Spring-Watching Pavilion by Hồ Xuân Hương
A gentle spring evening arrives Airily, unclouded by worldly dust. Three times the bell tolls echoes like a wave. We see heaven upside-down in sad puddles. Love’s vast sea cannot be emptied. And springs of…
Category: World Literature
Sitting Idle at the North Window by Po Chü-i
The window empty: two thickets of bamboo. The house tranquil: a single fragrant stove. Beyond the gate, it’s red dust everywhere, and in the city, that white sun hurries on, but I don’t chase after…
Share the Wealth with Mark Chmiel: The Poetry of Denise Levertov
For friends in town over Thanksgiving holiday, join us on Sunday 25 November for a potluck supper and my sharing on Denise Levertov—British-born American, activist, disturber of the peace, whose poetry from the 1960s to…
Latin America Reading Group: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
This month, we meet to discuss Junot Díaz’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao– Beginning at 8:00 p.m. At the home of Josh and Laura Aranda 6312 West Park Avenue (in…
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…
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.
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.
Reading/Writing/Seeing
for Emily, Kelley, and Lindsay 1. In reality every reader is, while she is reading, the reader of her own self. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument which he offers to…
This Palestinian Life
Mounif is calling me In America From Qatar About Fahim’s martyrdom In Beirut And burial In Kuwait And about the necessity Of informing Sitti Umm ‘Ata In Deir Ghassanah And his maternal grandmother In Nablus…
Thơ
Little Sister At the end of our lesson At the Bread Co on South Grand You gave me a simple assignment: “Write a four-line poem in Vietnamese” You came to this country at age eight…