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One day eighteen years ago, a senior colleague at the small South Carolina college where I taught found more than $300,000 worth of stripped Penguin paperbacks at a local thrift shop. Other than the piece of each cover that had been sliced off, the books were in excellent condition, but the prison to which they…
The neutral corner is one of the two corners of the ring not used by boxers between rounds. It is also the corner a boxer must retreat to after he has floored his opponent. The Neutral Corner was also a bar in Saratoga Springs, New York, that I frequented when at Yaddo in the late…
Why is it that most American poets know very little about contemporary poetry from Britain and Ireland? A good number of them are published in Britain; they give readings at festivals in the UK and Ireland where they’re able to meet and hear the work of their British and Irish counterparts. Many of the poets…
In the fall of 2012, I received a call from my friend, the painter Pat de Groot. She told me that Neil Astley was visiting her in Provincetown with the artist and filmmaker, Pamela Robertson-Pearce, and she asked if I wanted to meet them. Of course I did. I had admired Bloodaxe books for years,…
original Gaelic poem with English translation by the author mo chasan a’ leughadh leabhar-cumha ruadh an fhoghair my feet reading the russet elegy-book of autumn eòlas nan dùil sgrìobhte ann an làmh rèimeil nan tùs ag innse dhomh gu’n d’fhiach an sgeul ath-aithris, nach eil anns an lobhadh ach bruadar knowledge of hopes written in…
original Irish poem with English translation by Gillian Clarke ar ôl “Bird Watching” R. S. Thomas after “Bird Watching” by R. S. Thomas A daeth taith fawr ddwsinau o ddrudwns i ben. It’s long journey’s end for a murmuration of starlings. Nid sbienddrych o bell yn gorwelio eu plu sy. Ond heddiw seicdreiddwyr eu…
original Irish poem with English translation by the author faiteadh súile feithide i bhforaois fearthainne i mBorneó the blink of an insect’s eye in the rain forest of Borneo chuir gála gaoithe ag réabadh na tíre, ag pleancadh scioból tuí set gale force winds ripping the country, battering tin sheds is monarchan iata, scoileanna réamhdhéanta…
Imperative: to anchor in the present, stay alive to every now— the currency of beat and breath with which you pay for every stolen step. * Of sound: a mortal music; sick, sweet drop and bounce. * The boys we were becoming something else. How we ripened through the back-and-forth and stretched to test the empty space…
from Çekoslovakyalılaştıramadıklarımızdanmısınız or Long Words, a sequence of poems that take their titles from the English translations of long words in various languages. This poem is drawn from Pinakanakapagpapabagabag-damdamin, a word in Tagalog. is qualified by an inserted parenthesis there is of course a difference between disturbing and upsetting but that is registered…
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