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If I lived here
before long
I would go crazy
for the ocean.
A lake just isn’t enough
for me.
As beautiful as this gem
reflects earth’s diamond grave
I could die here for love’s sake
while I’m still strong.
Before long
(why take it seriously)
the sun’s gone down
as I was drowning in you
sorrows and all.How deep does it have to go?
A lake just isn’t enoughin this rough deep
cold.“Inland,” from Joseph Ceravolo’s Collected Poems, reviewed at The Rumpus by Barbara Berman.
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“At their best, love and translation share some contradictions, including selfishness and generosity. Translation is impossible, or at least not very good, without a passionate desire to own the material and leave one’s mark on it. At the same time, few translators want to “hide the light” of their translations “under a bushel.” The translations they undertake and complete belong to them, are marked by them, and yet they are without much value unless shared.” — Barbara Berman reviews The Emily Dickinson Reader by Paul Legault over at The Rumpus. -
“ A poet could not but be gay
–William Wordsworth
Don’t you know, sweetheart,
”
less is more?
Giving yourself away
so quickly
with your eager trumpet—
April’s rentboy
in your flock of clones,
unreasonably cheerful, cellulose,
as yellow as a crow’s foot—please.
I don’t get you.
Maybe it’s me,
always loving what I can’t have,
the bulb refusing itself,
perennial challenge.— From Angelo Nikolopoulos’s “Daffodil,” included in The Best American Poetry 2012, edited this year by Mark Doty. Long time Rumpus reviewer Barbara Berman chose the volume for her book-themed Holiday Shopping Guide, over at The Rumpus. -
“Louise Gluck’s Wild Iris was a companion more intimate than any living friend, a murmur and a rasp and balm in the mind those months the structures of living you yourself had erected were now collapsing, the foundations battered by your yourself. Your depression was florid, ardent, a sick fever of desired annihilation when any flicker of energy served only to fuel and intensify despair.” -
“And how sometimes
in the evening
I’d cut what hair
you’d lately grown.”— From “A Long Life,” a poem from Heather Christle’s collection, What Is Amazing, reviewed at The Rumpus by Barbara Berman.
