Monday, June 15, 2009

790. The Great Wave - Donald Finkel

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The Great Wave at Kamagawa Katsushika Hokusai (1823) But we will take the problem in its most obscure manifestation, and suppose that our sp...
Monday, June 08, 2009

789. Landscape With The Fall of Icarus - William Carlos Williams

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. According to Brueghel when Icarus fell it was spring a farmer was ploughing his field the whole pageantry of the year was awake tingling n...
Saturday, June 06, 2009

788. Ithaca - C. P. Cavafy, 5th translation

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Translated from the Greek by Theoharis C. Theoharis As you set out toward Ithaca, hope the way is long, full of reversals, full of knowing. ...
Monday, May 25, 2009

787. Possible Answers to Prayer - Scott Cairns

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Your petitions—though they continue to bear just the one signature—have been duly recorded. Your anxieties—despite their constant, relativel...
Friday, May 15, 2009

786. Eavan Boland - From the Painting ‘Back from Market’ by Chardin

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Dressed in the colours of a country day - Grey-blue, blue-grey, the white of seagulls’ bodies - Chardin’s peasant woman Is to be found at al...
Monday, May 04, 2009

785. Later - L. E. Sissman

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Two last exhibits must be introduced In evidence, if it please your honor. One, Called "Two Comedians," painted at the end Of Hopp...
Friday, May 01, 2009

784. Brueghel In Naples - Diane Abse

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. About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters: W. H Auden Ovid would never have guessed how far and father's notion about wa...
Sunday, April 26, 2009

783. Annunciation - Kay Smith

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for Kathy (Artist Simone Martini, Sienese painter) In all the old paintings The virgin is reading–– No one know what, When she is disturbed ...
Thursday, April 23, 2009

782. Rubins' Women - Wislawa Szymborska

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Wislawa Szymborska - Rubens' Women (1) Translated from Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh Titanettes, female fauna, naked ...
Tuesday, April 14, 2009

781. Waiting For Icarus - Muriel Rukeyser

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. He said he would be back and we'd drink wine together He said that everything would be better than before He said we were on the edge ...
Monday, March 23, 2009

780. The Sky - Wislawa Szymborska

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Translated from the Polish by Walter Whipple We should have started from this: the sky. A window without a sill, frame, or pane. An opening ...
Monday, March 16, 2009

779. January - Betty Adcock

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. Dusk and snow this hour in argument have settled nothing. Light persists, and darkness. If a star shines now, that shine is swallowed and ...
Friday, March 13, 2009

778. Sisyphus And The Sudden Lightness - Stephen Dunn

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It was as if he had wings, and the wind behind him. Even uphill the rock seemed to move of its own accord. Every road felt like a shortc...
Tuesday, March 10, 2009

777. Letter to Dr. B--, Diane Ackerman

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I have found you among the texts (but not the textures) of your life, in the library of your cunning, where the abstracts of forty papers op...
Thursday, February 26, 2009

776. Thanks - Wislawa Szymborska

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Wislawa Szymborska - Thank-You Note Translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh I owe so much to those I don't ...
Tuesday, February 24, 2009

775. John & Mary - John Dunn

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John & Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who also had never met. —From A Freshman's Short Story...
Thursday, February 19, 2009

774. Night Morning - Grace Paley

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. To translate a poem from thinking into English takes all night night nights and days English down the best it can while the mother...
Sunday, February 15, 2009

773. In Memory of M. B. - Anna Akhmatova

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Translated from the Russian by Max Hayward and Stanley Kunitz Here is my gift, not roses on your grave, not sticks of burning incense. You l...
Thursday, February 12, 2009

772. Thomas Hardy - Lee Upton

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. There's not a chance. Too late, he says. But it's never too late for the poetry of regret. Pines thicken with this rain. Always, u...
Wednesday, February 11, 2009

771. The Wolf's Postcript to 'Little Red Riding Hood' - Agha Shahid Ali

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. First, grant me my sense of history: I did it for posterity, for kindergarten teachers and a clear moral: Little girls shouldn't wande...