Monthly Archives: May 2018

The Sonosopher

Posted on May 27, 2018 by Scott Abbott

The title is “The Sonosopher.” The poem to the right of the image begins “in my mind.” The afternoon sun slanting down from a high west-facing window is an illuminating exclamation. Daily I have the pleasure of living inside the … Continue reading →

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Philip Roth

Posted on May 23, 2018 by Scott Abbott

I’ve spent a lot of hours with Philip Roth over the years. Sorry to see him go. When it was first published, I reviewed The Anatomy Lesson for the Sunstone Review. I compared it to Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship; wonder if … Continue reading →

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Clouds

Posted on May 22, 2018 by Scott Abbott

From Mark Jarman’s Epistles: 26. In the Clouds Simply by thinking I stood among the clouds. They surrounded and passed me, being and becoming. Blood released into clear water. Breath into cold air. Formlessness entering form, forced into form. . . … Continue reading →

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Translation

Posted on May 20, 2018 by Scott Abbott

Emily Wilson’s review of Mark Polizzotti’s Sympathy for the Traitor: A Translation Manifesto (in the current edition of the NYRB) makes me think about my own work as a translator. Should a translation, as Walter Benjamin argued, “be powerfully affected … Continue reading →

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Mark Jarman: Devotional Poetry

Posted on May 19, 2018 by Scott Abbott

A couple of years ago, poet, translator, and critic Kimberly Johnson organized a conference at Brigham Young University on Devotional Poetry. Poet Susan Howe suggested that Kimberly invite me to introduce their keynote speaker, Mark Jarman, who had been a … Continue reading →

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Michael Ondaatje’s Warlight

Posted on May 18, 2018 by Scott Abbott

We order our lives with barely held stories. As if we have been lost in a confusing landscape, gathering what was invisible and unspoken . . . sewing it all together in order to survive, incomplete. . . . Now … Continue reading →

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Into the Unknown with Charles Bowden and Edward Abbey

Posted on May 15, 2018 by Scott Abbott

Scott Carrier begins his foreword to the forthcoming reissue of Charles Bowden’s Some of the Dead Are Still Breathing with a caveat: Instead of a foreword I should start with a forewarning to those with a desire to feel safe—put this … Continue reading →

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Hunting the Truth

Posted on May 14, 2018 by Scott Abbott

Reading a review in the NYRB of Beate and Serge Klarsfeld’s memoir, I see a photo of Beate Klarsfeld with her arm raised in the Bundestag where she is shouting at the Chancellor before being removed from the chamber: “Kiesinger, … Continue reading →

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River of Lost Souls

Posted on May 5, 2018 by Scott Abbott

I just read Jonathan P. Thompson’s The River of Lost Souls (Torrey House Press, March 2018). The book unsettled me. Profoundly. On August 5, 2015, EPA contractors who were investigating a portal of the Gold King Mine above Durango accidentally … Continue reading →

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