#graywolf press

[garadinervi]

Fadwa Tuqan (فدوى طوقان‎), (1985), Enough For Me, in A Mountainous Journey. A Poet's Autobiography, Edited by Salma Khadra Jayyusi (سلمى الخضراء الجيوسي), Translated from the Arabic by Olive Kenny, Poetry translated from the Arabic by Naomi Shihab Nye (نعومي شهاب ناي), Graywolf Press, Saint Paul, MN, 1990, p. 231

[cityofchapin]

"Unrest in Baton Rouge" by Tracy K. Smith

"Unrest in Baton Rouge" after the photo by Jonathan BachmanOur bodies run with ink dark blood.Blood pools in the pavement’s seams.Is it strange to say love is a languageFew practice, but all, or near all speak?Even the men in black armor, the onesJangling handcuffs and keys, what elseAre they so buffered against, if not love’s bladeSizing up the heart’s familiar meat?We watch and grieve. We…

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[bostonpoetryslam]

Forgive me if the wind stole the howl from my mouth and whipped it against your windowpanes. When I lived, I wanted to be seen.

Sally Wen Mao, “Ghost Story,” from Oculus

[poetsandwriters]

Solmaz Sharif’s poem “Social Skills Training” in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine. 

[devoutjunk]

"But Knud is connected to this landscape, and he knows that identity must be formed in the schism. You carry the place you come from inside of you, but you can never go back to it."

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"'I have come here often,' she writes. 'A whole childhood, every single day. All these arrivals are false, because in reality I was born here. Here I can do nothing but return.'

But that's just one side of the coin, Kerstin, I think. The other is this: the place you come from is not somewhere you can ever return. It no longer exists, and you have become a stranger."

A Line in the World: A Year on the North Sea Coast by Dorthe Nors trans. by Caroline Waight

[tinkercreek]

Tarfia Faizullah from Register of Illuminated Villages (Graywolf, 2018)

Great Material There were the blue-tied garbage bags bulging with her dresses. Then, the buzz of junebugs on nights I sat on the roof alone and asked where my sister was until I felt stupid

and stopped. What do you say to the dead? How can we rejoin them when we fall apart in the safety net below? Does she know her friends Lauren and Cameron played

house after she died, set a place for her at a play dinner table? As though she might stop by for a few bites of air from empty plates with spoons empty

of her short seven years on this planet . . . it unbottles me, how precisely they lamented her. What great material, the conference well-wisher said. Can’t wait to read that poem.

Here it is then, now. The crinkle of your laughter. The beetles pouring into your eyes as we toast you.

[whilereadingandwalking]

Irene Solà's novel When I Sing, Mountains Dance, translated from Catalan by Mara Faye Lethem, is an absolutely wonderful story of a small village in the Pyrenees. It all begins when poet and farmer Domènec is struck by lightning high up on a ridge. From there, a story unspools. His is not the last death that will haunt this family. As his two children, Mia and Hilari, grow up under the tough care of mother Siró, who never wanted this life in the country, never planned to be a single mother on a farm. 

Everyone and everything speaks to us to tell this story. Siró, her children, their neighbors, narrate—but so do the black chanterelles, a roe-buck, the land's crust, dog Lluna. And don't forget the ghosts that haunt these peaks, starting with the four witches who have laughed on these rocks since they were hanged in the 17th century. All of these monologues come together to paint a rich watercolor of dripping, bleeding color, all steep ridges and remote forest, wide-open landscapes and merry festival and finding connection where we can. It's a beautiful novel about loss, grief, and connection, and the experimental narratives all pay off. This was one of my most anticipated reads of the year, and it delivered: I devoured it in one long, luscious sitting. 

I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. When I Sing, Mountains Dance is out March 15 from Graywolf Press. 

Content warnings for sex shaming, death, grief, violence, emotional and domestic abuse.

[sunfish-swimming]

Diane Seuss