Public Republic

Roger Conner Jr. Photo: fauxto digit The stage set tempest hurled wet against the walls of a small townhouse

Simon Perchik Photo: jimkster A plain paper bag yet in its night this popcorn needs more salt — a fragrant grip and I am Hercules muscle-bound, shaking the screen the actors giants, grotesque

Bozhana Apostolova Photo: dawnzy58 Everything starts from there – from the dipped soggy brush: swaying wheaten in the plowed up ocher wind gust, a blue song above them and a wing gone mad with the wild mixture of wind and white…

Reviewed by Charlotte Pence Marilyn Kallet, author of fourteen books, opens her anticipated selected poems with “Jonah on Oprah,” a dramatic monologue that epitomizes how through wit, rhythm, and imaginative metaphors her poems arrive at insight: “I’ve lived through gut-wrenching / remorse, got swallowed up by it. // Now I understand I can’t run / […]

Jessie Janeshek Photo: hansvink I’ve been lingering over Hilda Raz’s new book because of the breadth and depth of her voice; she’s confident in her wisdom yet open to learn, objective yet welcomingly warm, serious yet light. No matter where her poetry takes us—and it takes us great distances—Raz’s speaker returns to the comfort of […]

Carol Berg Photo: lenny_montana Tomas Transtromer writes in the opening poem “Prelude” of his Selected Poems, “consciousness can own the world” and this philosophy informs much of his poetry. Transtromer’s own consciousness deeply engages his world, sometimes with dread as his consciousness reflects Nature’s cold aloofness, as in his poem “Face to Face,” and sometime […]

Yassen Vassilev Photo: popelegantiarum O crazy royal jester O crippled circus clown O sad harlequin without company O fool of funerary carnivals O crumpled joker without deck

Interview with Blaga Dimitrova’s Poetry by Farideh Hassanzadeh-Mostafavi Farideh Hassanzadeh (Mostafavi), an Iranian poet, has translated poems by Blaga Dimitrova into Farsi. She wrote to Dimitrova and asked for an interview. The great poet was in her last days and could only send her books. Farideh decided to arrange an interview with the poetry of […]

Interview with Marilyn Kallet by Matt Urmy Marilyn Kallet was born in Montgomery, Alabama, and grew up in New York. She is the author of 14 books, including Circe, After Hours, poetry from BkMk Press, and Last Love Poems of Paul Eluard, translations from Black Widow Press. In 2009, Black Widow will publish Packing Light: […]

Ellie Ivanova Ponti Petja Heinrich is a journalist, linguist and writer. Her first book of poetry in Bulgarian is to be presented in Sofia on December 6, 2008. She is an editor for the German-language edition of Public Republic.

Interview with Fiona Lorrain by Karen Rigby Fiona Lorrain, née Fiona Sze is an artist whose works range from literary creation to music, theatre and curating. An international award-winning pianist and zheng concertist, she also writes poems, plays and critical prose, often under the pen-name Greta Aart. Currently, she is part of the editorial team […]

Unknown Author, c. 600BC Photo: I’mClaude a dead doe in the wild shrouded in white reeds there is a girl, spring-longing a gentleman to seduce her

Barbara Sabol Photo: Rene Ehrhardt In Maureen Morehead’s “My Mother Is a Hand,” from her collection, A Sense of Time Left, the memory of a childhood visit to the speaker’s grandmother’s house is described, in two voices and from two subtly but significantly different perspectives. The memory of the speaker as a child and, later […]

Julie Farkas Photo: Macsurak Remi trained the viewfinder of her camera at the painting of a couple dancing in a bar. They pressed their elongated figures close together, their expressions frozen and sad. The dark wood floorboards wobbled and dipped under their feet and the orange walls and ceilings curved inward. Remi wondered if she […]

Katerina Stoykova-Klemer Photo: *PaysImaginaire* Why did this big Black bird With a red beak Have her feathery chest Pressed on the glass Of the fourth floor As though She were showing off a medal?