Category: World Literature

Gratitude/555

I give thanks for translators whose labors allow me to meditate on the teachings of sages throughout time, like David Hinton’s work with  Confucius’s Analects…   1.16 The Master said: “Don’t grieve when people fail…

Training Our Memory

Adam Zagajewski, Another Beauty Translated by Clare Cavanagh Memoirs of a young poet who studied in Krakow.  Mostly it is the short aperçus that captured my attention and interest, plus the method of writing a…

Putting Marginalia to Use

for Danielle Mackey Eduardo Galeano, The Book of Embraces 31 Saturday October 2009 I reread this book for one reason:  To see if it could help me generate some ideas as to form and content…

Reminder to Self

When you encounter those who are wicked, unrighteous, foolish, dim-witted, deformed, vicious, chronically ill, lonely, unfortunate, or handicapped, you should think: “How can I save them?” And even if there is nothing you can do,…

“It’s the Old Thoreau Tradition”

This morning I was reading a 1972 interview with poet Allen Ginsberg and came across the following exchange… YLP: I was surprised to see the importance young Americans grant now to the Do It Yourself…

Two Ways of Looking at a Plague…

Ernesto Cardenal, Zero Hour And Other Documentary Poems New Directions, 1980 Dear Chase & Liz, The Nicaraguan poet Ernesto Cardenal died on March 1. I’m going back over his works this spring under quarantine. I…