Robert Bertholf

Robert J. Bertholf has retired after a twenty-five-year run as curator of the Poetry Collection, State University of New York at Buffalo, and now lives in Austin, Texas. He is the author of Robert Duncan: A Descriptive Bibliography, and Remembering Joel Oppenheimer; he is editor with Albert Gelpi of The Complete Correspondence of Robert Duncan and Denise Levertov, as well as the editor of Collected Later Poems of Joel Oppenheimer. He is currently writing on the serial poem in modern American poetry.

By this author

On Kenneth Irby's 'The Intent On: Collected Poems, 1962–2006'

On John Taggart's 'There Are Birds'

The Jargon Society and contemporary literary history

An introduction to Robert Bertholf’s Robert Duncan

Robert Duncan: A biographical sketch

Robert Duncan’s 'The Venice Poem' and Symphonic Form

The Robert Duncan / Denise Levertov correspondence: Duncan’s View

From Robert Duncan’s notebooks: On Denise Levertov

Preliminary checklist of Robert Duncan’s reference library

The poetry collection at the State University of New York at Buffalo: a sketch

Recently in Jacket2

50 poets on 50 poems

A book to be published in 2020

Al Filreis

Anna Strong Safford & I are editing a book, to be published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2020, in which we present 50 poets writing 1,000 words each in response to 50 poems. Fred Wah on Creeley's "I Know a Man." Rachel Blau DuPlessis on H.D's "Sea Rose." Tyrone Williams on Baraka's "Incident." And also Mónica de la Torre on Erica Baum's "Déjà vu." Reproduced above is Baum's piece (from "Card Catalogues").

Ōoka Makoto: from 'What Is Poetry?'

In 'Beneath the Sleepless Tossing of the Planets: Selected Poems'

Jerome Rothenberg

Translation from Japanese by Janine Beichman

Bassam Hajjar: poetry, a reading of silence

Huda Fakhreddine

Magritte’s “Not to Be Reproduced” on the cover of Hajjar’s ‘You Shall Survive Me,’ 2001 (a collection of works).

The Lebanese Bassam Hajjar (1955–2009) is a poet and a translator of silence. His poetry reminds us of George Steiner’s famous statement, “when the poet’s word ceases, a great light begins.” Perhaps because he was a dedicated translator, he hesitated and listened well for the charged silence in what he wrote and what he translated.