It helps me read contemporary poetry to conjure the mindset of an athlete in the elite sport of pole vaulting. The bar sits there at a distanced height. I summon latency, coil with icy focus, charge the standards, launch myself … Continue reading
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And out comes a tenderly belabored prospect of dilapidation. Looking at a photograph I didn’t take, I painted a quaint tranche of unleveled-up Britain from the plein air of the shed I inhabit. Painting my two-bit canvases from photos lets … Continue reading
I encountered the following expression in my Arabic reference grammar: May you be ransomed by my soul! Arabic can be sublimely terse and florid in the same breath. Blachere’s example shows optative use of the perfect tense instancing how the … Continue reading
To All a Good New Year! Audrey Petty describes her first one-on-one conference with her poetry teacher Agha Shahid Ali at the University of Massachusetts. After she read her draft to him, he reviewed it and said, “What if you … Continue reading
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My approach to Clint is to grace him with a mighty hat and a bodacious cheroot. Outside the frame he’s packing heat, of course. Clint Eastwood personifies a school of movie acting whose slogan is “Don’t just do something. Stand … Continue reading
To write, first and foremost, is to choose the words to tell a story, whereas to translate is to evaluate, acutely, each word an author chooses. Thus starts Jhumpa Lahiri’s essay drawn from the afterword of her translation of “Trust” … Continue reading
When reading poetry I try to think like astronomers. They are a doughty lot, trucking with the unexpected, stalking questions that defy asking. “What I really hope for is something we don’t expect” [John Mather, Goddard Space Flight Center, on … Continue reading
Portuguese-born artist Paula Rego (b. 1935) studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, London. She lives in the UK. Quotable saying: “Doing work, that is to say, drawing, is an erotic activity.” Anna Russell writes that the urgency of … Continue reading
A trove of drawings by Franz Kafka was brought to light in 2019. They share, says Philip Oltermann, features with paintings Kafka describes in his fiction: “… men riding flying buckets, singing mice and creatures made of household detritus… dream-like … Continue reading
EthicalDative 
Minefield of Rabbit Holes
In my Arabic grammar I encounter the preposition fiy- illustrated in a “relationship of comparison” (rapport de comparaison). Blachere’s jouissance is matA( from root m-t-( meaning “to carry away” and, in derived forms, “to enjoy.” Its usages meander through enjoyment, … Continue reading →