I've mentioned Jenny Factor before, whom I discovered in a review by Sonny Williams at Contemporary Poetry Review (it's in the archives, which are available for a small fee). Here are the last two sections of "Pride Diary," from her Unraveling at the Name:
4. LES NOUVEAUX FROM LA NOUVELLE JUSTINE
I don't love her. She doesn't love me. Neither
does this waiter who may think it strange
when young girls dine with staid dames twice their age
on salade de Bastille and pain de Sade.
I don't like sitting by her like wet cloth.
I don't like restaurants whose queers pawn sex
to the bachelor bunch who want a thrill.
I don't like dining with my, well, not-ex,
both measuring the humid air for signs
of sparks I see by parts will not ignite.
I'd rather have a knock-down, drag-out fight
that cleared the joint than watch another guy
get spanked by Corset Kris, who'd like to grab
a tit, not spend humping hairy thighs.
I'd rather I were twice her age and wise.
I'd spin cruel stories of past days of bliss
then give my own hands covert exercise
and send her home without a kiss.
5. L'ADDITION
30 for the play and 10 for gins,
10 for two cabs and 40 for the eats,
at least the metro home was freezer-cold,
at least the Broadway Local still had seats,
at 96th, the local went express.
I blistered home ten sockless humid blocks
back to my solo digs for solo sex.
I got this poem for my 90 bucks.
Unraveling at the Name was published by Copper Canyon Press, which is run by Sam Hamill, the poet who organized the protest which caused the cancellation of Laura Bush's "little tea-party," at which Dana Gioia was to be introduced as the new head of the NEA. Gioia, about whom Ron Silliman bizarrely wrote today that his "anglophilia takes him out of American literature altogether," is probably the one who suggested inviting Hamill. His first publication as NEA head, timed to appear with the tea party, was a review of Hamill's edition of The Complete Poems of Kenneth Rexroth. Here's one of my favorites from Rexroth, a translation from Tu Fu:
TO WEI PA, A RETIRED SCHOLAR
The lives of many men are
Shorter than the years since we have
Seen each other. Aldebaran
And Antares move as we have.
And now, what night is this? We sit
Here together in the candle
Light. How much longer will our prime
Last? Our temples are already
Grey. I visit my old friends.
Half of them have become ghosts.
Fear and sorrow choke me and burn
My bowels. I never dreamed I would
Come this way, after twenty years,
A wayfarer to your parlor.
When we parted years ago,
You were unmarried. Now you have
A row of boys and girls, who smile
And ask me about my travels.
How have I reached this time and place?
Before I can come to the end
Of an endless tale, the children
Have brought out the wine. We go
Out in the night and cut young
Onions in the rainy darkness.
We eat them with hot, steaming,
Yellow millet. You say, "It is
Sad, meeting each other again."
We drink ten toasts rapidly from
The rhinoceros horn cups.
Ten cups, and still we are not drunk.
We still love each other as
We did when we were schoolboys.
Tomorrow morning mountain peaks
Will come between us, and with them
The endless, oblivious
Business of the world.
And here's the same poem, translated by Vikram Seth, from Three Chinese Poets:
To Wei Ba, who has Lived Away from the Court
Like stars that rise when the other has set,
For years we two friends have not met,
How rare it is then that tonight
We once more share the same lamplight.
Our youth has quickly slipped away
And both of us are turning grey.
Old friends have died, and with a start
We hear the sad news, sick at heart.
How could I, twenty years before,
Know that I'd be here at your door?
When last I left, so long ago,
You were unmarried. In a row
Suddenly now your children stand,
Welcome their father's friend, demand
To know his home, his town, his kin, —
Till they're chased out to fetch wine in.
Spring chives are cut in the night rain
And steamed rice mixed with yellow grain.
To mark the occasion, we should drink
Ten cups of wine straight off, you think —
But even ten can't make me high,
So moved by your old love am I.
The mountains will divide our lives,
Each to his world, when day arrives.
I like the Rexroth better. I have no idea which is more faithful to the Chinese; I know that classical Chinese poetry is ferociously formal, but here I think phrases like "Spring chives are cut" and "Our youth has quickly slipped away" mean that Seth, for once, was overwhelmed by form.
Finally, from Dana Gioia, the arch-formalist and anglophile himself:
AFTER A LINE BY CAVAFY
for the poet John Finlay, dead of AIDS
Return and take me, distant afternoon,
Return and take hold of me
When the blue lake is dry white stone,
And the earth reclaims its arch of green.
Remember and repeat some confidence we shared,
Drunk with the promise of our new acquaintance,
Walking on the shore arguing ideas
As only the young can argue—
Passionate, naïve, and nervous with excitement,
Like hands touching for the first time—
We who were neither lovers nor intimates
And never met again.
9:14:52 PM 
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