I have seen a tunnel before of ashes that opens itself seen its abyss of golden-gold light heart throbbing I have taken the first step into the tunnel then the light enclosed me and I cowered a beachcomber in the pale yellow tread wheel under-furrowed filled with flowing wounds that hung like fog sateless sorrow […]
Contributors 65
Greg Pardlo: Translating Niels Lyngsø’s “Constellation” Poems
True to the term “constellations,” which is what Danish poet Niels Lyngsø calls the numbered poems in his book Force Majeure (Borgens Forlag, 1999), spacing and placement of the phrases and words on the page suggest their relative gravitational pull—the amount of contextual influence the poet intends the cluster to have upon its textual neighbors. […]
Yang Lian: In the Timeless Air: Chinese Language, Pound and The Cantos
The Chinese version of “in the timeless air” from Canto LXXVI—”in everlasting time and space”—deviates from the original meaning of the poem: here the timeless air refers to a space separated from time (an artificial thought). The world exists timelessly. What “everlasting time and space” emphasizes is the permanent unity of time and space. Because […]
Yang Lian: Notes of a Blissful Ghost
1 leaking from the eye-socket dog dragging half-stripped dog skin running vision competes with stove-stuffed sparrow flying snow’s touch always half-rotted tumbledown ruins mask yesterday painted a colour less than white horizon sprints back against the wind toward a drop of water a teardrop has a pear-stalk to lead a great hue and cry bliss […]
Katrine Guldager: Earth
I don’t know what I came here for, only that everything else was impossible, that the little No I’m now holding up in front of me is just a sorry shield against an abundance of milky stars, a slip of meaning: Only that my little cardboard sign is just a hint of what is unused […]
Katrine Guldager: Traffic Accident
It’s hard to tell if there is something outside the window, but a chronic curiosity forces you to draw in, wind, people. It’s hard to tell how it happens, but you lean back in, into the shadow, and all senses are suddenly on DELETE: Suddenly you can’t remember why you leaned out or in, or […]