On translating Marcelo Cohen
Through translation, inventive turns of phrase and expanded linguistic boundaries imbed themselves in our cultural consciousness like the very stories they tell, and it is from these mutations that… More
On Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited
You could make a case for a kind of parallel between the events of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited and the fact of it being challenged in Alabama schools for… More
Excerpts from Dagmara Kraus’s gloomerang
guns in under-burn, time watched her slash sleek dreams / time leeched her guns · under dreams was knit: slash, burn. More
On translating Dagmara Kraus
Dagmara Kraus’s debut poetry collection, kummerang, is an exuberant investigation of a linguistically charged mind. The poems in kummerangrefuse to decide whether they will speak through sense or music,… More
Excerpts from Qiu Miaojin’s Notes of a Crocodile
She had sought me out. I knew it would happen. Even if I had switched to a different section, she would have sought me out all the same. She,… More
On translating Qiu Miaojin
What makes Kerouac or Salinger timeless is not necessarily literary, but perhaps didactic: the fact that there is wisdom to be found at the fountain of youth, no matter… More
A Few Ideas from My Black Box
A Few Ideas from My Black BoxOrange crush. No, blue field.Wait, green ember. Maybe red beam.In-any-case yellow. Possibly,Netherworld gray. Quivering purple?Skylark white. Taking out the trashbeneath a shuddering sadness… More
Last of the Late Great Gorilla-Suit Actors
All the blondes / are thrown over his shoulders, the blondes he never even / liked, the bunches of blondes he mistook for bananas. More
Copenhagen Airport
Once a week, the PEN Poetry Series publishes work by emerging and established writers from coast to coast. This installment, selected by Ben Mirov, features poetry by Jason Bredle,… More
Ari Banias: Two Poems
And soon it will rain, and we / will be down in the grass again. / A blade of grass gets thirsty; / it’s nice to think we could… More