Jerome Rothenberg

Poems and poetics

Jennifer K. Dick

Two new poems from 'Shelf Break,' a work in progress

[These poems, each containing 5–7 fairly short subsections, are from a manuscript called Shelf Break, which is primarily using and playing off of nautical terms in a variety of sound-driven ways.  (JKD)]

[These poems, each containing 5–7 fairly short subsections, are from a manuscript called Shelf Break, which is primarily using and playing off of nautical terms in a variety of sound-driven ways.  (JKD)]

 

Boundary

 

1

 

in

to the binary of

Tamas Panitz: two new poems from 'The House of the Devil'

with a note on Lunar Chandelier Collective

[EDITOR’S NOTE. To point out that the poetry, while sufficient in itself, is of interest too for the circumstances of its coming publication, under the auspices of Lunar Chandelier Collective (LCC), a self-defined community of younger poets largely quartered in the Hudson valley of New York and with close ties to Robert Kelly and others of his generation and mine among those sharing publication.]

It is not enough to remember

                                                            R.K. — The Loom

 

Kazim Ali: Four New Poems & an Excerpt from an Interview

[NOTE. Kazim Ali was born in the United Kingdom and has lived transnationally in the United States, Canada, India, France, and the Middle East. His books encompass multiple genres, including the volumes of poetry InquisitionSky WardThe Far MosqueThe Fortieth DayAll One’s Blue, and the cross-genre texts Bright Felon and Wind Instrument. His novels include the recently published The Secret Room: A String Quartet and among his books of essays are the hybrid memoir Silver Road: Essays, Maps & Calligraphies, and Fasting for Ramadan: Notes from a Spiritual Practice. He is also an accomplished translator (of Marguerite Duras, Sohrab Sepehri, Ananda Devi, Mahmoud Chokrollahi and others) and an editor of several anthologies and books of criticism. He is currently a Professor of Literature at the University of California, San Diego. His newest books are a volume of three long poems entitled The Voice of Sheila Chandra and a memoir of his Canadian childhood, Northern Light.]

Crumpled Up

 

Debris crushed to flowers made

summer you will thought swam

Shard have this ember

rendered member of the body whose

urge surged swerve and shine

ocean opens shone hours

ours to contrail pretends

José Vicente Anaya

from Híkuri (Peyote), some excerpts from a masterwork of Infrarealism

Alongside Roberto Bolaño and Mario Santiago Papasquiaro, José Vicente Anaya was one of the founders of Infrarealism in Mexico in the 1970s. Infrarealism was a post-communist avant-garde movement that existed in opposition to a complacent Mexican literary status quo. 

Translation from Spanish by Joshua Pollock.

[Reprinted from publication by The Operating System with permission of the author]

 

Toward a poetry and poetics of the Americas (23)

Eunice Odio, from 'The Fire's Journey'

[In the process of gathering with Javier Taboada our assemblage-in-progress of North and South American poetry “from origins to present,” scheduled for publication by University of California Press in 2021, I would like to call special attention to this masterwork by Eunice Odio (1919–1974), which is now available in a full four-volume edition from Tavern Books in Portland, Oregon. Octavio Paz’s description of Odio as “of that line of poets who invent their own mythology, like Blake, like St.-John Perse, like Ezra Pound” is a succinct assessment of that work, as brought beautifully into English by Keith Ekiss and Sonia P. Ticas. (J.R.)]

Translation from Spanish by Keith Ekiss and Sonia P. Ticas