Organized into five “acts,” Slaves to Do These Things is, ostensibly, theatrical in terms of its development—though the dramatic action isn’t always quite clear. That’s alright. Mystery plays are rare at present. …more

Whether or not you believe in evil or think that asserting your desires in the open is evidence of its existence, your position on these issues may determine how much you enjoy Jesse Sigler’s new collection of poems, Living Must Bury. …more

Because you read me, dear reader,
therefore I am; because you read us
(my book and me), dear reader,
therefore we are (You, it and i).

–Francis Ponge

I have come back to it often, this book, whose title is variously translated as Things, The Voice of Things or Taking the Side of Things, not least because it asks me to. Beth Archer’s canny 1972 translation of French writer Francis Ponge’s book of arresting prose poems (though there’s a lot to be said for Cid Corman’s version as well) captures much of the cleverness of the original language while managing to transform the work, through some arcane prosodic alchemy, into something that reads with great verve and elasticity in English. The epigraph to Archer’s translation (which begins this piece) invites readers in with a kind of wit and generosity very much in the spirit of Ponge’s own vision. It’s a poetics that privileges the act of observation as a collaborative process–worthy, daring (and sometimes dangerous) but always worth the risk. …more