Author Archives: JMN

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About JMN

I live in Texas and devote much of my time to easel painting on an amateur basis. I stream a lot of music, mostly jazz, throughout the day. I like to read and memorize poetry.

“A Prayer for My Daughter” (3)

Posted on August 23, 2018 by JMN

I’m nervous if a post of mine runs longer than a couple of scrolls, so I’m parceling the translation now into one stanza at a time until the end. I realize that I run the risk of confining myself to … Continue reading →

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Adverbs Beware

Posted on August 23, 2018 by JMN

I read somewhere today that someone said that something “almost ought to be illegal.” A statement like that always reminds me of how terrified I am, as a stylist, of adverbs. I estimate that at least half the time I … Continue reading →

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“A Prayer for My Daughter” (2)

Posted on August 22, 2018 by JMN

“A Prayer for My Daughter” by W. B. Yeats (Spanish translation by James Mansfield Nichols) https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/14635/a-prayer-for-my-daughter A Prayer for My Daughter (2) Once more the storm is howling, and half hid Under this cradle-hood and coverlid My child sleeps on. … Continue reading →

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“A Prayer for my Daughter” (1)

Posted on August 22, 2018 by JMN

“A Prayer for My Daughter” by W. B. Yeats (Spanish translation by James Mansfield Nichols) https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/14635/a-prayer-for-my-daughter Celebrating recent renewal of contact with my long-lost daughter raised in Spain, I undertake this translation into Spanish of Yeats’s “Prayer for My Daughter.” … Continue reading →

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Frozen Versus Canned

Posted on August 21, 2018 by JMN

Hollie Jean Burmeister makes such a to-do over her old-fashioned frozen pies. I don’t know what the big fuss is. The canned pies at Mustang Mart cost ninety-eight cents apiece, half of what the frozen ones do. The Kandi-Whip gets … Continue reading →

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Personal Goal

Posted on August 20, 2018 by JMN

When I was a student of literature I recall being influenced by a school of critical theory (Rene Wellek?) that said an author’s biography was irrelevant to a consideration of his or her text. Once it was loosed from the … Continue reading →

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Tale of Two Treatments

Posted on August 18, 2018 by JMN

I once took a poetry writing seminar conducted by a prominent American poet based at the time in Colby College. She was already an eminence in the early stages of her career and has achieved Olympian status since. I lunched … Continue reading →

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Comment on a Comment

Posted on August 18, 2018 by JMN

I very much appreciate supportive comments. They encourage me to up my game. I quoted a paragraph from a remembrance of V.S. Naipaul published by Aatish Taseer in the NYTimes: Taseer is a writer I had not encountered previously. What … Continue reading →

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On V.S. Naipaul

Posted on August 16, 2018 by JMN

He never looked away. I was with him in Wiltshire soon after my father, the governor of Punjab in Pakistan, was assassinated. I had been estranged from my father and was not sure how to mourn him. Mr. Naipaul, with … Continue reading →

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Proportion

Posted on August 16, 2018 by JMN

The most important word in art is “proportion.” How much? How long is this joke going to be? How many words? How many minutes? And getting that right is what makes it art or what makes it mediocre. (Jerry Seinfeld, … Continue reading →

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