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Olivia Elias
Translated from the French by Kareem James Abu-Zeid
In this country the stars were not fixed

they could easily fly off    in a single go    migrate to
regions where happiness    is less precarious

and that's precisely what happened

in fact it was that way with everything    life itself
could fly off    the water stop flowing    the house
and field vanish    just like that    in their place    a
Wall blocking the horizon

a concrete house sprang up    followed soon by
thousands of others    all the same

living nearby was like camping    on the edge of a
volcano ready to blow    at night the lava gushed
out    the wolves prowled    with their teeth bared

the women threw stones    tied knots in their
handkerchiefs    hung blue beads and small crosses
around the children's necks    there were more of
them every day

do you know the sound of an olive tree being
uprooted?

or of a bullet    striking a man    right between the
eyes?



Migration des étoiles

Dans ce pays les étoiles n'étaient pas stabilisée


elles pouvaient tout aussi bien s'envoler d'un seul
coup    migrer vers des contrées où le bonheur est
moins précaire

et c'est ce qui arriva

en fait il en était ainsi de tout    la vie même pou-
vait s'envoler    l'eau s'arrêter de couler    la màison
et le champ s'évanouir    comme ça pschitt    à leur
place    un Mur bouche l'horizon

une maison de béton surgissait    bientôt suivie de
milliers d'autres      toutes semblables

habiter auprès était comme camper    au bord d'un
volcan prêt à exploser    la nuit les laves jaillis-
saient    les loups rôdaient      babines retroussées

les femmes avaient beau lancer des cailloux    faire des
nœuds à leur mouchoir    accrocher des perles bleues
ou de petites croix    au cou des enfants    il y en avait
tous les jours davantage

savez-vous le bruit que fait un olivier qui s'écroule rac-
ines à l'air?

et celui d'une balle frappant un homme en plein front?
from the book CHAOS, CROSSING / World Poetry Books
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"An Interview with Alice Notley"

"At once mobile and highly formally attentive, Notley’s poems synthesize a wide range of poetic tradition(s) while sounding like no one else. Over the course of her career, comprising, at present, over 40 books, Notley has written work ranging from tiny New York School style occasional poems to epic work on the scale of Dante’s Inferno, as in her most recent book, The Speak Angel Series (Fonograf Editions, 2023)."

via POETRY SOCIETY OF AMERICA
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What Sparks Poetry:
Keene Carter on David Ferry's The Odes of Horace


"The genius for a simple clarity is what makes all of Ferry’s Horace and Virgil so commendable, and his verse is proof as well that 'simple clarity' is not 'economy,' nor less and stranger language. That he adds a word or removes a god is hardly worth attacking when the former makes for grace and the latter is a name we neither cared about nor said correctly. Instead, like the King James translators, he understands that another language is another material, and one cannot build a wooden house from marble. The attempt will last forever."
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