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.

Bradley Trumpfheller: ‘It Is Mica and Night Honey’

Posted on July 14, 2023 by JMN

There are poems whose gist I imperfectly apprehend. Putting such a poem into an acquired language can be a form of beaconing for bounce-back from latent referents. It’s therapy for bafflement. The drill induces closer confrontation with the text, on … Continue reading →

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Rowan Ricardo Phillips: ‘We Are Crowded by Presence…’

Posted on July 11, 2023 by JMN

Who is this Phillips person? — I wondered after reading aloud what had looked like a forbiddingly long poem in Poetry, July/August 2023. (The biographical note tells me what I dread knowing: He’s a distinguished professor of English!) The poem, … Continue reading →

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When the Work Be Done, Then Rest Will Come

Posted on July 9, 2023 by JMN

My title sounds like a hoary aphorism distilling virtuous wisdom passed down through the ages in simple, God-fearing households. But I just made it up. The “aphorism” models usage gone all but missing from English. An encounter with it in … Continue reading →

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The Poem of ‘^Antara’ (6th Century A.D.)

Posted on July 7, 2023 by JMN

The text I use is from A.J. Arberry, Arabic Poetry: A Primer for Students (Cambridge University Press, 1965). Arberry says the poem is likely not by ^Antara, but is in the spirit of “one of the greatest hero-poets of the … Continue reading →

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Snapshot of Crack Wordcraft

Posted on July 3, 2023 by JMN

This snapshot is from Poetry, July/August 2023. Midway through Wong May’s poem titled “The Last Film,” the speaker’s mother-in-law melts down briefly after a movie (“8 Women” by François Ozon) and a restaurant dinner (fried courgette flowers, salade Niçoise) with … Continue reading →

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‘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 →

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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 →

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‘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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