On October 14, 2023, I received the 11th Annual 'T' Space Poetry Award at ‘T’ Space Reserve in Rhinebeck, NY. The event coincided with the opening of Giuliano Fiorenzoli’s exhibition “Because of seeing architecture” at ‘T’ Space’s newly completed Archive Gallery. As a result, I gave an archetechture-themed reading. In addition to brief talks by Steven Holl and Fiorenzoli prior to my reading and award presentation, Nate Wooley performed an improvised set of inventive trumpet music afterwards.
Joan Retallack's poem “Not a Cage” has been discussed often by the ModPo community over the years. By now there are ten different resources relating to this poem: text, audio, video; recitation, analysis, discussion. Click HERE to see all ten in one view. Here, below, we feature an 8-minute video made in 2021 in which we discuss Retallack's procedure and strategy further.
If the words of the British poet/artist William Blake stand as the opening for our book, it is both for his recognition of a larger America and for his regard for poetry as an instrument of prophecy. It is in this sense that we invoke him as our guardian angel, to remind us (when circumstances or history repeat themselves) of this “calling” for our continents and poets. Like Blake, whose America a Prophecy is part of a series of continental prophecies, our hemispheric assemblage tries, through the voices gathered here, to reiterate this markedly American “path,” or in our case, this series of paths. Thus, the “prophecy about America” (if there is one in the following pages, as there surely was for Blake) becomes not so much a projection of events-to-come, but a testimony of the difficulties and threats we face today, North and South and replicated ominously throughout the world.
On my American plains I feel the struggling afflictions Endur'd by roots that writhe their arms into the nether deep: I see a Serpent in Canada, who courts me to his love; In Mexico an Eagle, and a Lion in Peru; I see a Whale in the South-sea, drinking my soul away. O what limb rending pains I feel. thy fire & my frost Mingle in howling pains, in furrows by thy lightnings rent; This is eternal death; and this the torment long foretold.
During ModPo's 2022 week 4 live webcast, Jerome Rothenberg talks about a favorite Gertrude Stein poem. Rothenberg was visiting the Writers House from California to be with us for the webcast, a PoemTalk episode, and a public reading. Click here to view the one-minute video directly on YouTube, and here to see the entire archive of ModPo videos.
Margo Tamez’sFather | Genocide was published by Turtle Point Press in 2021. A book of Ndé Dene [Lipan Apache] ‘place, memory, and poetics,’ Tamez describes currently living “on unceded sqilxw lands on the Okanagan Indian Band Reserve #1 (near Vernon, BC) as an invited guest.”
We are on opposite nodes of an entire continent, and I knew nothing of the smoke. The fire’s widening container a made architecture of disappearance.
'T'-Space reading
On October 14, 2023, I received the 11th Annual 'T' Space Poetry Award at ‘T’ Space Reserve in Rhinebeck, NY. The event coincided with the opening of Giuliano Fiorenzoli’s exhibition “Because of seeing architecture” at ‘T’ Space’s newly completed Archive Gallery. As a result, I gave an archetechture-themed reading. In addition to brief talks by Steven Holl and Fiorenzoli prior to my reading and award presentation, Nate Wooley performed an improvised set of inventive trumpet music afterwards.
Discussion of Joan Retallack's "Not a Cage"
From a 2021 ModPo webcast
Joan Retallack's poem “Not a Cage” has been discussed often by the ModPo community over the years. By now there are ten different resources relating to this poem: text, audio, video; recitation, analysis, discussion. Click HERE to see all ten in one view. Here, below, we feature an 8-minute video made in 2021 in which we discuss Retallack's procedure and strategy further.
An Omnipoetics Manifesto
From the preface to "A Book of Americas," by Jerome Rothenberg & Javier Taboada
If the words of the British poet/artist William Blake stand as the opening for our book, it is both for his recognition of a larger America and for his regard for poetry as an instrument of prophecy. It is in this sense that we invoke him as our guardian angel, to remind us (when circumstances or history repeat themselves) of this “calling” for our continents and poets. Like Blake, whose America a Prophecy is part of a series of continental prophecies, our hemispheric assemblage tries, through the voices gathered here, to reiterate this markedly American “path,” or in our case, this series of paths. Thus, the “prophecy about America” (if there is one in the following pages, as there surely was for Blake) becomes not so much a projection of events-to-come, but a testimony of the difficulties and threats we face today, North and South and replicated ominously throughout the world.
On my American plains I feel the struggling afflictions
Endur'd by roots that writhe their arms into the nether deep:
I see a Serpent in Canada, who courts me to his love;
In Mexico an Eagle, and a Lion in Peru;
I see a Whale in the South-sea, drinking my soul away.
O what limb rending pains I feel. thy fire & my frost
Mingle in howling pains, in furrows by thy lightnings rent;
This is eternal death; and this the torment long foretold.
Jerome Rothenberg's favorite Stein poem
A 1:25 minute ModPo video
During ModPo's 2022 week 4 live webcast, Jerome Rothenberg talks about a favorite Gertrude Stein poem. Rothenberg was visiting the Writers House from California to be with us for the webcast, a PoemTalk episode, and a public reading. Click here to view the one-minute video directly on YouTube, and here to see the entire archive of ModPo videos.
Reading Margo Tamez's "Father | Genocide"
Margo Tamez’s Father | Genocide was published by Turtle Point Press in 2021. A book of Ndé Dene [Lipan Apache] ‘place, memory, and poetics,’ Tamez describes currently living “on unceded sqilxw lands on the Okanagan Indian Band Reserve #1 (near Vernon, BC) as an invited guest.”
We are on opposite nodes of an entire continent, and I knew nothing of the smoke.
The fire’s widening container a made architecture of disappearance.