understanding my connection to Shez’s poetry

As I’ve been doing final (for now) edits on my translations of Shez’s poems, I keep feeling a kind of haunting—some of her words could be my own; I could definitely interweave the translations and my poems into a single, unified text. Sometimes I even dream about having my work translated into Hebrew and then [...]

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Shez: Literary Alibis

more translating work. There’s an earlier version of this, from when I started in May. I’ve learned a lot in the last few months, and know I have still have so much more to learn. So “Yeah!” for step 2, knowing there’ll be plenty more steps to celebrate along the way… תירוצים ספרותיים כְּשֶׁיַּגִּיּעַ יוֹם [...]

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Translating: “In his love for me” by Shez

I’m working on an MFA in poetry in translation. My translation project is a book of poems by an Israeli Jewish lesbian who writes as Shez. She says of her own work that she writes about being an incest survivor, and wow, does she. Since this has been an important theme in my own work, [...]

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April 30 – If you sit in the woods

If you sit in the woods If you sit in the woods long enough nothing happens just the earth’s breath climbing and descending the tree trunks copper-green in morning light just your own body warming this spot of earth your own heart beating And you begin, like all creatures, to repeat yourself— the same ragged [...]

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April 28 – None of us deserved this revision

None of us deserved this None of us deserved this, but still we’d been tried, judged, pronounced guilty. We’d believed that sexy was a path to power, that all those slasher movie bloodbaths meant nothing. We’d believed that our lives could be more than what it had taken to survive to now, to posting an [...]

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April 20 – Shez “Literary Rationalizations”

UPDATE: see revision at The Excuse of Literature תירוצים ספרותיים כְּשֶׁיַּגִּיּעַ יוֹם הַדִּין לָאָבוֹת הָאוֹנְסִים לֹא תַּגִּידוּ אַף מִלָּה סוֹפְסוֹף תֵּשְׁבוּ בְּשֶׁקֶט וְתִתְּנוּ מָקוֹם לְזַוְעוֹת בְּכְיָהּ שֶׁל הַיַּלְדָּה אֲבָל עַד שֶׁיַּגִּיעַ יוֹם הַדִּין תַּמְשִׁיכוּ לִסְתֹּם לי אֶת הַפֶּה וּלְחַיֵּךְ אֵלַי בְּנִימוּס לֹא תַּדְפִּיסוּ אֶת הַשִׁירים שֶׁלִּי בִּמְקוֹמוֹתֵיכֶם וְתַמְשִׁיכוּ עִם תֵּרוּצֵי סִפְרוּת. Literary Rationalizations Shez, translated [...]

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April 19th – Afikomen/A few things I’ve broken

Afikomen/A few things I’ve broken my father’s car, trying to swing wide      and fast        around the first curve on Stuart Road,        south of 104, trying to impress        Janina Hendricks my Schwinn, bouncing off the back        of Kathy Hodgson’s father’s 72 Buick,        north on Prospect Street, worth it        when she ran to save me the double-wide [...]

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April 12 – a poem for Alexine

Grace Neither divine nor rare, perhaps unexpected, rarely unearned, Grace is our brightest courage shone back at us. She learned to trust by trusting the horse hurtling both of them over fences and walls. And when Rosie died, she found, in her grief, she was not alone. Rosie’s friends, people who came to the pasture, [...]

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April 9th – a Beloit prose poem

a revision, because the first ending was far too simple. On the 4th day of Bio 101, Elliott batTzedek sitting in a hall with more students than my entire high school the professor read to us from a medical journal update about the first person to have died of tetanus in the U.S. in many [...]

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April 5th – found poem, New York Times

Long Island barrier beach, Monday, Found poem from New York Times 4/5/2011 remains of three more people bringing number to eight [not people but] missing prostitutes. Grim December, bodies of four female prostitutes, a fifth last Tuesday. Authorities would not speculate about the identities; four, in their 20s, advertised on Craigslist. Eyewitnesses, phone records, budget [...]

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