Newark

In audio practice VI

Notes on Baraka recordings

Chris Funkhouser and Amiri Baraka June 2013 photo by Amy Hufnagel — Chris Funkhouser and Amiri Baraka, June 2013, photo by Amy Hufnagel

My wife and I first met Amiri Baraka in November 1997, standing in line to get our tickets to a Betty Carter, Joshua Redman, and Maria João/Mario Laginha concert at New Jersey Performing Art Center in Newark. Baraka was directly in front of us! Both Amy and I had been readers of his work since college, were aware of his intensity, and struck up conversation with him. I explained I had been a student and friend of Ginsberg’s, and that I was living and working in Newark. He told us about monthly salons he and his wife Amina hosted at their home, Kimako’s Blues People, gave us his card, and invited us to come over — which we did many times during the next few years.

Recently in Jacket2

50 poets on 50 poems

A book to be published in 2020

Al Filreis

Anna Strong Safford & I are editing a book, to be published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2020, in which we present 50 poets writing 1,000 words each in response to 50 poems. Fred Wah on Creeley's "I Know a Man." Rachel Blau DuPlessis on H.D's "Sea Rose." Tyrone Williams on Baraka's "Incident." And also Mónica de la Torre on Erica Baum's "Déjà vu." Reproduced above is Baum's piece (from "Card Catalogues").

Ōoka Makoto: from 'What Is Poetry?'

In 'Beneath the Sleepless Tossing of the Planets: Selected Poems'

Jerome Rothenberg

Translation from Japanese by Janine Beichman

Bassam Hajjar: poetry, a reading of silence

Huda Fakhreddine

Magritte’s “Not to Be Reproduced” on the cover of Hajjar’s ‘You Shall Survive Me,’ 2001 (a collection of works).

The Lebanese Bassam Hajjar (1955–2009) is a poet and a translator of silence. His poetry reminds us of George Steiner’s famous statement, “when the poet’s word ceases, a great light begins.” Perhaps because he was a dedicated translator, he hesitated and listened well for the charged silence in what he wrote and what he translated.