MADDALENA POLEGGI I met Olive at the library, she was strange but familiar. At the time I couldn’t know that we were going to spend a few months together, sharing our deepest thoughts and so many intimate details of our…
Today Emily Dickinson turns 190. EMILY DICKINSON 1488 Birthday of but a single pang That there are less to come – Afflictive is the Adjective But affluent the doom – *** 903 I hide myself – within my flower, That…
LESLIE MCBRIDE WILE With November comes la nebbia, the fog that rises from Piemontese valleys and blankets the plain of Lombardia. On the day before the United States presidential election I watched it form above our prato, the damp air of a chilly afternoon…
YUAN CHANGMING Raging against the Crow in the Park Disguised as a pigeon, you’ve just had Enough food From my palm (& heart); then, you flap high up Beginning to circle above me, ready To flee away only after Shitting…
GERMAIN DROOGENBROODT How Celan’s Poems inspired me Although born in the Flemish part of Belgium where Dutch is the official language, as a youngster it was not the Flemish nor the Dutch poetry that fascinated me, but the French, Baudelaire,…
ANNA STELLA SCERBO Emily Dickinson lived on poetry, poetry was her Pole star, her only reason to live. In mid 19th century Massachusetts, education had hard puritan rules. Emily suffered from that situation but claimed and got freedom without striking…
LESLIE MCBRIDE WILE October has been kind from beginning to end—sunny days, cooler nights and early mornings, leaves of red, gold, flame, and russet filtering the incomparable light of autumn afternoons. As the month ends, I have taken my car…
THE ALBERO PROJECT Edited by Silvia Pio and Richard Berengarten Alphabetical Index of Authors, Translators, Artists, Film-makers, Photographers, Composers This ongoing project was founded at the Festival of Trees in October 2017 in Mondovi, Piedmont, Italy. All contributions can also…
DREAM OF THE FIR-TREE by Heinrich Heine 1797-1856 A fir-tree stands in northern lands Alone on barren height. Fitful his slumber; snow and ice Wrap him in coat of white. . His dream is of a palm-tree In distant lands…
LESLIE MCBRIDE WILE September is over. I’ve written next to nothing, but our cantina is filling up nicely with potatoes, onions and winter squashes, apples for cider, jars of salsa, fruit preserves, pickles. Any thoughts that might have been worth…
GERMAIN DROOGENBROODT Hope Since many months no rain they suffer but still they are green because without hope neither they can live ─ the trees. Translation with the author by Stanley Barkan For the articles included in The Albero Project,…
GABRIEL ROSENSTOCK Letter to India (On the imprisonment of Telugu-language poet Varavara Rao) India! Does the goddess Saraswati smile When you imprison your poets When, Covid-stricken, they hallucinate Sitting in a puddle of urine? India! Is Saraswati pleased? Varavara Rao,…
ELDAR AKHADOV For Richard Berengarten, author of the monumental poem ‘Tree’* Artillery shots. Foxtrot sounds. Villages and ancient manuscripts burn. And only the tree outside the window keeps waiting. Whenever you glance at it The mind darkens. Ice crumbles. A…
MALCOLM HEBRON I once read a good story – whether real or apocryphal, I do not know – about four artists in the early twentieth century, on a painting expedition in the countryside. All had been trained in the academic…
BILL LEWIS Syzygy The book opens. The mind opens. They recognise Each other as Brother and sister. The mind reads The book as the Book searches The mind for their Lost sibling: The heart. Abraxas The curtain is torn The…
