POETRY

CARLO ALBERTO SALUSTRI, ALIAS TRILUSSA – The cynical Roman version of La Fontane: three sonnets

Among the Roman dialect poets, Trilussa (1871/1950), is by far the most well-known and appreciated outside his own hometown. His mature work falls broadly into two types (sonnets and fables), however, it wasat the poetic fable that Trilussa truly excelled, developing a distinctly cynical Roman version (of the genre of Aesop and La Fontaine). Among his many artistic merits, he …

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THINGS GET REARRANGED – Poetry, by Huang Lihai

THINGS GET REARRANGED – The world changes subtly as it goes around. The morning coffee aroma feels like the glow from a honeycomb, while outside the window the olive grove still soaks in the twilight mist. Tiny footsteps follow faint sounds to distant places, but the fisherman has returned and is sitting in the courtyard, watching a bird foraging in …

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LETTER TO A FRIEND – Poetry, by Ah Xin

LETTER TO A FRIEND – Let me tell you about these sheep. In many ways they are like the ocean creatures you know so well: in the benevolence of the creator, they bear children, each has a face of a lad or an old man. These days they are on the hills, a tight flock, a warm flock, with a …

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THE GREAT YUNNAN KINGDOM – Poetry, by Lang Qibo

THE GREAT YUNNAN KINGDOM – Wumeng likes to sing after a few drinks, and he always sings the same old song. I’ve heard it many times, but still can’t remember a word of it. Wumeng dreams of building his own empire, calling it The Great Yunnan Kingdom, but the soberer he gets, the more his empire looks like a castle …

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WHAT IF YOU SLEPT – Poetry, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

WHAT IF YOU SLEPT – What if you slept, and what if in your sleep you dreamed, and what if in your dream you went to heaven, and there plucked a strange and beautiful flower, and what if when you awoke you had that flower in you hand. Ah, what then? http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Poems-Penguin-Classics/dp/0140423532

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IF YOU FORGET ME – Poetry, by Pablo Neruda

IF YOU FORGET ME – I want you to know one thing. You know how this is: if I look at the crystal moon, at the red branch of the slow autumn at my window, if I touch near the fire the impalpable ash or the wrinkled body of the log, everything carries me to you, as if everything that …

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ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE – Petry, by William Shakespeare

ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE – All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages. At first, the infant, mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms. Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel and shining …

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A WORLD THAT PLAYS ITS OWN GAME WITH US – Inger Christensen, poems

Christensen’s father was a tailor, and her mother a cook before her marriage, but Inger Christensen (1935/2009, born in Vejle Denmark), become experimentalists – in different way – one of Europe’s leading contemporary experimentalists. Her works include poetry, fiction, drama, and essays. She received numerous international literary awards. After teaching at the College for Arts in Holbæk, she turned to …

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CONTEMPORARY CHINESE POETRY – An Qi, Ba Ling and Chen Guiliang

PARTING BEFORE DAYBREAK – First the day, then daybreak, and finally the time for parting. Local time in Beijing is 7 o’clock according to the TV. As a child, I liked to lie in bed and wait for daybreak, my silver broach stayed in its soft dormant curve. I counted my fingers, exactly ten. Almost daybreak, but no light in …

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CONTEMPORARY INDIAN POETRY – Tanya Mendonsa, The Daughters of the Lie

Exhibitions of her paintings have been many, but as a poet, she is new to the Indian literary scene. Originally from Kolkata, she to Paris at the age of 21, to paint, major in French literature at the Sorbonne. After nineteen years, she returned to India, to live in the river-laced village of Moira in Goa, where she painted and …

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