Author Archives: Ann Kjellberg

Reasons for Hope: Ellen

Met a nearly blind woman named Ellen today in front of the Andrew Heiskell library for the blind who has been devouring books since childhood, and makes the trek to the library on 20th Street from Brooklyn via Access-a-Ride for the large type, so she can “hold a book in her hands,” and feel the […]

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Long Live St. Mark’s and Friends!

We were most saddened to read recently of downsizing at St. Mark’s Bookshop.  “Is this a nightmare? Pretty much,” writes Harriet of the Poetry Foundation blog. “Vanishing New York” posts this alarming photo. St. Mark’s was the first bookstore to stock Little Star and has faithfully carried us in a big pile.  In recent years […]

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Binyavanga Wainaina, Some scenes from a Kenyan childhood

It is a Sunday. I am nine. We are sitting on a patch of some tough nylon grass next to the veranda. Mum has brought out her Ugandan mats. I am reading a new book. I am reading a new book every day now. This book is about a flamingo woman; she is a secretary, […]

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Philip Roth in New York

A vigorous pleasure: four very strong and mutually contradictory readings of Philip Roth’s recent Nemesis at the Yivo Institute, followed by a few minutes with the author (link here). [jwplayer config=”Video Only” mediaid=”2194″ height=”400″] Roth’s coda to the events at Yivo was a time-stopping reading of the last four pages of Nemesis, in which the […]

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Zagajewski on Rilke

Out recently: the paperback edition of Edward Snow’s translations of Rilke, with Adam Zagajewski’s capacious introduction. From which: Maybe it’s more interesting to see Rilke’s work as not as virginal, not as ethereal, as it seems to many readers. After all, like the majority of literary modernists, he is an antimodern; one of the main […]

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Tim Parks: Run, don’t walk, then sit

A heartfelt plea: Read immediately Tim Parks’s new book, Teach Us to Sit Still, published today. The book comes disguised as medical self-help or new-age how-to, but it is not: It is an original and courageous exploration of the ravages of the thinking life. Says Coetzee, Teach Us to Sit Still is a “quest for […]

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Two Ghazals, translated by Elizabeth T. Gray, Jr.

LS contributor Elizabeth T. Gray, Jr., sends new translations of two ghazals, one by the fourteenth-century master of the form, Hafiz-I Shirazi, and one from 2009, written by poet Simin Behbahani after national elections in Iran ended in mass demonstrations and violent crack-down. Hafiz-i Shirazi GHAZAL [Hijab-i chehr-i jan mishavad ghubar-i manam] The dust of […]

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Poets in Their Youth

Scenes from newly published memoirs by Durs Grünbein (The Vocation of Poetry) and Les Murray (Killing the Black Dog). Durs Grünbein: “For me it all started with a noise—a not at all harmless noise—more of an acoustic irritation. The strange thing about it was its suddenness and the rift it left in my overall perception. […]

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Two Poets from Adam Zagajewski: Tomasz Rozycki and Marie Lundquist

On Monday, March 28, Tomasz Różycki and Marie Lundquist will read with Adam Zagajewski in the Tenth Muse Series at the 92nd Street Y in New York.  Here is a poem from each. CINNAMON AND CLOVES by Tomasz Różycki, translated by Mira Rosenthal I’m lying here with a hole in my head through which the […]

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2028. A trusted member of the security services embarks on a royal errand.

Vladimir Sorokin, translated by Jamey Gambrell . We first drive along the highway, then turn onto a narrow road. The road stretches through woodlands, then crawls into the taiga. We ride silently. Pines, firs, and deciduous trees surround us, heavy with snow. But the sun is already heading toward sunset. Another hour or so and […]

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