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 [...]

Read Full Post »

NaPoMo April 5th “you don’t believe in god, but”

(Warning to casual blog readers – this is really explicit about violence against girls. Don’t read on if, right now, you just can’t go there) you don’t believe in god, but run down the hall      dart in the room           close the door           block it with your whole body run down the hall      dart in the [...]

Read Full Post »

The first Shez translations have been published!

The Spring 2012 Issue of Trivia went live today, including the first four Shez translations to ever appear in English! I’m so happy! And, when I asked that the Hebrew be included, the editors worked hard to find a way to make that happen. Go read ‘em, and stay to take in the other great [...]

Read Full Post »

Poetry Wednesday: “Jerusalem” by Naomi Shihab Nye

Read Full Post »

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 [...]

Read Full Post »

National Coming Out, 1987

National Coming Out, 1987 Elliott batTzedek Swallowing charcoal swill I,I,I, couldn’t say why she took the pill bottle instead of the pill, only that I didn’t mean to die. She, the smart girl, always so smart, oh how she burst apart heart’s juice run thin mopped up off the kitchen floor with unused tickets for [...]

Read Full Post »

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 [...]

Read Full Post »

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, [...]

Read Full Post »

On Casey Anthony and Incest Statistics

On Casey Anthony and Incest Statistics Look, I don’t know what happened in Florida years ago. A child is dead. I wish for her sake that the death was a painless accident, one with no fear, violence, terror. I am not being callous when I say that so many many children are dead, ones the [...]

Read Full Post »

Translation Revision – Shez’ “The Excuse of Literature”

See my most recent translation here With input from poet and translator Ruth Artman-Breindler, with whom I might be working, a deep revision of my first attempt. I have to go back and re-do the learning I once did about verb forms, because I mistranslated as first person what was actually “to me” in second [...]

Read Full Post »