evening and my dead once husband rises up from the spirit board through trembled air i moan the names of our wayward sons and ask him to explain why i fuss like a fishwife why cancer and terrible loneliness and the wars against our people and the room glimmers as if washed in tears and out of the mist a hand becomes flesh and i watch as its pointing fingers spell
"Beddoes remains a fascinating and sometimes startlingly good poet. When he turns his attention to smaller players in the jest-book of mortality, as in this week’s poem, the imaginative scrutiny remains intense. There’s a disproportionality about his address to this 'snowdrop of dogs,' which animates the ordinary doggy presence and amplifies its mystery from the start—or almost from the start."
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"Take, for example, the 'verdura' rhyming with 'segura' in the Camões, which in the translations I’ve already written appears as verdure, greenery, and lushness depending on what the variation in question most needs. Hatherly does this herself throughout when she uses a range of synonyms, and interestingly also thought of her reinterpretation of traditional texts as an act of translation that has the effect of altering the original."
