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Mann & Sexton Wednesday, Nov. 8: Don’t Miss It!
TRANSLATE with x English Arabic Hebrew Polish Bulgarian Hindi Portuguese Catalan Hmong Daw Romanian Chinese Simplified Hungarian Russian Chinese Traditional Indonesian Slovak Czech Italian Slovenian Danish Japanese Spanish Dutch Klingon Swedish English Korean Thai Estonian Latvian Turkish Finnish Lithuanian Ukrainian French Malay Urdu German Maltese Vietnamese Greek Norwegian Welsh Haitian Creole Persian var LanguageMenu; var LanguageMenu_keys=[“ar”,”bg”,”ca”,”zh-CHS”,”zh-CHT”,”cs”,”da”,”nl”,”en”,”et”,”fi”,”fr”,”de”,”el”,”ht”,”he”,”hi”,”mww”,”hu”,”id”,”it”,”ja”,”tlh”,”ko”,”lv”,”lt”,”ms”,”mt”,”no”,”fa”,”pl”,”pt”,”ro”,”ru”,”sk”,”sl”,”es”,”sv”,”th”,”tr”,”uk”,”ur”,”vi”,”cy”]; var LanguageMenu_values=[“Arabic”,”Bulgarian”,”Catalan”,”Chinese Simplified”,”Chinese Traditional”,”Czech”,”Danish”,”Dutch”,”English”,”Estonian”,”Finnish”,”French”,”German”,”Greek”,”Haitian Creole”,”Hebrew”,”Hindi”,”Hmong Daw”,”Hungarian”,”Indonesian”,”Italian”,”Japanese”,”Klingon”,”Korean”,”Latvian”,”Lithuanian”,”Malay”,”Maltese”,”Norwegian”,”Persian”,”Polish”,”Portuguese”,”Romanian”,”Russian”,”Slovak”,”Slovenian”,”Spanish”,”Swedish”,”Thai”,”Turkish”,”Ukrainian”,”Urdu”,”Vietnamese”,”Welsh”]; var LanguageMenu_callback=function(){ }; var LanguageMenu_popupid=’__LanguageMenu_popup’; TRANSLATE with COPY THE URL BELOW Back EMBED THE SNIPPET BELOW IN YOUR SITE Enable collaborative features and customize widget: Bing Webmaster Portal Back var intervalId = setInterval(function () { if (MtPopUpList)…Read More
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Library Adventures 1
Philippe Jaccottet Distances Swifts turn in the heights of the air;higher still turn the invisible stars.When day withdraws to the ends of the earththeir fires shine on a dark expanse of sand. We live in a world of motion and distance.The heart flies from tree to bird,from bird to distant star,from star to love; and love growsin the quiet house, turning and working,servant of thought, a lamp held in one hand. —Philippe Jaccottet, Selected Poemstr.Read More
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Man Meets Dog
Here’s an extraordinary poem by Irish poet Pat Boran. You can read it and hear Boran read it.Read More
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Reading Into and the Avant-Garde
Jacket Magazine has published a peculiarly passive-aggressive 4,000-plus word response by Jeffrey Side to a 193 word statement by Seamus Heaney, quoted from Heaney’s interview with Dennis O’Driscoll as published in Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney. (The interview is no longer available online, alas.) Here is the Heaney excerpt; his initial “it” refers to the term “avant-garde”: It’s an old-fashioned term by now. In literature, nobody can cause bother any more. John Ashbery was a kind of avant-garde poet certainly and now he’s become a mainstream voice.Read More
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Thingyness
Here’s an imaginal excerpt from a wonderful, long profile by Robert McCrum of the great Irish poet Seamus Heaney. It’s Heaney’s response to McCrum’s question (the most common question asked of every poet, I think): “Where does poetry come from?” “I think it comes from all the other poetry that’s there,” [Heaney] replies.Read More
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A Tribute to Michael Hartnett
Irish poet Michael Hartnett passed away 10 years ago, and today The Irish Times offers this rich remembrance by his friend and fellow poet, Michael Smith.Read More
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On the Poet’s Role
After two absurdly relaxing weeks in Mexico I am only just now digging out from under emails, backlogged paperwork—you know the routine. But before the weekend overtakes me I want to pass along one of the most evocative meditations I’ve read about the role of the poet: Eavan Boland’s “Islands Apart: A Notebook”, from the latest (May 2008) issue of Poetry.Read More
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The Astonishing Sinéad Morrissey
I don’t remember how I first head of the young Irish poet Sinéad Morrissey, but I’m grateful to Serendipity for sending her work my way. Her first two collections, There Was a Fire in Vancouver and Between Here and There are lively and adventurous, but her third, The State of the Prisons, places her among the half-dozen finest poets of her generation. That book’s eponymous poem, subtitled “A History of John Howard, Prison Reformer, 1726-1790,” is a masterpiece, but it’s too long to quote here.Read More
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On The Incorrection
A couple of weeks ago I received my copy of Canadian poet George McWhirter’s new collection of poems, The Incorrection, and I’ve savored my way through it, first at one serial go, then dipping in and out like a sandpiper nibbling amidst sliding sea foam at the beach.* There is no way to summarize, coherently characterize, or anatomize this collection. First, it is large: 186 pages, or roughly three of what we’ve come to accept as average-in-length poetry books.Read More