Eliot Weinberger

  • America: the dead People die, but there are no dead in America. The dead are those who are exhumed a year after burial, their bones washed and placed in catacombs or in a special niche in the house, their skulls painted, with jewels set in the eye sockets, their skulls set on spikes around the

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  • I’ve been musing a little about the usefulness or otherwise of the term “mainstream” in relation to Scottish poetry. I think it’s fair to say that, in UK terms, Hugh MacDiarmid would not be regarded as mainstream. His non-mainstream status is emphasised by the fact that he turns up in the marvellous PENNsound archive, which

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  • Words on War

    Read this, by Eliot Weinberger, and weep. Then read this, also by Weinberger, and weep some more. Finally, read this, not by Weinberger, and smile grimly.

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  • In the preface to Antonio Machado: Selected Poems, the translator Alan S Trueblood (what a gift of a name!) writes: “One cannot hold today that a poet’s voice in translation should sound as if he had been writing in English all along. … Some aura of foreignness, individually and culturally marked, should survive re-creation.” By

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