other people’s poetry
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The Song of One Hundred Thousand Chemicals Approximating Sunshine
‘This is the Song of One Hundred Thousand’ by Ariana Reines This is the song of one hundredThousand chemicals approximating Sunshine in my hair. My lover bit My cheek this morning. I think I’ll Fall from one trance into the nextMight fall asleep any minuteIt gets tiring making yourself looklike you’re alive while you’re lookingHard…
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Good Blue Clay
Tanka, by Ono No Oyu The city of Nara of good blue clay glows like a blooming flower, now at its prime Source: Ono No Oyu. “Tanka.” From the Country of Eight Islands: An Anthology of Japanese Poetry, edited by Hiroaki Sato and Burton Watson. New York: Columbia University Press, 1987, p. 43. Photo: Church…
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An Urge to Flex Everything
‘Solidus’ by Ron Padgett Why am I making myselfdo and be things that I don’t really want to?Because I have an idea of what I should be doing and/orI don’t have an idea of what I really want to be and/or do.And/or both. I seem to be very and/or,with an urge to flex everything until…
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The Fiction of Time Destroyed
‘Anticipation of Love’ by Jorge Luis Borges Neither the intimacy of your look, your brow fair as a feast day,nor the favor of your body, still mysterious, reserved, and childlike,nor what comes to me of your life, settling in words or silence,will be so mysterious a giftas the sight of your sleep, enfoldedin the vigil…
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‘Greenwich Avenue’ by James Schuyler
In the evening of a brightlyunsunny day to watch back-lightedbuildings through the slitsbetween vertical strips of blindsand how red brick, brick paintedred, a flaky white, gray orthose of no color at all takethe light though it seems onlyabove and behind them so whatshows below has a slight evening“the day—sobs—dies” sadness and the sun marches on.…
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Artifacts of Reference, No. 70
Sources: Czaykowski, Bogdan. “The Collective.” Volvox: Poetry from the Unofficial Languages of Canada in English Translation, edited by J. Michael Yates, Victoria, British Columbia, Can: Sono Nis Press, 1971, p. 61. Coulthart, John. “Howl from Beyond.” 1997. Trading card. Wizards of the Coast, Renton, Wash.
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“The Great Enigma” by Stamatis Polenakis (trans. Richard Pierce)
Goodbye forever to this brief age of freedom. Farewell unforgettable days and glorious nights and leaves swept away by the wind. We were young, we hoped for nothing and we waited for tomorrow with the blind obstinacy of the castaway who throws stones in the water. Source: Polenakis, Stamatis. “The Great Enigma.” Austerity Measures: The…
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‘Dream Song 238’ by John Berryman
Henry’s Programme for God “It was not gay, that life.” You can’t “make me small,” you “can’t put me down” or take away my job I am immune, although it is not gay. Why did we come at all, consonant to whose bidding? Perhaps God is a slob, playful, vast, rough-hewn. Perhaps God resembles one…
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‘For a Moment’ by Ron Padgett
It’s funny howif you just let goof things they will come toyou. That is to saysometimes. So what good is such ageneralization?Ah, it makes you feel good to saysuch things fromtime to time, as if you actuallyand really and trulyknew something! Source: Padgett, Ron. Collected Poems. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Coffee House Press, 2013, p. 415.
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‘Royalty’ by Arthur Rimbaud, trans. John Ashbery
Royauté Un beau matin, chez un peuple fort doux, un homme et une femme superbes criaient sur la place publique. «Mes amis, je veux qu’elle soit reine!» «Je veux être reine!» Elle riait et tremblait. Il parlait aux amis de révélation, d’épreuve terminée. Ils se pâmaient lun contre l’autre. En effet ils furent rois toute…
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