Samuel is an older man, so perhaps it’s the tenderness of length-of-days that shapes his recollection of Mary’s gaze on her toddler, a gaze—according to Samuel—informed by a premonition of Jesus’s death, and the same look with which she now regards Him. No mind is me dat make him up, Samuel’s reassurance to Jesus that His mother knows He doesn’t want to leave her in this way, moves me deeply...
Pamela Mordecai on "Station IV: Jesus Meets His Mother" |
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"In Bad Faith: Notes on Fidelity in Translation"
"As so often happens with translation, the only way to be faithful was to be unfaithful. In this case, in order to be faithful to Fabre’s novel, I had to be unfaithful to the San Juan that English speakers have known for decades....Initially I cowered behind versions of the poems cobbled together from existing translations, adding a few of my own cosmetic adjustments. But that approach wasn’t working, so I went back to the drawing board."
via POETS & WRITERS |
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What Sparks Poetry:
Nathan Spoon on Language as Form
"'I Have a Vision for My Poems' belongs to a series of Sylvia Plath found poems Nazifa Islam is writing 'to dissect, examine, and explore the bipolar experience.' The poem exemplifies how Islam is using this series to openly connect with a disabled ancestor, which is important because, while various cognitive disabilities have probably existed as long as humans have, the language to frame and see them as distinct embodiments and identities has not." |
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