Our photographs swept each other off their invisible feet and hung upon the hooks like wilted violets. Their colours were green and grey sadness; their unblinking eyes reflected the tragic impossibility of closing the gap between fancy and duty.
The void was listening. A faceless portrait muttered: “A man can marry any flower that grows fragrantly, but he will then get filled with its odour. Try to read him and you will see that he is inscribed in invisible ink.”
Nothing looked particularly different that day: the Sun’s eyeball, as green as ever; the ivory architecture of our gadgets spelling desire, and an abdominous red-skinned woman multiplied tenfold in the TV-shop window; singing, “Fate always takes the same shape.”
Tony Kitt on "Sea Oranges" |
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Shortlist for the 2024 National Translation Awards
"The poetry shortlist nominees include: And the Street by Pierre Alferi, translated from French by Cole Swensen, from Green Linden Press; A Friend’s Kitchen by Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi, translated from the Arabic by Bryar Bajalan with the poet Shook, from The Poetry Translation Centre; and Winter King by Ostap Slyvynsky, translated from the Ukrainian by Vitaly Chernetsky and Iryna Shuvalova, from Lost Horse Press."
via LITERARY HUB |
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What Sparks Poetry: Philip Metres on "Qasida for Abdel Wahab Yousif"
"The qasida begins with human longing. The moderns didn’t invent it! It was in the human heart. This is the nasīb, which means 'fate,' the poet is in a nostalgic mood. Sometimes, pursuing the beloved, the poet will come upon the remains of a camp, the beloved’s caravan, causing a consideration of what has passed. If it begins with longing and its endless distances (thanks, Robert Hass), it doesn’t stay there, but rather moves into the trouble of the world." |
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