It was a little store at the edge of town crammed with herbs and medicines and crooked roots in bottles, and in the corner I saw a jar labeled Rowboat Number Two and when I asked the owner he said “Oh that’s fine stuff, my friend, absolutely terrific. Why you’ve got poems in therefrom a bunch of places including Japan, Equador, Russia, Egypt, old Scotland and the Czech Republic, both in their original languages and as transformed by such alchemists as Coleman Barks, H.L. Hix, Dennis Maloney, Louise B. Popkin, Jerome Rothenberg, Katharyn Farris and Ilya Kaminsky. There’s an essay on Anglo-Saxon poetry in there like the powdered branch of a thousand-year-old tree, and an interview with Ange Mlinko that has the tang of sea-salt and cranberries. Some of the poets translated include Yosano Akiko, Mario Benedetti, Omar ibn al-Farid, Polina Barskova, Juhan Liiv and Richard Maitlandof Lethingtoun. I knew three explorers trapped in the Arctic who lived off of that stuff for ten years. When they got home each of them had one leg that was longer than the other, but they could remember the color of every apple they’d ever eaten and man, they were never the same.”