David Meltzer

Jerome Rothenberg: On the achievement of David Meltzer, a preface & a memorial

[The word of David Meltzer’s death came to us the morning after & on the threshold of a new & dangerous year in which his friendship & kindly spirit will be greatly missed by the many of us who drew from & treasured his grace of mind & the life of poetry that surrounds it. In the immediate aftermath I thought to reprint the preface I was privileged to write for his selected poems (David’s Copy, Penguin Poets, 2005) & the short poem, composed by gematria, that follows.

Recently in Jacket2

Denver is home to the world's first Quiznos

Sommer Browning

Sign of Quiznos's first location in Denver — First Quiznos location is in Denver

In Alice Notley’s Waltzing Matilda the narrator reads a friend’s poems, contends with the ambivalences of marriage, tends to sick children, gets hammered, makes an ass of herself, worries about making an ass of herself, reads the news, frets about money. Good god, am I describing my life or a book of poems? This book was published in 1981. I was published in 1976.

Pablo Picasso: A translation in progress of 'The Four Little Girls'

A translation in progress of 'The Four Little Girls'

[November 24, 1947–August 13, 1948]

Jerome Rothenberg

“Harpy with Bull’s Head and Four Little Girls on Top of a Tower with Black Flag,” Plate 13 from the Vollard Suite, December 1934

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE. While Pierre Joris and I were translating and putting together Picasso’s Burial of the Count of Orgaz & Other Poems (2004), I began a translation of Les Quatre Petites Filles, the second of the two full-length plays Picasso wrote in the 1940s.

Translation from French by Jerome Rothenberg.

The scene — a vegetable garden almost smack in its center a well.

four little girls singing — we’re not gonna go to the woods no more the laurel trees are down on the floor hey the beautiful babe will go pick them up then we’ll come out to dance hey just like they dance oh you sing dance and hug anybody you want

Toward a poetry and poetics of the Americas (16): For the forty-fifth Presidentiad

Toward a poetry and poetics of the Americas (16)

From Whitman, Sousandrade, Darío, and Emerson

Jerome Rothenberg

Why reclining, interrogating? why myself and all drowsing?

What deepening twilight — scum floating atop of the waters,

Who are they as bats and night-dogs askant in the capitol?

Walt Whitman

TO THE STATES

To Identify the 16th, 17th, or 18th Presidentiad.

Why reclining, interrogating? why myself and all drowsing?

What deepening twilight — scum floating atop of the waters,

Who are they as bats and night-dogs askant in the capitol?