Jonathan Cott

Kites

Arts & Literature

“Jonathan Chaves’s new collection of poems, Kites, includes a masterpiece called ‘Grey Potomac,’ about emptiness and the insubstantial moments of time—so difficult to pin down and realize in poetry. Chaves writes: ‘And yet Blake says / The poet’s work is done between pulsations / Of an artery, that is, between / The non-existent moments! How did he / Achieve that realm?’ William Blake did so by learning how to bear ‘the beams of love.’ And as Kites makes clear, so has Jonathan Chaves.”

Surfing the Torrent

Arts & Literature

“Jonathan Chaves is a translator of genius and a poet whose own work evinces profound attentiveness, sacramental tenderness, and emotions that, in the words of the Chinese poet Yüan Hung-tao (whose poems Chaves has beautifully translated), have ‘the lucidity of calm waters.’”