I
Wondrous, the emptiness so close, close to an absent sea,
only sea-fields, wheat-fields, golden stubble,
though we were walking together on a path to find the sea.
Wandering together under a wide horizon.
On a road called Pas de l’Assassin.
New work from RODRIGO TOSCANO, OLENA JENNINGS, EZZA AHMED, and WYATT TOWNLEY
Table of Contents:
—Rodrigo Toscano, “One Like”
—Olena Jennings, “The Pine”
—Ezza Ahmed, “The River That Was and Wasn’t”
—Wyatt Townley, “The Longest View” and “Christina’s World”
One Like
By Rodrigo Toscano
“Couple Bach preludes, a binding ceasefire,
One Dickenson poem, and we’re all set”
That was the post, like a gleaming beach pier
Charming half way out, torn up at the tip
Battered by statecraft, departmental verse.
Poems and sculptures by LISA ASAGI
This is a conversation with whales, clay, and poetry.
A wonderment with whales began in a childhood alivened by the early days of the Save the Whales movement and stories from my father of mysterious encounters on overnight boating trips. This fascination resurfaced seven years ago when I found myself working with my hands—clay sculpture and stand-up paddling led to long overdue reconnections with both earth and sea. Research deepened my curiosity: before the centuries of whaling, very different kinds of relationships existed between whales and humans. Here in the 21st century, what’s possible? These pieces are part of an ongoing series of rememberings, imaginings, longings, and offerings.
— Lisa Asagi
By ANNA MALIHON
Translated from the Ukrainian by OLENA JENNINGS
From Girl with a Bullet, forthcoming October 2025
Presented in Olena Jennings’ seamless translation, Anna Malihon’s new collection, Girl with a Bullet, is one of the most important books of the year for those with an interest in the fate of Ukraine, a gift to Anglophone readers.
—John Hennessy, poetry editor
Table of Contents:
[The girl with a bullet in her stomach]
[Don’t go into that home]
[Now the only thing that you can do for her, Christ,]
[Unfold and dive into me, to my very bone,]
New work from GEOFFREY BROCK, GRAY DAVIDSON CARROLL, DOLORES HAYDEN, JAMES RICHARDSON, and JULIA LISELLA.
Table of Contents:
This month we’re pleased to bring you poems by PEDRO POITEVIN translated from Spanish by PHILIP NIKOLAYEV and new work by 2025 Disquiet Prize finalists AIDEN HEUNG and ELLIE BLACK.
Table of Contents:
This month we’re honored to bring our readers an excerpt from MARY JO BANG’s new translation of Dante’s Paradiso, out soon from Graywolf Press.
From Paradiso: Canto XI
The first eighteen lines of this canto are Dante’s elaboration of human difference, his lament over the failure of some humans to realize their gifts, and an exultation for the opportunity he’s been given—which is to enter Heaven before he has died.
Thomas Aquinas’s clarification of “where they fatten up” begins at line 22 and continues without interruption until the end of the canto. In lines 124 to 126, Thomas complains that Saint Dominic’s flock, the Dominican friars, are showing signs of ambition and greed, seeking honors and offices. They are wandering away from the tenets of the order, which are to live a life of humility and self-sacrifice. In lines 137 to 139, he says, “You’ll see what has splintered the tree, / And how the remedy for that can be deduced from // ‘Where they fatten up, if they don’t lose their way.’” The tree is the Dominican order, and it has been scheggia (“splintered” or “chipped away at”) because so many of the sheep have strayed. If the monks and clergy remain true to the principles set out by Saint Dominic, they will be enriched with the “milk” of spiritual nourishment and “fatten up” the way sheep are meant to.
Throughout the Divine Comedy, Dante is concerned with the ways in which selfishness destroys the social fabric. He details how people pay for that selfishness in Hell or by having to trudge up the seven terraces of Mount Purgatory. But Dante isn’t only interested in what happens after death, he is also talking about how we live while on earth. His life was destroyed by the petty grudges of partisan politics. As an exile, he was under constant threat of death. He takes great risks in writing his poem because he hopes that by addressing the greed and megalomania that is destroying Italy, he can help put a stop to it. He also knows that this is not a time-limited problem but a timeless one, which is why he wrote the poem in the vernacular—so that, unlike poems written in literary Latin, it would change over time. He said he was also writing his poem in the vernacular so that it could be read by everyone. That is why I translated the poem into the American vernacular.
—Mary Jo Bang
Poems by CATHERINE-ESTHER COWIE
Having made both poetry and fiction contributions to TC, the multitalented Catherine-Esther Cowie returns to us this month with highlights from her debut poetry collection Heirloom, forthcoming from Carcanet Press on April 24, 2025.
Publisher’s Note
Moving from colonial to post-colonial St. Lucia, this debut collection brings to light the inheritances of four generations of women, developing monologues, lyrics, and narrative poems which enable us to see how past dysfunction, tyranny, and terror structure the shapes of women’s lives, and what they hand down to one another.
Uneasy inheritances are just the starting point for this debut’s remarkable meditations: Should the stories of the past be told? Do they bring redemption or ruin? What are the costs of saying what happened? Beguiling and cathartic, Catherine-Esther Cowie’s powerful, formally inventive poems reckon with the past even as they elegize and celebrate her subjects.
New work from ELIZABETH METZGER, MATT W. MILLER, ANNIE SCHUMACHER, and MARC VINCENZ.
Table of Contents:
Poems by RAFAEL ALBERTI
Translated from the Spanish by JOHN MURILLO
From Rafael Alberti’s Concerning the Angels, forthcoming in March from Four Way Books.
Poems appear in both English and Spanish.
Table of Contents:
Don’t miss an issue! Subscribe to The Common.