Infinitive
Joan Naviyuk Kane
There is nothing sentimental
in this forest. A squall, birch
boughs sibilant. Some hearth
upwind glut with wet wood.

You, taken with a fine polish,
should have wed the woman
you would have loved: nothing
in this forest. Sentimental,

I dwelt once beneath a linden tree
sprung up between leaves of mica,
scaffolds, lanes of passing traffic.
Its redolence stifling & flawless,

conditional. I do not miss it.
Torn from a tangled understory
underfoot, a scud of clubmoss
spores blown burns rapid, right.
from the book EX MACHINA / Staircase Books
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"Voiding the Ego: Charlotte Mandell on Translating Paul Valéry"

"There are so many different ways of translating poetry, and there are so many different ways of translating these 'Pensées,' so that was hard to grapple with, finding the right word, finding the right way of saying something. And I’m not sure I did, because I think there’s always room for improvement—it can always be retranslated. I think it would be interesting to do lots of different translations of this one book. I wish that there was a publisher that would pay for that."

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What Sparks Poetry: Soham Patel on Language as Form

"Place is a process with past(s), present(s), and future(s) that, according to geographer Doreen Massey, can be fragmented, dislocated, forgotten and reformed. Massey’s thinking through place in this era of super speedy space-time compression helps shape my sense of a poem’s ability to attend to place as an unending yet impermanent entity. A poem is a place where space-time compression must occur, and why place in all its durations inspires me."
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