Amy Catanzano at CERN under the Big European Bubble Chamber in the garden of decommissioned experiments, 2019. For this second visit, she was sponsored as a research artist and funded by the Outreach office of the ATLAS Experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. Catanzano has been awarded funding by Wake Forest University and CERN for a third visit to pursue collaborative projects.
2020 EDITOR’S NOTE. Above is how I handled the presentation of Catanzano’s work a decade ago, not realizing the strides she would make in the intervening years — most notably through a series of interventions and residencies at major observatories and scientific research centers: among them, CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) in Switzerland, the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, and the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics at Stony Brook University. From this came a further outflow of work and the composition of poems and poetics that went beyond metaphor to the investigative urgency of Olson’s dictum from Herodotus: “to find out for oneself … instead of depending on hearsay.”
Accordingly, then, along with her own projects, she is collaborating on literary-scientific projects with scientists at CERN and elsewhere and has prepared a revised and expanded edition of all of her essays, and “essay-poems,” on quantum poetics. These include those first published here between 2009 and 2012, accessible now in an updated edition presented by Poems and Poetics. Her author’s note and opening essay of this edition appear below. — Jerome Rothenberg
My main man for poetry in Ithaca, New York — last residence prior to Oakland — was Joel Kuszai, a graduate of Buffalo’s poetics program and publisher of chapbooks (Meow Press) and print-on-demand perfect-bounds (Factory School).
Two postcard images of 'Broken Obelisk' at the Rothko Chapel in honor of Martin Luther King.
… in an altered time my breath catches yours my question to myself what poem would I have written if what has happened already hadn’t already happened what song would my throat have sung in between the notes moving with the breath of breath … what dance have danced me …
During this time of slowed publication, we at J2 want to highlight some books from our (digital) reviews shelf. Today’s title on our radar: Thanksgiving: A Poem, by Ted Rees (Golias Books, 2020). If you’d like to submit a review of this title for consideration, please let us know: jacket2.org/contact
Early on in my East Bay ramblings, I found my way into Serendipity Books, on University just up from San Pablo. Sometimes you’re in Ali Baba’s cave and you don’t even realize it. Used to be that every bookman in the area had an anecdote concerning Peter Howard, the legendarily perverse and curmudgeonly proprietor of that cavernous establishment.
Amy Catanzano
Quantum poetics (revised and expanded 2020)
2020 EDITOR’S NOTE. Above is how I handled the presentation of Catanzano’s work a decade ago, not realizing the strides she would make in the intervening years — most notably through a series of interventions and residencies at major observatories and scientific research centers: among them, CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) in Switzerland, the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, and the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics at Stony Brook University. From this came a further outflow of work and the composition of poems and poetics that went beyond metaphor to the investigative urgency of Olson’s dictum from Herodotus: “to find out for oneself … instead of depending on hearsay.”
Accordingly, then, along with her own projects, she is collaborating on literary-scientific projects with scientists at CERN and elsewhere and has prepared a revised and expanded edition of all of her essays, and “essay-poems,” on quantum poetics. These include those first published here between 2009 and 2012, accessible now in an updated edition presented by Poems and Poetics. Her author’s note and opening essay of this edition appear below. — Jerome Rothenberg
Norma Cole: 'Where Shadows Will' // 2009
street of the heart and / the street crossing it
My main man for poetry in Ithaca, New York — last residence prior to Oakland — was Joel Kuszai, a graduate of Buffalo’s poetics program and publisher of chapbooks (Meow Press) and print-on-demand perfect-bounds (Factory School).
Conditions of expanse
Algebraic equations of death
… in an altered time my breath catches yours my question to myself what poem would I have written if what has happened already hadn’t already happened what song would my throat have sung in between the notes moving with the breath of breath … what dance have danced me …
On our radar: 'Thanksgiving' by Ted Rees
During this time of slowed publication, we at J2 want to highlight some books from our (digital) reviews shelf. Today’s title on our radar: Thanksgiving: A Poem, by Ted Rees (Golias Books, 2020). If you’d like to submit a review of this title for consideration, please let us know: jacket2.org/contact
Robin Blaser: 'The Holy Forest' // 2008
dear beings I can feel your hands
Early on in my East Bay ramblings, I found my way into Serendipity Books, on University just up from San Pablo. Sometimes you’re in Ali Baba’s cave and you don’t even realize it. Used to be that every bookman in the area had an anecdote concerning Peter Howard, the legendarily perverse and curmudgeonly proprietor of that cavernous establishment.