On J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye

What Salinger gave to us were memorable meeting points between innocence and the world’s soiling stains. There was so much authenticity in his stance and sympathy that his artificialities… 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

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

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

My Banned Books

Before the decade ended, I was asked to return a payment of $50.00 to an educational publisher. My poem about dinosaurs had to be removed from a language arts… More