Tag Archives: reading

‘Cuerpo,’ from La Bancarrota del Circo

Posted on April 9, 2025 by JMN

I asked azurea20 if I could post an English reading of her poem “Cuerpo” on EthicalDative, and she said yes. Below is the original Spanish text of her lyric published on her website, La Bancarrota del Circo, followed by my … Continue reading →

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An Unbosoming: On Cohesion

Posted on April 6, 2025 by JMN

Wehr lists anatomical English equivalents for Arabic noun ṣadr, plural ṣudūr, as: chest, bust, breast, bosom. (Heart is an outlier, clearly metaphorical.) At a tender age I heard my grandmother refer to ladies’ “bosoms.” Context nudged me to associate “bosom” … Continue reading →

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‘the living can / be silenced the dead cannot’

Posted on April 3, 2025 by JMN

The writer who wrote the line in my title is ire’ne lara silva. Here it is in context: … they will make us all into virginmadonnas protecting mexicanidadbut our redred blood spilt on the ground does not knowhow to be … Continue reading →

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What’s in YOUR Belly?

Posted on March 30, 2025 by JMN

The Arabic phrase under examination is this (with my transliteration): وَأَصْلِحُوا۟ ذَاتَ بَيْنِكُمْ ۖwa-‘aṣliḥū ḏāt(a) bain(i)-kum In the languages I can navigate, here are various translations. All but “Cortés” are from here: Englishsettle your affairs (Dr. Mustafa Khattab, The Clear … Continue reading →

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I Need Some Writer’s Block

Posted on March 26, 2025 by JMN

Really, I should draw, paint and read more, write less. It’s a constant struggle to pipe down.  Poetry, for one thing, triggers me. Intending to read a bait of versifying, before I know it I’m a keyboard Roman candle ejaculating … Continue reading →

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Looking and Listening Versus Seeing and Hearing

Posted on February 20, 2025 by JMN

I relish the tension that exists between certain verb pairs often used as roughly synonymous. This isn’t scientific, but here’s how I think of a couple of common verbs: “Look” describes the action of directing the eye to a focal … Continue reading →

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‘When All Three Pounds of Me Came Earthside…’

Posted on January 11, 2025 by JMN

The tiny speaker in Megan Denton’s “A Girl and Her Fireplace” (Poetry, December 2024) is off to a shaky start. Born on a new moon, one minute after my sisterand one pound less, my ribcage was full of roosting songbirds … Continue reading →

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A Poem Is Like an Emergency

Posted on January 4, 2025 by JMN

First responders plunge into scenarios that need to be made sense of quickly. I call myself a first responder to poetry, and not a critic, but the poetry I read is published, so at least one other reader more qualified … Continue reading →

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Three Scholars ‘Explain’ the Kama Sutra. It Doesn’t Go Well.

Posted on January 2, 2025 by JMN

The two male scholars urgently want to talk about what’s dealt with in the Kama Sutra that’s not, um, you know, the sex part.  BBC4 moderator Melvyn Bragg presses them, saying the sex part is why the book’s famous in … Continue reading →

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Manly Love Trumping Other Love for the Moment, But Not in Poetry

Posted on December 28, 2024 by JMN

Cigar this life and light it with the sun. / Breathe this poem in. (From “Gratification to the survivors of daily damnations” by Oladejo Abdullah Feranmi) The rest of Feranmi’s poem says this: […] Own a spot on a cliff … Continue reading →

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