I threw the book into a dark garden and let it, all that winter, rot; retrieving it before the weather turned, to transcribe what was legible. Though I considered burning it, I threw the notebook, instead, into the bin. (Then, feeling guilty, plucked it out and put it in the recycling instead.) Some notes on retrieval, on the circulatory and evolutionary intensity of “scraps“; of the notebook next to the book: the book that fails:
The top ten illnesses in our household in 2009 have been: roto virus, lyme disease, sinus infection, common cold, pink eye, swine flu, pink eye redux, occasional faint echoes
It used to be the case that I’d type things up fairly quickly after getting them. Now I seem to want more distance between the accumulation of materials and their typing or arranging.
I remember being lazy and stupid and nonetheless curious. I remember the Optionists, the Actualists, the Pre-Born Bag of Chipists, the Expos, and the Typing Wild Speechists. I remember white roaches
Write what you know. But I don’t know! The floor creaks when I walk up the steps, even when I’m not there. I am facing a national personality triage. The nation is not america but poesie, the personality is not body but name.
Dear readers of this here Harriet blog,
Well, looks like my time here has come to a close. It’s been interesting watching you all anonymously thumbs up and thumbs down one another. In all seriousness, thank you for reading my posts, and allowing me to introduce you all to some poets, poetry, and indie presses which may not have otherwise blipped on your radar.
I will be posting here every now and then; there have been books sitting in my growing “to review” stack, and I do mean to say a few things about a couple of them, namely these two:
INCANTATIONS: Songs, Spells and Images by Mayan Women by Xpetra Ernandes / Xalik Guzmán Bakbolom / Ambar Past (Cinco Puntos Press, 2009).
KILLING KANOKO: SELECTED POEMS OF HIROMI ITO Translated from the Japanese by Jeffrey Angles (Action Books, 2009). You can read more about Ito here).
And this brings me to my question: how do you write about translated poetic work when you don’t read the original language, and when the original language is not included with the translated text (you know, like when you read Lorca, and the original Spanish is included on the facing page)?
That said, it’s back to my own cozy blog for me. Do come and have conversations with me there.

White space criss-crossed yesterday’s New York Times opinion page like mortar. Uneven in length and width, stanzas gave the impression of crumbling brick. Poem titles appeared painted on, recalling graffiti.
In light of the endless debate over Whether Good Political Poetry Exists, the commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall with a wall of poetry–a throwback to the days when poems regularly appeared in newspapers–gave me a case of the grins. The poetry wall struck me as an editorial eye-roll, a visually complex, literarily ambitious “duh.” (Just the same, it’s worth bearing that debate in mind while reading these poems, which, like the rough-hewn wall, can feel uneven.)
Today I went to visit my mother, Margaret Rockwell Finch, who turned 88 a few weeks ago. As always lately, she showed me a new poem. Maggie was my first model of a

Margaret Rockwell Finch, 1961
Thom Donovan
Bhanu Kapil
Fred Moten
Craig Santos Perez
Sina Queyras
Sotère Torregian
Cathy Halley
Michael Marcinkowski
Travis Nichols
Fred Sasaki
Don Share
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