Soul Feast anthology interviews in Beshara & on Books for Breakfast
Interviews with Neil Astley in Beshara Magazine & on Ireland's Books for Breakfast podcast about Soul Feast (co-edited with Pamela Robertson-Pearce); review in London...
It hovers in dark corners
before the lights are turned on,
it shakes sleep from its eyes
and drops from mushroom gills,
it explodes in the starry heads
of dandelions turned sages,
it sticks to the wings of green angels
that sail from the tops of maples.
It sprouts in each occluded eye
of the many-eyed potato,
it lives in each earthworm segment
surviving cruelty,
it is the motion that runs the tail of a dog,
it is the mouth that inflates the lungs
of the child that has just been born.
It is the singular gift
we cannot destroy in ourselves,
the argument that refutes death,
the genius that invents the future,
all we know of God.
It is the serum which makes us swear
not to betray one another;
it is in this poem, trying to speak.
Lisel Mueller
*
Hope
She has a sense of somewhere beyond
here where there is hope. A note cools
on a piano in a room long emptied,
and so well that only the ghosts notice.
She is aware of them all; they catch her
breathing now and then, attempting to
turn around again in a space that grows
narrow but not bitter with age:
the nights end-stage perhaps, its black edge
stopped dead by a sliver of morning light;
the certainty of sorts of a day
where something, anything, might happen.
Oscillating, she assumes the shape, skin-
slipping to a place where she can wait.
Enda Coyle-Greene
*
Hope
I want to be unconstrained –
therefore I care not a fig for noble styles.
I roll up my sleeves.
The poem’s dough is rising…
Oh what a pity
that I cannot bake cathedrals…
Highness of forms –
goal of persistent longing.
Child of the present –
does your spirit not have a proper shell?
Before I die
I shall bake a cathedral.
Edith Södergran translated from the Finland Swedish by David McDuff
*
The Lamp
Hope that looked toward the horizon
now lies in this oil lamp –
For the sky’s farther than hope can reach!
Arrows of light obliterate the distance
into blank nothingness;
then what makes my trembling fingers
gently stroke the brilliant forehead
of this oil lamp?
[1933–1935, in prison]
Ai Qing translated from the Chinese by Robert Dorsett
*
Now
There is never an end to loss, or hope
I give up the ghost for which I grope
Over and over again saying Amen
To all that does or does not happen –
The eternal event is now, not when
Samuel Menashe
Contents List
1. JOURNEYS
Lorna Crozier 11 Packing for the Future: Instructions
Mary O’Donnell 13 The Intimate Future
Julius Chingono 14 As I Go
Jericho Brown 15 Crossing
Stanisłav Baranczak 16 If china
William Stafford 17 The Way It Is
Toon Tellegen 17 ‘I drew a line…’
Ruth Stone 18 Train Ride
Tomas Tranströmer 19 Tracks
Ted Kooser 20 November 12: 4.30 a.m.
Kerry Hardie 21 We Go On
Lal Ded 22 Two poems
2. SOUL SEARCH
Jane Hirshfield 23 Counting, New Year’s Morning, What Powers Yet Remain to Me
Kona Macphee 25 The Gift
Denise Levertov 25 The Gift
Arun Kolatkar 26 Yeshwant Rao
Tukaram 28 ‘When he comes…’
Kathleen Ossip 30 The Believer
Dennis O’Driscoll 31 Fabrications
Edward Hirsch 35 I Was Never Able to Pray
Giorgio Caproni 36 Prayer
Arundhathi Subramaniam 37 Prayer
Jorge Luis Borges 38 Poem Written in a Copy of Beowulf
Peter Sirr 39 A Saxon Primer
Lucie Brock-Boido 40 Soul Keeping Company
Adriana Lisboa 41 Soul Washing
May Swenson 42 Question
3. LIFE ON EARTH
Denise Levertov 43 O Taste and See
Linda Pastan 44 Imaginary Conversation
Muriel Rukeyser 45 Yes
Gregory Orr 46 To Be Alive
Rosemary Tonks 47 Addiction to an Old Mattress
Maya C. Popa 48 Dear Life
Marin Sorescu 49 With Only One Life
John McCullogh 50 Watermelon Man
Ada Limón 51 Love Poem with Apologies for My Appearance
Jack Hirschman 52 Path
Jack Gilbert 53 A Brief for the Defense
Ellen Bass 54 The Thing Is
Ellen Bass 55 Any Common Desolation
Joan Margarit 56 Love Is a Place
Jane Hirshfield 57 A Cedary Fragrance
Chase Twichell 58 Saint Animal
Mona Arshi 59 Little Prayer
William Stafford 60 Listening
Tuvia Ruebner 61 Wonder
Jeong Ho-seung 62 A Spider
Jane Hirshfield 63 The Supple Deer
Jane Hirshfield 64 The Envoy
Lynne Wycherley 65 The Substitute Sky
Marie Howe 66 Postscript
4. ALL TOGETHER NOW
Fernando Pessoa 67 They Spoke to Me of People, and of Humanity.
Vincent Katz 68 This Beautiful Bubble
Naomi Shihab Nye 70 Gate A-4
Imtiaz Dharker 72 How to Cut a Pomegranate
Imtiaz Dharker 73 Crab-apples
John Koethe 74 Lives
Tomas Tranströmer 75 After Someone’s Death
Taha Muhammad Ali 76 Maybe
A.E. Housman 77 ‘Good creatures…’
Tomas Tranströmer 78 Alone
Jeong Ho-seung 80 To Daffodils
Sandra McPherson 81 Some Meanings of Silence
John O’Donohue 82 from For the Break-up of a Relationship
Naomi Shihab Nye 82 The Art of Disappearing
Lee Young-ju 84 Lumberjack Diary
Naomi Shihab Nye 85 Shoulders
Lauren Halderman 86 from Instead of Dying
Chen Chen 87 a small book of questions: chapter VII
Mary Jean Chan 90 Conversation with a Fantasy Mother
Jane Clarke 91 Spalls
Sandra Cisneros 92 At Fifty I Am Startled to Find I Am in My Splendor
Doug Anderson 93 Homage to Li Po
Alicia Ostriker 94 Wrinkly Lady Dancer
Lucille Clifton 95 homage to my hips
Norigo Ibaragi 96 When I Was at My Most Beautiful
Norigo Ibaragi 98 Your Own Sensitivity at Least
Linda Pastan 99 I Am Learning to Abandon the World
Joy Harjo 100 I Am a Prayer
5. HOPE & LIGHT
Imtiaz Dharker 102 Carving
Kerry Hardie 103 Flesh
Alyson Hallett 104 Suddenly, Everything
E.E. Cummings 105 ‘i thank You God for most this amazing’
Edip Cansever 106 Table
Elena Shvarts 107 ‘Set your course by the Sun…’
Imtiaz Dharker 108 Living Space
Brendan Kennelly 109 Permission
Adam Zagajewski 109 Wake Up
Danusha Laméris 110 Insha’Allah
Miroslav Holub 111 The door
Roger Robinson 112 A Portable Paradise
Boris A. Novak 113 Decisions: II
Ivan V. Lalc 114 The Spaces of Hope
Lisel Muller 115 Hope
Enda Coyle-Greene 116 Hope
Edith Södergran 117 Hope
Ellen Cranitch 118 Hope
Ai Qing 119 The Lamp
Samuel Menashe 119 Now
Langston Hughes 120 Dreams
Langston Hughes 120 Harlem [2]
Brendan Kennelly 121 Good Souls to Survive
Molly Fisk 122 Against Panic
Michael D. Higgins 123 The Well 2
Leanne O’Sullivan 124 A Healing
Paula Meehan 125 Seed
Derek Mahon 126 Everything Is Going To Be All Right
127 Notes on the poets
153 Acknowledgements
159 Index of writers