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Top 10 Poems of 2011

12/29/2011 by Nina Alvarez

1. Ithaca

2. I Walked a Mile with Pleasure

3. The Lost Son

4. Ithaca (video)

5. The Serpent

6. After a While

7. Love Me Like You Never Loved Before

8. Deathless Aphrodite of the Spangled Mind

9. Giving Up

10. The Unicorn

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Poem of the Day: In My Hollow Bones

12/27/2011 by Nina Alvarez

In my hollow bones
I heard her
Like a bone woman
A lisp

Her eyes were green
And I see now
How I thought I was beautiful
Compared to him
But she was beautiful
Compared to me

And he would chose her

In my head
And in the hall of my roots
Where the dead grow and the old
Plays are memorialized on tapestry

The mold is only slight, there is a
Magic that keeps this terrible truth alive

In all I wanted, in all these years, I thought
I found something to aspire to, that is a line
From a book, I suspect, some bland platitude
But it piques my interest because

I am the tom cat
In the celebrity showcase

I am the one cartooned

She is the plaster goddess, the thing on the wall
She is the face that said no
And now smiles and so
Who could say no to her?

She is the power play, I am merely the one who
Stood next to him

I am the one who has offered
She has asked to be given

And no matter what I do
it is always me
who must be cast out
To the far corners

Me as always
In every one of these stories
In the deep dank room of roots
Untried, unloved, unwon, uncarried
The woman in the background

Fading away already, always light of hair, light of skin

A ghost

-Nina Alvarez

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Give the Gift of World Literature this Holiday Season

12/09/2011 by Nina Alvarez

This time of year, every year since 2008, I post a call to support Words Without Borders. Here are the past three calls to action:

http://ninaalvarez.net/2010/12/04/support-the-arts-this-christmas

http://ninaalvarez.net/2009/12/10/words-without-borders

http://ninaalvarez.net/2008/12/18/support-literature-this-christmas-if-you-can

Words Without Borders is a wonderful and important publication, celebrating and curating literature from around the world and sharing it in many different languages. But like many literary organizations, they need your support. Read this holiday message from their Executive Director.
Dear Friends

As a regular reader of Words without Borders you know that for the last eight years Words without Borders has provided our readers with the very best in international literature and that in doing so we promote cultural understanding and build bridges between cultures. Whether it is a fictional account of the Dasht-e-Leili massacre, the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas at the hands of the Taliban, Leïla Marouane’s taleof a woman’s oppression by a family member or even the existential torment of shopping at IKEA, Words without Borders connects you, our reader, to the entire world.

But we do so much more in order to bring our authors and their important work to as many people as possible.

We actively advocate to the publishing industry on behalf of our authors. In fact, we have a quarterly newsletter that just goes out to agents and editors. This year we welcomed the release of  Galit Seliktar and Galid Seliktar’s Farm 54 and Johan Harstad’s Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion , and announced that Angela Pradelli received a contract with Latin American Review Press thanks to our efforts.

We publish stories in many languages. Since April 2011 whenever we can attain the rights, we publish the original alongside the translation (like this!). We now have work in Spanish, French, German, Pashto, Dari, Arabic, Icelandic, Korean, Japanese, Maltese and over a dozen more.

We’re placing international authors in public high schools around the country, including Évelyne Trouillot, Galit Seliktar, and Etgar Keret at the Bard High School and Early College New York, Dei Bao in Chicago, Carmen Boullosa at the Houston Independent School District in Houston, and Eduardo Halfon at the June Jordan High School for Equity in San Francisco. These visits are just the first steps in a much larger education program we hope to launch in 2012.

Whether you are one of our readers from around the world, an academic or student engaged in scholarly research, or a publishing professional looking for new talent, Words without Borders’ small staff is working to provide you and as many other people as we can possible reach with a rich and meaningful cross-cultural experience, which is why I’m asking you to join our growing list of financial supporters by making a tax-deductible donation via JustGive.org by December 31.

Whether it’s $10, $1000 or a much welcome monthly donation your gift goes toward supporting Words without Borders: The Online Magazine of International Literature and our burgeoning education program and ensuring that we remain a strong and vital cultural institution.

Donate today. Thank you for your support.

Sincerely,
Joshua Mandelbaum
Executive Director

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Poem of the Day: Poem 3

12/08/2011 by Nina Alvarez

Friend, hope for the Guest while you are alive.
Jump into experience while you are alive!
Think…and think… while you are alive.
If you don’t break your ropes while you’re alive,
do you think
ghosts will do it after?

The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic
just because the body is rotten –
that is all fantasy.
What is found now is found then.
If you find nothing now,
you will simply end up with an apartment in the City

of Death.
If you make love with the divine now, in the next life
you will have the face of satisfied desire.
So plunge into the truth, find out who the Teacher is,

Believe in the Great Sound!
Kabir says this: When the Guest is being searched for,

it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest that
does all the work.
Look at me, and you will see a slave of that intensity.

-Kabir

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Poem of the Day: Untitled [I talk to my inner lover]

11/24/2011 by Nina Alvarez

I talk to my inner lover, and I say, why such
rush?
We sense that there is some sort of spirit that loves
birds and animals and the ants–
perhaps the same one who gave a radiance to you in
your mother’s womb.
Is it logical you would be walking around entirely
orphaned now?
The truth is you turned away yourself,
and decided to go into the dark alone.
Now you are tangled up in others, and have forgotten
what you once knew,
and that’s why everything you do has some weird
failure in it.

-Kabir

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Short Story The Dancing Man Published Today in Danse Macabre

11/07/2011 by Nina Alvarez

Aren’t they fantastic with their Old World macabre sensibilities? I am delighted to be counted among the contributors to their 51st issue.

Click on the flyer to read the whole issue.


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Poem of the Day: Affirmation

11/05/2011 by Nina Alvarez

Once in a while I will come across an unpublished poem – or one will be sent to me – by a talented but unpromoted writer. It is my honor to showcase them to you, especially this poem by Mary Harker.

Affirmation

“If anyone here
knows a reason why
these two should not be wed
let him speak now.”
Of course, at this wedding
these words weren’t spoken.

At this wedding
on our porch above the beach
the words told of a chance meeting,
attraction, loyalty, and love.
They spoke of difficulty
and of gratitude.

I watched the slight caress of fingers
the quick meetings of eyes
the soft interplay of smiles.
Beyond, waves crested, rolled in
to spill themselves across the sand.
Sun parted the clouds.

A man on the beach,
his camera pointed our way
dashed here and there to get pictures.
He had a smile on his face
delighted, I think, by these two
in their matching white jackets.

-Mary Harker

About Mary
I began writing poetry at age 43, received a Master’s Degree in English with an emphasis on poetry from San Diego State at age 53, and now teach a Poetry Workshop for adults 50 and above through OASIS. I was married for 27 years, have 3 children and 8 grandchildren.

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Poem of the Day: How Many Miles to Babylon?

10/31/2011 by Nina Alvarez

How many miles to Babylon?
Three-score and ten.
Can I get there by candle-light?
Yes, there and back again.
If your heels are nimble and light,
You will get there by candle-light.

-Old English Nursery Rhyme

 

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Poem of the Day: Metaphors of a Magnifico

10/25/2011 by Nina Alvarez

Twenty men crossing a bridge,
Into a village,
Are twenty men crossing twenty bridges,
Into twenty villages,
Or one man
Crossing a single bridge into a village.

This is old song
That will not declare itself . . .

Twenty men crossing a bridge,
Into a village,
Are
Twenty men crossing a bridge
Into a village.

That will not declare itself
Yet is certain as meaning . . .

The boots of the men clump
On the boards of the bridge.
The first white wall of the village
Rises through fruit-trees.
Of what was it I was thinking?
So the meaning escapes.

The first white wall of the village . . .
The fruit-trees . . .

 

-Wallace Stevens

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Poem of the Day: Night Journey

10/18/2011 by Nina Alvarez

Now as the train bears west,
Its rhythm rocks the earth,
And from my Pullman berth
I stare into the night
While others take their rest.
Bridges of iron lace,
A suddenness of trees,
A lap of mountain mist
All cross my line of sight,
Then a bleak wasted place,
And a lake below my knees.
Full on my neck I feel
The straining at a curve;
My muscles move with steel,
I wake in every nerve.
I watch a beacon swing
From dark to blazing bright;
We thunder through ravines
And gullies washed with light.
Beyond the mountain pass
Mist deepens on the pane;
We rush into a rain
That rattles double glass.
Wheels shake the roadbed stone,
The pistons jerk and shove,
I stay up half the night
To see the land I love.

-Theodore Roethke

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