Jerome Rothenberg

Poems and poetics

'A Miniaturized Bulwark Against Being Solitary': SJ Fowler introduces 'Enemies: Selected Collaborations'

[Enemies: The Selected Collaborations of SJ Fowler is available from Penned in the Margins in the UK, priced £9.99.  This introduction was originally published on the Penned in the Margins web site, November 22, 2013.  The emphasis on collaboration is a perspective to which I feel a very great affinity.  (J.R.)]

David Antin: 'icy seagulls' (a new talk poem)

David Antin talking while Jerome Rothenberg listens in the background (photo by
David Antin talking while Jerome Rothenberg listens in the background (photo by D.G. Wills)

i guess we all need the mike because the people in the back wont hear it    it feels a little weird to me to have it    the glasses are a mistake i only use them for reading and i cant see you if i have the glasses on and ive learned in recent years ive learned from the fact that i can no longer see anything clearly sixteen inches from my face that i need glasses   

Pierre Joris: From 'The Agony of Ingeborg Bachmann,' prologue and first scene

[AUTHOR'S NOTE. Asked by the TNL (Theatre National du Luxembourg) to be author-in-residence for the 2015-2016 season, I proposed as my second and final play, a 3-act drama concerning the death of poet Ingeborg Bachmann. She died — mythically speaking — through fire, falling asleep with a lit cigarette; though what actually caused the 3-week coma from which she wasn’t able to come out, was her addiction to pills.

Jerome Rothenberg: 'A Book of Shadows' for Tita Reut

A BOOK OF SHADOWS

History is over.
In another world
you find another
young as you,
your shadow
over his, the two
together, sharing
hidden sorrows,
thoughts of                                         (G. de Nerval)
expiation. The world
does not forgive.

*

Allotments.
Shut.

From 'Technicians of the Sacred Expanded': 'Genesis Three' (Enuma Elish), with commentary

Translation from Old Babylonian by Harris Lenowitz

 

When sky above had no name

          earth beneath no given name

   APSU       the first       their seeder

Deepwater