Monthly Archives: April 2011
Tim Parks: Run, don’t walk, then sit
A heartfelt plea: Read immediately Tim Parks’s new book, Teach Us to Sit Still, published today. The book comes disguised as medical self-help or new-age how-to, but it is not: It is an original and courageous exploration of the ravages of the thinking life. Says Coetzee, Teach Us to Sit Still is a “quest for […]
Two Ghazals, translated by Elizabeth T. Gray, Jr.
LS contributor Elizabeth T. Gray, Jr., sends new translations of two ghazals, one by the fourteenth-century master of the form, Hafiz-I Shirazi, and one from 2009, written by poet Simin Behbahani after national elections in Iran ended in mass demonstrations and violent crack-down. Hafiz-i Shirazi GHAZAL [Hijab-i chehr-i jan mishavad ghubar-i manam] The dust of […]
Poets in Their Youth
Scenes from newly published memoirs by Durs Grünbein (The Vocation of Poetry) and Les Murray (Killing the Black Dog). Durs Grünbein: “For me it all started with a noise—a not at all harmless noise—more of an acoustic irritation. The strange thing about it was its suddenness and the rift it left in my overall perception. […]