Arthur Rimbaud, “Seascape” (Marine)

Silver and copper chariots—
Steel and silver ship’s bows—
Hammer the foam,—
Heave up stumps of brambles.
     The currents of the heath,
And the huge ruts of the ebb tide
Swirl toward the east,
Toward the pillars of the forest,—
Toward the timbers of the pier,
Whose angle is struck by whirlpools of light.

W.W. Norton has published a new translation of Illuminations by John Ashbery. Thanks to Criticism &c, you can compare Ashbery to the Louise Varèse translation, and Poetry has published four of the poems—“Genie,” “Morning of Drunkenness,” “Royalty,” and “To a Reason”—as well as Ashbery’s introductory remarks.

And here’s Ashbery reading from “Promontory” earlier this year at the New School…

17 May 2011 | poetry |

Marge Piercy, “Collectors”

Some people collect grudges
like stamps or rare coins.
They take out their prize holdings
to polish till they glow.

But after a while, it doesn’t work
any longer, so they need fresh
ones to cherish the way another
will groom a champion setter.

Friendships are expendable
as last decade’s palazzo pants.
Rejecting is more fun than
holding close. So on they go

their paths littered with torn
and discarded friendships,
like bones outside the den
of a fairy tale giant.

“Collectors” is one of the previously uncollected poems in The Hunger Moon, a selected retrospective of Marge Piercy‘s poems from 1980 to 2010. Other new Piercy poems in the collection include “The low road,” “The curse of Wonder Woman” (published in Blue Fifth), “Football for dummies,” and “End of days” (published in Rattle).

12 May 2011 | poetry |