James Tilly Matthews, Engraving of the Air Loom, from John Haslam’s “Illustrations of Madness”, 1810. Ink on paper, 15 3/5″ x 10 1/3″
[As John Bloomberg-Rissman and I draw to the end of our new assemblage of outside & subterranean poetry, I plan to post in advance a number of additional excerpts from the work in progress. Scheduled publication is later this year from Black Widow Press under the working title, Barbaric Vast & Wild, a gathering that will serve as well as the fifth volume of Poems for the Millennium. Earlier selections going back several years can be found elsewhere on Poems and Poetics. (J.R.)]
[In the final stages of preparing Barbaric Vast & Wild: An Assemblage of Outside & Subterranean Poetry with John Bloomberg-Rissman, I’m continuing to post excerpts on Poems and Poetics. Publication of the full volume is scheduled later this year from Black Widow Press as the de facto fifth installment of Poems for the Millennium. Earlier excerpts continue to be available in these spaces, most of them prior to final editing & recomposition. (J.R.)]
[Published previously in Poems and Poetics (blogger version) but revisited here in the context of a new project undertaken by me & Heriberto Yépez toward an experimental grand assemblage of poetry across all of the Americas & with consideration of the multiplicity of languages & poetries now native to those places. In the construction of such an assemblage Charles Bernstein has been & remains a close friend & collaborator. (J.R.)]
La musique est une chose étrange! -- Byron L'art? ... c'est l'art - et puis, Voilà tout. -- Béranger
1 Bound to your place those penultimate days Whose plot was impenetrable – – Myth-full, Dawn-pallid … – Life’s end a whisper summons its start: “I will not render you – no! I will raise you! …”
2 Bound to your place, those days so penultimate Once when you mirrored – each moment, each moment – That lyre that Orpheus lent us,
Poems and poetics