[NOTE. Michael Davidson has been a major thinker toward the construction of a new poetics of disability, which raises questions as well as to how disabilities, physical as well as mental, might affect ideas of outsiderness that I’ve been exploring in these postings & that John Bloomberg-Rissman and I are moving toward publication in an anthology still in progress. It is in particular the connection between the physical body and the structure & shape of the poemthat Davidson gets at clearly in the following, which should be read as well in connection to anearlierposting in Poems&Poetics. (J.R.)]
My title refers to Larry Eigner, a significant figure in the New American Poetry, who is missing in a number of senses. On a personal level, I miss Larry, who died in February 1996 as a poet whose curiosity and attentiveness remain a model of poetic integrity. Although his movements were extremely restricted due to cerebral palsy contracted at birth, he was by no means “missing” from the poetry world, particularly after his move to Berkeley. Thanks to the efforts of Bob Grenier, Kathleen Frumkin and Jack Foley, Larry was present at many readings, talks, and parties throughout the 1980s. Nor, as those who knew him can attest, was a reticent presence at such events. He was a central influence on the emerging “language-writing” movement of the mid-1970s, publishing in their magazines (L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, Bezoar, This, Hills) and participating in their talk and reading series. His emphasis on clear, direct presentation of moment-to-moment perceptions also linked him to the older Objectivists (George Oppen, Carl Rakosi, Charles Reznikoff, and Louis Zukofsky) as well as poets of his own generation living in the San Francisco Bay region such as Robert Duncan and Michael McClure.
NOTE. The following offers a first look at what will be the fourth volume of Poems for the Millennium, the experimental anthology that Pierre Joris and I initiated in the mid-1990s as an attempt to lay out & map what I've more recently come to describe as a global or omnipoetics. With volume 4, Joris & Habib Tengour move the focus to a particular demographic & cultural area, exploring it over a 2000-year span & with a sense of the often unacknowledged diversities (both formal & cultural) that such a region & history contain. Their workings will otherwise speak for themselves. (J.R.)
NOTE. The following posting inaugurates the appearance of Poems and Poetics as a section of “commentaries” for Jacket2. The blog/journal as such has been active on the internet for almost four years now & will still be viewable at the old blogger site. In its new presentation I expect, among other things, to continue it as a platform for the presentation of an outsider anthology-in-progress & to launch a discussion of that omnipoetics that I see as the most ambitious & still unrealized thrust of many of our lives & works as poets & readers. That I have no ready definition of either outsider poetry or omnipoetics (among various ongoing concerns) is surely one of the lacks that keeps me going. (J.R.)
Editorial Associate & Confidant: Amish Trivedi
[The following is an excerpt from a recent interview by Karl Jirgens in Rampike magazine (University of Windsor, Ontario, Canada): “Omnipoetics & Ethnopoetics: Talking with Jerome Rothenberg,”. In the course of being questioned about the international/intercultural implications of works like TechniciansoftheSacred & PoemsfortheMillennium, I hit on “omnipoetics” as yet another attempt at pinning down what many of us had been pursuing with more or less success over the last several decades, & more. The ideas embodied in the word are matters I would care to pursue still further over the years to come. (J.R.)]
This site is now in the process of construction and will go into full operation shortly. In the meantime, postings continue to be available at poemsandpoetics.blogspot.com.
Poems and poetics