(Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions, 2019) Lee Ann Roripaugh’s fifth volume of poetry, tsunami vs. the fukushima 50, explores the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster, triggered by the tsunami following the Tōhoku earthquake. The collection opens with a handful of poems … Continued
Heather Lang: Thank you so much, Michael, for agreeing to an interview on your brilliant translation of The Popol Vuh, the ancient Mayan creation epic, as translated from the K’iche’. I’ve long been familiar with your poetry, so I was … Continued
Translated from the German by Katharina Rout (Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions, 2010) Born in Mongolia in the forties, Galsan Tschinag has lived a range of human experience I can only imagine: he has been, by his own description, a gatherer, … Continued
Translated from the French by Sheila Fischman (Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions, 2016) A mother gives her child life. She cradles him, loves him, feeds him and nurtures him. The death of that child is a mother’s worst fear. She will … Continued
Translated from the Chinese by Fiona Sze-Lorrain (Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions, 2015) “A stage setting has no independent life of its own. Its emphasis is directed towards the performance. In the absence of the actor it does not exist.” These words … Continued
(Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions, 2015) Every so often, I come across a poem that I share with everyone, even those not familiar with contemporary poetry. “How to Triumph Like a Girl,” the opening poem in Ada Limón’s Bright Dead Things, … Continued
(Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions, 2015) Parneshia Jones’s poetry collection Vessel celebrates life with story and with lyric. Jones grew up an African-American girl in Chicago, and these reflective poems carve out for the reader a portrait of a life and … Continued
(Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions, 2015) At some point while reading Eric Pankey’s Crow-Work, I set the book down and Google’d “Who invented time?” I am embarrassed to admit it. A foolish question, I know, and not one that I expected … Continued
(Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions, 2014) The poems in Sara Eliza Johnson’s Bone Map are unmistakably kindred with one another; though neither formally unified nor linear in any discernible way, each one seems to resonate with the next. Driven by a … Continued
(Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions, 2014) Writers are often recommended to chronicle their dreams. Once recorded, one is expected to find the consequences within the strange images, the symbolism, the wild transformations. I could never capture them. My nightmares were never … Continued
(Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions, 2014) “Sun’s yoke a greasy sputter in morning’s blue Teflon.” Lee Ann Roripaugh opens her poem “Trompe l’Oeil: The Annotated Version” with these words, which I read as I sit at a diner down the road, … Continued
(Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions, 2014) From “big jellyfish, All grown-assed” to “rain-laden / Lilacs,” Alex Lemon’s newest poetry collection, The Wish Book, is filled with everything. In a way, this reminds me of Dara Wier’s newest collection, You Good Thing, … Continued