My Scrapbook

We must not fear repetition in poetry,
because sweet speech is pleasant in the repetition.

—Nasir Khusraw, translated by Alice C. Hunsberger

"It is [an] irony of oppression that the solution chosen to eliminate an enemy often guarantees that enemy's enduring fame. [N]o one knows the names of [Nasir Khusraw's] oppressors, but his poems...speak across centuries...to anyone who has [known] war, oppression or terror."

—Alice Hunberger, Nasir Khusraw: The Ruby of Badakhshan

from “Reading Matsuo Bashō,” by Gemma Gorga (translated by Sharon Dolin):

I wonder: how many syllables must I remove
to make a perfect haiku from my life?

From “Joyeux Noël” by Gemma Gorga (translated by Sharon Dolin):

While you try ordering yourself in the midst of the disorder
of my hands, the afternoon melts like a clump of snow.

From Fletcher’s Field, by Derek Webster in @columba_poetry:

All these years, I have lived as if a thought
could sink me like a paper boat
and have tried to trace back the creek
that carried me out to sea.