Once awake, I tend to like it.
A puddle can recognize me. Then I look up
and I'm as anonymous as the sky.
And yet, in my hands, this terrible orb glows.
The ships, it reports, can now sail
straight through the Arctic, filthy bears
dinging to shriveling rafts of ice.

Tell me the truth, what does anyone care
inside the barber shop this morning
where everyone wants the regular again,
combs swimming in little blue aquariums.
What if this isn't late capitalism, but early?

One idea is to set the clocks ahead
one hour so we're closer to knowing
how it turns out. Another is the Roman ides,
or the 72 ko of Japan. Mist starts to linger.
Great rains sometimes fall.
The Buddhists have a word for it,
but the moment it's defined,
the thing itself vanishes.

The more we ask of this world
rises up through us, like an evaporation.
When I asked you what day it was,
you said the day after yesterday.
No matter where we move the glass vase,
it leaves a ring.
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Head shot of Emily Wilson
The Lure of Homer

Emily Wilson, the first woman to translate the complete text of The Odyssey into English, embarks on The Iliad. "I don’t see myself as serving an individual named Homer. I see myself as serving multiple texts at the same time, both the original and also the text I’m trying to give birth to. I’m in service of both the past and the future." 

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What Sparks Poetry:
John Cotter on Bill Knott’s "(Sergey) (Yesenin) Speaking (Isadora) (Duncan)"

"I realized eventually the intensity of my hero worship was too unwieldy, though only about six or seven months after my friends did. I also knew I’d never find my own voice if I kept imitating Bill’s. I pushed off toward other mentors—no one I interacted with personally, just voices in books—but it was never the same. Poetry was too lonely without Bill in my head." 
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