Jerome Rothenberg

Poems and poetics

Toward a poetry and poetics of the Americas (8)

Pablo Neruda, 'Ode to Walt Whitman'

Translation from Spanish by Martín Espada

 

I don’t know

at what age,

or where,

in the great wet South

or on the fearsome coast

beneath the brief

scream of the seagulls,

I touched a hand and it was

Reuben Woolley: Six poems from 'broken stories' with a note by the author

Six poems from 'broken stories'

NOTE. Published earlier this year by 20/20 Vision Publishing in the UK, of which Woolley writes, relating to both the title & the concept: “For a story to be broken means that once upon a time it was whole. A story is never finished; one leads into another. However, in these dystopian times, this process has become more complex; the story teller meets interference. These narratives that used to exist, that helped to hold a culture together are being broken by certain people for their own ends (political and corporatist) or are being weakened in our hi-tech world (with or without our collaboration). We haven’t yet produced a strong enough narratology to take their place.”

black

 

she brings black flowers
black flowers
to black weddings

 

flowers
from black suns
she dances

 

black swans
on black rivers
singing

 

black
i want / black
sails on black seas

Jennifer Liston: The poetry and poetics of the 'Rescued Poem'

[Jennifer Liston grew up in Co Galway, Ireland and now lives in Adelaide, South Australia. Her procedural poetry, as presented here, adds significantly to the line of such poetry in modern and postmodern writing — in both her poems and poetics. The idea of the “rescued poem” is indubitably her own, and a further collection of  poems as examples will shortly be gathered as a book. (J.R.)]

 

What Is a ‘Rescued Poem’?

David Baptiste Chirot: 'Hidden in Plain Sight': Found visual/sound poetries of feeling eyes and seeing hands

[Himself on the cusp between “outside” & “inside” poetry & art, Chirot, whose work, both verbal & visual, is a great too often hidden resource, writes from an authoritative if barely visible position in contemporary letters. The depth & breadth of his more recent work — the rubbings & collages foremost — is outstanding. (J.R.)]

Jerome Rothenberg: A Round of Solipsisms

for my 86th birthday

“He takes a book down from his shelf & scribbles across a page of text: I am the final one. This means the world will end when he does.” (from A Paradise of Poets)

 

1/

the lie of consciousness

assails me    waking

in the early hours

 

shorn of dreams