Jerome Rothenberg: A Gematria Sampler
[In response to questions about my use of traditional gematria as a means of poetic composition, the following sampler draws poems from two books of mine previously published and still, I believe, in circulation: Gematria, Sun & Moon Press, 1994, and Gematria Complete, Marick Press, 2009. That the works were part of an ongoing dialogue between myself and Jackson Mac Low may also be worth noting.]
Gematria — a form of traditional Jewish numerology — plays off the fact that every letter of the Hebrew alphabet (see above) is also a number, and that words or phrases the sums of whose letters are equal are at some level meaningfully connected. In the course of compiling A Big Jewish Book, I came across a number of traditional combinations of words associated (usually in pairs) through gematria, and I juxtaposed one of the words with the other so as to form miniature poems. A few years later I came across Gutman G. Locks’s The Spice of Torah — Gematria, which offers easy access to the numerical value of every word in the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. With its more than three hundred pages of Hebrew word lists translated into English words and phrases, I began to construct new poems based on combinations that I discovered or that I calculated on my own. Unlike the traditionalists of gematria, I have seen these coincidences/synchronicities not as hermeneutic substantiations for religious and ethical doctrines, but as an entry into the kinds of correspondences/constellations that have been central to modernist and “post”modernist poetry experiments over the last century and a half. I have proceeded in these works in several different ways: by using one word or word-phrase as title and others (numerically equivalent) as poem; by using the gematria number as a title and constructing poems of single lines and/or stanzas of two or several lines that fall under or add up to that number; and occasionally by using a freer selection of words brought to my attention by gematria, but combining and adding to them with considerably more freedom of choice. To the degree that all such works are substantially aleatory, they are full of surprises that have added greatly to my own excitement in the act of writing.
Of the poems presented here, only the final one diverges significantly from the stricter mode of composition.
A Gematria for Jackson Mac Low
Chance
made it happen.
Chance = 310.
Fourth Gematria
“In the Shadow”
Gematria 372
Seven.
Plenty.
A Week.
_____________
My Heart (1) My Heart (2)
Flaming. Blood
_____________
The Sign
I see
a word / spoken.
____________
In the Shadow (1) In the Shadow (2)
A womb I am
he devours. nothing.
____________
Testimony
for Charles Reznikoff
The light.
The terror.
____________
Burning
Your beautiful
mind.
Dead
at the entry.
____________
A Fountain (1) A Fountain (2)
An eye. Shall I hide?
____________
A Window
Wherein
& forward.
____________
Colors (1) Colors (2)
Yellow His red
stars throne.
____________
The Candlestick / The Fire
The yellow
Baal
eats
like a god.
____________
A Vision (1) A Vision (2)
Beat it God
with power. is crushed.
____________
You
& a double.
____________
The City
Broken.
.
Void.
____________
Flesh (1) Flesh (2)
An ark Before
& a worm. & bitter.
____________
The Rock
fell.
____________
A Curse
Your father
shall live.
____________
A Cloud (1) A Cloud (2)
In wood. Forever.
____________
All
or enough.
____________
Cities, Cities
Silver
& speckled.
A tree
fallen down.
____________
My country
a fire
.
Divided.
____________
The Voice (1) The Voice (2)
will answer. A voice.
From More Gematrias 1–100
1
His red
unclean
blood.
Earth
& water.
The adam, the man,
fat
& bloody. [50]
8
Benjamin,
the old man,
brought us up,
a living substance
in your sight,
like sheep
he has upheld
your flock —
out of the thousands
— & has brought
a sprig of calamus
& wormwood
money
in your eye
& birds
& from his people
in the tree
an unjust gain
they rose up,
they shall rise up [161, 162]
32
Gematria 444
cakes
/
& cakes
/
& a cake of
34
Gematria 456
“Fear”
You will become unclean
You will become unclean
You will defile yourselves
in uncleanness
You will go
You will die
You will die
in uncleanness
And she went
And he died
And he died
And it ended
45
Gematria 519
“Around Midnight”
so he drove out
& was silent
& she took it
& when it rose
sang
the song
at their door
around midnight
55
Your Loins
The thighs
he stripped naked. [560]
57
Sad Gematria
I am old
.
.
.
& I fell down. [567]
85
Gematria 780
Heaven.
He made you.
Oil.
From my book.
In the ashes.
Heaven.
Eleven.
Alone.
98
Gematria 988
I know
his dreams.
.
Stone
wombs.
.
Many
bruised testicles.
.
Almond blossoms.
Frogs.
.
And the open
door.
100
Chains (1) Chains (2)
Your six False
gates. eagles. [1200]
From Beyond Gematria
Gematria One
Laughter. Of their blood into his nostrils. Numbed. And the window numbed as well. We ate the children. We will eat their gods. We ate and we will eat. His desire will be ransomed. May my angel eat? He may. He will. He will heave a bone against you. A sodomite & angel. The confusion arising from two kinds — of bones? of angels? When the water rises into waters. As when the water rises into seas.
Gematria Two
Perhaps they do,
millennial & white —
a kingdom talks to me your bread
is taken for a treasure
— even more the lice —
stars shine in his mouth
beneath his gums
a yellow angel rises, swelling
like a bat
a great star, fair as days
& beautiful as waters,
as her sweet mouth haunts
the man who sees
& knows a window,
if an angel by himself
becomes a cup, also a little owl,
my heart condenses to an emerald,
water that our hearts are,
eyes, a basket from the sea,
the face his mouth took for a king’s
& saved although the face
kept murmuring, the sea
drove globulets onto the land,
his bone against her, wailing,
a star is in your mouth,
your yellow god is sucking
like a dog.
Gematria Five
The darkness
gushes against a second
darkness
blesst & scalded,
redder than the lamb the demons
bring, evil shepherds
who surround you,
turtledoves above & lamps
like stars, like lights
all over
the night sky,
glowing
as an oven fills with darkness,
the jews inside their cities
lost in sleep.
Poems and poetics