Jerome Rothenberg

Poems and poetics

Takahashi Mutsuo: 'This World, or the Man of the Boxes,' dedicated to Joseph Cornell

Translation from Japanese by Jeffrey Angles

 

[This posting was immediately dropped from Jacket2 Commentaries when I first posted it, so I’m reposting it now. (J.R.)]

 

Pilgrim on earth, thy name is heaven,
Stranger, thou art the guest of God.

Mary Baker Eddy

Jake Marmer: A new poem, 'The Law of Returning Lost Objects'

After Talmud Bava Metzia, 21A

 

On seeing Roman Vishniac’s ‘Vanished World’ exhibit

 

when is an object considered lost?

when it has been disassembled, crumbled, or scattered

so that it can no longer be described

as a sum total of itself

Amish Trivedi: From 'FuturePanic': 'What We Remembered Before'

What We Remembered Before

 

A face climbing

atop an old       

starter motor,    

buried down

and spit-taken

ahead of slender

 

white ether gloves and

Aimé Césaire: From 'Ferrements,' 'Tombeau de Paul Eluard' (1960)

Translation from French by A. James Arnold and Clayton Eshleman

 

Blazon of blows on the shattered body of dreams

                         first snowy morning

Takahashi Mutsuo: 'This World, or the Man of the Boxes,' dedicated to Joseph Cornell

Translation from Japanese by Jeffrey Angles

 

Pilgrim on earth, thy name is heaven,
Stranger, thou art the guest of God.

—Mary Baker Eddy

 

The shade of sooty quince

The bloom of dusty roses

——And beyond that