Tag Archives: Poetry
Gro Dahle
I bend, cringe. I am less than a normal person. I am a child. Less than a child. I am an ape. I am a dog. Less than a dog. A cat. A rabbit. I am a turtle. A frog. No, less than a frog. A grasshopper. A …………….beetle. I am a wood louse that hides […]
Writers: Gro Dahle
P is for Poetry, a definition of sorts from Edward Hirsch
POETRY An inexplicable (though not incomprehensible) event in language; an experience through words. Jorge Luis Borges believed that “poetry is something that cannot be defined without oversimplifying it. It would be like attempting to define the color yellow, love, the fall of leaves in autumn.” Even Samuel Johnson maintained, “To circumscribe poetry by a definition will […]
Writers: Edward Hirsch
Welcome Derek Walcott!
Derek Walcott is arriving in New York for a week of readings, and we wanted to mark the occasion by rounding up all we have had to offer of his work over the years, for your delectation: • Poems in Issue #1 • Translation of a Christmas Poem by Joseph Brodsky • Performance of his play, […]
Writers: Derek Walcott
Sohrab Sepehri
This week in Little Star Weekly we feature a poem from the Persian of Sohrab Sepehri. Tonight I will say farewell. I have spoken to my neighbors through the wide-open window but don’t understand what they are talking about. Sohrab Sepehri was born in 1928 in Kashan, Iran, and was trained as a painter. In […]
Writers: Kazim Ali, Mohammad Jafar Mahallati, Sohrab Sepehri
Max Jacob Extravaganza!
In February 1912, the newly fledged Futurist painters (Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Luigi Russolo, and Gino Severini—those who had signed the first two Futurist manifestos of painting), led by the poet and publicist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, had held their first Parisian exhibit, at the Galerie Bernheim, provoking several tart articles by Apollinaire. The […]
Writers: Max Jacob, Rosanna Warren
One poem by Derek Walcott: Glyn Maxwell
Most poets, when they leaf back through their work to select the Best of Themselves, tend to want grown-ups around: poems from not so long ago, poems that show what the poet came to, what he or she did when he or she grew up, poems they can talk to. The awkward youngsters in the […]
Writers: Derek Walcott, Glyn Maxwell
One of the most relentlessly and funnily experimental writers of our time
Here is the much-missed David Markson, author of Wittgenstein’s Mistress and other great, unclassifiable works, on Kenneth Bernard, in Little Star Weekly this week: One of the most relentlessly and funnily experimental writers of our time. Kenneth Bernard is one of the most gloriously antic fiction writers we possess. Think of Salvador Dali or Giorgio […]
Writers: David Markson, Kenneth Bernard
Flight into Egypt (2), by Joseph Brodsky, translated by Seamus Heaney
In the cave—it sheltered them, at least, safer than four square-set right angles— in the cave the threesome felt secure in the reek of straw and old clobber. Straw for bedding. Outside the door, blizzard, sandstorm, howling air, Mule rubbed ox; they stirred and groaned like sand and snowflake scourged in wind. Mary prays; the […]
Writers: Joseph Brodsky, Seamus Heaney
On the production and consumption of pierogis, by Tomasz Rozycki
In honor of familial feasting of all kinds we thought we would offer the great Pierogi Divertimento from Tomasz Rozycki’s book-length modern-day epic Twelve Stations, which we sampled in large part in Little Star #4 and will shortly appear in its entirety, in Bill Johnston’s translation, from Zephyr Press. It suffices to know that Twelve […]
Writers: Bill Johnston, Tomasz Różycki
Maria Stepanova in Little Star
This week we welcome Maria Stepanova to these shores by featuring her poem “Fish” from our forthcoming Little Star #5 (2014). Stepanova is not only a great poet but she’s also the courageous founder of Colta.ru, Russia’s most respected independent magazine of ideas. Colta is using crowd-funding to maintain its autonomy and elude Putinian restrictions […]
Writers: Maria Stepanova, Sasha Dugdale