Poetry Far and Wide
Next week we’re celebrating the publication of In the Shape of a Human Body I Am Visiting the Earth: Poems from Far and Wide. Founding editors of McSweeney’s Poetry Series, Dominic Luxford and Jesse Nathan, join Ilya Kaminsky in reading from this collection of their favorite poems from around the world and across generations.
Since we’re talking about poetry from far and wide, I wanted to take this moment to remind everyone of our large collection of free online content—published as Online Exclusives. You can search through our archives by language, genre, and issue, which is super convenient if, like me, you wanted to peruse our poetry archives. In preparation for next week’s event, I started thinking about my own favorite poems from our archives. Here are a few poems from far and wide that I’m still thinking about.
a language wrecker
laboring nearby
the murk of order has no bottom.
—from “Language Wrecker” by Galina Rymbu, translated from Russian by Jonathan Brooks Platt
your smile which stretches so far back
that to emerge will finally be
a useful and strident verb
—from “Cities really” by Nicole Brossard, translated from French by Sylvain Gallais & Cynthia Hogue
When I split it, the water runs like pollen
—from “Voices of Summer” by Chika Sagawa, translated from Japanese by Sawako Nakayasu
A silence worse than hopelessness
Even the sound of a leaf makes my body tremble
—from “Change” by Ngo Tu Lap, translated from Vietnamese by Martha Collins
When it was close and had found its way . . .
the sound of its breathing
and the scent by the door told of it.
—from “Wolves, Also” by Ghassan Zaqtan, translated from Arabic by Fady Joudah
Sarah Coolidge received her BA in comparative literature from Bard College. She enjoys reading books in Spanish and English, and she writes essays on photography and international literature.
