What I remember most about translating this poem was the sight of the poem coming off the roof. How am I going to get this poem off the roof? I asked my friend, Tomaž, who was dead. How does it come off the roof? It unglues from the roof, from your eyes, I thought he said. OK, I said to my friend. Then, how does it unglue? I asked him. Span after span, he said, though he was dead. And what about the oar in the grass? I asked. Call it a scull, so it rhymes with the human head. The best of Tomaž Šalamun's poetry reminds me of Lear's fool. Sprightly nonsense to a fawning audience. Bitter news to the mad. And always a roving awareness of language's creatureliness.
Matthew Moore on "Drulovka" |
|
|
"Mark Kyungsoo Bias on How Hip-Hop Influences His Poetry"
"Most of the time when I'm writing, sound comes unconsciously, but that doesn't mean it's a natural skill. When I was growing up, I was a huge fan of hip-hop, and I still am. I listened to Tupac, Lil' Kim, Biggie, Nas, Gangsta Boo. These are artists that I really admire, not just as artists but as writers, as poets....If you listen to lyrics like this every day for years, it's almost a promise that these maneuvers will show up in your work, whether it's consciously or unconsciously."
via LITHUB |
|
|
What Sparks Poetry:
Felicia Zamora on Threa Almontaser's The Wild Fox of Yemen
"I keep returning to 'Heritage Emissary.' The work of this poem cores me. The couplets mimic tensions throughout the entire book with the push/pull of play and intense difficulty juxtaposed. The pluralities of being for multilingual individuals become verb—as in 'When I Arabic my way/ towards them'—and we continue to see the stitch/wound paradox for the voice in, 'I long to play a song that doesn't terrorize,/ a song that's understood.'" |
|
|
|
|
|
|
