José Emilio Pacheco: High Treason
I’d die
for ten places,
a few folks,
ports, forests, deserts, forts,
a broken city, gray, monstrous
Pablo Neruda: The Riddles
You have asked me what the crustacean spins between its limbs of gold
and I answer: the sea knows it.
Federico García Lorca: Weeping for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías
García Lorca’s “Weeping for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías” is by far his best known poem in the Spanish speaking world. Why is it not better known in the United States?
Paul Celan: Death Fugue
Black milk of dawn we drink it in the evening
we drink it at noon and in the morning we drink it at night
Eva-Maria Simms, Michael Simms: Translating Rilke
Every thing is protected
by a grace ready for flight,
every stone and flower
every child at night.
Choman Hardi: Homeland, what shall I do with you?
What shall I do with you, homeland?
What shall I do with all this blood?
Where shall I put you
to prevent you from filling my days
with damage and grief?
John Samuel Tieman: Francisco Franco and Chagrin Falls, Ohio
It would be nice if we could convert fascists to democratic republicans. If that fails, it then is absolutely necessary to utterly defeat them.
Pablo Neruda: I’m explaining a few things
Treacherous
generals:
see my dead house,
look at broken Spain
Elizabeth Jacobson: Which Yellow Bird
Just to the right of the lifeguard shack, a couple was fucking on a chaise longue . in the first row of many rows of chairs which had been set … Continue reading
Doug Anderson: Purity and Politics
We live in an age of tarnished idols. Picasso was a womanizer, drunk with his own success, having been born into the pivotal moment of modernism and thus achieving more … Continue reading
Pablo Neruda: Poetry is Rebellion
I have never known how to be eloquent in my appreciation. The world’s magnitude, knowledge, acknowledgement, the joy of a gift received, smooth as a comet’s passing, all this and … Continue reading
Michael Simms: The Very American Poetry of Jose Padua
What are poets for in destitute times? — Hölderlin . Every poem is a subversive act. In an age when our senses are benumbed by competing media screaming for our … Continue reading
