Sorrow of Departure by Li Ch’ing-chao
To the Tune “Cutting a Flowering Plum Branch” Red lotus incense fades on The jeweled curtain. Autumn Comes again. Gently I open My silk dress and float alone On the orchid boat. Who can Take…
Category: Poets
A Poem by Li Ch’ing-chao (Lǐ Qīngzhào)
Autumn Love “A Weary Song to a Slow Sad Tune” Search. Search. Seek. Seek. Cold. Cold. Clear. Clear. Sorrow. Sorrow. Pain. Pain. Hot flashes. Sudden chills. Stabbing pains. Slow agonies. I can find no peace.
A Poem by Charles Reznikoff
My grandmother in her old age Sold barley and groats at a stall In the market place. She did not measure her cereal More carefully Than I must minutes. — The Poems Of Charles Reznikoff:…
Three Poems by Hồ Chí Minh
Advice to Oneself Without the cold and desolation of winter There could not be the warmth and splendor of spring. Calamity has tempered and hardened me, And turned my mind to steel.
The On-Going Responsibility: Cleaning the Flag
In 1985 during the terrorist contra war in Nicaragua, Brazilian bishop Pedro Casaldáliga visited and engaged in what he called the ministries of the border and of consolation. His reflection on these ministries: “The visits…
Subversives
In the New Directions collection, Zero Hour and Other Documentary Poems, Ernesto Cardenal includes an “Epistle to Monsignor Casaldáliga (whom Mev Puleo interviewed in her book The Struggle is One, and from which I quoted…
A Poem by Dorothee Sölle: hospital in haiphong
doan is three years old in his head a fragment of that handy bomb that leaves buildings undamaged never puts a factory out of production doesn’t even harm bridges
Composing “HOWL”
Here’s Allen Ginsberg talking about the process of writing HOWL, which is reminiscent of Natalie Goldberg’s project in Writing down the Bones, to free the writer within: I thought I wouldn’t write a poem but…
Ko Un
1. Ko Un‘s Ten Thousand Lives is a remarkable sample in English of his twenty-volume work in Korean, known as Maninbo. In his early years, he was a Buddhist monk. Later, he was part of…
Epistolary Ecstasy
A while back, I read a selection of letters of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: Hand-written, wild-typed marvels and postcards, written and sent from around the world—on work, books, loves, life, loss, Dharma, and gossip….