All Articles by Date
March, 2010
Ilya on Poetry in Poetry
The March issue of Poetry includes Adam Kirsch's thrilling interview with Ilya Kaminsky about our Ecco Anthology of International Poetry. With the erudite brilliance that ...
Zbigniew Herbert: An Introduction
This article originally ran on January 7th, 2008 as part of a forum on Herbert's work. We republish it here as part of our month long look at International poetry and to celebrate the ...
Poeboes Podcast with Fiona Sampson
Fiona Sampson (1968 - ) has published five collections of poetry, including, most recently, Common Prayer (2007), short-listed for the T.S. Eliot Prize. Editor ...
For Bread Alone
I first read Mohamed Choukri’s memoir For Bread Alone when I was working on A Basket of Leaves. I considered using it as one of the books I discussed for Morocco, but before I had read ...
Then
Then with her hands she’d crown her son’s head, then with her arms she’d embrace him, then with her fingers she’d pluck out his ...
Black Lips
Listen You who chew on my solitude with your televisions on You who attend my funeral every morning to light a candle Listen I will drive a verb into your eyes I will plant a beat in ...
Half Sleep Half Death
Half sleep half death. My hands in springtime my heart in mud. Thus I transform myself. Between spring and not spring where trees are deep and waves strike root. Thus I transform ...
Shave
Observe yourself in the mirror, unchanged yet strange, still shaggy with sleep, startled at seeing your likeness. These wrinkles, these graying temples that you’ve already accepted ...
Night Does Not Fall
Night does not fall nor does it come Night slowly breaks within me Because I am a lake ever faceless and I am mud in the dreams of secret stars So ...
Roosters and Bones
If when night falls in the kitchen Someone leans over To look in the sink, he will see That the rooster’s bones Are much less white. The reason is that they don’t remain ...
Situation: To Cast Off A Malady
invite people over. invite everyone. to a feast. a big feast. and if the sick one doesn't want to get out of bed, that’s fine, leave him there. let there be music and ...
Largo di Vitoria
Out of milk, out of strong skin jumps the big brother. When the river flows, the berth sleeps. There’s the block behind me. The biggest mango tree in Bahia is a hundred ...
From the Figure 6 Into Ships
You destroyed all letters. You burned the heavenly garden. Lot's wife, Ahmed, tiny little mouth. Das ist Mercedes Benz. Jetzt ist zu spät. Did Glinka shake ...
Correspondences in the Air: On The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry
Octavio Paz once wrote that the modern poet “extracts his visions from within himself.” It is my hope that our comprehensive, aesthetically varied anthology of poetry from ...
Let Us Talk
First, we will bury you in the sand, with your head free to speak about mutual understanding, about peace; first, we will make your field our own, station soldiers between mine and ...
Day, A
gulls woke me and the sun the month january at the foot of the mountain my day at sea, in raging waves, i proved an awful captain, anchor caught in a burnt ...
Trilingual Poem with Dead Swans
Lebede moarte pe ape vinete—Cygnes morts dans des eaux violettes—Dead swans on purple waters—tremura albe de iarna—tremblent blancs d’hiver—shiver white ...
Movements
1 You went to heaven, Sir, forgetting your legs. Should we bury them? My legs are rose-pink and they’re no good for a wafer. 2 Wanderer, the moon has its own ...
Call Me at Home, Flambé
darling, when it comes to strawberries you’re like me more, and more and sugar, brandy in mom’s tin pan all summer. you’ve strawberried yourself you leave my tongue ...
Hermes In Retrogression
With fingers—fingertips and edge of nail— he plots fires with tongues of snakes, a child yearning for sheer drops, with paper wings on his shoulders, thinking and thinking of ...
Room
In that town there was a room I kept circling. It was near my girlfriend’s. She didn’t know I sometimes climbed those stairs. On the wall there were photos from before the war. I ...
Worth It (A Thursday Telephonically)
Sad is he who for love has never lost a home. Joan Margarit Around ten I call you to say I have ten calls, another meeting, six letters, a ...
from “Tales of the Autumn in Gerona”
A woman—I should say a stranger—who caresses you, jokes with you, is sweet with you and brings you to the edge of the abyss. There, the character cries ah or pales. As though he ...
Lockjaw
I walk toward the mill To meet my quiet father He walks on grass-covered paths His foot in a child's shoe The mill got swept away by the river Two wars have since gone by Father was ...
