Empty Mirror

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About David Kherdian

David Kherdian was born in Racine, Wisconsin, the site of his 13-volume Root River Cycle. In addition to his poetry, biographies, novels, and memoirs, his translations and retellings have included the Asian classic Monkey: A Journey to the West, and the soon-to-be released 9th century Armenian bardic epic, David of Sassoun. He has also written a narrative life of The Buddha. As an editor he has produced two seminal anthologies: Settling America: The Ethnic Expression of 14 Contemporary American Poets, and Down at the Santa Fe Depot: 20 Fresno Poets, which inspired over 100 city and state anthologies. His biography of his mother, The Road From Home, his best known work, has been continuously in print in various editions and 17 translations. since its publication in 1979. Contributions to Beat literature include the bio-bibliograpy, Six Poets of the San Francisco Renaissance: Portraits and Checklists and Beat Voices: An Anthology of Beat Literature. An hour-long documentary on his poetry, by New York independent filmmaker, Jim Belleau, was released in 1997. He is married to two-time Caldecott Award winner, Nonny Hogrogian, with whom he has collaborated on a number of children’s book, and also on three journals, Ararat, Forkroads: A Journal of Ethnic-American Literature, and Stopinder: A Gurdjieff Journal for Our Time. Learn more at Kherdian.com.

Five poems by David Kherdian

David Kherdian

Skagit Snow / credit: D.Enck

In Calling Out Somewhere inside me my father is circling the fork of his spade digging the earth. I hold his workman's hankie and wipe his brow without his seeing. Behind, the lands he has … [Read more...]

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Empty Mirror

Established in 2000 and edited by Denise Enck, Empty Mirror is an online literary magazine that publishes new work each Friday.

Each week EM features several poems each by one or two poets; reviews; critical essays; visual art; and personal essays.

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Recent features

  • My Father’s Map
  • On Waiting
  • Seeing Las Meninas in Madrid, 1994
  • Visual poems from 23 Bodhisattvas by Chris Stephenson
  • Historical Punctum: Reading Natasha Trethewey’s Bellocq’s Ophelia and Native Guard Through the Lens of Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida
  • Panic In The Rear-View Mirror: Exploring The Work of Richard Siken and Ann Gale
  • “Art has side effects,” I said.

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