Jerome Rothenberg

From 'Technicians of the Sacred Expanded' (a work in progress): 'The Khanty Prayer of the Bear' by Leonty Taragupta, poem, & commentary

Jerome Rothenberg

O Father of the Seven Skies –

I too have been a God-spirit,

descendant of the bright ancestor,

descendant of the all-hearing ancestor,

though set upon the firmament

of the Earth!

But the Son of the Master of Towns –

is he your Father’s heir?

the son of the Master of the Hamlets –

Dennis Tedlock: Seven poems from Alcheringa & another from a long trip through Morocco

Jerome Rothenberg

[Re-posted from a previous publication in Poems and Poetics, to mark Dennis Tedlock’s unexpected passing earlier this year. My admiration & debt to him – & that of so many others – is hardly in need of explanation, though the note below provides some of it. (J.R.)]

Advice Received

Don’t ask too many questions.

Norman Finkelstein: 'Oppen at Altamont'

Jerome Rothenberg

From N. Finkelstein, The Ratio of Reason to Magic: New & Selected Poems, Dos Madres Press, 2016

Thrownness he calls it

And indeed “everyone

turned very sharply

into himself or herself.

Kind of a masturbatory

atmosphere.”

And the music—

something we had never

Coda: Eight poems in black, after Goya

Jerome Rothenberg

[N.B. What began for me with 50 Caprichos after Goya & has continued with variations on “The Disasters of War” will end with this Coda, first sketched in Madrid 2007, in the shadow of his darkest works. (J.R.)]

two women watch

a man his hand

under his cloak

or in his pants the act