Xavier Kalck

First reading of Lorine Niedecker's 'Popcorn-can cover' (4)

Xavier Kalck

The bigger picture obscures the actual one. I have to wonder, am I looking at a product of Imagism? This poem seems concrete, simple and based on direct observation. Is it Objectivist? There is sense of clarity countered by ellipsis as sound abstracts the image from its context, so yes as well. What about Surrealism? A trivial domestic object is endowed with uncanny — pun intended — (possibly sexual) significance. associated with distinct specularity (it seems I am looking at an interiorized interior). The list could go on. Does the sense of rural poverty implied in the makeshift device make it a rural poem?

Popcorn-can cover
screwed to the wall
over a hole
so the cold
can’t mouse in
— Lorine Niedecker

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.