Eric Giraud (left), Liliane Giraudon, Jean-Jacques Viton (May 24,1933–March 14, 2021), Susan Bee, me, Henri Deluy: Marseille, November 22, 2016.
Henry Deluy (April 25, 1931–July 20, 2021)
Saddened to have lost the great poet, publisher, and literary organizer and friend, Henri Deluy. Here’s a poem I wrote “after” his writing in the Sun & Moon book, Carnal Love. — Douglas Messerli
CETA dancers Jane Goldberg and Charles “Cookie” Cook. (photos: George Malave)
CETA (the Comprehensive Employment Training Act), from the 1970s, provided more jobs for artists than any government program since the WPA in the 1930s. Efforts are now underway to commemorate the program. CityLore has received an NEH grant and there is asuperb new website that chronicles the programs.
On June 15, boundary 2 editor Paul Bové convened Yunte Huang (from California), Runa Bandyopadhyay (from India), Abigail Lang (from France), and me for b2’s webinar on Topsy-Turvy, focusing on non-U.S. perspectives, in anticipation of an issue of boundary 2 coming out in the fall. In the b2 issue, Runa gives a Vedic and Bengali spin to her reading of my poetics, Yunte writes about our ongoing mishmash of American and Chinese encounters, and Abigail continues her exploration of American/French poetry exchanges in an introduction to her translation of my work.
The new issue of NLO (New Literary Review, Russia, 168:2, 2021) features a section on American poetry edited edited by Vladimir Feschenko. Two of the essays, both machine translated, with some modification, are published here. Please consult the Russian original for accuracy.
Ivan Sokolov The Poet Is Always under Arrest: A Study in Cave Tones
Published as part of a feature in NLO (Russia), edited by Vladimir Feschenko: "American Experimental Poetry: The Poetics of Language and Ethnopoetics."
Beware: This is a (human assited) machine translation from Russian. Consult the orginal in NLO (2021) Published here with the permission of the Ivan Sokolov.
where vallejo césar let open sesame Аleksandr Skidan
We will burn the ultimate essence! César Vallejo
Clayton Eshleman's name (1935-2021) says little to the Russian reader, though this author's work runs a red and blue vein through the solar plexus of contemporary American literature. Author of dozens of books of poetry, several collections of essays, and a striking combination of ambition and meticulous translation projects, Eshleman is recognized and appreciated both as a writer and as a literary figure. From 1967 to 1973, he published the magazine Caterpillar, where Zukofsky, Brakhage, and Duncan were published, and from 1981 to 2000, Sulfur (with a title referring both to sulphur and, continuing the insect line, to the yellow butterfly), a major contribution to post-war avant-garde poetry that drew Eliot Weinberger, Michael Palmer, Marjorie Perloff and others. Most of his poetry collections have appeared at two publishers marked, curiously, by a sign of dark bestiality –– Black Sparrow (publisher of Bowles and Creeley) and Black Widow (which also publishes books by Pierre Joris, Jerome Rothenberg). To date, Eshleman has had three volumes of selected poems (1986, 2008, 2015), a monograph (Minding the Underworld: Clayton Eshleman and Late Postmodernism by Paul Christensen, 1991) and a collection of articles (Clayton Eshleman: The Whole Art, edited by Stewart Kendall, 2014). The poet has won many awards. [Image: Eshleman and Joris]
Pierre Joris, Jerome Rothenberg). To date, Eshleman has had three volumes of selected poems (1986, 2008, 2015), a monograph (Minding the Underworld: Clayton Eshleman and Late Postmodernism by Paul Christensen, 1991) and a collection of articles (Clayton Eshleman: The Whole Art, edited by Stewart Kendall, 2014). The poet has won many awards. [Image: Eshleman and Joris]