January Journal #21: Monday, January 21, 2013 Don Mager Poetry

local_library January Journal #21: Monday, January 21, 2013

by Don Mager

Published in Issue No. 200 ~ January, 2014

Assuming cars have neither haste nor

destinations, the congregation

of assembled geese meanders, one

plodding pigeon-toed web-foot after

the next, across the intersection.

The intersection holds its noon hour

rush of breath and cancels plans for quick-

stop errands on the way. As slow as

methodical drips from a shower

head, the geese feet march to a different

beat. Grass sprigs and wild onion tufts in

sun bright lawns are their calculus of

time and destination. Noon follows

suit while the intersection unclogs.

account_box More About

Don Mager’s chapbooks and volumes of poetry are: To Track the Wounded One, Glosses, That Which is Owed to Death, Borderings, Good Turns and The Elegance of the Ungraspable, Birth Daybook Drive Time and Russian Riffs. He is retired with degrees from Drake University (BA), Syracuse University (MA) and Wayne State University (PhD). He was the Mott University Professor of English at Johnson C. Smith University from 1998-2004 where he served as Dean of the College of Arts and Letters (2005-2011). As well as a number of scholarly articles, he has published over 200 poems and translations from German, Czech and Russian. He lives in Charlotte, NC. Us Four Plus Four is an anthology of translations from eight major Soviet-era Russian poets. It is unique because it tracks almost a half century of their careers by simply placing the poems each wrote to the others in chronological order. The 85 poems represent one of the most fascinating conversations in poems produced by any group of poets in any language or time period. From poems and infatuation and admiration to anger and grief and finally to deep tribute, this anthology invites readers into the unfolding lives of such inimitable creative forces as Anna Akhmatova, Boris Pasternak, Marina Tsvetaeva and Osip Mandelstam.