After Mandelshtam by Reginald Gibbons

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend July 3, 2014   After Mandelshtam   Reginald Gibbons

To the futile sound of midnight church bells, out back someone is rinsing her thoughts in unfathomable universal sky— a cold faint glowing. As always stars are white as salt on the blade of an old axe. The rain-barrel’s full, there’s ice in its mouth. Smash the ice—comets and stars melt away like salt, the water darkens and the earth on which the barrel stands is transparent underfoot, and there too are galaxies, ghost-pale and roaring silently in the seven-hundred-odd chambers of the mind.            Copyright @ 2014 by Reginald Gibbons. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “‘After Mandelshtam’ is one of a group of poems most of which use a phrase or two, or a few images, from Osip Mandelshtam’s poems, which I have taken either from as yet unpublished translations of his work that I have made with the Russian poet Ilya Kutik, or from existing published translations. I feel compelled to honor the richness of his extraordinary imagination, the swiftness of his metaphorical transformations, and his moral and spiritual courage during years of poverty, censorship, internal exile, and ultimately illness ending in a lonely death.” —Reginald Gibbons   Reginald Gibbons is the author of Slow Trains Overhead: Chicago Poems and Stories (University of Chicago Press, 2010).  He is the Frances Hooper Professor of Arts and Humanities at Northwestern University and lives in Evanston, Illinois. Most Recent Book by Gibbons   Slow Trains Overhead: Chicago Poems and Stories (University of Chicago Press, 2010) “Elegy in Limestone” by CJ Evans “Clonazepam” by Donald Dunbar “To Earthward” by Robert Frost Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038