Apollinaire's Birthday

"Seigneur que t'ai-je fait Vois Je suis unicorne"

"Watson, come here! I want to see you!"

I recently co-founded a poetry translation journal, called Telephone, and it's officially in print.

Basically, we take a single foreign poet and have his or her work interpreted repeatedly by a team of poet-translators who may or may not be familiar with the original language. It's an experiment, though one with a past--and a future. And said future arrived in a box at my office yesterday.

The first issue features the work of Berlin poet Uljana Wolf, translated by Mary Jo Bang, Robert Fitterman, Matthea Harvey, Christian Hawkey, Erin Moure, and, and...

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#1 Cutest Poet

The finalists include:

Maya Angelou (with Grover), a perplexed John Ashbery, a very pleased-looking Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Marie Ponsot with a bow.

But the prize goes to...Anne Stevenson?

Watch this, and tell me you don't want one. Impossible.

I don't care whether you like her poetry or T. S. Eliot, but after seeing this, you should realize that she is hands-down the cutest poet on the market. I want to squeal.

Pokerface Vs. "Poker Face"

Billy Collins's first book of poetry was called Pokerface (Kenmore Press, 1977).

And she stole your look.