Nov 21, 2023
The velvet-dark […] by my side without reflections.
— Tomas Tranströmer, The Sorrow Gondola/Sorgegondolen, transl by Michael McGriff and Mikaela Grassl, (2010)
seen from United States
seen from Thailand
seen from South Korea
seen from United States
seen from Russia
seen from Italy
seen from Iraq
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from China
seen from Azerbaijan
seen from Malaysia
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from Slovakia
seen from Slovakia
seen from Indonesia
seen from China
The velvet-dark […] by my side without reflections.
— Tomas Tranströmer, The Sorrow Gondola/Sorgegondolen, transl by Michael McGriff and Mikaela Grassl, (2010)
Denis Johnson...told us that we should keep two notebooks. In the first, he said, we were to write in the usual way—fretting, second-guessing, brooding. The second one, he said, was different because it was governed by a single rule—this notebook had to be a space where the pen never left the page, where we wrote everything down, no matter how bizarre or reckless it felt. The first notebook is your enemy, he told us, and the second is the only thing worth committing your lives to. I think of all the rough edges, impulsive leaps, obsessive engines, and quirky spillways of intellection that give my life its deepest meanings and pleasures. And what it all shares, of course, is born of that ‘second notebook.’
Michael McGriff, in this week’s Writers Recommend (Poets & Writers, 2017)
Soon, I will be the barn-dark space / between the trees.
Michael McGriff, from “Skipping a Funeral,” Early Hour
This is one of our favorite broadsides from our special collections, a moving poem by Coos Bay, Oregon-born poet Michael McGriff; designed and printed beautifully by Sandy Tilcock at her lone goose press in Eugene. Our collection also has the archives of this remarkable press which includes the actual pieces of barbed wire used to make the photopolymer plates (which we also have!)...
Before we were birds,
postcards.
A letter not sent.
Faces somewhere wild.
The domain of small mercies.
My dim aviary.
The wilderness after which...
I swim out in a trance on the glittering dark waters.
— Tomas Tranströmer, The Sorrow Gondola/Sorgegondolen, transl by Michael McGriff and Mikaela Grassl, (2010)
The bright shore hypnotizes the dark one.
— Tomas Tranströmer, The Sorrow Gondola/Sorgegondolen, transl by Michael McGriff and Mikaela Grassl, (2010)
November offers candies made of granite. Unpredictable!
— Tomas Tranströmer, The Sorrow Gondola/Sorgegondolen, transl by Michael McGriff and Mikaela Grassl, (2010)