Monthly Archives: June 2023

‘Everything Floats’

Posted on June 30, 2023 by JMN

As for Fuji… it’s nothing but three quick strokes: a swoop to the top, a bobble for the summit, a long glide back to the ground. […] What Hokusai and his successors affirm over and over is that there’s no … Continue reading →

Posted in Quotations | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Can We Park the ‘Passion’ for a Moment?

Posted on June 27, 2023 by JMN

… When the phrase I’m passionate aboutis trotted out like a mirror,I adjust the last of my hair,my dubious neck folded into my collar: a dirty wad of dollars.(Randall Mann, from “The Ritz,” Poetry, May 2023) Many are “passionate” about … Continue reading →

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The Case of the Bashful Punchline

Posted on June 25, 2023 by JMN

Jared Bartman. [New York Times illustration] “Is it ever easier?” a young writer asked me recently. “Do you ever grow a thicker skin?” She was suffering because an essay she’d written about the death of her mother had been rejected … Continue reading →

Posted in Quotations | Tagged | 2 Comments

‘L’avidité de tes muqueuses cannibales’

Posted on June 23, 2023 by JMN

Emilie Moorhouse’s translations of the verse of Joyce Mansour (1928-1986) in Poetry, June 2023, give full-throated voice to the satisfactions of the originals. Take the line from “Fever your sex is a crab” that serves as my title: Lack of … Continue reading →

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The Poem of an-Nābiḡa (Died ca. A.D. 604)

Posted on June 21, 2023 by JMN

In this complicated, ancient poem* I glimpse the life of squalid intrigue and dependency that was ever the courtier’s lot. At the mercy of the tyrant’s whim and the plots of competitors, his is a routine of flattery, complaint and … Continue reading →

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Sometimes I Miss the Forest for Dwelling on the Trees

Posted on June 17, 2023 by JMN

In reading “The ‘Change’ in Climate Change” by Jacob Shores-Argüello (Poetry, June 2023), I stiffened attentively at the following: … Because a year before,a hurricane reaved its way across this country for the first timein recorded history… The country is … Continue reading →

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A Tenacious Seeking of Certainty Sows More Doubt

Posted on June 15, 2023 by JMN

I’ve saved this passage by Kafka translator Ross Benjamin in my notes since early February. In re-reading it I realize anew how cogently it expresses my own experience of reading poetry, never mind translating it. It ends with a compelling … Continue reading →

Posted in Quotations | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

A Compelling Rationale for Taking Up Versifying

Posted on June 13, 2023 by JMN

Monet grew up in East New York in Brooklyn and started writing poetry when she was 8 because she was “fascinated by typewriters and people who would sit at typewriters,” she said. Monet fondly recalls her former college adviser: “I … Continue reading →

Posted in Commentary, Quotations | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Words, Words, It’s Always the Words

Posted on June 12, 2023 by JMN

These are the generations of mice… The phrase introduces each of three meaty stanzas in John Kinsella’s “Familiars” (Poetry, June 2023). The device, with its mock portentous sonority and homiletic repetition, has a pleasing (to this Jean-Luc Picard fan) Star-Trekkie … Continue reading →

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Notes on Poetry (Compound Pizza)

Posted on June 10, 2023 by JMN

To make it clear, I don’t think there’s anything mysticalabout “ghosts” — they are an isness. There’s no secret codeor system of access, and they are there whether you wantthem to be or not. They are enjambments within your narrative.(John … Continue reading →

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