Poetry
Two poems by James Scully — There Is No Truth to the Rumor Donatello’s Version THERE IS NO TRUTH TO THE RUMOR there is no truth to the rumor the Constitution’s a goddamned piece of paper it’s not vegetable, but animal dressed as parchment– invented in Pergamon in not yet Turkey 3rd century BCE when…
Read Full Article...“On High” by Paulo Henriques Britto (translated from the Portuguese by Idra Novey) “I Have Been Calling Them” and “Faders” by Vivian Demuth Paulo Henriques Britto (Translated from the Portuguese by Idra Novey) On High I Even the world doesn’t fit within the slender space consigned to it. All things overflow their borders. (And so…
Read Full Article...Translated from the Spanish by Jonathan Cohen Poets to come! orators, singers, musicians to come! Not to-day is to justify me and answer what I am for, But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than before known, Arouse! for you must justify me. * * * Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan…
Read Full Article...Martín Espada The Soldiers in the Garden The God of the Weatherbeaten Face Anne Waldman Corset 5 Female Poets Next to a Block of Ice Martín Espada The Soldiers in the Garden Isla Negra, Chile, September 1973 After the coup, the soldiers appeared in Neruda’s garden one night, raising lanterns to interrogate the trees,…
Read Full Article...Alicia Ostriker “A Walker in the City” “Coda: Into the Street” Andy Clausen “Insurgency” A Walker in the City What you see is what you get, an inventory of garbage lying loose– the poor are always with us, but the rich lurk behind one-way glass in limousines and an entire class of attractive youth increasingly…
Read Full Article...Baron Wormser “Carthage Gets Mail” “Carthage’s Diary” Francis Combes “Spain of Blood and Jasmine” (translated from French by Jack Hirschman) Carthage Gets Mail Citizens write letters to Carthage. Mostly they want a smiling, signed photograph. A husband or wife may leave, The IRS may be auditing them, The car may be broke But the President…
Read Full Article...Poetry Poetry Section Contents Suheir Hammad, “a prayer band” Thomas Sayers Ellis, “Groovallegiance” Lorraine Healy, “Where They Were” Stephen Paul Miller, from “I’m Trying to Get My Phony Baloney Ideas about Metamodernism into a Poem” SUHEIR HAMMAD a prayer band every thing you ever paid for you ever worked on you ever received every…
Read Full Article...My first encounter with the poetry of Andrey Gritsman occurred on a cheerless winter night in 2004. Gritsman was giving a poetry reading at the Romanian Cultural Institute in New York City. The RCI had invited him to promote the Romanian translation of one of his recent poetry collections, In Transit (2004). The evening began…
Read Full Article...CATCHER You are a catcher of the lights from your childhood in the apple orchard, a lone patrol with smokes in a tight skirt, reconnaissance detachment. In the afternoon, after the pill wears off your eyes are alert and out there all of them are waiting to be taken into custody, into account, to pay…
Read Full Article...LOGOS EM: Who were your earliest poetic influences? AG: Well, certainly in Russian poetry Lermontov and Pushkin. I would say Vladimir Mayakovsky was very important during my early years, mainly because my father liked him a lot and read his poems to me aloud. To a certain degree Yessenin. In other words, these two giants…
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