All posts tagged: Poetry Feature

May 2025 Poetry Feature: Dante Alighieri, translated by Mary Jo Bang

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.

 

cover of paradiso

 

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

 

Canto XI

O pointless fretting of mortals,
How defective that deductive reasoning
That makes you flap your wings below.

One was heading for law, one was drawn
To doctoring, one to pursuing the priesthood,
One was ruling by force or by fraud.

One was robbing, one wheeling and dealing,
One was acting like a tapped-out sex addict,
One was lying on a lazy bed all the livelong day,

While I—freed from all that—
Was being so gloriously welcomed
High up in Heaven with Beatrice.

When each flame had returned to that point
Of the circle where it had been, it stopped
Stock still, like a candlestick candle.                                                   15       

Inside that light that had first spoken to me,
And which became even more clarified—
As if he were smiling—I heard him begin:

“Even as I’m illuminated by Its rays,
So, staring into the Eternal Light,
I’m aware of your thoughts and what causes them.

You have doubts. And want things explained
In such detail and in such language
That it’s made perfectly clear to you what I meant

When I said earlier, ‘where they fatten up,’ and  
Back there where I said, ‘no second was ever born’;
Here one needs to make a clear distinction.

The Providence that rules the world
With such insight that every created vision                           
Is overcome before its depths are ever plumbed—                            30

In order that the Bride of Him who cried out loudly
When He married her with His sacred blood
Might gladly go to her beloved
Feeling sure in herself and with more faith
In Him—He ordained two princes
To serve her, one on either side, as guides.

One was totally seraphic in his fiery passion;
The other, through wisdom, had
When on earth, the radiance of cherubic light.

I’ll talk about one, because whichever one
I take up, I’m praising both,
Since both worked toward the same end.                 

Between Topino and the stream that flows
Down the hill chosen by Saint Ubaldo,
The fertile side of Mount Subasio descends.                                      45

From there, Perugia feels the summer heat
And winter wind at Porta Sole, and behind it,
Nocera and Gualdo mourn the heavy yoke.

Right where the steepness of this slope
Flattens out the most, a sun rose on this world
As it sometimes does from the Ganges.

So, whoever talks about this place,
Don’t call it Assisi, which would be saying
Too little, but The East, if you want to be precise.

It wasn’t very long after his rising 
That he began to make the earth
Feel sustained by his great power.

When still a young man, he went up against
His father over that lady to whom—
As with death—no one wants to open the door.                                60

And before her spiritual court, and before
His father, he married her and, from that day on,
He loved her more deeply every day.

Bereft of her first husband—scorned and shut away
For well over eleven hundred years—
No one invited her in until that one arrived. 

Nor did it help to hear about how she’d stood
Firm with Amyclas, even at the sound
Of Caesar’s voice, which the whole world feared.
Nor did it help when, steadfast and fearless,
She cried on the cross with Christ
While Mary stayed below.

But so I don’t go on too obscurely—
From now on, take Francis and Poverty
As those two lovers in everything I’m saying.                                     75

Their harmony and happy manner,
Their love and wonder, their sweet glances,
Made them the source of holy thoughts.

So much so that the venerable Bernard,
The first to go barefoot, went chasing after peace
Running, yet it seemed to him he was slow.

Oh, unknown riches! Oh, prolific good!                                                                   
Giles goes barefoot, Sylvester goes barefoot,
Right behind the groom, the bride so delights them.

And afterward, that father and teacher
Set out with his bride, and with that family
That was already bound by the humble cord. 

Neither shamefaced about being the son
Of Pietro Bernadone, nor at being mocked
To the point of amazement,                                                               90

With the grandeur of royalty, he revealed
His stern resolve to Pope Innocent,
And received from him the first seal of his Order.

When more and more of those who chose poverty
Got behind him whose admirable life
Would best be sung in the glory of Heaven,

The sacred purpose of this abbot of many
Monasteries was wreathed with a second crown
By the Holy Spirit through Pope Honorius.

After that, longing for martyrdom, he preached
Of Christ and those who followed him                                                         
In the presence of the arrogant sultan.

Finding those people too early for conversion, 
Rather than wasting his time there,
He went back to reap what he’d planted in Italy.                              105

On the rugged cliff between the Tiber and Arno
He received, from Christ, the final seal: stigmata                 
That his limbs bore for his last two years.                                         

When He who’d chosen him for such goodness
Was pleased to bring him up to the reward
He deserved for having humbled himself,

He commended his most beloved lady
To his brothers, as his rightful heirs,
And commanded them to faithfully love her.

When his illustrious soul decided to set out
From her lap, returning to its realm,
He wanted no other coffin for his body.

Now think which of his worthy colleagues
Was to keep Saint Peter’s boat
On the right course on the high seas;                                                 120

And this was our patriarch. Whoever follows
Him as he commands, you can see
The freight they lade is goodness.

But his flock has become so greedy
For tasty new treats, it can’t help but scatter
Over far-flung pastures.                                 

The more remote his sheep are, and the more
They go a roving, that much more
They come back to the fold empty of milk.

Sure, there are some who fear harm, so stay close
To the shepherd, but so few that all their cowls
Can be made from a scrap of fabric.

Now, if my words aren’t too faint,
If you’ve listened very carefully,
If you call to mind what’s been said,                                                  135

Your wish will at least be partially satisfied,
Since 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.’”

 

 

Mary Jo Bang is the author of nine books of poems—including A Film in Which I Play Everyone, which was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award, A Doll for Throwing, and Elegy, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award. She has published translations of Dante’s Inferno, illustrated by Henrik Drescher, Purgatorio, and Colonies of Paradise: Poems by Matthias Göritz. She is also the co-translator, with Yuki Tanaka, of A Kiss for the Absolute: Selected Poems of Shuzo Takaguchi. She teaches creative writing at Washington University in St. Louis. Her translation of Paradiso will be published by Graywolf in July 2025.

May 2025 Poetry Feature: Dante Alighieri, translated by Mary Jo Bang
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March 2025 Poetry Feature: Catherine-Esther Cowie’s Heirloom

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.

cover of HEIRLOOM

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. 

 

Table of Contents

  • Mother: Frankenstein
  • A Bedtime Prayer
  • The War
  • Haunting

 

Mother: Frankenstein

Raise the dead. The cross-stitched

face. Her eye-less eye. My long

longings brighten, like tinsel, the three-fingered

hand. Ashen lip. To exist in fragments.

            To exist at all. A comfort.

A gutting. String her up then,

figurine on the cot mobile.

And I am the restless infant transfixed.

Her full skirt, a plume of white feathers,

            blots out the light.

 

A Bedtime Prayer

We ate the fruit Lord,

boiled and buttered we ate.

Thought nothing of it.

 

It was pleasing to the eye.

Filled our mouths, our bellies.

 

It was the fruit of a breadfruit tree.

A tree as old as the first city.

 

How it grew taller than the house.

Those monstrous leaves.

 

Its roots echoing— cracks in the walls.

Its shadow falling through the back door, the corridor,

lengthening towards the front—

 

Ghost of our first father,

ghost begetting ghosts,

our lives thinned into his weakness,

his terror.

 

But we were fed, fed, fed.

                        *

Lord, you have cast us off,

left us to starve,

 

Sent that girl.

 

Girl born with a veiled face,

a caul, calling.

 

How did she find the axe?

 

She wouldn’t eat the fruit,

refused its sweetness,

 

weight of our father,

the first city.

 

Lord, she went down to the garden,

an axe flowering in her hand.

 

It was you Lord, the bouden blan

chirping in her ear.

 

What cruel instructions?

 

Didn’t we do your will,

kept a remembrance—

the tree,

our father,

 

we were hungry, Lord.

 

The tree fell into the house.

 

The War

                  St. Lucia, 194-

A disturbed hour, the sky loud

with the memory of assault.

But still, it’s Sunday, the trees shake

like shac-shacs in the breeze,

and the sea goes on and on

with its lullaby like it has never

given cover to the enemy.

 

It is Sunday,

and we go on with our lovemaking.

I refuse to hush, let my pleasure rise

against the weary tones

in the thin-walled rooms like ours,

it was yesterday, only yesterday,

another body washed ashore…

 

Forever and forever,

death our only guarantee.

Haven’t I died already,

years ago, on a kitchen floor,

under the weight of a different man,

my girlhood shot through,

I learnt the body as machine—

dead heart, dead pubis.

 

It is Sunday,

I teem with life like the flies

swarming the torpedoed ships

in the harbour.

 

Haunting 

We frighten the children.

 

My hair ragged in red cloth,

I speak a language they don’t understand,

 

their ears tuned to English, tuned

to American cartoons.

 

And Leda, Gwanmanman Leda runs

cracks up the walls,

through the centre of our dinner plates.

 

It’s their own fault, you know,

they won’t stay in their rooms.

 

How she endures, endures,

Gwanmanman Leda. Leda.

 

Even after I married,

after she died, she endures.

Tanbou mwen.

Jab mwen.

 

But the children,

the children.

They stare.

Regard me strangely, sadly.

There will be no walk to the park today.

No jump rope high.

Only their rooms.

They will stay in their rooms.

 

Alé, alé. I chase.

They hide behind a wall. Spy.

 

I must clean my house like I cleaned Leda’s room.

 

Scrubbing. A form of memory.

A song. Trojan horse for my own blues.

 

Keeper of the madness.

The mad. Leda.

Mwen faché.

I was only a child,

only a child

made for play,

not the washing of soiled sheets,

of shit-stained walls,

of an old woman.

 

But the children,

how they stare.

Their blink-less eyes.

Pouty lips.

Why won’t they go into their rooms?

Leave me to Leda.

 

We are a pair.

She, because of her bad head.

Mal tèt. And I,

because I was a child.

Small. Piti.

Crushable.

Like a roach.

 

The mad and the little,

The mad and the little,

Give them a tickle,

Then a prickle.

 

Leda, stop your singing.

 

And I must stop this fool parade.

This arm muscling towards memory—

 

You’ve made it up,

Isn’t that what they said?

Mal tèt, bad head.

 

No one ever hit you. Mantè.

Isn’t that what they said?

 

But Leda, Leda,

my sweet Leda.

Mad monument.

Rogue memory.

 

But we must think of the children.

They cry for us, Mommy, Mommy.

 

 

Catherine-Esther Cowie was born in St. Lucia to a Trinidadian father and a St. Lucian mother. She migrated with her family to Canada and then to the USA. Her poems have been published in PN Review, Prairie Schooner, West Branch Journal, The Common, SWWIM, Rhino Poetry and others. Cowie is a Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop fellow.

March 2025 Poetry Feature: Catherine-Esther Cowie’s Heirloom
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January 2025 Poetry Feature #2: Rafael Alberti in Translation

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.

Book cover of Concerning the Angels by Rafael Alberti

Poems appear in both English and Spanish.

Table of Contents:

  • Introduction by John Murillo
  • LOS ÁNGELES VENGATIVOS (The Vengeful Angels)
  • CAN DE LLAMAS (Hound of Flames)
  • EL ÁNGEL TONTO (The Foolish Angel)
  • EL ÁNGEL DEL MISTERIO (The Angel of Mystery)
  • ASCENSIÓN (Ascension)
January 2025 Poetry Feature #2: Rafael Alberti in Translation
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December 2024 Poetry Feature #2: New Work from our Contributors

New work by LEAH FLAX BARBERROBERT CORDING, PETER FILKINS

 

Table of Contents:

  • Robert Cording, “In Beaufort”
  • Leah Flax Barber, “School Poem” and “Cordelia’s No”
  • Peter Filkins, “Trains”

 

In Beaufort
By Robert Cording

At a rented air B&B, I am sitting on a swing
placed here just for me it seems,
or just to carry off my worries and sorrows
as I rock slowly, back and forth, taking in
the shifting colors of the Broad River that circles
this marsh pocketed with cut-outs of water
and long inlets that circle round and round
as if it were one of those spiritual labyrinths
that bring calm as the center is reached.

December 2024 Poetry Feature #2: New Work from our Contributors
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December 2024 Poetry Feature #1: New Work from our Contributors

Works by JEN JABAILY-BLACKBURN and DIANA KEREN LEE

Table of Contents:

  • Jen Jabaily-Blackburn: “Archeological, Atlantic” and “Velvel”
  • Diana Keren Lee: “Living Together” and “Living Alone”

 

Archaeological, Atlantic
By Jen Jabaily-Blackburn

A morsel of conventional wisdom: Never use the word
      boring in a poem because then they
can call your poem boring. The boring sponge can’t
      do everything, but can make holes in oysters, & for the boring sponge, it’s
enough. I miss boring things like gathering mussel shells
      for no one. I miss being so bored that time felt physical, an un-
governable cat sleeping over my heart. I have, I’m told, an archaeologist’s
      heart. I have, I’m told, an archaeologist’s soul. An archaeologist’s eye, so

December 2024 Poetry Feature #1: New Work from our Contributors
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November 2024 Poetry Feature: New Work from our Contributors

Poems By G. C. WALDREP, ALLISON FUNK, and KEVIN O’CONNOR

Table of Contents:

  • G.C. Waldrep, “Below the Shoals, Glendale”
  • Allison Funk, “After Andrew Wyeth’s Snow Hill
  • Kevin O’Connor, “The Other Shoe”

 

Below the Shoals, Glendale
By G. C. Waldrep

I am listening to the slickened sound of the new
wind. It is a true thing. Or, it is true in its falseness.
It is the stuff against which matter’s music breaks.
Mural of the natural, a complicity epic.
The shoals, not quite distant enough to unhear—
Not at all like a war. Or, like a war, in passage,

November 2024 Poetry Feature: New Work from our Contributors
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October 2024 Poetry Feature: New Poems By Our Contributors

New Poems by Our Contributors NATHANIEL PERRY and TYLER KLINE.

 

Table of Contents:

    • Nathaniel Perry, “34 (Song, with Young Lions)” and “36 (Song, with Contranym)”
    • Tyler Kline, “Romance Study” and “What if I told you”                  

 

34 (Song, with Young Lions)
By Nathaniel Perry

All the young lions do lack

bones. They lie wasted on grass,

cashed out, exhausted and un-

delivered. A poor man cries

eventually. A troubled

friend cries eventually.

October 2024 Poetry Feature: New Poems By Our Contributors
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Portfolio from China: Poetry Feature I

This piece is part of a special portfolio featuring new and queer voices from China. Read more from the portfolio here.

By Li Zhuang, Cynthia Chen, Chen Du, Xisheng Chen, and Jolie Zhilei Zhou

Table of Contents:

  • Li Zhuang, “Fan Fiction”
  • Cynthia Chen, “When the TOEFL robot asked us to ‘Describe the city you live in,’ the whole room started repeating that question as if casting an aimless spell”
  • Yan An, translated by Chen Du and Xisheng Chen, “Photo of Free Life in the E-Era”
  • Jolie Zhilei Zhou, “Der Knall” 
Portfolio from China: Poetry Feature I
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