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 [...]

Read Full Post »

consider what must be happening when we set out to produce a poem

There are no more two distinct brain sides than there are two distinct genders. Why would that surprise anyone who’s ever created anything? from “A Moment’s Thought” by Ellen Bryant Voigt in her excellent collection The Flexible Lyric The recent bicameral (and thoroughly Nietzschean) model—right brain for intuition, emotion, art, and music; left brain for [...]

Read Full Post »

The Language Issue – Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill

The Language Issue Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill translated by Paul Muldoon I place my hope on the water in this little boat of the language, the way a body might put an infant in a basket of intertwined iris leaves, its underside proofed with bitumen and pitch, then set the whole thing down amidst the sedge [...]

Read Full Post »

Blackberry Eating

Blackberry Eating by Galway Kinnell I love to go out in late September among the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries to eat blackberries for breakfast, the stalks very prickly, a penalty they earn for knowing the black art of blackberry making; and as I stand among them lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest [...]

Read Full Post »

On adjectives

a continuation of my poetic love affair with Ellen Bryant Voigt and because it makes me think, hard, about how language works Nouns are the strongest parts of speech; without nouns, there is no poem, maybe no language: if language points to or names, then the nomen is language. The noun is the source of [...]

Read Full Post »

new work – On finding a kindred spirit in Sappho, then

On finding a kindred spirit in Sappho, then knowing too much anthropology to trust my own instincts Elliott batTzedek I have had not one word from her Frankly I wish I was dead Sappho (Barnard translation) Times change cultures change languages change but the human heart remains the same. As if! As if we don’t [...]

Read Full Post »

Notes on Paul Celan and translating

from a lecture on Saturday by Mihaela Moscaliuc Paul Celan was a Jewish writer and Holocaust survivor whose family was killed as first the Soviets and then the Germans occupied his land. He grew up in what was then Romania, speaking German at home, later Russian and Romanian in school. His parents were deported in [...]

Read Full Post »

Notes on Dickinson, Poetry and Language

from our afternoon lecture by Anne Marie Macari -language is hypothesis and experiment -poetic language expands our boundaries -metaphor is instinctual groping Dickinson’s definition of “redemption” is those things that force us into immediate experience, to the embodied, physical realm Dickinson would improvise for hours on the keyboard, and was a singer with perfect pitch [...]

Read Full Post »