John Baker’s Blog

At The Kenyon Review, Sergei Lobanov-Rostovsky reflects on book-lovers who end relationships because their partner doesn’t share their taste in books:
What a relief finally to hear the truth spoken aloud! Ever since I was a little boy and saw the girl across the street reading One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, I’ve known [...]

June

by Shi Tao
My whole life
Will never get past “June”
June, when my heart died
When my poetry died
When my lover
Died in romance’s pool of blood
June, the scorching sun burns open my skin
Revealing the true nature of my wound
June, the fish swims out of the blood-red sea
Toward another place to hibernate
June, the earth shifts, the rivers fall silent
Piled [...]

Giosuè Carducci, an Italian poet, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1906. He was born in a small town near Pisa. Carducci began writing poetry when he was a child. He was enthusiastic about the ancients and demonstrated a strong revolutionary tendency.
Carducci led an active political life and his poetry inspired many [...]

At the Public Market Museum: Charleston, South Carolina

A volunteer, a Daughter of the Confederacy,
receives my admission and points the way.
Here are gray jackets with holes in them,
red sashes with individual flourishes,
things soft as flesh. Someone sewed
the gold silk cord onto that gray sleeve
as if embellishments
could keep a man alive.
I have been reading War and Peace,
and [...]