Kathleen Graber: The Telephone
… once I fell in love with a beautiful voice passing through the wire. I remember the drop of it, a man talking about something he’d read, turning to a page with an audible rustle & breath, whispering, Listen. These are the lines that haunt. It’s not that the skin has no function, only...
Alice in Wonderland: A Musical Porno
Throughout our first year of publishing, we’ve noticed a few folks have stumbled upon our journal Googling the oddest of phrases. We’d like to commemorate these Internet searchers with a poem, composed entirely and verbatim from their queries. Perhaps in CalJoPo, they found what they didn’t even know they were looking for. Alice...
An Evening with Katie Farris and Ilya Kaminsky
On a magical night among the Buddhas at Ilya Kaminsky read their own works of art for the 2011 Summer Salon Series curated by Agitprop Literary Arts co-curated by K. Lorraine Graham Our interview with Katie Farris Ilya Kaminsky’s website
Music for the Black Room by Sarah Maclay
In Sarah Maclay’s third collection of poems, Music for the Black Room, humans attempt to conquer the natural world, but out of this desire for dominance, a synthesis of nature and civilization emerges, forming at times a surreal and dreamlike landscape. Quite possibly there is no place on Earth more suited to surreality and dreamy...
An Interview with Valzhyna Mort
My personal history of violence is quite visible, yes, and it challenges first of all myself. Valzhyna Mort’s previous two poetry collections, I’m as Thin as Your Eyelashes and Factory of Tears, garnered international acclaim, and she quickly developed a reputation as an electrifying reader. Mort has received numerous awards and fellowships throughout Europe...
Author Audio: Nikola Madzirov
Click on the links below to hear Nikola Madzirov read from his translated poetry collection, Remnants of Another Age, performed at San Diego State University, April 2011. Read our interview with Madzirov here. I Don’t Know Shadows Pass Us By Before We Were Born Usual Summer Nightfall When Someone Goes Away Everything That’s Been...
The Alchemist’s Kitchen by Susan Rich
The beauty and musicality of the English language cannot be overlooked in Susan Rich’s third book, The Alchemist’s Kitchen (a finalist for the Washington State Book Award and the Foreword Poetry Book of the Year). She invents new forms and reinvents the tried and true, exploring every device and tool with a keen ear and deft...
Author Audio & Profile: Nikola Madzirov
From my father I learned to believe in doubt, and from communism I learned to doubt in believing. Recently, we interviewed Nikola Madzirov about his latest collection of poems translated from Macedonian into English, Remnants of Another Age. Read the interview here. We also had the chance to hear Madzirov read from Remnants. Click on...
An Interview with Nikola Madzirov
The translator is a silent deconstructor, a night guard of the bridges of difference and understanding. Nikola Madzirov (poet, essayist, translator) was born into a family of Balkan Wars refugees in 1973 in Strumica, Macedonia.
Paul Celan Revisited: Moving from Silence to Speech
In his famous “Meridian” speech Celan confessed that poetry is ultimately “an eternalization of nothing but mortality, and in vain.” The contradictions between silence and speech, between human consciousness and death are present in his poem “Chanson of a Lady in the Shade.” One of Celan’s earlier poems, “Chanson of a Lady in the...
How to Speak American: Heather McHugh’s “Language Lesson 1976″
This is an analysis of Heather McHugh’s poem, “Language Lesson 1976.” You can read the entire poem McHugh and her work on the Poetry Foundation