Jerome Rothenberg

Poems and poetics

Inuhiko Yomota

from 'A Beggar of Life,' title poem translated by Hiroaki Sato

[For many years now Hiroaki Sato has brought the work of a range of Japanese experimental modernists into English, among the latest of whom is Inuhiko Yomota, whose book My Purgatory was published in 2015 by Red Moon Press in Virginia. Sato describes Yomota, a prolific writer in many areas, as follows: “Inuhiko Yomota (b. 1953) aptly calls himself a tuttologista.

Toward a poetry and poetics of the Americas (37)

Etel Adnan, Lebanon/USA, 1925–2021, from 'The Arab Apocalypse'

III

 

The night of the non-event. War in the vacant sky. The Phantom’s absence.

Funerals. Coffin not covered with roses. Unarmed population. Long.

The yellow sun’s procession from the mosque to the vacant Place. Mute taxis.

Plainclothed army. Silent hearse. Silenced music. Palestinians with no Palestine.

 

Toward a poetry and poetics of the Americas (36)

Gregorio de Matos, Brazil, 1636–1696: Two poems

To the Veritable Judge Belchoir da Cunha Brochado

 

Jerome Rothenberg

Ian and me: A collaboration (redux)

[In memoriam, Ian Tyson (19332021), painter, printmaker, sculptor, and extraordinary book artist, who was my dear friend and frequent collaborator over a half-century and more. (j.r.)]

 

I have tried an altenstil / & dropped it. — J.R., A Book of Witness, 2003

 

Rachel Blau DuPlessis

Angelus Novus

N.B. As a master of the multivolume long poem, one of Rachel Blau DuPlessis’s motifs, she tells us, is “making a commentary in a poem that glosses key modernist texts in suspicion and homage.”

1.

It’s A Strange Angel!

 

A NEW & improved angel!

 

Chicken-footed claws and finger feathers,

a perfect poultry type.

Raglan sleeve-y wings