Commentaries - August 2021

'Post-pleistocene relic world'

Alternative communities and writing, part 2

Book opened to copyright pages. Include title, authors, and publisher details.
Photograph by Jaime Groetsema. Courtesy of Naropa University Archives.

Is it necessary to think about community from an ecological point of view? If so, would our depicted world community be more populated with trees than our current ecological moment?

Interlude: Rereading the beginning

Featuring Anne Waldman

Black and white image of a woman and man holding a large quilt.
Ethel Sampson’s historical quilt from 1937.

Are archives necessarily institutional? Is an archive simply a collection of things representing something? Does it matter if the collection of things is metaphorical, commercial, or virtual? Must the materials of the archive represent an event and must they include a nod to the longevity of narrative and the pursuit of preservation? Is an archive still an archive if it is inaccessible? (I’ve written more specifically about archives and language over at Reconfigurations.)

Jerome Rothenberg and Javier Taboada

'An Omnipoetics Manifesto,' from the preface to a gathering of the poetries and poetics of the Americas 'from origins to present'

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 and my frost
Mingle in howling pains, in furrows by thy lightnings rent;
This is eternal death; and this the torment long foretold.