On Sunday I went to Albania.
No one understood, clearly, at first, why I (or anyone) would go to Albania.
Except my father, who knew at once: “Because, before, you couldn’t go to Albania.”
Other Work
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Poems
Essays
The Battle of Fromelles
The Paris Review asked those whose translations appeared in the summer issue to contribute to their online “Staff Picks” feature, a brief note on something each of us has been reading or watching. This micro-essay pursues 250 Australian and British soldiers who went “missing” in the Battle of Fromelles in 1916, and who were finally tracked down and reburied with full honors in 2010. Maps and aerial reconnaissance photos included. View here. (2020).
Dispatches from a Pandemic
The Harvard Review asked some of its authors to contribute to this online feature. Dispatches came in from all over the world, and here’s mine, from the Upper East Side. (2020)
The Untranslatable
The Paris Review asked the translators from its summer issue to discuss a word or a line that evaded any efforts to bring it into English. Forough Farrokzad uses the Persian word for “table” to do a dizzying array of things in her poem “After You,” discussed here. (2020).
The Obstacle
e Poetry Society of America asked for author comments on a poem from Salient. A discussion on the origins of the poem, “The Obstacle,” and its context within the book, can be found in their “In Their Own Words” feature on the PSA site, here. (2020).
Iran: Poems of Dissent
Introductory essay, Poetry International No. 18/19. (2013).
POETRY, Letter to the Editor
Poetry, Vol. 203, No. 1 (October 2013).
The Origins of a Text
The Harvard Review. (Spring 1995).
