When I was twenty, me and a friend couchsurfed our way through the Midwest. My dad was due to have a serious operation back home in London. I thought about the far-ness of the landscape: far from either coast, far from centres of commerce, far from history. All I could see in the flat disc of the sky was judgment.
Margaret Atwood reflects on time and art in a new essay and poem. "Reputations and styles rise and fall, books get spurned and burned, then unearthed and recycled, and today’s singer for eternity is likely to end up as the day after tomorrow’s fire starter, just as the day after tomorrow’s fire starter may be snatched from the flames, extolled and embossed on a plinth."
Poetry Daily stands with the Black community. We oppose racism, oppression, and police brutality. We will continue to amplify diverse voices in the poetry world. Black Lives Matter.
"I chose to translate this whole book rather than another selected edition because, although composed of individual poems, It Must Be a Misunderstanding is really a deeply affecting book-length work whose force builds as the poems cycle through their sequences. The 'plot' follows a general trajectory—from early to late Alzheimer’s—with non-judgmental affection and compassionate watchfulness."
