Commentaries - July 2011

Twenty-six boxes containing Grenier's 'Sentences' discovered

Whale Cloth Press recently announced the discovery (in a storage unit in Massachusetts) of a cache of 26 forgotten/‘extra’ copies from the original (1978) printing of Robert Grenier’s legendary work Sentences.

Sentences (500 poems centered on 500 5 x 8” index cards contained in a blue, folding, Chinese cloth box) was published in an edition of only 200 copies — all of which were distributed at the time of issuance, so that (though the text is often referenced in scholarly accounts of Grenier’s work & the history of Language Writing generally) the “thing itself’ has been out of print and unavailable for more than 30 years.

These 26 copies, newly lettered A-Z and signed by the author (in their original blue Chinese boxes), are in very good condition and are for sale to libraries and collectors for $1,000 (with the proceeds going to the author).  If you are interested in buying a box of Sentences, contact the publisher, Michael Waltuch, at waltuchm [at sign] gmail.com.

Tonya's Lost New Orleans

video portrait of Tonya Foster (1/8/2008)

 Tonya grew up in New Orleans and was heading down for the Spring. Now she was graduate student at CUNY, about to write a dissertation of poetry and place. We had just eaten in the new sushi joint across the street. I asked her what she missed most about what is gone in New Orleans.
January 8, 2008
(mp4, 37 seconds, 27.6 mb)

NOTE: Web Log videos are now available in full screen: click on the icon. Full-screen will also now work on the previous videos I have posted:

Dennis Brutus's creative activism

Dennis Brutus testifying before the United Nations in 1967 on behalf of the South African Nonracial Olympic Committee as well as South African political prisoners. [African Activist Archive]

Kaia Sand

Jules most recently wrote about poetry, dissent, and the Olympics, and in this capacity, the late South African poet Dennis Brutus was legendary. African Activist ArchiveDespite the fact Brutus said he was “never a good athlete,” he turned to sports as a focus for his activism (“I was reasonably good at organizing,” he explained), and began organizing sports competitions in the 1940s at the high school where he taught (Brutus 38). Through his affiliation with a number of anti-apartheid activists, he homed in on the Olympics with his sports-organizing talents, finding a contradiction between the Olympic charter (which forbade racial discrimination by participating countries) and the apartheid government of South Africa.