Online Exclusives

Whenever I find myself falling into the same compositional habits (the same words, same form, same sentence structure), I go back to translation, then back to writing, and I feel a renewed appreciation of this magical space where anything is possible.

"I think that being a poet means being a translator, even if he or she doesn't speak another language. I translate images, sensations, effluences into words."

  "Iambic pentameter and rhyme—not just end rhyme but internal resonances—provided a foundation of sonic texture that worked in English and that was different though perhaps parallel to the music of the Polish."

the fog the wind speed the repetitions was it you who saw the bodies the animal sequence of the frieze the fog the ruin of juniper was it you who decided which instruments which rusted snares which chains stayed outside the frame which screams outside audible frequency?

"I suppose that’s the important thing, that I translate something I want to read."

Without a return there’s no suitcase, and journeys with no return are timeless, not really taking place in the future and certainly not in the present.

I leave the café and call Hanna Krall. “It could be yet another list of Jewish women, real names and adopted ones. Lists like that get passed around, so do be careful, Mariusz…” “I’m always careful what I say.” “I know you are, but they might react with terror. You know what? Best leave that list and those women in peace.”

I saw a rat pass. Or the shadow of a bat flying low. It was something. Some evidence of a world of callous textures.

The four who face me, glaring. An astronaut, a shepherdess-poet, a village pianist, a woman in furs who rests her chin on the palm of her hand. It would be better to address them, familiarly: You have all witnessed or loved space.

But the sea was reopened, the sea was broken by a rudder’s thrust at a harbor’s entry without a country

I hear water racking its brains as it slices through spume.

Ahoy, I will tend to the tingling of being by tapping on my soul.