Translation

I like this poem translated by him. And this poem too.

I was looking through the poetry section at two of my local bookstores, and really, the poetry selection there sucks. It bores me. I ended up leaving with two books, both translations of foreign poets. Sometimes I feel the poetry here has been so elevated to this crazy academic level of perfection, instead of being organic and real and hard. I get tired of the prettiness of it all...

My friend Donna lives above one of my former creative writing professors, Irving Feldman. I guess she must have told him that I ask about him from time to time (even though he drove me crazy in his classes----grrrrrrrrrrrr---I even wrote a poem about it) and he mentioned to her he wanted me to come to some reading he was giving. But she forgot about it because it was when her aunt was dying.

Anyway, I was surprised he remembered me. Even though we argued a lot in his class, he did seem to like me. And actually, once he found out I was a classically trained clarinetist, and I sang with THE chorus, his attitude toward me changed dramatically (though that annoys me on some level).

Well, anyway, his writing is of the academically perfect, MacArthur fellowship, type that I do not write like.