The sun glints off the waves of the Bosporus as the wind skims across the surface of the water, and power boats, tourist ships and ferries cruise between the shores of Europe and Asia on Istanbul’s great waterway. I’ve arrived to an Indian summer in this city at the crossroads of Europe, Asia and the Middle East after a PEN International Congress an hour and a half away in Belgrade where the theme was Literature—Language of the World.
I’m here with purpose and meetings, but for the afternoon I have a few hours to sit on the banks of the waterway and write and contemplate the bridges linking the two continents and consider...
Was Ernesto Cardenal Censored at PEN's World Voices Poetry Evening titled: The Second Skin? Was it censorship in the guise of "Art for Art's Sake?" I heard Cardenal read a vital poem, "Cell Phone," at Poets House in the afternoon. He intended to read it at PEN, Friday evening. I was told by those traveling with him, that it was cut from his intended program by the directors of the poetry event. Why?
I was shocked that the PEN poetry event directors seemed to censor Ernesto Cardenal's vital poem, "Cell Phone." It's in Cardenal's latest book--no doubt one of the greatest poetry books of the 20 or 21st Centuries, titled The Origin of the Species, after Darwin's treatise, and translated by John Lyons. "Cell Phone"...
