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Introduction

TO FORGIVE TAKES POWER—judgment, sentence, and pardon are each implied in the act. We imagine that power divine and yet also claim it for ourselves. Forgive us our . . . what? debts, trespasses, sins? as we forgive . . . the sins of others. In the loose weave of Christian tradition, transgression is the red thread, and human history begins with the first taste of good and evil. Assuming that, as the story goes, all are sinners, then the extension of forgiveness to others is the necessary step that binds community together again. Religion, from the Latin, re-ligare, to bind again....

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View a recording of our Disability Justice: A Reading event, featuring featuring Zefyr Lisowski, Bhavna Mehta, Claude Olson, and Saleem Hue Penny!

Closed Captioning is available, and an audio transcript can be found here.

“We are the heirs of a legacy of creative protest [...] the teachings of Thoreau are alive today, indeed, they are more alive today than ever before.”

—REV. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. (MR 4.1, Autumn 1962)

From the Blog

Reviews

Limericks for Saint Patrick’s Day

- By Marsha Bryant

 

 

It might take years
To win your heart.
To grab a beer
Would be a start.
--Paul Muldoon

‘Twas in Limerick, Ireland, was born
This rollicking, frolicsome form
That refuses the haughty
(But relishes naughty)
In light, triple rhythms adorned.

On St. Patrick’s Day, let’s turn to Ale
With a triply delicious regal-
ing of tasty dark brews
I’ve selected for you
For this alcoholiday we hail.

 

1
Go and taste for the thirst time this classic.
The Extra Stout Guinness is basic:
For its foam, roasted malt,
And its hops hath no fault.
And...


Interviews

10 Questions for John Newton Webb

- By Edward Clifford

I work
the soil    it echoes with the footsetps of the world
I make my body tremble like a fallen leaf and sink
and I thirst for words of life which may bud in tomorrow's loam
—from "Loam" by Shiki Itsuma, Translated by John Newton Webb, Volume 63, Issue 4 (Winter 2022)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you translated.
The first poem I translated was Ishihara Yoshiro’s Funeral Train (published in The Kyoto Journal). I was finding my way into the world of post-war Japanese poetry and I came across a couple of Ishihara’s poems in an anthology. Funeral Train immediately stood out to me.

Ishihara (1915-77) spent 8 years as a Soviet POW after WWII and train...


Interviews

10 Questions for Clare Richards

- By Edward Clifford

Five minutes later and I was already regretting going with him. I fell behind, uneasy. I hoped he wouldn't notice, that he'd carry on walking. But he stopped and turned around. It seemed he wouldn't move an inch until I was right beside him. His smile read catch up, quick. I told him to go ahead, that I'd follow.
—from "The Lake" by Kang Hwagil, Translated by Clare Richards, Volume 63, Issue 4 (Winter 2022)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you translated.
I first started out translating film subtitles. My most memorable experience was working on 1990 documentary Even the Blades of Grass Have Names, the first work by South Korean feminist film collective Bariteo. The film takes a very candid, yet...


Reviews

Nights of Plague

- By Margot Demopoulos

A Review of Nights of Plague by Orhan Pamuk. Translated from Turkish by Ekin Oklap. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2022.

Orhan Pamuk is the first Turkish Nobel laureate for literature. His work focuses on Turkish culture and history, using labyrinthine plots, an overload of detail, operatic flights of imagination, and tongue-in-cheek word play. In a 2020 essay, Pamuk revealed he started thinking about writing a plague novel thirty years earlier. He regards Daniel Defoe’s Journal of a Plague Year as “the single most illuminating work of literature...


Interviews

10 Questions for Yi Zhe

- By Edward Clifford

Because of my poor hearing
two old friends think
they can make mischief
in front of me.
—From "I Blacklisted Two Old Friends" by Zuo You, Translated by Yi Zhe, Volume 63, Issue 4 (Winter 2022)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you translated.
Zuo You has suffered from a hearing impairment at the age of six. Since then, he has been exploring sounds, eager to hear every day. His hope to communicate with the world has shaped his poetic practice. Zuo You writes with high accuracy to evoke feelings which strike home in the text, and to achieve self-transcendence. At times, his writing is insolent, modern, lyrical, direct, self-ridiculing.

I have been translating Zuo You’s poems about sound, deafness,...


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