I can’t help but wonder at the fact that reliability itself has become novel.

Reader, some say they were a simple people, who believed in mere symbols, gods of corn. They planted—in the quick, festive flush of summer heat—fennel and barley in terracotta shards.

So how does this practice of Dickinson’s translate into the contemporary world, where, for better or for worse, publishers, who insist on a final version of the text, exist?

Each image I’ve eaten
meaningless, meaningless.
Have you seen enough of me?

On the day I turned twenty-five, I decided I would give my mother the life she never had. And by that I mean I planned to live the life she was never able to live.

A library of turning leaves; its rings
A record of the years no needle traces,
Shade the annihilating sun erases,
Torn from the catalogue of living things.

I picture an arrow on a map: You are here. You mold your days around this change, incorporate the new thing into your life, even if the new thing is cancer.

I tried to remember when I’d first heard him express even the slightest embarrassment about his role in the financial crisis, rather than defensiveness or fury at Treasury for bailing out Bear Stearns and Morgan Stanley but leaving Lehman in the wind.

Translation requires an inventory of one’s linguistic resources, which is a form of muscle memory, so to speak; the rim shot and quick draw are as much a poet-translator’s tools as the glossary.