Jerome Rothenberg

From Daichidoron: '32 Ways of Looking at the Buddha,' with '13 Buddhas of My Own'

For Hiromi Ito

(1) When the Buddha walks. his feet are so close to the ground that there is not even a hair’s space between his soles & the earth;

(2) the imprint of a wheel appears on the soles of the Buddha’s feet;

(3) the Buddha’s fingers are exceptionally long & slender;

(4) the Buddha’s heels are broad, round & smooth;

(5) the Buddha has a web-like membrane between his fingers & toes;

(6) the skin of the Buddha’s hands & feet is soft & smooth;

(7) the Buddha’s feet have unusually high insteps;

Heinrich Heine: Two poems, after the French transcreations by Gerard de Nerval

Jerome Rothenberg

H. Heine (1797 – 1856) on cover of Die Jugend, 1906 — H. Heine (1797– 1856) on cover of Die Jugend, 1906

[To be noted: the high credit that Heine gave to Gerard de Nerval for his French prose versions after the German rhymed verses, much as Goethe found Nerval’s prose transcreations of Faust its perfect translation.]

The Castaway

Longing & love!

It’s all broken: I’m lying here sprawled on the shore, deserted & naked, a corpse that the sea has spit up with contempt.

Diane Rothenberg: 'On the Insanity of Cornplanter' (part one)

Jerome Rothenberg

One of the recognized problems in research, any kind of research, is the repetition of a single original finding or opinion by other, later researchers as if those others had arrived at the finding or opinion independently. This, then, may result in an extensive bibliography of secondary sources for a position that, in fact, has only a single source. Obviously there is no problem with building on the work of others, but there isa problem if the original source was flawed.