Category Archives: News

Jeet Thayil, poet of the Bombay streets

He handed me the headphones. The music was high- pitched, like the sound track of a movie in which random scenes had been strung together, or cut up and played backwards, or deliberately placed out of order. Bottles clinked and a door creaked open. A shot rang out. A child whispered, is he here? Where […]

Tagged , | Comments Off on Jeet Thayil, poet of the Bombay streets

“Flight Into Egypt,” by Joseph Brodsky, translated by Melissa Green

…where the drover came from, no one knew. Their affinity made the heavens slate the desert for a miracle. There, they chose to light a fire and camp, the cave in a vortex of snow. Not divining his role, the Infant drowsed in a halo of curls that would quickly become accustomed to radiance. Its […]

Tagged , , | Comments Off on “Flight Into Egypt,” by Joseph Brodsky, translated by Melissa Green

“mehitabel dances with boreas,” by Don Marquis

On a hibernal note, a cockroach types, regarding his friend Mehitabel the cat: well boss i saw mehitabel last evening she was out in the alley dancing on the cold cobbles while the wild december wind blew through her frozen whiskers and as she danced she wailed and sang to herself uttering the fragments that […]

Tagged | Comments Off on “mehitabel dances with boreas,” by Don Marquis

“Live Like a Poet! At Home in the Bateau Lavoir,” by Rosanna Warren

On April 13, 1904, Pablo Picasso and his friend the Catalan painter Sebastià Junyer Vidal travelled from Barcelona to Paris and installed themselves in Montmartre in the studio just vacated by the Basque ceramicist and sculptor Paco Durrio. Junyer Vidal paid the rent. Called “La Maison du Trappeur” (The Trapper’s House), later renamed Le Bateau […]

Tagged | 11 Comments

“Arcanum” by William Logan

As soon as I see the word arcanum in any proposition, I begin to suspect it. —Descartes   Like Hegel’s cows, chewing in the final dark of reason, a domestic passion lies within the salus of a language. Writing is a privacy. I seal up that child of silence; it turns its blank, dull face […]

Tagged | Comments Off on “Arcanum” by William Logan

More Rozewicz!

We considered the work of Polish poet Tadeusz Rozewicz in February, when Norton published a major new selected poems translated by Joanna Trzeciak. Now arrives from Anvil the third edition of their selection of Rozewicz, They Came to See a Poet, translated by Adam Czerniawski and first published in 1982. How interesting!  There is rather […]

Tagged , | Comments Off on More Rozewicz!

On Grief, Kathrin Stengel

In my love for the other, I desire death and life at the same time: death because I want to balance out the injustice of his death, and life because now I have a completely different appreciation for it. And even though the urge to live is stronger than the wish to die, life from […]

Tagged , | Comments Off on On Grief, Kathrin Stengel

Faiz Ahmed Faiz, 100 Years

This year marks the centenary of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, the great poet of modern Urdu. Faiz was born in a small Punjabi village in British India and studied English and Arabic literature in Lahore before becoming a prominent public intellectual and advocate for an independent Pakistan. He is celebrated for expanding the traditional Urdu forms […]

Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Faiz Ahmed Faiz, 100 Years

Turkey’s Melih Cevdet Anday

Atom translated by Sidney Wade and Efe Murad H My house has one room Inside it a lunatic turns and turns Electron Now here now on the other side of the moon Both here and behind the moon Nucleus I knocked on the door of a lighthouse A nutcase opened it   Voice translated by […]

Tagged , | Comments Off on Turkey’s Melih Cevdet Anday

Poems by Turkey’s Yahya Kemal

Evening Music translated by Sidney Wade and Yurdanur Salman   In the antique gardens of Kandilli, As the evening settles, veil over veil, The aching pleasures of memory prevail. No one comes or watches from balconies. In the middle of a lonely road the breeze Is toying with the October leaves. The hours deeper and […]

Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Poems by Turkey’s Yahya Kemal