poetry: vera pavlova

If only I knew from what tongue
your I love you has been translated,
if I could find the original,
consult the dictionary
to be sure the rendition is exact:
the translator is not at fault!

Vera Pavlova, from Here and Everywhere, 2002.

poetry: vera pavlova

Why do I recite my poems by heart?
Because I write them by heart,
because I know that kind of spleen
by heart. But I lie to the pen,
not daring to describe how I ambled
along the distant ramparts of love,
barefoot, wearing a birthday suit:
the placental slime and blood.

Vera Pavlova, translated by Steven Seymour, from On The Other Shore of Speech, 2009

allen on post-collage

5. Postcollage

Collage and montage acquired force through the collision of distinct orders and the generation of tension across seams of difference. Previously stable subjectivities were fragmented. But today mobile subjectivities can be put into play both with and against existing spatial orders. The disjunctive play of difference has lost the power to shock. Fluid models of exchange, differential unities and free floating intensities replace the critical models of recuperating difference through ever escalating fragmentation.

17, “Contextual Tactics,” Stan Allen

mcneil on depression

It happened three more times that night. And it happened a lot that winter. Depression is inexplicable. There were weeks I felt so unutterably empty I couldn’t see beyond it. The imprint of the sadness lingered a smoky gray even in the better moments so that they seemed hazy, dull, unrealized. And I couldn’t imagine not feeling the sadness or anger or frustration, each of those in turn another sweatshirt over my body so I was bulky in it, clumsy and unathletic, unable to move through the day without gasping for air. I was mired. I was a burden. I was narcissistic, anxious, self-loathing, listless, disintegrating. I wanted to tear the sweatshirt off. I wanted to be taped up.

— “On Depression”, Claire McNeil for The New Library