Commentaries - November 2018

Toward a poetry and poetics of the Americas (17): Adah Isaacs Menken

'Sale of Souls,' A poem with an accompanying commentary

[In the transnational assemblage of the Americas (“from origins to present”) that Heriberto Yépez and I are now composing, a wide range of English-language poetry will be positioned alongside the multiple languages spoken and/or written on the two American continents. As with the work of Adah Isaacs Menken (18351868), we will also be giving special attention to a number of earlier poets still awaiting recognition in whatever we take to be an American canon or pantheon.

Jerome Rothenberg: Beyond Babel

An omnipoetics project and the role of translation

Image by Eric Hanson
Image by Eric Hanson

[A talk presented November 16, 2018 as a keynote at “The Fabricant: Symposium on the Figure of the Translator,” University of California, Santa Barbara. Original title: “Toward a Poetry and Poetics of the Americas: A Transnational Assemblage in Progress.”]

Denver is home to the world's first Quiznos

Sign of Quiznos's first location in Denver
First Quiznos location is in Denver

In Alice Notley’s Waltzing Matilda the narrator reads a friend’s poems, contends with the ambivalences of marriage, tends to sick children, gets hammered, makes an ass of herself, worries about making an ass of herself, reads the news, frets about money. Good god, am I describing my life or a book of poems? This book was published in 1981. I was published in 1976.