
Essay |
“The Angry Estate Gardener” & “Exercise After a Long Flight”
“The gardener raged, rattled high-speed after the Porsche — in a pickup truck hitched to a trailer full of fertilizer. He pursued, but didn’t come close …”
Poetry |
“These are some of the poems I read today,” “I went to the museum and stood staring at a chicken,” “If only the cute nannies at the park would trade glances at me” & “In Alice Notley’s poem ‘I must have called and so he comes'”
“Then I sat reading a book about the women who clean / other people’s houses, written by one of the women / homeowners. I thought about how the world is divided / between the books you start to read and the ones you don’t.”