DPF / Strand

So sad to see that Mark Strand died yesterday. Thankful he lived through this last Thanksgiving. Love this one from his book, The Weather of Words. Here’s a small part of it.

from Narrative Poetry / by Mark Strand

I wanted to remind them that the narrative poem takes the place of an absent narrative and is always absorbing the other’s absence so it can be named, and, at the same time, relinquishing its own presence to the awful solitudes of forgetfulness.

DPF / Sutzkever

For cranberry bogs south of Boston, through which William rode on a train as a child. Without cranberry bogs, no cranberries to mingle memory and present moment. From Poetry, November 2014, The Translation Issue. What is more in translation than memory?

from The Blade of Grass from Ponar / by Abraham Sutzkever (1913-2010), translated By Maia Evrona

This blade of grass is now my world, my miniature home,
where children play the fiddle in a line on fire.