Stanley H. Barkan

Stanley H. Barkan is the editor-publisher of Cross-Cultural Communications, a small literary arts, non-commercial press focusing on bilingual poetry, which has, to date, published some 400 titles in 50 different languages. His own work, which has been translated into 25 different languages, has been published in 17 different collections, several others of which are bilingual (Bulgarian, Chinese, Italian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Sicilian). His latest books are Sailing the Yangtze and Tango Nights (both published by The Feral Press, 2014)., and The Machine for Inventing Ideals / Mașiina de inventat idealuri, a shared bilingual (English/Romanian) edition with Daniel Corbu (Iasi, Romania: Princeps Multimedia, 2014). Among the many honors he has received, he most treasures the 2011 Korean Expatriate Literature Association award “for his contribution to the promotion of the globalization of Korean literature through exchanges of Korean and American poetry” and Peter Thabit Jones’s special 2014 “Stanley H. Barkan” tribute issue of the Swansea, Wales-based international poetry magazine, The Seventh Quarry, published with a gathering of poems and interviews and photos and art by the many poets and writers and translators and photographers and artists Stanley has worked with during the last four decades.

AS YET UNBORN

Oh to be Adam

again

with all his ribs

yearning for a woman

as yet unborn,

mouth free

of the taste of apples,

ears without

the hiss of snakes,

mindless of

nakedness and shame

in the garden

of gentle creatures

waiting for a name.

IMMORTALITY

(a “footnote” after Donald Lev)

I jumped off

the Brooklyn Bridge.

Twice.

But I failed.

I didn't die.

The Guinness Book of World Records   

called me up,

said I should try again:

If I lived,

I'd set a record.

So I jumped a third time

and succeeded.

At last I've achieved . . .

Immortality?

NAMING THE BIRDS

Tired of naming cattle & fish,

Adam turned to the birds.

“Raven,” he said;

then “dove,”

prophetically,

these first creatures of the air

who’d be symbols in a later time

of rain and flood and rainbow.

Of the birds who would

sing at dawn and dusk

he had little interest;

so Eve decided to try

her onomastic skill.

“Nightingale,” she whispered.

“Ibis, heron, flamingo,

parrot, peacock, tanager,”

mystery, grace, magnificence

of thought, motion, and design.

It took a woman

to properly name

the birds of Paradise.