Category: Fiction
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After “Vor dem Gesetz,” At Home, Oct ’20
He was sat in an obscure corner of the world, In Memphis (of late), and left alone to read Obscure histories, of the fishing of sea-bream, And grouper, of the proper ecological relations, Of sponge, tortoise, and the sunlight which scatters Thru the unlanc’d emeraldry of sea-skin, Their holy bilayer. This curriculum Like most, went…
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Sharing some John Ashbery, and Poetry in California
Wanted to pass along some beloved excerpts from John Ashbery, who I try my utmost to imitate. Nothing is like his poetry. An immodest little white wine, some scattered seraphs,recollections of the Fall—tell me,has anyone made a spongier representation, chasedfewer demons out of the parking lotwhere we all held hands? Little by little the idea…
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“Das Wunderkind,” by Thomas Mann
I was asked, after posting my translation of this story, whether I could offer readers a link to the original. Hoping ardently that I’m not running afoul of any copyright laws for posting a 117-year-old story, here it is in full. Das Wunderkind kommt herein – im Saale wird’s still. Es wird still, und dann…
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“The Prodigy,” by Thomas Mann – My Translation
For the Christmas 1903 issue of Vienna’s Die Presse, the Nobel laureate-to-be Thomas Mann contributed this lovely short story, about a wintertime concert given by a prodigy pianist. “Das Wunderkind” was the title it carried when published as a novella in 1914. Mann himself wrote in 1910 that it was his “most beloved” work. I…
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Predestination, Home, Aug ’20
There are no mountains On the sky-rim here, no. Not much offered to the gauzy eye, Squat and squinting, On the lookout for orogenies And irruptions. It’s a flat place. For the Puritans, the most attractive features of this, The nearer coast, was respite, a chance to get away from it all, Arable land less…
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Barnacle-Studded Buoy, Seattle WA, Aug ’20
A night-dark cormorant skizzed past us on a solid packet of waves. Some minutes later, he came back the same way. You gripped with both hands alert and taut the unspooling line which plumbed the gloom. I had taken to wondering by and by when those hands would jump up and clamp into a vise…
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The Bug’s Birth, Outside, Jun ’20
I sneezed, and there came to be a honeybee Lying on the turf. Writhing, writhing amid its stalks, His arms catching for some fast, that his wings Might underfoot take air, and him deliver Anon to higher ground. The ejecta previously mine, now his and the earth’s, Strung itself along a glimmer, and waited. I…
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Acts of Union, Nighttime, Jun ’20
Betty, who with her Scotch tongue New stews could set to boil ladleless, Sat inhomogenously upon the bus seat. Yes, Friend, inhomogeneous – for within her made rent The hoary statistic of gaseous state and without, On her visage, ruled well-traveled liquid, Fit to meet whose nature it and she chanced Upon the highway. Remaining,…
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Concerto for Woodwinds, Home, Jun ’20
Do the rest of them wonder, out there? Glockenspiel. What about? Downbeat, quarter rest, Quarter rest, and: I mean about the Dismemberment of their kith and kin, Do they ponder the sucking dread Of a sibling’s early end? Did space in its Unflappable maw, the totality, having, once there, No recourse but consciousnessless, make them…
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Corner Suite, Pacific Coast Highway, May ’20
The only thing next to you there then is The diving bell, a wigwam of passions, Inscrutable to even our doggedest detectives And theologians, those sobbing – I meant Slobbering packed minds. Finely – Finally – fine, a lee – pick your way Over to the garden. It was made just for you. If it…
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