MARNI BERGER interviews JACQUELYN POPE
Jacquelyn Pope is the author of the poetry collection Watermark (Marsh Hawk Press, 2005). Her next book, Hungerpots—translations of the Dutch poet Hester Knibbe—is due out in October from Eyewear Publishing in the UK. Jacquelyn is the recipient of a 2015 National Endowment of the Arts Translation Fellowship and a PEN/Heim Translation Fund grant. She has received awards from the Academy of American Poets and the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
That black telephone would ring and ring,
fixed to its wall. It was a ring that roamed
the mind, while night drummed down
its list of last and lost events, circadian
paths that tangled where they tried to pass,
crossed and uncrossed hours.
Dear little day later,
Can’t you keep up?
There is no going back
so don’t insist. The view’s bound
by the block, fenced for now
but then will come
and new alarms
will set off and stop.
It’s our pleasure to bring you new poems by four poets whose work will also appear in an upcoming print issue of The Common.
Translated by JACQUELYN POPE
In love everything is possible. You doggedly
paper a tree with roses
and say: this was the place
and everyone who passes should
By JACQUELYN POPE
Whatever possessed you
pursues me. Whatever
unnerved you sings me
to sleep, repeats and repeats,
insists. Whatever composed
you constricts me. Where
you were bright I was blind.
By JACQUELYN POPE
Girl when you get lost
the forest will find you
tame you take you over.
Pocket of breadcrumbs
and birdsong. Pocket of rocks.
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