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Megan Nichols
If everyone in the dream is you
(and everyone in the dream is you)
then when you stand naked in the classroom,
you are the classmates, the teacher, and the flesh.
And when your mother drowns you in the tub
you are the mother, the child, and the bathwater.
And when all your teeth fall out at once, think
of yourself as not just the Chiclets clattering
to the tile, not just the empty mouth gaping, gums
softening like frozen yogurt melt. No, think
of yourself as the fall too, not the thing that will fall,
or the thing that has fallen, not the force behind
the falling, nor the thing that falls. You are the verb,
the act of, the motion as it moves.
from the journal THE THREEPENNY REVIEW
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"Why Translators are Battling for Recognition"

“Translation is an art, and it takes me just as long to translate a poem as it takes for me to write an original one in English. I have to work hard to research the poet, the times they’re living in, and the literary forms they’re working in, then find creative ways to convey the spirit of their work in English. Classic Chinese poetry has many cultural idioms, archaic diction, and completely different grammar and syntactical structures to English.”

via THE GUARDIAN
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Cover of the translation of Rene Char's The Brittle Age and Returning Upland
What Sparks Poetry:
Jody Gladding on René Char's The Brittle Age and Returning Upland 

"There are other more comprehensive volumes of Char’s work in translation....But this one offers a wonderful bookness. There’s an integrity to the object, the physical form with the page as its basic unit, the short poems set in that space, nothing to distract me as I turn the page, or don’t. It fits in the hand, rests on a shelf, travels in a pack."
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