Jeffrey Yang, “Xi-Turtle”
Follow the third guideway thru
the Eastern Mountains, pass
the Desert of Shifting Sands to
Tiptoe Peak, bare of plants
and trees but full of jade and giant
snakes, you’ll find Deep Lake
where the sacred Xi-Turtle dwells.
The markings on its shell foretell;
its stomach emanates strange sounds.
Says Master Zhuang: What people
know is inferior to what they do not know.
From An Aquarium. Although this is his first collection of original poems, Yang is the translator of work by the 11th-century Chinese poet Su Shi as well as a collection of other poets in the era of the Tang and Song dynasties. See, for example, nine examples of his translation from Words Without Borders.
11 November 2008 | poetry |
James Agee, “Two Songs on the Economy of Abundance”
Temperance Note: and Weather Prophecy
Watch well The Poor in this late hour
Before the wretched wonder stop:
Who march along a thundershower
And never touch a drop.Red Sea
How long this way: that everywhere
We make our march the water stands
Apart and all our wine is air
And all our ease the emptied sands?
From James Agee: Selected Poems, the latest volume in the Library of America’s American Poets Project, which reminds us that for all the other types of writing Agee practiced—from fiction to journalism to film criticism—he considered himself a poet first.
Other Agee poems online include “Permit Me Voyage” and Sunday: Outskirts of Knoxville, Tennessee.”
4 September 2008 | poetry |
Our Endless and Proper Work is my new book with Belt Publishing about starting (and sticking to) a productive writing practice. 
