La Piccioletta Barca | Paraphrasis

Now our faces fall off, everything rings false, houses sink in black sap and there are a thousand horses beneath...

The Dead Horsies by Antoine Mouton

there are so many lonely people who seem to have lost pieces of themselves there are so many pieces of people who...

Barrenness by T.H. Parry-Williams

It was a treeless world of weather-swept wilds in Snowdonia around my birth, bare as if giants ...

Pulling Some Crap by Juan Arabia

Patricio Ferrari

Of pardine sun, I embrightened ...

Two poems by William Auld

Translated from the Esperanto of William AuldThe dancing woman lifts her face,Passive amid the wilting flowers ...

Two poems by Ninfa María

Asheley Nova Navarro

Language has a to-do list: -Make it so that love does not sound cliche -That myth does not sound pretentious...

'Verses Written in a Copy of Beowulf' by Borges

Kate Tsurkan & Dmytro Kyyan

Sometimes I ask myself the reasons why I'm driven, with no hope of satisfaction as my night pushes onward now...

Take me by the eyes and lead me by Khrystia Vengryniuk

Take me by the eyes and lead me / So far, it turns both cold and hot / So that days change into nights...

To Say A Prayer by Abraham Sutzkever

I have the urge to say a prayer. I do not know to whom. He who once gave me comfort will not hear it, should it come...

Endless Nothingness, Sweet Nothings: Two Poems by Eminescu

Delia Radu

When there was neither death, nor anything undying, Nor any seeds of light, breeders of life, for form vying, Ther...

Three poems by Arnaut Daniel

Selen Ozturk

Bitter air strips wood off branches. Sweet air scatters leaves. All the while, beaks’ warbling ...

Selected poems from Un titre simple by Arno Calleja

Katie Shireen Assef

Every time something takes place on Earth someone writes it ...

Note for the heat

Olivia Boyle

All powerful and good—you, the up-above—I give you praise, glory, honour, and all benediction;

Picnic by Antonia Pozzi

Amy Newman

I don't remember who offered me the flowers: I think a surly little girl who had long braids, beautiful...

Poems by Cho Ji Hoon

Sekyo Nam Haines

At the highest of a high mountain ridge alone, leaning on a dead tree, as if I’ve been nailed here...

Three poems by Évelyne Truoillot

Alani Hicks-Bartlett

One day I will renounce my mother, with eyes closed I will go without waves or boats in my sight...

Writing

Nancy Burke

Pen-tip leaves a trail of death, tail of past tense, / twisting lines of already-attenuating thoughts, monument

Vertical Poetry by Roberto Juarroz

Wally Swist

Life draws a tree / and death draws another. / Life draws a nest / and death copies it. / Life draws a bird ...

Harakiri by Claudio Bertoni

idea for a film where everyone cries all the time

How Lucky You Are by Denis Michelis

He’s got fifteen minutes left, so he hurries. He feels like taking an ice-cold shower and he also feels like drinking...

Selected Texts of Oostende by Martín Zícari

Martín Zícari

I return to Brussels by train. The jacket, the winter, and the boots, the jeans and the headphones make me feel bigger.

Turbulence by Mukyu

Catherine Xinxin Yu

I’m a Hong Kong writer. All my articles are about elsewhere.

Sinp’ asqa and Boxes by Magui Rodríguez

I wish I had the patience for long hair

The Spill Beyond by Simon Brown

There’s a beginning and then many beginnings

The Empty Apse by Maria Messina

Amaryllis Gacioppo

Every year, all the nuns would kneel behind the choir grate to see the women and then the priests and then, finally...

The poem as an idea of poetry by Alberto Girri

Clara Cattarossi

Shall the purpose / be to provoke the feeling / of the words, and to reach / the challenge of expression ...

what existence is measuring by anne-laure garicoix

Every morning when he puts a first foot on the ground he gathers

Sonata for a bison by Delphine Arras

i tap my foot for joy to rise

Voces/Voices: the aphorisms of Antonio Porchia

Wally Swist

Whomever has seen everything empty, almost knows what everything is filled with.

Snake Charming on Hot Evenings by Małgorzata Żarów

Nasim Luczaj

It only feels like I’m running. I'm barely limping, and the plastic bag, still attached to my dress, adds drama...

Nothing at All by Olivia Tapiero

I wanted to swallow the sun, absorb desired bodies, hold the sea in my gaze without ever mourning its shores.

Geographies by Mario Benedetti

The silence of the sea roars an infinite judgement

Sappho 31

Maggie Palmer

He seems to me equal to the gods, whoever sits opposite you there and listens closely to your voice speaking sweetly...

Undo lovers, and other poems

Alma Holovatuck

An error constant, / to undo lovers, / talking to yesterday, / reopening scars...

No Safe Area by Teona Farmatu

James Appleby

i suffer each time the driver

Drink Van Houten’s Cocoa by Ornela Vorpsi

Antonella Lettieri

“The only thing I ask of you,” Moma repeats from time to time ...

In a Low Voice by Mercè Rodoreda

Alani Hicks-Bartlett

It was the last day. The last. The very last day...

Punctured Diary by Mercedes Halfon

Rachel Ballenger

At the moment I am nowhere. Although there is a phrase “to be in the clouds” that suggests this is a plausible residence

Three poems by Laura Rodríguez Díaz

a black dog covers me / and I squeeze handfuls of blackberries / so that a murky juice / fills with blood the cotton ...

The Hunt by Felix Tavchandjian

Dear reader, be warned, the story I am about to tell puts you at risk of the same evil which inhabits me.

Two poems by Yehuda HaLevi

Dan Alter

Sleeper with your heart stirred, burning, storm-churned, / Shake off sleep, come out now & walk in the light of my ...

Words of the Greek by Francisco Hernández

Guillermo Manning

I shall look for your name / in the first crypt of the cemetery ...

When I say nothing I still think by Camille Readman Prud'homme

secretly you disapprove of odd numbers; they remind you of the wickedness of children who have fits around sharing.

Surfing Underground by Eduardo Castillo

No poems today only more “grinding” stone.

Prehistory, by Stefano D'Arrigo

Joe Gross

Others migrated: prayers beating / sails of solar barges on toward ...

The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon

Those who purposefully ingratiate themselves into the palace are obnoxious and lazy

Accident by Rosario Castellanos

I feared... not the great love.

Those who remain silent by Bruno Doucey

They sit under the mulberry tree and converse without chattering ...

The book of longitude and latitude by Laura Vazquez

Eponine Howarth and Yara Bazzoun

When i crush an ant without meaning to i look for all the others and kill them ...

Dad's Place by Claudia Piñeiro

Fiona Mackintosh

'Tonight you’re sleeping at dad’s place.' Without a clue that 'dad’s place' didn’t yet exist...

House of Ravens by Blanca Varela

Laura Rodríguez Díaz

because I fed you with this undercooked reality because of so many and so poor flowers of evil ...

Zaatar by Sofía Karámpali Farhat

I feel the urge to tell you that the time has come

Three poems by Susana Thénon

the hour / eases the sky / the statue's mouth sings / the...

What will happen to us, Summer afternoons and The whole universe

Antonia De Gattis

I certainly feel the melancholy...

Four poems by Cristina Cavazos

I’m born in the disgrace of the 7th day of / dead leaves. / The sky explodes its fury against / me while I swallow my...

Words by Alejandra Pizarnik

The rain is expected to pass. The winds are expected to arrive. It is hoped. It is said. For love of silence ...

Number 1, Series 4 by Georgia O'Keeffe

Want, it's telling me as if I knew what it could say. Yellow jets to pink suddenly turning you turquoise and I ...

Residue by Ida Vitale

Life short or long, everything we live is reduced to a grey residue in memory. From the old journeys remain...

The poets by Mattia Tarantino

We are happy if we break the stars, if we dig into the bread returning to wheat, for everyverse is dark with earth.

Cabo Cervera by Rodrigo Arriagada Zubieta

At dusk you look at the drunken girls/awake by the grace and work of the salt/they dance in transparent dresses...

an (un)faithful translation

The rhythm of Japanese moves much like the sound of water, languorous one moment, crashing into consonants the next...

City by Astrid Velasco Montante

The deserted print, retraced, glances a sprout in the crack. Each street I recognize slants the memory which plays ...

A Translation of A Translation

‘Y en el juego angustioso de un espejo frente a otro cae mi voz y mi voz que madura y mi voz quemadura...

limestone by Camila Evia

Inaudible multiplier life diminutive flowers that float inside the lab...

"When the sirocco blows, it blows round" by Nino De Vita

Carlo Massimo

Nino De Vita (b. 1950) is my cousin; that is, he’s my grandmother’s first cousin, and he looks alarmingly like her ...

(Re)Drawing the Contours: A Translation of a Painting

Rodrigo Arriagada Zubieta

I recently told Nacho, the editor of Paraphrasis, that I would engage in the translation of a painting. I have long...

Wangchuan Villa: Arriving, Abiding, Parting

Talbot Hook

Quite simply put, there are writers that one feels one knows. To state that thought in yet another, more long-winded ...

Covid's Metamorphoses by Maë Schwinghammer

Lisa Schantl

When translating Maë Schwinghammer’s poems, I cannot help but fall into a trance-like state. Their words become my ...

The Bund by Juan Arabia: Politics in Images

The brevity is sustained at the exact point where the experience and the poetic project of the author intersect.

The window by Miguel Ángel Zapata

Anthony Seidman

I’m going to build a window in the middle of the street in order to not feel lonely. I will plant a tree in the ...

Fragment by Bian Zhilin

Michelle Yeh

Bian Zhilin was a poet and a translator of French and English literature into Chinese. He was born in Jiangsu and ...

"Poemínimo": Misfortunes, Poet by Efraín Huerta

An enemy of the mounted police, the petty bourgeoisie and its publicist poets, Efraín Huerta (1914-1982) devoted poems..

Translating the Oulipo: Georges Perec and Les mots croisés

Maggie Vlietstra

Since 1960, the French Oulipo (short for Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle) has brought together an eclectic ...

Marina Jarre: A Writer for Our Times - A prologue by Marta Barone

Cheryl Chaffin

Over four years I’ve been composing a sort of hybrid biography and memoir entitled The Bright Dream: A Writer’s Return..

The Cipher and the Mirror: Two Poems by Eminescu and Barbu

Delia Radu

What a Borgesian delight to think that Mihai Eminescu, considered by many to be Europe’s last great Romantic...

Sarmiento's Travels: an emancipated gaze

Sarmiento (San Juan, Argentina, 1811-Asunción, Paraguay, 1888) observes and writes down; he used to exhaust the pages...

The World Used To Be More Poetic - Lêdo Ivo's Poems and Confessions

Andrew Gebhardt

“The world used to be more poetic,” wrote Lêdo Ivo in “Vultures on the Cove.” He had a broad and unusual vocabulary...

Baudelaire, 1845: Homo Duplex by Rodrigo Arriagada-Zubieta

Nacho Vilanova, Emilio Vilanova, and Eponine Howarth

The movement takes place on a truly experiential level, playing on great impulses, from the aesthetic point of view ...

Lost in Translation: 53rd Chorus, Mexico City Blues

‘Lost in Translation’ is very much an experiment in linguistics and translation, where the outcome revealed above to ...

Seferis ‘Mythistorema 15’

Ollie Cowley

Born in Smyrna in 1900, Giorgos Seferis would become one of the most prominent Greek poets in the twentieth...

Countdown by Camila Evia

Patricio Ferrari

Poet, graphic designer and translator. Graduated from the Faculty of Architecture...

Earth for Me is Sky: Poems by Agi Mishol

Joanna Chen

‍Reading Agi Mishol’s poetry is like going for a walk on a well-trodden path and finding something new and surprising...

Jay Parini, Borges and me

This novel by Jay Parini, while displaying true events that occurred fifty years ago, can work from various places...

Bulmenia by Juan Arabia

Eponine Howarth and Yara Bazzoun

Arabia is configured in this monological song through the trade that has fallen to him, the craft that leads him to a...

Five poems by Omar Lara

Jessica Sequeira

The poet Omar Lara (1941 – 2021) was a vital referent in contemporary Chilean poetry. I have translated a few of ...

The clock has just struck midi: five poems by Mario Scalesi

Carlo Massimo

There was a time when, in the Sicilian port of Trapani, a crowd would gather at the docks once or even twice a week ...

Two poems by Aleksandra Byrska

Mark Tardi

There’s vocabulary, and then there’s vocabulary. A word you can look at in your native tongue and think, “Huh? ...

Sissy Zhong by Yan Ge

Nicky Harman

Yan Ge has always taken her inspiration from the town where she grew up, but she uses that backdrop in very different...

Anniversary Snow by Yang Lian

Brian Holton

Chinese, like English, is an analytic SVO language (man bites dog/dog bites man), although nouns don’t decline, verbs...

Juicio by Juan Arabia

Patricio Ferrari

‘Juicio’ [Judgement]: first a noun, an act of assessment. Granted. But when we say judgement in poetry today, do we...

The Puzzle of "Mimic Language"

In the original version of “Encounter in the forest”, the French-speaking reader manages to understand that a horrible..

Poems by Bronka Nowicka

Katarzyna Szuster-Tardi

The first thing about Bronka Nowicka’s work that resonated with me was her language, which seemed clean and effortless..

Precisely Your Turn by Alberto Moravia

Zoe Fairtlough

Alberto Moravia, one of Italy’s most famous literary figures, is renowned for his neorealist and anti-fascist novels...

To Awaken from Despair: Translating Hamid Adib

Mahdi Ganjavi

I have long been mesmerized by the varied social settings and contexts in which classical Persian poetry is reproduced..

Poems by Katarzyna Szaulińska

Mark Tardi

My first encounter with the work of Katarzyna Szaulińska was through her poem “dorothy vallens”, which jolted me with...

Four lines by Paul Celan

Dan Bellm

I began with one short, circumscribed, parenthetical, untitled poem, in a language I didn’t know, a spark of encounter..

Poems by Julia Nemirovskaya

Boris Dralyuk

The art of translation, like any deeply engaged act of reading, is partly a matter of mirroring. We often see, in the...

The Death of Fellini & Other Poems

Poems by Jacques Prévert translated by E.H.‍

Lacul by Mihai Eminescu

Andreea Iulia Scridon

Romania’s national poet, Mihai Eminescu (1850 – 1889), is the prototype of the Romantic poet: thematically comparable...

Writing searches for a homeland. Behind a poem or a story is a landscape, or several if there is a journey. The setting may be in a wild, remote place. Or it may be in a city.. Or it may be an imagined place, like Xanadu.

Meditations From A Restless Night

Stephen R. Minnich

For a restless soul, the night is an endless possibility. A stage upon which experience and imagination collide. How different would be the day if just one thing only changed? If everything changed but only just? Countless are the variations that one might imagine. These poems welcome what arrives when rest is unwelcome and restlessness embraced; when one learns, perhaps, to stand on stage between the infinite collisions, letting each one try itself out.

Ambivalence

Somewhere in between knowing, ambivalence is a feeling that never quite acts like one. It’s more of a filter, that blurs reality until the moment it snaps, cracks under its own ephemerality. Here you’ll find a drive between prose and poetry, effort and surrender, loss and its clarity.

Out of the Woods

Civilisation and Nature often have a difficult relationship. Writing about Nature seeks harmony between town and country.

Follies

Ian Fisher

These three linked short stories anecdote the cosmopolitan fictional Fielder family: Ira, wife Nessa, and son Rónán, from the mid-eighties—which Rónán likes to call B.R.—to summer 2021.

Seoul Metal

Michael Howarth

'Seoul Metal' explores the Mullae Dong district with a series of ten photographs. Visit this neighbourhood in Seoul, with an eclectic mix of metal workshops, artists’ studios, bars and restaurants. Join this loud, boisterous and very industrial trip with Michael Howarth.

All That Glitters is Not Gold

Yvonne Jowell

"All that glitters is not gold” is a three-piece story that examines a woman’s abortion from three overlapping angles. "The danger of the child in your head", “Mozart assassinated” and “Playing your cards right” each explore the pains of an abortion, crumbling relationships and the pursuit of hope.

L'Escargot

Geoffrey Heptonstall returns in the Thread with a collection of essays inspired by Henri Matisse’s L’Escargot. Go down into the labyrinth. You will find a discussion about art, darkness, tragedy and memory with Francois Gilot, Jean-Paul Sartre, Stéphane Mallarmé, Jean Cocteau, Horace and Aristotle amongst many other guests.

Come Here, Chodż Tutaj (or, A Tribute to Mother Courage)

Joe Wagner

Come Here, Chodż Tutaj (or, A Tribute to Mother Courage) is a three-part essay that revolves around the author’s experience in Warsaw in 1980 and 1981 as a twelve-year-old boy, as well as the life of Anna Walentynowicz, the Polish activist who inspired Solidarity. It explores notions of memory, language, history, and labor unions with several literary references along the way.

Way Out in the Old West

Sam Price

Stories of the American West have largely been relegated to the past. Reading about gratuitous, racially-charged violence in a world brimming with gratuitous, racially-charged violence -- most readers are wise to pass. Yet, something gleams in those far-off hills, gems like True Grit, Warlock, and Lonesome Dove. These genre classics remind modern readers the stories we construct about our own pasts are, like the legends of old, more mythology than history.

Digital Truth Serum

Mulan Fu

How does the virtual world control how we perceive ourselves and can animation help us identify how we unknowingly subject ourselves to its terms? Constructed in relation with artist Mulan Fu's visual language of abstraction, this is a record of the development of a work of animation from conception to production. A simulation.

700th Anniversary of the Death of Dante

Antonio Melloni

Seven hundred years ago, Dante Alighieri died in Ravena. Broadly read and criticized, his Comedy has been – and still is – a sea in which many have ventured to find poetry, philosophy, history and religion. Some, moved by the Italian, attempted their own creations inspired by such waters. Here, two essays and a poem intend to be, if nothing else, a compass for an eventual reader to find his way towards Dante´s work.

Animal v. Human

Luke Davies

Two miniature collections of short stories and a short essay on the theme of animals and humans, written by a human.

Dream Journey

Dream Journey is an account of the images that a mind encounters on first waking. It begins with a city walk at night. Before nightfall, there is a strange feeling that the world is neither light nor dark. The noise of the day gives way not to silence, but to the sounds of the night. In the early morning at first light it may seem that the stones come alive. They may appear to move or to speak. Of course it is only the mist of a grey dawn.

Dostoevsky is 200

Jakob Brønnum

The Russian novelist, Fyodor Dostoevsky, turns 200 on November 11th. "Dostoevsky is 200” is a quartet of short essays that explores the writer’s understanding of the problems of Russian society and his characterization of human nature. His vision of the human person is so strong and pure that there is much to be learned from reading him.

Through the Lens

Through the Lens offers a reflection on photography, memory and identity through essays and poetry. You can expect to encounter Bioy Casares, Manoel de Oliveira, Joaquín Sorolla, Nacho’s friend Simón, as well as others along the way.

In Constant Motion

This collection of essays investigates the poetic form, the life of poets, familiar streets and places of learning. A journey within the mind, with language and within the world at a moment of transformation. You can expect to meet T.S. Eliot, Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, Hugh MacDiarmid, Sally Purcell, John Wain, John Berryman, Elizabeth Bishop and Amanda Gorman along the way...

On History

Dylan Howarth

‘On History’ comprises three critical reflections on the depiction of historical events in cinema, on the role of the historian in the study of history, and on the historical depiction of madness in American literature. Through this collection of essays, join a voyage through history, from the late Stalin and Khrushchev eras, to ‘Hitler’s War,’ and 19th and 20th century America.

Dreamland

Michael Shapland

December 2030. Tom is a young man intent on saving his older brother, who resides in ‘Dreamland’. Dreamland is a drug house for the rich, hidden underneath Soho Square. No man has ever left Dreamland.

The Muses of October

Michael A. Dann

This collection of essays offers a reflection on the decay of empires. From Ancient Greece, to the Roman Empire, to the Aztecs, the story of the fall of ancient civilisations in 'The Muses of October’ provides some insight into contemporary political developments.

Lockdown Meanderings

Eleonora Narbone

'Lockdown Meanderings' offers a critical reflection on some of the effects of the pandemic. This collection of essays and short stories explores the passing of time, the subtle beauty of routines, the importance of storytelling, and the immense joy of seeing people again after lockdown. From Boccacio’s Decameron, to running in Ancona, to the beauty of moka coffee, enjoy a virtual trip to the heart of Italy.

Singing Cicadas

Chariklia Martalas

According to Socrates in the Phaedrus, when the Muses were born, song was birthed with them. Some people became so intoxicated with singing that they forgot to eat and drink and so they died. These humans became the Singing Cicadas who sang until they died and then reported to the Muses which humans have honoured them. Chariklia openly admits that she wants the Cicadas to report to the Muses that she has honoured them, so she can give these pieces of writing as offerings.

The First Words

"When the first words were written it became possible…" This trilogy explores the role of writers and literature, as well as the art of writing; these notebooks filled with possibilities, improbabilities and nonsense. A true manifesto that explains why it matters very much how you say what you say, why nobody can tell you how to write and why the true self is the imaged self.

A Chapter in the Book of Existence

Colby Torbett

This collection of essays offers a reflection of life’s place in space and time through the physical environment of three different settings: Space, the arctic, and the jungle. A Chapter in the Book of Existence seek to express the beautiful, finite nature of our planet as it exists in the universe through the lenses of science, human nature, and exploration.

Celebrating Beethoven

Jakob Brønnum

Beethoven was born 250 years ago in December. We do not know his exact birthday, but records show that he was baptized in Bonn on the 17th. 2020 should be a celebration of his intense artistic and unswervingly humanistic musical legacy. “Celebrating Beethoven” looks at four large and well-known works, attempting to identify some ways Beethoven widens his time and his métier into matters relevant to philosophy, romantic spirituality, abstract art and the dawning of modern, personal identity.

On Voices

Myko Philip

Join the odyssey through the voices that one hears while deciphering Eliot’s The Waste Land. Are you hearing the voices? What happens when you don’t quite hear the voices that Eliot wants you to hear? What happens when you do begin to hear the voices? What happens when you mistakenly hear the other voices?

Some Notes from Chile

Joe Wagner

A trip to Chile, exploring its history and present, from Pinochet and the Chicago Boys to O-18 and Covid-19. Notes on political unrest, streets coming to life and creating a new social pact. Interventions by Neruda and references to Bolaño may shine light on the rebellion, or simply provide solace.

In Search of Lost Words

Zoe Fairtlough

A reflection on family legacies and the search for purpose, threaded through with the origins of Italian gelato and the etymology of related words.

On Poetic Creation

Embarking on a journey into the past – from ancient Greece, across the Seine and the Sistine Chapel, to Hollywood and America – this is an exploration of the intricacies of the poetic process, the interaction of poetry with history and philosophy and the uniqueness of different art forms.

On Loss and Solitude

Pamela Mandell

Ruminations on the natural cycles of life and death inspired by the bildungsroman of a life companion. The Noki Trilogy, named after the author’s canine companion, builds on casual conversations in the form of three short stories, stimulating all five senses, and exploring the depth and clarity of the perception of loss.

On Writers and Writing

An investigation of the writer’s challenges in accepting reality, the inevitability of change in order to discover the truth and the life of words independent from their writer. This ensemble of short essays proposes a journey across Santiago de Cuba, San Francisco, Cape Ann, Cambridge and Avignon through diary entries.

On Philosophical Thought

Facundo Rodriguez

An exploration of the abstraction of modern thought and its interaction with shared practice. Featuring Boethius, Ortega y Gasset, Marx, Kant and many more, this series of pieces employs both prose and verse to explore the depths of human nature, and the existential impact of creation.

On Love and Memory

Sonya Wohletz

Some thoughts on modern aesthetics and the realm of the affective. From Otto Dix, to a tale of Gustav Mahler and Gustav Klimt, this four-part historical account cum contemporary journey, spells out the intricacies of love, memory and ritual grief.

On The Self and The Other

Daniel Olivieri

An anatomy of human connections, their joys and disappointments. A compilation of short stories which investigate the value of conversations in the dark, the disappointments of author pictures, the pleasures of TSA inspection, and provide tips on how to avoid the cold desperation of being lonely, while steering clear from the prickly pain of being with other people.

On Poetic Truth

Myko Philip

An exploration of the intricacies of a poetic life, including the experience the artfulness of objects and the desire to shake off automated routines. This collection of essays sheds light on how one’s literary inclinations can guide attention, perception and actions, explains why some words stick, and, satisfies the reader’s pursuit of revelations, settling for a moment of modest epiphany.

On The Five Elements

Joude Bazzoun

Contemplations on mother nature and the elements. These three short personifications of nature as a creative and controlling force affecting humans, explore the motherly qualities of the sea, the wind and the rain. Paintings by the artist accompany the texts and offer a visual voyage from the comfort of your home.

On Self-Improvement