Jerome Rothenberg

Poems and poetics

Peter Valente: Fragmentary Improvisations of Yearning

küçük İskender's 'souljam'

introduction.  About a year ago I began discussions with Murat Nemet-Nejat on the subject of contemporary Turkish poetry. From these discussions was born a series of notes, experimental essays, and brief commentaries. The following text is based on a reading of küçük İskender’s souljam (see photo, above), in Murat’s translation, included in Eda: An Anthology of Contemporary Turkish Poetry published by Talisman House in 2004.

[introduction.  About a year ago I began discussions with Murat Nemet-Nejat on the subject of contemporary Turkish poetry. From these discussions was born a series of notes, experimental essays, and brief commentaries. The following text is based on a reading of küçük İskender’s souljam (see photo, above), in Murat’s translation, included in Eda: An Anthology of Contemporary Turkish Poetry published by Talisman House in 2004. k.

Jess’s O! : An unknown masterwork (by Jack Foley)

What do W. C. Fields, the Mona Lisa, an upside down Tarot card, and the capitalized phrase, “GOOD NIGHT, PAPA” have in common? Not much, except that they all grace the cover of an almost unknown masterwork by the San Francisco artist, Jess.

Even is come; and from the dark park, hark.

            — O!   

 

What do W. C. Fields, the Mona Lisa, an upside down Tarot card, and the capitalized phrase, “GOOD NIGHT, PAPA” have in common? Not much, except that they all grace the cover of an almost unknown masterwork by the San Francisco artist, Jess.

Technicians of the Sacred: Ethnopoetics and the New Indigenous Poetries (A Talk & Reading in Melbourne)

Coinciding with the publication of an expanded 50th anniversary edition of his anthology Technicians of the Sacred, poet, translator and anthologist Jerome Rothenberg will explore the early history of ethnopoetics.

Ned Kelly: from the Jerilderie Letter, 10 February 1879

[At the start of a month’s visit in Australia I thought it appropriate to repost the following, included also in Barbaric Vast & Wild: Outside & Subterranean Poetry from Origins to Present. (J.R.)]           

[At the start of a month’s visit in Australia I thought it appropriate to repost the following, included also in Barbaric Vast & Wild: Outside & Subterranean Poetry from Origins to Present.

Jack Foley: from “Grief Songs” (Sagging Mencius Press, 2017)

Publisher Jacob Smullyan writes:

 

“On June 4th, 2016, poet Jack Foley’s wife, Adelle Foley, who was (as she told her doctor) ‘never sick,’ was diagnosed with stomach cancer; she died on June 27th. They had been married for nearly fifty-five years and were an exceptionally close couple. Adelle was also a poet and, like Jack, had published widely. He wrote about her, ‘How can there be sunlight and you not in it?’