Zipped over to my neighborhood “small” Powell’s yesterday to buy @patrycjasara.bsky.social's We Contain Landscapes and saw, again, that the poetry people there have good taste! Look at @paisleyrekdal.bsky.social and @aditimachado.bsky.social's books!

Denver Quarterly 59 #2 arrived in my mailbox today, and I’m thrilled share three sonnets that distill signature moments of my experience being a teen in Germany/U.S. in the 80s. I’m a wordy poet but also love to write sonnet sequences. Grateful to the editors for including me in this fabulous issue!

Update on “Project Dishtowel,” where I’m teaching myself/ learning to spin flax and weave linen in an attempt to understand the processes that my ancestors mechanized and scaled up to a dizzying degree in a number of factories in 19th- to mid-20th-century Moravia.

Just saw that my translation of Daniela Danz was featured on this incredible list on Lit Hub! So grateful to the Poetry Foundation and Poetry Daily for helping this poem—which is among the best I’ve ever translated—find readers! And huge thanks to Timothy Donnelly for sharing it again!

RIP Professor Victor Brombert, who died last month at age 101. I was extraordinarily lucky to take his class on The Modern French Novel in 1991 and was just thinking about Robbe-Grillet, whom we read, the other day. At the time, I knew nothing about his biography, which I’ll link an article to.

Walked down to my neighborhood grocery store to picket with New Seasons workers today. As a former proud union member I won’t cross a picket line, but it’s even better to join one! I call on all Portland area friends to boycott until the workers get a fair contract!

I am losing my mind a bit about having won this award! And I’m so glad to be recognized for my translation work—foundation of who I am as a writer and also a deep way to express my life lived in two languages. And I’m so grateful to Daniela Danz and her brilliant poems.

Finished products: linen (two views) and half of the Stollen.

In a bit of a non-sequitur, I’m also making my annual dozen loaves of Stollen today with the family recipe, which uses three kilos of flour, two kilos of rum-soaked fruits and almond, and a kilo of butter. This is very cruel to our dog, who positively lusts after butter and never gets any.

I’m currently “scouring” the linen, boiling it for two hours in washing soda and soap to clean and soften it. It looks like very dirty soup and doesn’t smell amazing but also not terrible. Tune in later today for when it’s done!

While avoiding news for a few days I taught myself to spin flax so that I can eventually weave linen fabric, essentially reverse-engineering the process my ancestors industrialized in Moravia (then Austria) in the 19th century. Here are photos and a poem. www.theswannanoareview.com/issue2/monik...

Really happy and excited to have four new translations of Daniela Danz in the newest issue of the Georgia Review. Here's one of the poems; go get a copy of the print issue now!

See note re: title below.