Commentaries - January 2013

Feature: Bob Perelman, edited by Kristen Gallagher

300 printed pages, in Jacket 39

Bob Perelman
Bob Perelman

I wanted to do this special feature for Jacket on the work of Bob Perelman because I noticed a dearth of writing available on the internet about his work. There is a fair amount written about Language Poetry in general, and more if you have access to the search engines JSTOR, Project Muse, etc., or if you know how to search recent dissertations. But even then, I was surprised to find fewer essays focusing on Perelman alone than I had hoped for.[...] So I decided to edit a collection, and a special issue of Jacket seemed the obvious choice. I knew their editors liked this kind of work and, rather than edit a book, I chose the format of easily accessed online materials to best serve the largest audience. Books take forever and not many people buy them anymore. I wanted people to have access to this as soon as possible and for free. — Kristen Gallagher, from her Introduction

[»»] Kristen Gallagher: Introduction
[»»]
Bob Perelman: Biographical Note
 [»»] Rae Armantrout: Bob Perelman’s Grammatology
[»»] Charles Bernstein: The Importance of Being Bob
[»»] Louis Cabri: Poems
[»»] Al Filreis: The President of This Sentence: Bob Perelman’s History
[»»] Kristen Gallagher: Teaching Bob Perelman’s “The Story of My Life”

Seventeen ancient poems, translated from Greek and Latin by Thomas McEvilley


EPC Digital Library

See also McEvlilley's Sappho

SEVENTEEN ANCIENT POEMS
Translated from Greek and Latin by Thomas McEvilley

Meleager of Gadara
    Raising the Alarm
    Meleager Commiserates with His Soul
    Meleager Addresses His Servant Dorkas
    Meleager Speaks to a Honey Bee
    Instructions for Meleager’s Burial
    Meleager Reproaches the Dawn
    Meleager Reproaches the Dawn Again
    An Address to the Bedside Lamp
    Meleager Writes a Poem for the Police
    Meleager Puzzled

 

Philodemus of Alexandria

     Philodemus Reforms
     Philodemus Reforms Again

 

Anakreontea

      Invocation
      Night Vision
      Anacreon Speaks to the Ladies
     Anacreon’s Grave

Horace

       Strategy for Living

 

Anselm Hollo (1934-2013)

Tom Raworth on Hollo in The Independent (obit Jan. 31, 2013)

Anselm Hollo PennSound page
includes a section of The Empress Hotel Poems (1:30): MP3

Go through my things
   god knows what you'll find. When I'm not here.
I'm not here, in this poem
I'm in another room, writing praises
            of their loveliness and terror
the ones that dance through my mind
        not endlessly, but to be one at one
                               with them
                           I want to be.
                       I want to be one,
                   I want her to be one
              when the voice begins
         she is, and she dances.
I am the voice. I praise
There is
no mind.

A space only you can build (PoemTalk #62)

Charles Alexander, "Near or Random Acts"

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Charles Alexander joined others in Philadelphia in the early autumn of 2001 to celebrate Gil Ott, poet and maker of many important books of poems through his Singing Horse Press. Alexander, whose Chax Press owes a good deal to Ott’s work and persevering spirit, simply had to be there, notwithstanding the hassle of cross-country air travel during those early post-9/11 days. He arrived a day or two early and gave a pre-celebration reading at the Writers House, trying out some very new poems that seemed, in part, inspired by responses to the September 11 attacks. He had begun a long poem in many sections to honor his daughters, and these later became the book Near or Random Acts, published by — you guessed it — Singing Horse Press.