First the translator begins, bit by bit, to discover the poet’s verbal and ideational habits; then, little by little, the translator acquires the poet’s obsessions. . . . Next the translator is certain he or she inhabits the poet. . . . And at last, the translator turns into the...Read more

In his short essay “The Difficult Poem,” Charles Bernstein outlines “a handy checklist” to aid in the diagnosis of a difficult poem:

1. Do you find the poem hard to appreciate?

2. Do you find the poem’s vocabulary and...Read more

On December 4, 2020, Ali Ayman Abu Alayya, a Palestinian teenager who was turning fifteen that day, was shot in the stomach by an Israel Defense Forces sniper during a protest near his home village in the West Bank. He later died of his wounds. His death was quickly condemned by the United...Read more

The work on this article led me to rethink the Song of Songs, Kohelet, Keter Malkhut, and even the prayer sequence as antecedents of...Read more

Watch ...Read more

César Vallejo’s Trilce is one of the most astonishing works of poetry in the Vanguardista[1] canon and of modernism worldwide. Published in the annus mirabilis 1922, Trilce reconciles formal complexity,...Read more