This rough bark’s gray, lit up, separated
from the dark by some distant lamp.
An Opera With No Libretto
April 1, 2014
Issue 07, Issue 07 Poetry, Poetry
All posts tagged: Poetry
The Harbor
April 1, 2014
Issue 07, Issue 07 Poetry, Podcasts & Audio, Poetry
Afterwards everything whitened
like paper or breath—
The room was suddenly anchored to itself,
the chains stopped groaning.
I knew I could not leave with you.
The sea outside was like the sea
on the map. A sea-god was blowing
into a crosshatched arc of sails.
Little Chapel
April 1, 2014
Issue 07, Issue 07 Poetry, Poetry
How do I know
this stark room, the wooden chair,
the antique book in its lap,
the drawers lined with cedar,
the two folded shirts, his and mine,
the map of the Mediterranean World
in a frame, its sea faded turquoise?
Have you come here too?
Is this a place you recognize?
Toast
April 1, 2014
Issue 07, Issue 07 Poetry, Poetry
To Nissim Ezekiel
Friends, brothers, sisters, wellwishers
And our esteemed guests from foreign,
Today we welcome to our humble
Abode in Navsari, Gujarat, a precious
Addition to our family,
Our daughter-in-law Emily Curry
Hailing from Lankasire, UK.
On this auspicious day Miss Emily,
Now Mrs, has tied the knot
Of holy matrimony
With our youngest Mahess.
Your Parents’ House
April 1, 2014
Issue 07, Issue 07 Poetry, Podcasts & Audio, Poetry
Your parents grow older, perhaps
old. The same conversations,
yellow like the walls,
Review: The Marlowe Papers
March 31, 2014
Reviews
Book by ROS BARBER
Reviewed by
I’ll be honest: when The Common asked me to review Ros Barber’s new book, The Marlowe Papers, I was leery. Novels-in-verse aren’t really my thing. Reading the back cover blurbs, I became even more skeptical: a novel in iambic pentameter (rhymed and blank verse) from the point of view of the English poet, playwright, Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), whom conspiracy theorists claim was the real author of Shakespeare’s plays? The book claims Marlowe’s death, in a bar-fight before the Church of England could charge him with heresy, was staged to let him escape England. And while in hiding, he ghost-wrote all of Shakespeare’s plays.
What the hell? I expected an overwrought, creepy fan-fiction piece in archaic diction and clumsy meter. After reading a few pages, I realized I owed Ms Barber an apology. This is a damn fine book.
March 2014 Poetry Feature
March 23, 2014
Poetry
Celebrate the advent of spring with new poems by seven of our spectacular contributors.
Review: Dragon Logic
March 3, 2014
Reviews
Book by STEPHANIE STRICKLAND
Reviewed by
Begin with the cover of Dragon Logic: double Garamond italic ampersands. Inverted they propose elegant dragons against a green hide background. “TWO dragons,” Stephanie Strickland writes in the eponymous poem, “keep a pearl/in the air untouched/if yes then no if no then yes.” Their “dragon logic” insists that the reader consider sets that consist of themselves, a common problem in questions of reflexivity where the self of the self-reference is a human self. This proposition enlarges the idea of the juggling proposed by John Keats’ concept of negative capability—“when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”
February 2014 Poetry Feature
February 21, 2014
Poetry
This month The Common welcomes aboard four poets new to our pages: Maceo J. Whitaker, Claire Eder, Thomas March, and Jonathan Gerhardson. Two of these fine younger poets, Gerhardson and Whitaker, are being published for the first time. At The Common, we’re looking forward to more work by all four of them. Stay tuned.
January 2014 Poetry Feature
January 23, 2014
Poetry, Translation
Editor’s Note:
In October I had the pleasure of hearing the young Polish poet Tadeusz Dąbrowski read his poems in a bilingual performance at Atomic Books in Maryland, a stop on his recent tour of the United States. TC readers will no doubt join me in appreciation of his poems, which are simultaneously deeply moving and surprisingly comic. Hopefully you will also relish my aggressive effort to deliver his work to you. As soon as the reading was done I pursued him to the sidewalk, where I procured a promise that he would send us poems to publish. His word’s as good as his work: we’re offering four of his poems here, and three more will follow in the print issue.
Dabrowski is only thirty-four but has already published eight books of poetry; the list of his prizes is longer than the ingredients for plum pudding. His work has been translated around the world—into twenty languages—and his readership continues to grow. Another German collection is due out very soon, and Antonia Lloyd-Jones’ second volume of English translations is well underway—these poems come from that. He’s drawn high praise from Adam Zagajewski in his homeland, and in the US his Anglophone debut, Black Square, was hailed by Timothy Donnelly as a “brilliant, unforgettable book.” We welcome his work to our pages with sincere excitement.
