Jerome Rothenberg

Email to Jerome Rothenberg

Tom Weatherly

Note: This text is excerpted from an email sent to Jerome Rothenberg in January 2011. — David Grundy 

September 6, 2019

Black oral poetry in America

An open letter

Tom Weatherly

Note: The following open letter was originally published in Jerome Rothenberg and Dennis Tedlock’s journal of ethnopoetics, Alcheringa, no. 3 (Winter 1971): 94–95 (a facsimile is available online at Independent Voices). The immediate occasion was a statement made by Ted Wilentz, Weatherly’s coeditor for the Natural Process anthology, in his introduction to that volume. 

Note: The following open letter was originally published in Jerome Rothenberg and Dennis Tedlock’s journal of ethnopoetics, Alcheringa, no. 3 (Winter 1971): 94–95 (a facsimile is available online at Independent Voices).

September 6, 2019

John Bloomberg-Rissman

from 'With the Noose Around My Neck,' 139, a poem and multivocal collage in progress

Jerome Rothenberg

[EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is a further installment of John Bloomberg-Rissman’s ongoing collage epic, composed, as with much of his writing, (almost) entirely from words or sounds appropriated from other writers.

Jeffrey C. Robinson

Remaking the world: Poetry of the Homeless Library

Jerome Rothenberg

[AUTHOR’S NOTE: The Homeless Library (2014–17) is “the first history of British homelessness. A collection of books handmade by homeless people, reflecting on their lives and how they connect with the wider, previously unwritten heritage of homelessness. The books describe lived experience in interviews, poetry, art.” It was created by poet Philip Davenport and artist Lois Blackburn under their experimental arts organization arthur+martha, based in Manchester, UK.

Toward a poetry and poetics of the Americas (21)

'Lord' Timothy Dexter (1748–1806)

Jerome Rothenberg

from A PICKLE FOR THE KNOWING ONES; OR PLAIN TRUTHS IN A HOMESPUN DRESS (1848)

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Toward a poetry and poetics of the Americas (20)

Joanna Kitchel, El Niño Fidencio, and Essie Parrish

Jerome Rothenberg

[In putting together a transnational and historical anthology of the Americas North and South (now in progress), Javier Taboada and I are looking also at founders and representatives of new or revived American-based religions, who speak and write in forms of prophetic and visionary language that resembles what we otherwise would think of as open-verse poetry. In the present instance the outsider poets on display are Joanna Kitchel, a follower of Mother Anne Lee and the Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Coming (a.k.a. Shakers); El Niño Fidencio (Fidencio Constantino Síntora), a mid–twentieth-century healer and cult figure from Mexico; and Essie Parrish, cofounder of the Pomo Indian “dreamer religion” of California. The images above are of Fidencio and Parrish. (J.R.)]

[In putting together a transnational and historical anthology of the Americas North and South (now in progress), Javier Taboada and I are looking also at founders and representatives of new or revived American-based religions, who speak and write in forms of prophetic and visionary language that resembles what we otherwise would think of as open-verse poetry. In the present instance the outsider poets on display are Joanna Kitchel, a follower of Mother Anne Lee and the Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Coming (a.k.a.

Peter Valente

Introduction and translation of Nerval's essay 'Le Diable Rouge'

Jerome Rothenberg

[With the help of Henri Delaage (a well-known figure in the nineteenth century among the “initiated” in Paris) and some illustrators (including the famous Nadar, who was a designer before becoming a photographer), Gerard de Nerval composed the journal Le Diable Rouge, which was meant to be a “Cabalistic Almanac for 1850.” Le Diable Rouge inaugurated Nerval’s “Republican” period, the one that would see him, in 1850, publishing in Le National, the great daily organ of the Left.

Hiromi Itō and Jeffrey Angles

'Birthing the World,' from the Kojiki

Jerome Rothenberg
A portion of 'Izanami and Izanagi Creating the Japanese Islands' by Kobayashi Eitaku, mid-1880s, ink and color on silk, 49 5/8 x 21 1/2" (126 x 54.6 cm), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

[The Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters) is the oldest chronicle ever produced in Japan, compiled in the years 711–12 CE by the court noble Ō no Yasumaro at the request of the Empress Genmei, who reigned 707 to 715 CE. It begins with the creation of the world, describing the actions of the gods and goddesses as they create the earth and society, then it connects these myths to the earliest history of the Japanese nation. Among the most important of these stories is the tale of Izanami and Izanagi, the first gods to descend to earth.

India Radfar

Five opening poems, with foreword, from a booklength poem called 'Far'

Jerome Rothenberg

FOREWORD

 

Postface to 'The President of Desolation'

Now available from Black Widow Press

Jerome Rothenberg

[In announcing the publication of my latest book of poems from Black Widow Press, I thought the following postface might be of interest in what I say about the book’s title and the concerns that inform the book as a whole. Further information, for those who seek it, can be found at the Black Widow website, but for now I would hope to make the context of the work, including a number of procedural and aleatory poems, as clear as possible.

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