NOTE. The following posting inaugurates the appearance of Poems and Poetics as a section of “commentaries” for Jacket2. The blog/journal as such has been active on the internet for almost four years now & will still be viewable at the old blogger site. In its new presentation I expect, among other things, to continue it as a platform for the presentation of an outsider anthology-in-progress & to launch a discussion of that omnipoetics that I see as the most ambitious & still unrealized thrust of many of our lives & works as poets & readers. That I have no ready definition of either outsider poetry or omnipoetics (among various ongoing concerns) is surely one of the lacks that keeps me going. (J.R.)
Editorial Associate & Confidant: Amish Trivedi
[The following is an excerpt from a recent interview by Karl Jirgens in Rampike magazine (University of Windsor, Ontario, Canada): “Omnipoetics & Ethnopoetics: Talking with Jerome Rothenberg,”. In the course of being questioned about the international/intercultural implications of works like TechniciansoftheSacred & PoemsfortheMillennium, I hit on “omnipoetics” as yet another attempt at pinning down what many of us had been pursuing with more or less success over the last several decades, & more. The ideas embodied in the word are matters I would care to pursue still further over the years to come. (J.R.)]
Kim Hyesoon & Don Mee Choi, February, 2009, Chicago AWP bookfair
Among recent notices on my Facebook feed was one for the new issue of Big Bridge, in particular a feature on “Neo-surrealism,” edited by Adam Cornford. Cornford’s expansive introduction to the feature, which looks back to the history of surrealism and forward to his selection of living poets, includes this definition of his subject: “What defines a Surrealist poetry today, then, is what has defined it from the outset . . . Surrealist poetry can only be ‘a cry of the mind determined to break apart its fetters.’ It must contribute, intentionally or otherwise, to the liberation of the mind ‘and all that resembles it.’” I’m not here to argue against the mind’s liberation, rather to suggest that newer forms of surrealism can be used effectively to record what occurs before the imagined line break in Cornford’s phrase, “the mind determined to break apart / its fetters.” The breaking apart of a mind, most familiar to me as a product (or anti-product) of dementia and Alzheimer’s, can be tracked through what I’ve elsewhere called “documentary surrealism.”
This site is now in the process of construction and will go into full operation shortly. In the meantime, postings continue to be available at poemsandpoetics.blogspot.com.
Toward an omnipoetics: From an interview in Rampike magazine
NOTE. The following posting inaugurates the appearance of Poems and Poetics as a section of “commentaries” for Jacket2. The blog/journal as such has been active on the internet for almost four years now & will still be viewable at the old blogger site. In its new presentation I expect, among other things, to continue it as a platform for the presentation of an outsider anthology-in-progress & to launch a discussion of that omnipoetics that I see as the most ambitious & still unrealized thrust of many of our lives & works as poets & readers. That I have no ready definition of either outsider poetry or omnipoetics (among various ongoing concerns) is surely one of the lacks that keeps me going. (J.R.)
Editorial Associate & Confidant: Amish Trivedi
[The following is an excerpt from a recent interview by Karl Jirgens in Rampike magazine (University of Windsor, Ontario, Canada): “Omnipoetics & Ethnopoetics: Talking with Jerome Rothenberg,”. In the course of being questioned about the international/intercultural implications of works like Technicians of the Sacred & Poems for the Millennium, I hit on “omnipoetics” as yet another attempt at pinning down what many of us had been pursuing with more or less success over the last several decades, & more. The ideas embodied in the word are matters I would care to pursue still further over the years to come. (J.R.)]
Poetry and Revolution at Birbeck
full schedule now on-line
'Meme is a lone tree that got planted in a bed'
Towards a surrealism of old age: Kim Hyesoon's 'An Old Woman' & 'Princess Abandoned'
Among recent notices on my Facebook feed was one for the new issue of Big Bridge, in particular a feature on “Neo-surrealism,” edited by Adam Cornford. Cornford’s expansive introduction to the feature, which looks back to the history of surrealism and forward to his selection of living poets, includes this definition of his subject: “What defines a Surrealist poetry today, then, is what has defined it from the outset . . . Surrealist poetry can only be ‘a cry of the mind determined to break apart its fetters.’ It must contribute, intentionally or otherwise, to the liberation of the mind ‘and all that resembles it.’” I’m not here to argue against the mind’s liberation, rather to suggest that newer forms of surrealism can be used effectively to record what occurs before the imagined line break in Cornford’s phrase, “the mind determined to break apart / its fetters.” The breaking apart of a mind, most familiar to me as a product (or anti-product) of dementia and Alzheimer’s, can be tracked through what I’ve elsewhere called “documentary surrealism.”
Note
New posts coming soon!
This site is now in the process of construction and will go into full operation shortly. In the meantime, postings continue to be available at poemsandpoetics.blogspot.com.
Hadley Guest and Kathleen Fraser talk about Barbara Guest
Kathleen Fraser interviewed Hadley Guest about Barbara Guest in Berkeley on July 17, 2007. The complete recording lasts two hours and 31 minutes and is available on PennSound’s Barbara Guest author page.