Jerome Rothenberg: From 'Eye of Witness': The Table of Contents
[In composing a gathering of my own work over the last half-century or so, I’ve tried to construct it, with the collaboration of Heriberto Yépez, as an assemblage on the model of earlier works of mine like Technicians of the Sacred & Poems for the Millennium. The experiment in this case was how to turn a “reader” into something more than a chronological work stringing together selections from previous books of poetry & poetics. It’s my hope that the table of contents which follows will give some sense of what we were doing &, without claiming too much I hope, how it can serve as a model for yet another kind of “grand collage,” as Robert Duncan named them, not only for myself but for others whose work has attempted to cross over boundaries & genres. The proof however is in the work itself, published a couple of months ago by Black Widow Press & currently open for inspection.]
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION BY HERIBERTO YéPEZ
Pre-face by Jerome Rothenberg
GALLERY ONE: PROLEGOMENA TO A POETICS
“A Little Boy Lost”
The Night the Moon Was a Spider
Why Deep Image?
Invincible Flowers
A Poem for the President
A Small Poem
The Stationmaster’s Lament
The Real Revolution Is Tragic
A Conciliation
Image & Mode: A Letter, 1960, to Robert Creeley
The Lightbulb & the Cockeyed Queen of Poland
How Tragic It Is To Be a King & Live in a Palace
& Never Have Time To Be Gay
A First Manifesto 1960
A Death Fugue, after Paul Celan
Walkin’ Around, after Pablo Neruda
A Side of Beef
The Counter-Dances of Darkness
Image & Melos: A Letter, 1960, to Robert Duncan
The Journey Between Summers
The Deep Image Is the Threatened Image
A Canticle for Suicides
Found Poems from “The Emergence Notebooks”
From The Seven Hells of the Jigoku Zoshi
The First Hell: of Measures
The Second Hell: of Thieves
The Fifth Hell: of Unclean Food
The Seventh Hell: of Smoke
A Bodhisattva Undoes Hell
From The Gorky Poems
The Pirate (II)
The Diary of a Seducer
The Water of the Flowery Mill (II)
Child of an Idumean Night
Portrait of Myself with Arshile Gorky &
Gertrude Stein
A Commentary on The Gorky Poems
From a Shaman’s Notebook
An Invocation to the Rain
The Seven
Ghosts and Shadows
The Killer
A Poison Arrow
The Dead Hunter Speaks through the
Voice of a Shaman
The Stars
From Sightings
Sightings IV
Sightings V
Sightings VI
Sightings IX
A Note on the Measure of Sightings
Further Sightings
The Old King
“Hell”
The Witnesses
From Conversations: Three Poems
A Second Manifesto 1964
A Reconsideration 2010
A BOOK OF OTHERINGS
A Paradise of Poets
From Pre-Face to Writing Through: Translations
& Variations
Marpa: The Annunciation (Tibet, 11th Century)
From 15 Flower World Variations (Yaqui)
The Flight of Quetzalcoatl (Aztec)
Isaac Luria: A Poem for the Small Face (Aramaic)
Isaac Luria: A Poem for the Shekinah on the Feast of the
Sabbath (Aramaic)
“The Round Dance of Jesus” (Coptic)
25 Gematria (traditional)
A Commentary on Gematria
From Lorca’s Suites
Night: A Suite for Piano & Poet’s Voice
A Newton Suite
From The Lorca Variations: “Newton”
A Commentary on Lorca
From 50 Caprichos after Goya
In Goya’s World
Three Variations on Octavio Paz’s “Blanco”
Pablo Picasso: The Dream & Lie of Franco
A Commentary on Picasso
Tristan Tzara: Two Dada Poems
Metal Coughdrops
Maison Aragon
Tristan Tzara, Dada, & Ethnopoetics
Kurt Schwitters: Five Merz Poems
Desire
“Thou”
The Meadow
Roses Abloom like Daisy Blossoms
From the Back & from the Front to Start
A Commentary on Kurt Schwitters
Nakahara Chuya: Two Poems
“A Bone”
Poem: Sad Morning
A Commentary on Nakahara Chuya
Vitezslav Nezval: Shirt
A Commentary on Nezval
Eugen Gomringer: Four Concrete Poems
From a Letter to Eugen Gomringer 9th November 1967
In Memoriam Jackson Mac Low
A Commentary on Jackson Mac Low
The First Horse Song of Frank Mitchell (Blue)
From “Je Est un Autre: A Talk & Talk-Poem”
POETICS & POLEMICS 1: TOWARD AN ETHNOPOETICS
The Poetics of the Sacred: A Range of Topics for a
Keynote Speech
On Ethnopoetics: A Collage
Primitive & Modern: Intersections & Analogies
Poets & Tricksters: Innovation & Disruption in
Ritual & Myth
Total Translation: An Experiment in the Translation
of American Indian Poetry
From “New Models, New Visions”: The Poetics of
Performance
GALLERY TWO: THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN
A Third Manifesto 1968
A Seneca Memory
The Dream from A Big Jewish Book
From Poland/1931
Poland/1931: The Wedding
The Beadle’s Testimony
The Student’s Testimony
Portrait of a Jew Old Country Style
The Murder Inc. Sutra
Esther K. Comes to America: 1931
Galician Nights, or a Novel in Progress
Cokboy
From a Letter to Gary Pacernick 12/14/81
From A Seneca Journal
I became a beaver in 1968
Salamanca a Prophecy
Seneca Journal 1: A Poem of Beavers
(Song # 1): Old Man Beaver’s Blessing Song
Seneca Journal 7: The Dreamers
The Others Hunters in the North the Cree
A Pre-Face for María Sabina
The Little Saint of Huautla
The Nature Theater of Oklahoma
From That Dada Strain
A Pre-Face
That Dada Strain
The History of Dada as My Muse
A Glass Tube Ecstasy, for Hugo Ball
A Merz Sonata, for Kurt Schwitters
A Poem in Yellow after Tristan Tzara
The Holy Words of Tristan Tzara
Hunger
Pain
Vienna Blood
A Commentary on Vienna Blood
The Chicago Poem
Seedings
From Khurbn
Pre-face to Khurbn
In the Dark Word, Khurbn
Dos Oysleydikn (The Emptying)
Dos Geshray (The Scream)
Dibbukim (Dibbiks)
Der Gilgul (The Possessed)
Nokh Aushvitz (after Auschwitz)
Di toyte Kloles (The Maledictions)
Peroration for a Lost Town
A BOOK OF EXTENSIONS
From Songs from the Society of the Mystic Animals
“Two Songs about a Dead Person or a Mole – Which-
ever It Was” (with Richard Johnny John & Ian
Tyson)
The Directions (with Tom Phillips)
From The Burning Babe (with Susan Bee)
“A Babe Sits Placidly in Schwitters’ Bau”
From 14 Stations (with Arie Galles)
The Ninth Station: Ravensbruck
From Gematria Complete
Fourth Gematria: “In the Shadow”
The Leonardo Project 10 + 2
From The Pound Project: Three Poems & Images
Esther K Comes to America: 5 Images (with Larry Fink)
Events & Rituals
Lily Events
Garbage Event
Beard Event
Gift Event
Naming Events
Vision Events, I, II, III
Doings & Happenings: Notes on a Performance of the
Seneca Indian Eagle Dance, with the Scenario for
Gift Event III, Based on Its Orders
From That Dada Strain: A Hörspiel
Abraham Abulafia Visits the Pope, a Fragment of a
Steinian Opera
The Thirteenth Horse Song of Frank Mitchell (White)
A Letter to David McAllester, 1968, on the Beginnings
of Total Translation
POETICS & POLEMICS 2: EYE OF WITNESS
Prologomena to a Poetics
From the Sibila Interview: The Poem as an Act of Witness
Khurbn & Holocaust: “After Auschwitz There Is Only Poetry”
Harold Bloom: The Critic as Exterminating Angel
“Secular Jewish Culture / Radical Poetic Practice”
The Poet As Native: An Aspect of Contemporary Poetry
& Art
From A Book of Witness: “i-Songs Exist”
Postscript to A Book of Witness
GALLERY THREE: A CRUEL NIRVANA
Twentieth Century Unlimited
Pre-face to 14 Stations
From “14 Stations”
The First Station: Auschwitz-Burkina
The Third Station: Buchenwald
The Sixth Station: Gross-Rosen
The Eleventh Station: Maidanek
The Twelfth Station: Sobibor
The Fourteenth Station: Stutthof
From The Lorca Variations
Lorca’s Spain: A Homage
Water Jets
The Return
Second New York Poem
Coda: The Final Lorca Variation
First Night Poem, for Jackson Mac Low
Three Paris Elegies
A Poem for the Cruel Majority
At Tsukiji Market Tokyo
From China Notes
Tibetan Boogie
The Poet at Chin’s Mausoleum
The Poet in a Field of Tombs
The Treasures of Dunhuang (performance version)
A Commentary on China Notes
From An Oracle for Delfi
The Stones of Delfi, I and II
At Mykines
The Silver Trade
Spetses in Winter
From A Book of Witness
The Case for Memory
A Cruel Nirvana
A Real Man
I Can’t Say Who I Am
I Come into the New World
Eager to Break through Language
I Am That I Am
From 50 Caprichos, after Goya
The Sleep of Reason
The World a Masquerade
The Company of Men
Tight Stockings
All Who Will Fall
To Speak as Who You Are
That Which We See in Goya
A Donkey & a Monkey
A Commentary for Concealments & Caprichos
From A Book of Concealments
The Times Are Never Right
A Man in Love with Death
The Mystery of Evil
Oceanside Pier: Among the Fishers
The Sorry Mystics
A Double Schism
A Deep Romantic Chasm
Romantic Dadas
The Persistence of the Lyric Voice
In the Book of Concealments
Postscript to A Book of Concealments
POETICS & POLEMICS 3: TOWARD AN OMNIPOETICS
The Book Spiritual Instrument
The Anthology as a Manifesto & as an Epic Including Poetry
Poems for the Millennium: A First Pre-Face (with Pierre Joris)
Reconfiguring Romanticism: The Fancy as Duende & Capricho
A Round of Renshi & the Poet as Other: An Experiment in Poesis
From The Medusa Interview: Toward an Omnipoetics
NEW POEMS: DIVAGATIONS & AUTOVARIATIONS
From Divagations
Divagations (I): The Birth of Time
Divagations (2): A Field on Mars
Divagations (14): The Sound of Water
Divagations (16): Where Memory & Dream Are One
Divagations (20): The Final Word Is Desecration
From The Jigoku Zoshi Hells: A Book of Autovariations
Variations on the Hell of Measures
Variations on the Hell of Thieves
Variations on the Hell of Grieving Women
Variations on the Hell of Smoke
A Commentary on the Jigoku Zoshi Hells
A Poem of Miracles
A Chronology & Memoir 2012
Poems and poetics