I vividly remember the shock of joy with which I read Planet Wave when PN Review first published it in a shorter version in the late 1990s. In it, Morgan seems to have achieved almost complete control of expression. For those who haven’t read it, it’s essentially a version of the Human Story from Big Bang to our colonizing of a planetary system around Barnard’s Star. Glorying in its anthropocentricity, it treats the whole evolution of the universe as if it were only of significance in relation to man. It sparkles with wit and a kind of generalised humanity as … Continue Reading

Translated Tiina Aleman, Arc Publications, 142 pages; hardback £13.99, paperback £10.99.

In her Translator’s Preface, Tiina Aleman explains how closely she and Doris Kareva worked on the poems in this volume. Kareva herself is a well-regarded translator who has translated widely from English into Estonian, so I assume these versions achieve a high level of fidelity to the originals. They certainly read well in English and many achieve great power:

I saw you for two and a half seconds
after two and a half years.
That blink of an eye burns in my vision,
devastating, renewing.

Lightning, quake, and flood together
in an … Continue Reading