Commentaries - June 2017

The lives of the experimental poets 16–18

Fitch, Wilkinson, Lorange

“To stick to things, to sail over them, both are wrong,” writes utopian Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch in The Principle of Hope. In scenes of emergent Australian poetries, a new generation of experimental writers equipped with “radical hope” pursue the dream of the New as the avant-gardists did; but understanding that the way to do it is neither sticking to what has been (past vanguards) nor sailing over those works.

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16. Toby Fitch

                 Two versions of a poem, above in Otoliths (journal) the other in The Bloomin' Notions of Other & Beau (Vagabond 2016)

Jerome Rothenberg: from 'A Seneca Journal': 'Midwinter'

[No longer readily available, this section of A Seneca Journal was an early attempt of mine toward a poetry of minimal means — observations & off-the-cuff translations during my first viewing of the Seneca Indian Midwinter ceremonies at the Allegany Seneca reservation in western New York State.  While I’ve intercalated much of A Seneca Journal in later gatherings of my poetry I was never able to provide an alternative place for these poems, though I still find them crucial to the work that was then unfolding for myself & others.

Jacket2 welcomes Divya Victor

Jacket2 is delighted to welcome Divya Victor to our team as our new guest editor. Divya has long been a friend of the journal: she has curated and edited two extraordinary features, “Discourses on Vocality” and “Conceptual writing (plural and global) and other cultural productions” — the latter of which is one of our most massive and ambitious features to date — and written insightfully on her time in Singapore as part of our Commentaries section. She is a prolific poet whose titles include the award-winning Natural Subjects (reviewed here), UNSUBThings to Do with Your MouthSwift Taxidermies 1919–1922Goodbye, John! On John Baldessari, PUNCH, and more.

Jacket2 is delighted to welcome Divya Victor to our team as our new guest editor. Divya has long been a friend of the journal: she has curated and edited two extraordinary features, “Discourses on Vocality” and “Conceptual writing (plural and global) and other cultural productions” — the latter of which is one of our most massive and ambitious features to date — and written insightfully on her time in Singapore as part of our Commentaries section. She is a prolific poet whose titles include the award-winning Natural Subjects (reviewed here), UNSUBThings to Do with Your MouthSwift Taxidermies 1919–1922Goodbye, John! On John Baldessari, PUNCH, and the Partial trilogy, as well as a number of chapbooks.