from “Hunting Manual” by Eleanor Wilner

from her book Shekhinah from “Hunting Manual” …But the hard prey is the one that won’t come bidden. By these signs you will know it: when you lift your lure out of the water, the long plastic line will be missing its end: the lure and the hook will be gone, and the line will [...]

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NaPoMo – April 15 “Poppies”

Poppies From atop the cliff the sun at a certain angle sets them afire, pulsing light hearts beating theirs, and yours, and then the light moves on, you blink and they are shadowed so don’t stop looking hold your breath, feel the thumpa-thump of that good muscle—and the instant becomes as eternal as you risk [...]

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NaPoMo April 7 – notes toward a poem

and by “notes toward” I mean the ideas that may underlie a poem someday. I used to write just like this—have a deep-something-to-say, write it in short lines with rich language and be done. But that’s like scribbling some lyrics and claiming to have a song! But poem-a-day is a difficult pace and often means [...]

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on Adrienne

from Hugh MacDiarmid’s manifesto “The Kind of Poetry I Want,” quoted by Adrienne in her speech/essay “Poetry and Commitment.” A poetry the quality of which Is a stand made against intellectual apathy, Its material founded, like Gray’s, on difficult knowledge And its metres those of a poet Who has studied Pindar and Welsh poetry, But, [...]

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Poetry Wednesday “Anatomy Lesson” by Jan Heller Levi

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Poets on Poets

Vladimir Khodasevich writing about Marina Tsvetaeva: Poets are not born in a country. Poets are born in childhood. What, then, is Russian about Marina Tsvetaeva? Tsvetaeva understood audial and linguistic work that play such an enormous role in folk song. Folk song is for the most part a litany, joyful or grieving. There is an [...]

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Thank you, Mr. Barnstone

When, among a group of translation students, I got to have a long and winding conversation with Willis Barnstone, he said many many smart (as in genius-level) things about translating. One of those has become not only my favorite, but my guiding mantra for poetry: When it seems impossible, try a little harder and it [...]

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Thoughts on translating or why this is so damn difficult

“Poetry is what is lost in translation.” Robert Frost “Poetry is what is gained in translation.” Joseph Brodsky, the Nobel prize winning Russian poet who also spoke several languages. “Poetry is what gets transformed.” Octavio Paz “A poem is a manifestation of an invisible poem that is written beyond languages themselves.” Tomas Transtromer, renowned Swedish [...]

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April 1st – On the difference between a good poem and a great poem

(fess up time – I’ve been working on various drafts of this for a while now, but it finally solidified in re-visions this week, so I’m counting it as my first poem of the month) (2nd fess up – it may actually be prose. or a lyric essay. or a prose poem. it feels like [...]

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Making a Manuscript—Structuring Intuition

Inspired by Michelle Ovalle’s description of her process, a few notes on my own, up to this point. I’ve no idea where the manuscript as it exists will go as I revise over the next few months, but at least I feel now there is something there, some key structural element. When I started last [...]

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