Rust is the color of disappearance, the deintensification of metallic solidity. Seen in a different slant of light, rust produces a reintensification of color in the meeting of iron and oxygen, the proliferation of autumn in a congeries of breath, moisture, and steel. On the tongue rust acquires a taste: the bitterness of a disappearance, an evaporation that leaves behind the strange piquancy of material erosion.
Video portraits: Jerome and Diane Rothenberg
Jerome Rothenberg & the Burning Babe
Jerry and Diane come to our place for dinner. He had Susan had just collaborated on their fabulous Granary Book. The Burning Babe, so I asked Jerry about the central figure in the poem.
February 24, 2008
(mp4, 1 min. 36 sec., 18.2 mb)
Diane Rothenberg: Marshall Parkway & Other Figments of the Imagination
Diane grew up around Marshall Parkway in the Bronx. She talks about what's the same, what's different, and what is imagined.
February 24, 2008