Commentaries

In Memoriam: Tyrone Williams (1954–2024)

We at Jacket2 regretfully share the news that beloved poet and critic Tyrone Williams passed away on Monday, March 11, at the age of 70. The author of numerous books, including c.c. (2002), On Spec (2008), The Hero Project of the Century (2009), Adventures of Pi (2011), Howell (2011), As Iz (2018), and washpark (with Pat Clifford, 2021), Williams had recently joined the SUNY-Buffalo faculty as David Gray Professor of Poetry and Letters after a long teaching career at Xavier University in Cincinnati. 

We at Jacket2 regretfully share the news that beloved poet and critic Tyrone Williams passed away on Monday, March 11, at the age of 70.

Remembering Lyn Hejinian

Photo by Blake Martin.

The loss of the wonderful, talented, groundbreaking, generous poet and literary citizen Lyn Hejinian has rocked the poetry world. Those who knew her personally — as many of us at the Writers House did — and those who have read and discussed her work (e.g. the experimental coming-of-age book-length prose poem, My Life), are already feeling the impact of the loss: we won’t be able to read new poems and new books by Lyn. It remains for us to read and re-read the astonishing writings she left us.

We start this week off with unwelcome news that resonates widely: Lyn Hejinian has passed away suddenly at the age of 82. Our own Al Filreis shared the following message this morning, reflecting the feelings of many of us at  Jacket2KWH, and PennSound:

The loss of the wonderful, talented, groundbreaking, generous poet and literary citizen Lyn Hejinian has rocked the poetry world. Those who knew her personally — as many of us at the Writers House did — and those who have read and discussed her work (e.g. the experimental coming-of-age book-length prose poem, My Life), are already feeling the impact of the loss: we won’t be able to read new poems and new books by Lyn. It remains for us to read and re-read the astonishing writings she left us.

James Berger, "Naive and Sentimental Poetics"

Excerpt from a new book in draft

James Berger

James Berger, whose books include The Disarticulate: Language, Disability, and the Narratives of Modernity, Under the Impression, The Obvious Poems and the Worthless Poems, and The OBU Manifestos, is writing a new book to be titled "Naive and Sentimental Poetics." I've happily prevailed upon Jim to share with Jacket2 readers an excerpt from this new work in draft.

Edward R. Burns (1944-2023)

Edward M. Burns died on Nov. 3, according to a family obituary published in the New York Times. He was the editor of Picasso: The Complete WritingsStaying on Alone: Letters of Alice B. ToklasThe Letters of Gertrude Stein and Carl Van VechtenThe Letters of Gertrude Stein and Thornton WilderA Tour of the Darkling Plain: The Finnegans Wake Letters of Thornton Wilder and Adaline Glasheen,  A Passion for Joyce: The Letters of Hugh Kenner and Adaline Glasheen, and, most recenlty, Questioning Minds: The Letters of Guy Davenport and Hugh Kenner. He served as an editor of Text and its successor journal Textual Cultures and was Professor Emeritus at William Paterson University of New Jersey. He lived in the East Village, Manhattan.

Burns taught English at the Charles Evans Hughes High School of the Humanities (now called the Bayard Rustin High School of the Humanities), from the time it was founded, in 1983 till perhaps the late 1980s. He told Amy Feinstein, in an email: "I taught in a Junior HS in Canarsie and then in a High School in Manhattan.  It was while teaching in HS that I went at night to the Graduate Center of CUNY to earn a doctorate. . . . I had published two books, GS on Picasso and Staying on Alone while teaching in HS.  The Stein-Van Vechten letters were my doctoral dissertation."

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.