[editor’s note. In the wake of Marthe Reed’s sudden and unexpected death earlier this month, I am opening Poems and Poetics to a commemoration of her work and spirit through the posting of an excerpt from a new book now awaiting publication. I had known Marthe Reed first as my student at UCSD San Diego and later as a dear friend and greatly admired poet.
Reading at Morden Tower, Newcastle, circa 1967, with Tony Harrison (left).
[This conversation was carried on between Tbilisi, Georgia, and Encinitas, California in late 2017. Other work by Irakli Qolbaia can be found here and here on Poems and Poetics.]
[This conversation was carried on between Tbilisi, Georgia, and Encinitas, California in late 2017. Other work by Irakli Qolbaia can be found here and here on Poems and Poetics.]
[Reposted here as a follow-up to recent discussions of the use of Ezra Pound’s name by the neofascist Casa Pound party in Italy, as a reminder of the larger problem that confronts us, even today, even as poets. In memory, too, of Julian Beck and Judith Malina. (J.R.)]
[Reposted here as a follow-up to recent discussions of the use of Ezra Pound’s name by the neofascist Casa Pound party in Italy, as a reminder of the larger problem that confronts us, even today, even as poets. In memory, too, of Julian Beck and Judith Malina. (J.R.)]
the breasts of all the women crumpled like gas bags when neruda wrote his hymn celebrating the explosion of a hydrogen bomb by soviet authorities
[The abomination of the neofascist “Casa Pound” party in contemporary Italian politics brings me back to a sixteen-poem series I wrote several years ago, with Ezra Pound — a strong poetry influence for many of us (myself included) and in politics a fool or worse — as the central focus.
Poems and poetics