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Mexico Books 2009: Let the Truth Be Told
I promised in an earlier post to write about the second book I read in Mexico this year, Nicanor Parra’s After-Dinner Declarations. But every time I try to write about the book I get stuck: Parra’s book is brilliant but, for me at least, unsummarizable. The collection contains five long poems in the form of speeches, which Parra actually delivered on various occasions.Read More
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Graveside in Damascus
In the recently released A Levant Journal, translated by Roderick Beaton from the Greek of Nobel Prize winning poet George Seferis, the great poet visits the grave of Jane Digby (a.k.a. “Ianthe”) in Damascus. As so often in his journals, Seferis produces what amounts to a prose poem—a brief description full of suggestive disturbances. He is incapable, it seems, of shallow writing. It was getting dark, a wind was blowing. Between the grave and the surrounding wall was a great walnut tree heavy with ripening fruit.Read More
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Nut-Case Update
“Thirteen people have been arrested in Turkey as part of an investigation into an ultra-nationalist gang reported to be planning the assassination of Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk.” ==> Full Article HereRead More
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Pick Up the Phone!
Just finished reading Adrienne Rich’s excellent new collection, Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth (if you know of a better book title from the past year, I’d like to hear about it). Here’s an insightful review that gets to the heart of what makes this book, and Rich’s work overall, continually powerful and refreshing. Her sympathies reach far beyond feminism or politics in the narrow sense, and in the process produce a kind of poetry that seems to move beyond the subjective/objective, interior/exterior dichotomy by bearing witness to our historical/existential moment.Read More
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No Bull Prizes
On his very entertaining blog, the wonderful poet Bill Knott posted his top 10 poet choices for the Nobel Prize. It’s a fun exercise! Here are my ten, in descending order of age (on the theory that we should honor them before they’re dead): Nicanor ParraAndrea ZanzottoCarolyn KizerW. S.Read More