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Adventures in Reading 2018
Old Reading Room at BookBar (Photo: Tricia M.) Let me admit up front that I’ve included half a dozen books here that were read as part of my work with the Professional Creative Writing program at University College. But they all turned out to be worthwhile reading experiences. Even those I couldn’t quite connect with—Juan Gelman’s The Poems of Sidney West, Ben Lerner’s Angle of Yaw, and Adonis’s powerful Concerto al-Quds, which is also recondite and nakedly anguished by turns—continue to haunt me. This is usually an early indicator of re-readings in the offing.Read More
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Indispensable Neruda
What can I say? If there’s an indispensable 20th century poet it’s Pablo Neruda. With all his flaws, as a person and a poet (but “what soul is without flaws?”, as Rimbaud asked rhetorically), Neruda’s poems are illuminations. He’s been translated by everybody, it seems, but among his best servants in that regard has been William O’Daly. Here are a couple of poems from O’Daly’s 2008 translation of The Hands of Day. Bird Here in the tree it sings. It is a solitary bird, lifelong,full of water that falls,of crazy light that climbs,of guttural crystal,of ceaseless trill.Read More