lyric poetry

To a Corpse

Brian Reed — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 11:46:59 -0700

Okay, I've turned forty. On my birthday I celebrated my obsolescence by translating a sonnet titled "To a Corpse."

Chapter Three

Joseph Lease — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 15:50:48 -0700

Ginsberg's "Wichita Vortex Sutra" is directed to Walt Whitman and to language.

I Long Dared Not Speak

Brian Reed — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 23:08:55 -0700

I've returned from Poland. It will take me a while to process the amazing things I've seen, from the Baltic to the Black Madonna of Czestochowa. For now, I thought I'd just rave a little bit more about Anna Akhmatova.

Hello Goodbye Hello

Brian Reed — Mon, 31 May 2010 00:08:40 -0700

Here at the University of Washington, our over-long academic year is finally ending, and I am eager to be gone. Quick as I can, I'll be at a spa near Poznań in Poland, first stop on a East European vacation. I thought I'd post a poem about departures: Anna Akhmatova's "Pesnia poslednei vstrechi" (Song of the Last Meeting).

Dance Fever

Brian Reed — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 09:56:02 -0800

I've long been fascinated by Isadora Duncan's later career. After the 1917 October Revolution, she moved to the Soviet Union, where she opened a dance school for girls. She married the poet Sergei Esenin, drank to excess, and then, when the state failed to fund her school sufficiently, undertook a deliciously scandalous tour of the USA.

Hot Stuff, Cold Comfort

Brian Reed — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 21:18:48 -0800

Today I heard that my parents might be coming for a visit. That sent me into a cleaning tizzy. While I scrub and scour, I've been thinking about poems that capture the intimate ritual relationship between people and the things that populate their domestic spaces.

I Am Not a Peasant

Brian Reed — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 19:44:04 -0800

Kopna means stook or haycock. Skird means rick. I'm looking up words in my trusty Russian-English dictionary, and things remain clear as mud. Sometimes translation from one language to another is only a prelude to figuring out what a text says.

Living During Interesting Times

Brian Reed — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 10:49:28 -0800

Today during coverage of Dubai's debt crisis I heard for the umpteenth time since the recession began a reporter mention "the old Chinese curse 'may you live in interesting times.'" This is one of my pet peeves. This "curse" isn't Chinese in origin, and it's not that old.

Mothers, Daughters, Mothers

Brian Reed — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 11:22:21 -0800

In a few weeks I'm going to Illinois to see my niece Ellie for the first time. I'm sitting up late tonight trying to imagine my younger sister as a mother. It's not easy. To me she's still the girl whose biggest aspiration in life was to own the newest Strawberry Shortcake doll.

Are You Or Have You Ever Been

Brian Reed — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 23:58:35 -0700

In her recent post about a conference on Futurism at SFMOMA, Marjorie Perloff raises several important literary-historical questions. One of them: To what extent do a writer's noxious political opinions require us to construe as suspicious his or her activities and affiliations earlier in life?

Ernst Toller and Ada Doom

Nicholas Jenkins — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 12:50:52 -0700

Auden's 1939 string of elegies and farewellings – 'In Memory of W. B. Yeats', 'In Memory of Ernst Toller', 'September 1, 1939', and 'In Memory of Sigmund Freud' – contain some curiously discordant notes, as if there were some anarchic or nihilistic principle in them struggling against the ostensible protocol of solemnity.

dark, dark, darkling

Nicholas Jenkins — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 13:04:40 -0700

I got interested, for obvious reasons, in reading Hardy's "The Darkling Thrush". There is a discussion about the poem, initiated by Robert Pinsky, going on at Slate's "The Fray" at the moment.