Myself Am Ever Mine Own Counterfeit, by Noah Berlatsky

Poetry, chapbook, 28 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

Michelangelo’s sonnets are often an exercise in anti confession; the poet pledges that he does not love where he does, or pledges to love when he doesn’t. He laments being misunderstood even as he virtually begs for misunderstanding.

Translation also involves a confusion or obfuscation of identity, and these translations perhaps more than most, since the author does not read Italian. The poems here were mostly composed by referencing Google Translate, J.A. Symonds’ translations, and then wandering off where rhyme and inclination lead.

Some of these more or less follow Michelangelo’s meaning; some make the subtext less sub; some make the melodrama more drama; some argue with the originals or deliberately contradict them; all serve as a way to imagine oneself into the rhetoric and person of a great artist creating great art. These are thundering, impassioned, duplicitous sonnets that speak for us all—or, maybe, for someone else.

Noah Berlatsky (he/him) is a freelance writer in Chicago. His full-length collections are Not Akhmatova (Ben Yehuda Press, 2024), Gnarly Thumbs (Anxiety Press, 2025), Meaning Is Embarrassing (Ranger, 2025) and Brevity (Nun Prophet, 2025).