The Uncertain Geography of Lightning: Poems of Bartomeu Crespí
Everyday language has its limits. Poetic language multiplies the number of ways I can communicate with the world.
Sea-Creatures
We lie within the deep flow
feeding constantly. We
seep slowly beneath ice-packs
green like peppermint tea.
Coincidence
Coincidences transform reality. They are the touchstones of fate, places where narratives begin or break down, symptoms of pre-destination or randomness, depending on your intellect.
Memories
Memories,
Coiling round the mind like water snakes,
Poisonous and medicinal.
An Interview with Nidia Hernández
Nidia Hernández is a leading figure in the world of Latin American poetics. Her radio show, La Maja Desnuda, has served as an archive for poets across continents and eras, and has survived censorship from the Maduro administration. She is also a vital part of Mercurius, introducing the magazine to wonderful poetry from the Americas, both the North and South. Read her interview with Jonny Lipshin.
A Few Reasons to Celebrate
We form odd habits in times of strain. The early days of the pandemic were like those that follow heartbreak. The body wakes first, peaceful and unknowing. Then mind, that ancient film reel, starts its circuit. With a click and whir, news breaks: Pandemic. Stay at home.
Fog and Metropolis
Two poems by Muanis Sinanović translated from Slovenian into English by Mirza Purić.
Selected Contemporary Poetry
Allow me to present the wonderful worlds of Amy Gerstler, Carolyn Forché, Alexandria Hall, Kazim Ali, Rosanna Warren, Diane Loue, Jane Hirshfield and Jan Beatty. These readings were recorded at the 2020 Miami Book Fair.
The Art of (Stationary) Travel
Although cliched, the metaphor of the “journey” never loses its shine no matter how many times it is used. Immersed in an existence based on constant motion, we are possessed of a deep psychic need to decipher and come to terms with our own “soul-journeys”. And so time again we are drawn to the resonance of the “travel” narrative.
A Complicated Progress
Perhaps the popularity of the bildungsroman has less to do with a taste for accurate depictions of reality than a desire for a comprehensible structure amid the chaos of emotions.
Death in a Time of Coronavirus
It’s difficult to believe in death without first-hand experience. The loss of a loved one, or perhaps an illness, brings your own mortality into focus. The inhuman birth and death cycles carry on regardless of your absence. What appears steady, will change. If not now, then later. If not later, than now.
Death
The best thing about this year of lockdown has been the sighting of so many animals one ordinarily never saw, or, if you did, they were already dead, victims of roadkill or industrial poisoning or sheer exposure.
Five Latin American Poets
I want to share the poetry of five great Latin American poets: Darío Jaramillo Agudelo, Rafael Cadenas, Blanca Varela, Ida Vitale and Fina García Marruz. You can not only read them but hear their translations recited in English.
The Labyrinth of Human Culture
Like the dream of a mute, expressions of ultimate reality cannot be communicated. Thus we create labyrinths, in search of the Perfect Word that cannot be translated.
A labyrinth due for demolition
This shed had been habitable once. You could occupy it of a summer afternoon ten long years ago, with ample space at the table where one could read and write and sip one's slowly cooling green tea, the cup continually refilled from the ever-present steaming kettle.
Familia Hotel
a double bed & a flat-screen tv, undressed
stone walls, so much bad blood, banging around
as if it were mid-morning…
I will show you the life of the mind on prescription drugs
From the mysterious recesses of the mind (or is that brain?) comes the urge to fix our sadness! Drugs are the answer, allied with literature. Legal, prescribed drugs, by hurried doctors, which reroute synapses in millions of human beings consciousnesses.
Confessions of a Distracted Mind
We each have our own crooked nook of Reality from which to make sense of life. Perhaps a little poison is necessary to make the flow self-aware.
Memories of an old friend
Despite the years, I still remember her. Her small face had the softness of a swan, her eyes were the colour of autumn.
A Poisoned Mind
Poison need not be the plot device of an Agatha Christie mystery nor the mere mechanism of melodrama. There is a poison in and of the mind that is insidious, that seeps, that corrodes, that clouds the thought and distorts the judgement, that will take over entirely if left unattended.
The never-ending quest…
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