The PIP (Project for Innovative Poetry) Blog

List of Poets with Entries

2012-12-18T16:00:00.000-08:00

Review of Tomas Transtromer's poetry by Emil Siekken

2012-01-20T16:59:00.000-08:00

For a review of Tomas Transtromer's poetry on Rain Taxi, click below:
http://www.raintaxi.com/online/2011winter-2/transtromer.php

Review of Joe Ross' Wordlick by Jennifer Dick

2012-01-20T16:42:00.000-08:00

For a review of Joe Ross' Wordlick by Jennifer Dick, click below:
http://jenniferkdick.blogspot.com/2012/01/books-received-for-40s-project-mini.html

José Emilio Pacheco

2012-01-19T09:21:00.000-08:00

José Emilio Pacheco [Mexico] 1939

José Emilio Pacheco was born on June 30, 1939 in Mexico City. He was educated at the Autonomous National University of Mexico. Upon graduation he worked as the Assistant Editor for Revista de la Universidad de Mexico for two year from 1959 to 1960. Later he became Associated Editor of La Cultura en Meixco.

In the following years, Pacheco traveled extensively, teaching literature at the University of Essex in the UK as well as the University of Maryland in College Park.

His first book of poetry, Los elementos de la noche, was published in 1963, followed by his the same year by the fiction, El viento distante. Over the next several years Pacheco continued to publish numerous volumes of poetry, including El reposo del fuego (1966), No me preguntes cómo pasa el tiemp (1970), Islas a la deriva (1976), Desde entonces (1980), Trabajos en el mar (1983), and La arena errante: Poemas 1992-1998 (2009). He also published several other works of fiction, including the famed novel Morirás lejos of 1967, along with collections of stories and essays.

Pacheco is also well known in Mexico as the translator of many others, including Samuel Beckett, Yevgeny Yevtuschenko, and Albert Eisnstein.

The poet has been awarded nearly every major Spanish language prize, including the Premio Octavio Paz, Premio Pablo Neruda, Premio Alfonso Reyes, and the XVIII Premio Reina Sofia de Poesía Iberoamericana (2009).

At present, Pacheco resides in Mexico City.

BOOKS OF POETRY

Los elementos de la noche (México, D.F.: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1963); El reposo del fuego (México, D.F.; Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1966); No me preguntes cómo pasa el tiempo: poemas, 1964-1966) (México, D.F.: J. Mortiz, 1969); Irás y no volverás (México, D.F.: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1973; Islas a la dervia (México, D.F.: Siglo Veintinuo Editores, 1976); Tarde o temprano (México, D.F: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1980; reprinted by Barcelona: Editorial Anagrama, 2007); Desde entonces: poemas, 1975-1978 (México, D.F.: Ediciones Era, 1980); Los trabajos del mar (México, D.F.: Ediciones Era, 1983); Alta tración: antologia poética (Barcelona: Alianza Editoria, 1985); Miro la tierra: poemas 1983-1986 (México, D.F.: Ediciones Era, 1986); Ciudad de la memoria: poemas 1986-1989) (México, D.F.: Ediciones Era, 1989); El silencio de la luna: pemas 1985-1993 (México, D.F.: Ediciones Era, 1994; reprinted Madrid: Pre-Textos, 2003); La arena errante: poemas, 1992-1998 (México, D.F.: Ediciones Era, 1999); Siglo pasado, deseniace: poemas, 1999-2000 (México, D.F.: Ediciones Era, 2000); En resumidas cuenta: antologia (Madrid: Visor Libros, 2004); La fábula del tiempo: antologia poética (México, D.F.: Ediciones Era, 2005); Gota de Iluvia y otros poemas para niños y jóvenes (México, D.F.: Ediciones Era, 2005); Album de zoologia (México, D.F.: El Colegio Nacional and Ediciones Era, 2006) Como la Iluvia: poemas, 2001-2008 (México, D.F.: El Colegio Nacional and Ediciones Era, 2009); Circo de noche (México, D.F.: El Colegio Nacional and Ediciones Era, 2010)

POETRY IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE TRANSLATION

Tree Between Two Walls (Los Angeles: Black Sparrow Press, 1969); Don't Ask Me How the Time Goes By: Poems, 1964-1968 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978); Signals from the Flames (Pittsburgh: Latin American Literary Review Press, 1980); Selected Poems (New York: New Directions, 1987); The Ark for the Next Millennium: Poems (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993); City of Memory and Other Poems (San Francisco: City Lights, 1997)

Félix Morisseau-Leroy

2012-01-19T07:45:00.000-08:00

Félix Morisseau-Leroy [Haiti]

1912-1998

Morisseau-Leory was born in Grand-Gosier, Haiti on March 13, 1912. He spent most of his childhoon in Jacmel where at Condorcet Lerooy’s school, later transferring to the Lycée Pinchinat. He completed his education in Port-au-Prince, graduating from the Faculty of Law.

For a while he taught at Lycée Pinchinat, but was ultimately named chef de division at the Ministery of Public Instruction in 1941. After a period of study of education at Columbia University in New York City, Morisseu-Leroy became Director General of Education in Haiti.

Along with his position, the author also worked in journalist, becoming chief editor of the local paper of Jacmel, Sud-Quest, as well as contributing to several other newpapers and serving as editor of Le Matin.

His creative writing separated him from many of the French Haitian writers in that he chose to write for the masses, who primarily spoke the Creole language rather than standard French. In connection with that decision, he subjects, particularly in his fiction, were rustic, every day scenes, embracing colloquial languages. His careful analysis of the Haitian dialect of French, indeed, convinced him that it should be “dignified” as a national language. Particularly in Dyakout (a collection of poems) and his noted play Antigone, performed in Port-au-Prince in 1953, he demonstrated the richness of the Creole dialect, while reclaiming, altong with the efforts of Price-Mars and Jacques Roumain, the Haitian’s African roots.

That same year, he went into exile with his family, working for six years in Ghana for a UNESCO mission before establishing himself in Miami in the US, where he lived for the rest of his life. Despite increasingly blindness, the poet continued to write a weekly column in Haiti en Marche, and completed an epic novel Les Djons d'Haiti Tom. When the Haitian dictator Duvalier fell from power in 1986, Morisseau-Leroy briefly returned to Haiti for the inauguration of Aristide.

Besides writing several books of poetry, Morisseau-Leroy wrote several other plays and works of fiction, as well as numerous essays and other works. Three tales have been collected, translated by Peter Constantine, and published in the US.

Morisseau-Leroy died in 1958.

BOOKS OF POETRY

Pléntitude (Port-au-Prince: N. Telhomme, 1940); Natif-Natal (Port-au-Prince: Ed. Hatienne, 1948); Diacoute 1 (Port-au-Prince: H. Deschamps, 1953); Diacoute 2 (Montreal: Nouvelle Optique, 1972); Kasamanza (Dakar, Ghana: Nouvelles Editions Africaines, 1977); Dyakout 1, 2, 3, 4 (New York, 1990)

BOOKS IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION

Haitiad & Oddities , trans. by Jeffrey Knapp (Miami: Pantaléon Guilbaud, 1991)

I’m Taking a Little Trip to the Moon

I’m taking a little trip to the moon

I’ve had it with life down here
Around here everything’s sure hard
I’m on my way to the moon
They tell me up there there’s no such thing
As good and bad people
There’s no stupid guys or wise guys
No city or mountain people
All people are people on the moon
All people speak one language
I can’t hack it on earth anymore
Civilization’s exhausting me
Civilization’s scaring me
Wherever I turn I see
People killing people
Civilization has finished a long time ago
People there have forgotten that awful time

I’m taking a little trip to the moon

They tell me there’s no king there
No county sheriff
No justice of the peace
No baliff
No monseignor
I just gotta make that voyage to the moon
They tell me it’s beautiful there, just beautiful
Nights are clearer than daytime
There’s no time for a guy to sleep
No days for work of for play
Nights you watch the earth aglow
Brighter than the sun
And stars so Close as fireflies on trees
There’s no heat
No cold
No misery
No mud
Everyone’s forgotten about war
Forgotten about civilization
The way the old forget colic
Measles and teething
I’m gonna live on the moon
Evenings I’ll tell the kids stories
I’ll tell them that the whole time the earth turns
There’s a huge woman
An immense female werewolf
They call civilization
Crushing young men like ants.

—Translated from the Haitian Creole by Jack Hirschman and Boadiba

Review by William Allegrezza of The Salt Companion to Charles Bernstein

2012-01-18T09:58:00.000-08:00

For an interesting review of The Salt Companion to Charles Bernstein, click below:
http://poemsandpoetics.blogspot.com/2011/12/william-allegrezza-introduction-to-salt.html

Sarah Kirsch

2012-01-18T09:48:00.000-08:00

Sarah Kirsch [GDR/Germany] 1935

Born Ingrid Bernstein in the small town of Limlingerode at the edge of the Harz Mountains, the young poet spent most of her childhood in Halberstadt in central Germany. At the end of World War II, that city came under the control of the East German government. Bernstein's father was a socialist and a strong supporter of the new communist government. In defiance of her father's viewpoints, Ingrid changed her name, choosing the first name of Sarah as a symbolic statement of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust.

Upon completion of her secondary education, Bernstein majored in biology at the University of Halle, receiving her degree in 1959. While attending the university she met the writer Rainer Kirsch, whom she married the year before her graduation, changing her last name to his.

After graduation she and her husband joined a writing group headed by Gerhard Wolf, allowing her entry into the GDR Writer's Association. During this same period she committed herself to socialist activities, working in factories and on collective farms.

From 1963 to 1965 she took courses in literature at the Johannes R. Becher Institute in Leipzig, her first works, as for many German poets, being radio plays, publishing the volume Die betrunkene Sonne/Der Stäkste in 1963. Her volume of poetry, Gespräch mit dem Saurier appeared in 1965. Both books were written in collaboration with her husband.

In 1968 the couple divorced, Kirsch moving to East Berlin where she bore a son by the avant-garde writer Karl Michel. A few years later she was ousted from the Socialist Party and the GDR Writer's Association for signing a petition in support of Wolf Biermann, a poet whose GDR citizenship had been revoked.

In August of 1997, her petition to leave East Germany was granted, and she moved to West Berlin, traveling also to Italy, France, and the US. She settled finally in Tielenhemme in the north German province of Schleswig-Holstein.

With over 12 books of poetry and numerous prose writings, short stories, plays, and children's works to her name, Kirsch today is regarded as one of the most outstanding of late 20th century German poets. Her lyrical subjectivism and fantastical material, often played out in an almost idyllic natural world, has attracted a large number of readers, and she has been awarded almost every major German literary award, inclduing the Heinrich Heine Prize (1973), the Petrarca Prize (1976), and the Friedrich Hölderlin Prize (1984).

BOOKS OF POETRY

Gespräch mit dem Saurier [by Sarah and Rainer Kirsch] (Berlin, DDR: Verlag Neues Leben, 1965); Landaufenthalt (Berlin, DDR: Aufbau, 1967); Anna Achmatova: Eine niedagwesener Herbst [by Sarah und Rainer Kirsch] Berlin: DDR: Volk und Welt, 1967); Novella Matwejewa: Poesiealbum 6 (Halle, DDR: Mitteldeutscher Verg, 1968); Zaubersprüche (Berlin, DDR: Aufbau, 1973); Rückenwind (Berlin, DDR: Aufbau, 1976); Musik auf dem Wasser (Leipzig, DDR: Reklam, 1977); Katzenkopfpflaster (München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1978); Drachensteigen (Ebenhausen, DDR; Langewiesche-Brandt, 1979); La Pagerie (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 1983); Katzenleben (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 1984); Schneewärme (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 1989); Die Flut (Berliln: Aufbau, 1989); Erlkönigs Tochter (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 1992); Ich Crusoe: sechzig Gedichte und sechs Aquarelle (Stuttgart: Duetsche Verlagsanstalt, 1995); Bodenlos (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 1996); Luftspringerin: gesammelte Gedichte und Prosa (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 1997)

BOOKS IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION

Poems (Santa Cruz, California: Alcatraz Editions, 1983); Conjurations: The Poems of Sarah Kirsch (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1985); The Brontës' Hats (Cambridge, England: Street Editions, 1991); Captives: Sarah Kirsch's Katzenleben (Lubbock, Texas: Texas Tech University Press, 1991)

For a reading of Kirsch's poem "Ich bin sehr sanft" in German, click below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvpuonzq3tY

Michael Palmer

2012-01-18T08:44:00.000-08:00

Michael Palmer [USA]

1943

Born in New York City, Michael Palmer received his B.A. at Harvard University, where he edited the small magazine Joglars with fellow poet Clark Coolidge.

In 1963 he attended the famed Vancouver Poetry Conference which consisted of three weeks of workshops, readings, and discussions. At that Conference Palmer met and became friends with Robert Duncan, Robert Creeley, and other major figures who would be central to Palmer's writing.

In 1969 Palmer moved to San Francisco, where he continues to live today. He was contributing editor to the magazine Fracture and worked closely with several choreographers, dance companies and visual artists, including Margaret Jenkins. Michaëla Henich, Sandro Chia, Gerhard Richter, Irving Petlin, and Augusta Talbot.

In 1971 he published his first book of poetry, Plan of the City of O; and over the next decade numerous books followed, Blake's Newton, C's Songs, Six Poems, The Circular Gates, Poems, Without Music, Alogon, Transparency of the Mirror, Notes for Echo Lake and First Figure. Since those earlier years Palmer has continued to publish major works in Sun, At Passages, The Lion Bridge, and Promises of Glass.

Palmer's poetry has often been associated with the "Language" poets, a relationship he admits occurred early on with his friendships with the San Francisco "Language" writers. But he admits some hesitations: "My own hesitancy comes when you try to create, let's say, a fixed theoretical matrix and begin to work from an ideology of prohibitions about expressivity and the self—there I depart quite dramatically from a few of the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets."

Palmer's work also shows strong influences from contemporary French writers, and he has translated poets from the French, Russian, and Portuguese—Arthur Rimbaud, Emmanuel Hocquard, and Alexei Parshchikov. Palmer was one of the editors of the Brazilian anthology, first published by Sun & Moon and later reprinted by Green Integer: Nothing the Sun Could Not Explain: 20 Contemporary Brazilian Poets (1997, 2003).

Palmer has also written radio plays, essays, and a short travel journal, The Danish Notebook.

He has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets, a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writer's Award, a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, the American Award for Poetry, and the Shelley Memorial Prize from the Poetry Society of America.

BOOKS OF POETRY

Plan of the City of O (Boston: Barn Dreams Press, 1971); Blake's Newton (Santa Barbara, California: Black Sparrow Press, 1971); C's Songs (Berkeley, California: San Dollar Books, 1973); Six Poems (Santa Barbara, California: Black Sparrow Press, 1973); The Circular Gates (Santa Barbara, California: Black Sparrow Press, 1974); Poems (Berkeley, California: San Dollar Books, 1976); Without Music (Santa Barbara, California: Black Sparrow Press, 1977); Alogon (Berkeley, California: Tuumba Press, 1980); Transparency of the Mirror (Albany, California: Little Dinosaur Press, 1980); Notes for Echo Lake (Berkeley, California: North Point Press, 1981); First Figure (Berkeley, California: North Point Press, 1984); Songs for Sarah (Annisquam, Massachusetts: Lobster Cove Editions, 1987); For a Reading (New York: DIA Art Foundation, 1988); Sun (Berkeley, California: North Point Press, 1988); An Alphabet Undergroud (Viborg, Denmark: After Hand, 1993); At Passages (New York: New Directions, 1995); The Lion Bridge: Selected Poems 1972-1995 (New York: New Directions, 1998); The Promises of Glass (New York: New Directions, 2000); Codes Appearing: Poems 1979-1988 (New York: New Directions, 2001); Company of Moths (New York: New Directions, 2005); The Counter-Sky ([selected poems translated by Koichiro Yamauchi] Meltemia Press, 2007); Aygi Cycle ([poems inspired by the Russian poet Gennadiy Aygi] Ghent, Belgium: Druksel, 2009)

Numerous poems, with Palmer reading, are available from PENNSound at the link below:

http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Palmer.php

╬Winner of the PIP Gertrude Stein Awards for Innovative Poetry in English

1993-1994

The Leonardo Improvisations*

Can the

two be

told the

two bodies

be told

apart be

told to

part can

the two

be drawn

the two

be drawn

apart

What of the words reversed,

words meant

for mirror, words lost, voices

hear, mirrors

which return. What of the

body there.

the body which turns, the

face which

returns the gaze. What of

the backward

book, the hidden book, the

waves of

bent light in ascending air.

What possible

eye requires such blank signs.

What worlds

appear as more than real

reflected there.

First wrote of all water

in each of its motions

Then eddies of air

in the form of bell towers

Than a book of the building of cities

end the burning of cities,

book of the winged man and the hanged man,

book miter and argonaut, nautilus

double helix of the twin star,

book of the moon as mirror

and words made of mirrors,

book of the body and its memory,

body as the measure and body as a question,

book which explains our shadows,

book of the ram's horn lute and monochord,

the intervals of light along its string,

book of the trace and book of the fragment,

book of the earth split in half

The measure of the actual body

is the measure

of the imaginary body

The body is encircled—

a circle is drawn—

circle that is impossible

around an actual body

body which tastes of salt

and does not exist

within the perfect circle

it fashions around itself

and whose circumference it touches

with the tips of the fingers outstretched

and the soles of the feet at rest

The body is framed by mirrored words

It is not visible in the mirror

The circle and the body meet

on the plane of the imaginary page

Curl of leaf and wave

Curve of the neck and thigh

As much the unseen

as the visible

As much what has disappeared

as what remains

(Reprinted with permission of the author from Sulfur, 1993)

*These poems were part of a collaboration with the Italian painter Sandro Chia and were

first published in a limited edition by Edizioni della Bezuga as Improvvisazioni su Leonardo.

Helen Adam's "The Cheerless Junkie's Song"

2011-10-31T07:44:00.000-07:00

To hear Helen Adam's hilarious "The Cheerless Junkie's Song," click below:
http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2011/10/helen-adam-cheerless-junkies-song-from.html

Green Integer On Net

2011-10-17T16:15:00.000-07:00

Green Integer On Net ("Go In") is proud to announce its new series of book publications on line, a series that will include free and reasonably priced books of poetry and poetics, new and older, from around the world.

In conjunction with our educational efforts, these books will be offered free or for reasonable prices for our visitors: students, scholars, and readers of modern and contemporary poetry. Please note that any money we receive for books will go toward the maitenance of our site and for royalty payments for authors and translators. I do not receive a salary for my ongoing and quite endless activities.

Books now available:

[ordered PDF files ship within 24 hours]

John Wieners 707 Scott Street free

Charles Bernstein Dark City free

Djuna Barnes The Book of Repulsive Women free

Guiseppe Steiner Drawn States of Mind free

Tom Raworth Eternal Sections free

Gertrude Stein Tender Buttons $5.00 (PDF available to download through Paypal)

Ko Un Songs for Tomorrow: A Collection of Poems 1960-2002 $5.00 (PDF available to
download through Paypal)

Ko Un Himalaya Poems $5.00 (PDF available to downlaod through Paypal)

Douglas Messerli, ed. The PIP Anthology of World Poetry of the 20th Century, Volume 8
$7.00 (PDF available to download through Paypal)

Joe Ross Wordlick $5.00 (PDF available to download through Paypal)

Lyn Hejinian My Life $5.00 (PDF available to download through Paypal)

Forthcoming in November 2011:

Elsa von Fretag-Loringhoven Subjoyride: P-O-E-M-S $5.00 (PDF available to download through Paypal)

Susana Thenon distancias/distances free

The Project for Innovative Poetry (PIP)

2011-10-12T15:00:00.000-07:00

THE PROJECT FOR INNOVATIVE POETRY (PIP)

Members of our advisory board:

Adonis (Syria/Lebanon)
Ilse Aichinger (Austria)
Anne-Marie Albiach (France)
David Antin (USA)
John Ashbery (USA)
Nanni Balestrini (Italy)
Charles Bernstein (USA)
Elisabeth Borchers (Germany)
Nicole Brossard (Canada/writes in French)
Remco Campert (Netherlands)
Andrée Chedid (b. Egypt/France)
Henri Deluy (France)
Arkadii Dragomoschenko (Russia)
Tua Förstrom (Finland)
Lars Gustafssoon (Sweden)
Paavo Haavikko (Finland)
Oscar Hahn (Chile)
Paal-Helge Haugen (Norway)
Lyn Hejinian (USA)
Jóhann Hjálmarsson (Iceland)
Kenneth Irby (USA)
Philippe Jacottet (Switzerland)
Susanne Jorn (Denmark)
Sarah Kirsch (GDR/Germany)
Ko Un (Korea)
Günter Kunert (GDR/Germany)
Reiner Kunze (GDR/Germany)
Ewa Lipska (Poland)
Christopher Middleton (England/lives USA)
Friederike Mayröcker (Austria)
Jean Métellus (Haiti)
Giulia Niccolai (Italy)
Michael Palmer (USA)
Marjorie Perloff (USA)
Tom Raworth (England)
Reina María Rodriquez (Cuba)
Jerome Rothenberg (USA)
Jacques Roubaud (France)
Claude Royet-Journoud (France)
Tomaž Šalamun (b. Croatia/Slovenia)
Roberto Sosa (Honduras)
Takahshi Mutsuo (Japan)
Tomas Tranströmer (Sweden)
Nanos Valaoritis (Greece)
Paul Vangelisti (USA)
Rosmarie Waldrop (USA)
Yang Lian (China/New Zealand)
Yoshimasu Gōzō (Japan)
Andrea Zanzotto (Italy)
Visar Zhiti (Albania)

Former members [deceased]

Ece Ayhan (Turkey)
Robin Blaser (b. USA/Canada)
André du Bouchet (France)
Aimé Cesaire (Martinique)
Haroldo de Campos (Brazil)
Inger Christensen (Denmark)
Robert Creeley (USA)
Jacques Derrida (France)
Barbara Guest (USA)
Fiama Hasse de Pais Brandão (Portugal)
Miroslav Holub (Czech Republic)
Mario Luzi (Italy)
Jackson Mac Low (USA)
Nāzik al-Malā’ika (Iraq)
Oskar Pastior (Romania/Germany)
Carl Rakosi (USA)
Gonzalo Rojas (Chile)
Edoardo Sanguineti (Italy)
Abraham Sutzkevver (Lithuania/Israel)
Manuel Ulacia (Mexico)
Saül Yurkievich (Argentina)

TLS Review of Rae Armantrout and Susan Howe

2011-10-12T13:33:00.000-07:00

Times Literary Suuplement review of Susan Howe's That This and Rae Armantrout's Money Shot
click below:
https://jacket2.org/commentary/tls-susan-howe-and-rae-armantrout

Alberto Girri

2011-10-12T10:12:00.000-07:00

Alberto Girri [Argentina]

1919-1991

Alberto Girri was born in Argentina in 1919, and died in the same city in 1991. Although he is generally spoken of in the Argentine context as a poet of the Generation of 40, his personal style did not fit any particular movement. Writing in a highly lyrical and elegiac tradition, Girri sought out anonymity and isolation throughout much of his life.

He contributed regularly to the magazine Sur and to the literary newspaper supplement La Nación, but his work was generally described as highly ascetic and related to philosophical throught.

Beginning in 1946 with Playa Sola, Girri published some 30 volumes of poetry, including Coronación de las espera (1947), El Tiempo que destruye (1950), Penitencia y el mérito (1957), Quien habla no esta muerto (1976), El motivo es el poema (1976), Lo propio lo de todos (1980), Lírica de percepciones (1983), and Juegos alégoricos (1993).

Girri was the Spanish-language translator of T. S. Eliot, Stephen Sepnder, Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost and William Carlos Williams. In 1971 Girri, with William Shand, wrote the libretto to Alberto Ginastera's opera Beatrix Cenci, which at its premiere at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

BOOKS OF POETRY

Playa nova (Buenos Aires: Editorial Nova, 1946); Coronación de la espera (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Botella al Mar, 1947); Trece poemas (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Botella al Mar, 1950); El tiempo que destruye (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Botella al Mar, 1951); Escáandolo y soledades (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Botella al Mar, 1952); Línea de la vida (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sur, 1955); Examen de nuestra causa (Editorial Sur, 1956); La penitencia y el mérito (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sur, 1957); Propiedades de la magia (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sur, 1959); La condición necesaria (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sur, 1962); Elegías italianas (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sur, 1962); El ojo (Buenos Airies: Editorial Losada, 1963); Poemas elegidos (Buenos Aires: Editorial Losada, 1965); Envíos (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1967); Casa de la mente (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1968); Antología temática (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1970); Valores diaríos (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1970); En la letra, abigua selva (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1972); Poesía de observación (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1973); Quien habla no está muerto (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1975); Galería personal (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1975); El motivo es el poema (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1976); Bestiario (Benos Aires: La Garza, 1976); Obra poética, I (Buenos Aires: Editorial Corregidor, 1977); Árbol de la estirpe humana (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1978); Obra poética, II (Buenos Aires: Editorial Corregidor, 1978); Lo propio, lo de todos (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1980); Obra poética, III (Buenos Aires: Editorial Corregidor, 1980); Homenaje a W. C. Williams (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1981); Líraca de percepción (1983)

The Monkeys

In any event,
the provocative strength,
the freedom
we wielded as it pleased us
to screech, to form couples,
and even to let them crucify us
like sacrificial victims,
now lacks an object,
and above all the other species,
above our flattened noses,
the hard claws,
the prehensile feet,
we raise with great honor
to the one who deposes and succeeds us,
understanding master, clever guardian
helping with fire, insults, shackles,
so that our nature as
relatively cruel and savage beasts,
relatively adaptable and sensitive,
gains confidence, perceives
how we improve and prevent
our differences from growing larger,
if in spite of not constructing nests,
not being industrious,
not possessing a vocabulary to name
the heavenly furies
and the earthly varieties,
we grasp
the passionate human vocation
for exchanges and offerings,
and something
of their revealing art of harmonies,
something of what in their myths
signifies affection.

And what more promising
than this cage, this attempt
at imitation and coming together
supplanting the masquerade of the jungle;
we accept it
after having come from so far away
to await the fatal old age of man
and for the generosities and arrogance
to fall from his great dreams,
ah, all our time
destined
so that before dying out
that refined corpse
shall recognize us,
shall gaze at us as in a mirror.

—Translated from the Spanish by Jason Weiss

Ars Legendi

Of rapid movement,

plain in words and style,
direct and simple,
noble in ideas,

our Homer is Homer

because of the overall effect,
not for its isolated details,

but the professors disagree,

they silence opposition with the principle
that the classics contain too much
for the elemental enthusiasm of laymen
with no other weapons than good faith,
curiosity and innocence,

and they subject the reading

to the rack of exactitude,
questioning epithets, versions,
twisting around ideas,
the manner obscure,

an artificial

and urbane Homer,

in service of academic committees,
dressed up, free of fantasy,

the bloodless corpse

that justifies Voltaire's lament
indicating that human letters
are usually mistreated by stupidity
as tedious, inhuman.

—Translated from the Spanish by Jason Weiss

Liliane Giraudon

2011-10-12T08:43:00.000-07:00

Liliane Giraudon [France]
1946

Born on April 13,1946, French poet, dramatist, and fiction writer Liliane Giraudon has lived for most of her life in Marseille, where she teaches in the public schools.

Giraudon's work might be described as trans-genre, as she moves with and against prose ("prose does not exist") and poetry ("a poem is never alone"). The writer has also worked collaboration with other writers and artists, and has been extremely active in the French literary scene, co-founding, with Jean-Jacques Viton, Banana Split and If and serving as an editor for the noted poetry journal Action poétique. She has also worked in video and other medias.

Her books of poetry include Têtes ravagées: Une Fresque, Je marche ou je m'endors, La Réserve, Quel jour sommes-nous, Divagation des chiens, and, most recently, La Poétesse. She also edited, with Henri Deluy, 29 femmes: Poésie en France depuis 1960 (1994).

Among her prose-like works are La Nuit (1986), Pallaksch, Pallaksch, winner of the Prix Maupassant (1990, published in English by Sun & Moon Press, 1994), Fur (1992, published in English by Sun & Moon Press, 1995), Les animaux font toujours l'amour de la méme manière (1995), Parking des filles (1998), and La Fiancée de Makhno (2004).

Giraudon has also produced translations.

BOOKS OF POETRY

Têtes ravagées: Une Fresque (Paris: La Répétition, 1978); Je marche ou je m'endors (Paris: Hachette/P.O.L, 1982); La Réserve (Paris: P.O.L, 1984); Billy the Kid (in memoriam Jack Spicer (Paris: Manicle [H.C.], 1984; Quel jour sommes-nous (Paris: Ecbolade, 1985); _V_ (avec 6 vignettes de nanni Balestrini) (La Souterraine: La Main Courante, 1987); Divagation des chiens (Paris: P.O.L, 1988); Anne n'est pas Suzanne (with photographs by Casa Factori Marseille) (La Souterraine: La Main Courante, 1998); La Poétesse (Paris: P.O.L, 2009)

Crustaceans Are What They Eat

Don't tell me you're fed up with writing poetry
that you can't write any other way
that reaching the end of the line is too trying
or tiring or worrisome like a road
climbing a staircase or the top of a tree
that darkening the surface of a page
is like singeing the tips of the fingers the nails
(Edgard Pinaud's nail polish no. 15, Seduction)
which smells of Onions Tulips.

An infinitely unpleasant thing a feeling
of grease on the tongue for example
don't tell me the others all the others
—your poetry colleagues (those false navigators)—
annoy you with their negligent
postures their carbonated drinks
their clothes—sexual intellectual
habitual eternal presumptions they pontificate
postulate perambulate in vain are so old so soon that they greet
bleat eat out of your hand
biting only their shadows

Don't tell me that you've forgotten the day the hour
that sunlight spoils the sight of the sea that the moon
is a pathetic thing when the sky is clear
so clear the night that enfolds it seems an illusion
that you can't sleep that in your dreams it's always
the same woman undressing then refusing
that you've passed the age of pornographic acrobatics
limited to speaking without receivers

Flesh is soft on the back of the shoulder

Don't tell me that the word date so and so
translates it by delicacy somebody else by desert fruit
that you don't give a damn
that the taste of dates is unique in an oasis
that the target language must retain the odor of the original
different after all from a plate of fruit spit up by a child
that that has nothing to do with it
once on the fire with a sprinkling of sugar
producing a scintillating preserve
served in the curve of a china bowl on a white tablecloth
deep in a garden by attentive hands
on a quiet morning promising unspeakable happiness
as rare as a pure heart
for translating is just a snapping jaw
open on a body to be covered by your own
until it disappears
until nothing is left
the inescapable trace of an invisible, persistent chain
left behind to deceive the reader to make him believe
the crossing was accomplished the road traveled
the translation made

Don't tell me like that other guy
that all women are redheads
just put them on the fire
fierce ferocious equal in every way
to the true Paradise the one and only
with no need for philtre or propaganda
the latter secret
invisible rather down below beneath the belt
trampled perhaps by heels you step on it put up with it
Hell a paving stone
a handful of combative starving men
rusty boxes on the rim of the road
they love their poems like the smell of their own farts
it's a stock a pack a swamp
when it's simply quite simply
nothing how much sun is in sunflower
or r in the word carrot

Don't tell me don't tell me to keep quiet
the fax the dead
now that excites me the poem is a mirror
when a pig looks in abstraction increases
in illumination that's the blood they used to fix the gold
in the leaves the sun shines but not for us all
she says she wants monkey tooth implants
a tail would work better
would go better with the color of her eyes the white
sand of the river dazzling

Climbing into holes what an adventure
that's all I've ever done
flinging dirt over my shoulders
that's going the distance—attentive ear—
the feet beneath assembled moving
if I only had hooves
the cloven foot leaves better tracks in the mud
Io! Io! in the humid raw air
Ah my love! drain
drain me like a motor

—Translated from the French by Guy Bennett
English language copyright ©1996 by Guy Bennett

Frank Samperi

2011-10-08T12:53:00.000-07:00

For three books by the poet Frank Samperi, visit the site here:

The Prefiguration (1971)
Lumen Gloriae (1973)
Day (1998) (transcribed posthumously from 1970 notebook)

https://jacket2.org/commentary/frank-samperi-three-books

Francis Jammes

2011-10-08T09:59:00.000-07:00

Francis Jammes [France]
1868-1938

Born on December 2, 1868 in Tournay, in the High Pyrénées, Francis Jammes spent most of his life in Béarn and the Basque Country in which he was born. His parents were from an ancient family, but had no wealth, his father dying young and forcing the young poet to work as a lawyer's clerk to support his mother.

Although he attended school for a while in Bordeaux, he was evidently a poor student and failed his baccalauréat.

His poems began to be read in Paris in the late 1890s, appreciated for their symbolist tendencies and their fresh and immediate language. For a while Jammes became close friends with figures such as Stéphane Mallarmé, Henri de Régnier, and André Gide, with whom he traveled to Algeria in 1896. His earliest works, published in 1891 were sonnets, followed by several volumes titled Verse (1892, 1893, and 1894). Perhaps his most well known volume of poems appeared in from Mercure de France in 1897, De l'angélus de l'aube à l'angélus du soir (From morning Angelus to evening Angelus). Indeed much of his early poetry and almost all of his later works were devoted to a praise of God and all things religious.

Although beloved by many of the poets of Parisian society, Jammes' work belonged to no literary schools, and was characterized by a singular voice. Seen as a provincial author, his poems never truly became fashionable until his death.

     Although Jammes spent most of his days in his native region, he loved to travel and hunt, visiting Northern Africa several times. He was also a strong animal conservationist.

     Besides numerous volumes of poetry, Jammes also wrote numerous works of prose and books on poetry.

     The poet died on November 1, 1938, but editions of his books continued to appear until the mid-1940s.

BOOKS OF POETRY

Six Sonnets (1891); Vers (1892, 1893, and 1894); Un jour (1895); La Naissance du poète (1897); Quatorze prières (1898); De l'Angélus de l'aube à l'Angélus du soir (Paris: Mercure de France, 1898); Le Poète et l'oiseau (1899); La Jeune Fille nue (1899); Le Triomphe de la vie (1900-1901); Le Deuuil des primevères (1901); Clairières dans de Ciel (1902-1906); Tristesses (1905); Clairières dans le Ciel (1906); L'Eglise habillée de feuilles (1906); Le Triomphe de la vie (1906); Poèmes mesurés (1907); Rayons de miel (Paris: Bibliothèque de L'Occident, 1908); Le Géorgiques chrétiennes (3 volumes) (Paris: Mercure de France, 1911-1912); Feuilles dans le vent (1913); Cinq prières pour le temps de la guerre (Paris: Librairie de l'Art catholique, 1916); La Vierge et les sonnes (Paris: Mercure de France, 1919); Épitaphes (Paris: Librairie de l'Art catholique, 1921); Le Tombeau de Jean de la Fontaine (Paris: Mercure de France); Livres des quatrains (1922, 1923, 1924, and 1925); Brindilles pour rallumer la foi (Paris: Éditions Spes, 1925); Ma France poétique (Paris: Mercure de France, 1926); Diane (1928); L'Arc-en-ciel des amours (Paris: Bloud et Gay, 1931); Alouette (1935); De tout temps à jamais (Paris: Gallimard, 1935); Sources (Paris: Le Divan, 1936); Elégies et poésies diverse (1943); La Grâce (1946); Choix de poésies chrétiennes (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1946); Oeuvre poétique complète (Paris: J & D Éditions, 1995)

ENGLISH LANGUAGE TRANSLATIONS

The Naked Girl: A Poem/Play (Berkeley, California: Workingmans Press, 1977); Selected Poems of Francis Jammes, trans. by Barry Gifford and Bettina Dickie (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1976)

Twelfth Elegy

to Madame M. M. Moreno-Schwob

On high wind that fills the sails of ships
and lifts the anemones at the forest's brink;
wind that swelled the soul of the great René,
as he shouted bitter words at the swollen seas;
wind that made Virginia's hut shake,
and that ravages the autumn courtyards of the Sacré-Coeur;
wind that comes to my humble table to chat:
I have always loved you, that you winnow the sand,
or make the rain drive crossways from right to left.

Cradle me softly. Be to my poor heart

the soulful thing you were when I was a child.
I remember an attic room where I used to go
to listen to you blow beneath the doors and through the cracks.
Then I would mount a big box. From there,
I would gaze at the blue snow on the mountain.
My heart would leap. I wore a small white apron.
Cry? Dear God... I no longer know how... I was four.
Oh! The land of my birth... How perfect it seemed...

Oh wind, do you want me, the shepherd,

seated like a poet among the ferns,
to give you kiss to my little flute?
Would you have all the young girls' mouths
lean towards me like roses?
Where are you leading my dream? Where?
In the dawn snow, mules went by
carrying deeply colored winds, tobacco, and young girls.

Oh wind in which the morning bells fade to nothing,

and the flowering apple tress in the orchard come undone;
that blows the grass in waves and turns it silver;
that makes the pine trees sing and crumples the arbutus;
that swells the cloud and pushes it along. O wind,
when I hear you from the depths of my little room
you make my soul feel even lonelier.
your voice was always with me in laughter and in tears.
Reading Rousseau, it was as though you made
the trees sway in the old engravings.
I let my soul go free. I said to myself: it is meditation
to feel my thoughts die away as I listen to you speak.

It's you who carried my grandfather over the greenish

ocean on his way to the flowering Antilles.
you blew up a storm as he sailed away from France.
Rain and hailstones bounced off and battered
the porthole. The bulkheads creaked. Everyone was afraid.
But as they came near the blessed Antilles
your muffled voice went still and you burst out laughing
at the sight of both seagulls and our creole cousins
anxiously waiting on the breakwater wall.

Oh, if only I could recapture that day from another life.

My God, tell me, I beg you, was I really there?
Yes, I can see my grandfather again, followed by his cousins,
walking up the main street of St-Pierre-de-Martinique.
Wind, you ruffled the lively corollas
of the tobacco plants, and raised the soft muslin dresses
which our cousins sported like calyxes.

For that reason alone, whistling wind, you are my friend.

I know what you know. I love you like a brother.
I salute the pleasure you take in wandering among the elms.
I know that the birds are like a thousand hearts for you.
I know that I understand the meaning of your words.
I know that the kisses of our creole cousins
went along with you to the garden roses,
amidst the pink and blue dew of that morning.

—Translated from the French by Bruce Whiteman

______

Michael Heller

2011-10-08T08:16:00.000-07:00

Michael Heller [USA]

1937

Michael Heller was born in Brooklyn, NY on May 11, 1937. His father, the son and grandson of rabbis in Bialystok, Poland, and New York, led a colorful if not very successful life. He ran away from home at fifteen, became a cook’s mate on a freighter, then soldier, reporter, film producer, lawyer, political adviser and finally public relations counselor. As Heller describes it in Living Root, his memoir cum ars poetica, his father’s life, with its entwined ambiguous mix of Jewish tradition, romantic love, boyish rebellion and escapism, has been an unlikely but exemplary resource for his poetry.

Heller’s mother, the daughter of a successful Romanian businesswoman, taught in the New York City public schools, but in 1942, after her heart trouble worsened, the family began a piecemeal move to Miami Beach, Florida. The city’s garish pre-postmodern art-deco architecture and the daily sight of the Atlantic would provide an imagistic backdrop to elements of Heller’s work.

As a nine-year old elementary school student in Miami Beach, Heller made his first public “literary” experience on a weekly radio show, “Unfinshed Fables, ” as one of four child-panelists who were required to complete a half-written story impromptu over the air waves. With the help of his school friends, he published, on a hectograph, a bi-weekly journal of news, poems and cartoons. In high school, his interests were art and science-related, and at sixteen, he was the youngest member of the American Rocket Society (later Astronautics Society), and hoped for a career in science or engineering. After high school, he went to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Upon graduation in 1959, he moved to New York City to take a technical writing job. Since then, Manhattan has been his primary residence, except for summers spent in the Sangré de Cristo mountains of southern Colorado and frequent periods of foreign travel.

In Living Root, Heller describes “blundering” into poetry in the mid-1960s while working as a tech writer at Sperry Gyroscope, when on the job, he accidentally met a number of former students of Louis Zukofsky who introduced him to Zukofsky’s work, and to the Objectivists and Black Mountain poets, whom he started to read and study intensively. He began trying to write both poetry and fiction. The only poetry writing workshop he ever took was with Kenneth Koch at The New School where he won the Coffey Poetry Prize in 1964.

Impelled by that miniscule award, Heller went abroad to try to become a poet, at first traveling through the major cities of Europe, then settling for over a year in the small town of Nerja on Spain’s Andalucian coast. While there, he published his first poems in The Paris Review. In Nerja, he also met other writers, among them the Irish novelist Aidan Higgins, who introduced him to the writings of major European literary figures such as Walter Benjamin, Robert Musil, Hermann Broch and Samuel Beckett. In Nerja, he also became acquainted with the Spanish poet, Jorge Guillén and the family of Garcia Lorca who, as Franco’s power was waning, had started to live in Nerja in the summers.

Heller returned to New York in late 1966, freelanced as a tech writer and joined Angry Arts, the anti-Vietnam War group. He began to meet the Objectivist poets he had read, George Oppen, Charles Reznikoff and Zukofsky, whose writing and thinking influenced his work. In 1967, Heller was hired by New York University where for over thirty years he taught composition, creative writing and lectured on contemporary poetry.

His first full-length collection, Accidental Center was published in1972 by Dan Gerber’s and Jim Harrison’s Sumac Press, along with books by Robert Duncan, George Oppen and Carl Thayer. Since then his poetry, reviews, essays and fiction have been widely published and anthologized.

In 1990, while at Yaddo, he met the composer Ellen Fishman Johnson with whom he has collaborated on numerous projects involving text, video, music theater and opera, including the multi-media work, This Art Burning. His many editorial and advisory positions include associations with such magazines as Origin, Montemora and Pequod, and he has been a consultant for state and university poetry organizations, Poets in the Schools, the National Endowment for the Arts and Poets House. He has been the recipient of numerous awards and prizes, including the Di Castagnola Prize of the Poetry Society of America, an National Endowment for the Humanities Poet/Scholar Grant, and grants from the New York Foundation of the Arts and The Fund for Poetry. Since 1999, he has been an independent writer and critic. He has been married to the poet and scholar Jane Augustine since 1979, and has one son, Nicholas, from a previous marriage.

BOOKS OF POETRY

Two Poems (Mount Horeb, Wisconsin: Perishable Press Ltd., 1970) ; Accidental Center (Minneapolis: Sumac, 1972); Figures of Speaking ( Mount Horeb, Wisconsin: Perishable Press Ltd. 1977) Knowledge (New York: SUN, 1980); Marginalia in a Desperate Hand (England: Pig Press, 1986); In The Builded Place ( Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 1990); Wordflow: New and Selected Poems (Jersey City, New Jersey: Talisman House Publishers, 1997); Exigent Futures: New and Selected Poems (London: Salt Publishing, 2003); A Look At The Door With The Hinges Off (Loveland, Ohio: Dos Madres, 2006); Eschaton (Jersey City, New Jersey: Talisman House Publishers, 2009); Beckmann Variations & Other Poems (Exeter, England: Shearsman Books, 2010); This Constellation Is A Name: Collected Poems 1965-2010 (Swathmore, Pennsylvania: Nightboat Books, 2012)

CYCLICAL

It was on that day when the Names were not,
Nor any sign of existence endowed with name.

—Divani Shamsi Tabriz

I was remembering how the city took shape by the offices of light. How our words were lovely evensong, trilling above the muted rumble of buses, delicate, yielding, a kind of looseness twanging off the metallic forest of rooftops.

We had wormed ourselves down into darkness, descending, self-blinded air-moles, and then sun and memory rose, and our plangent mindfulness was godlike, a backing and filling which laid out the boulevards and crushed the sparrow.

At midday, a precision of shadows illumined the telltale refuse in the streets.

Love hectored: were we to exist, our being a kind of coruscation across the sallow air?

(So many machines, so much impelled movement. It was left to verbal mechanisms to draw down the power, to blow fuses, to irrigate the grid with nonsense syllables.)

II.

It hurt to be invaded by our surpluses, to wander in that crowded yet lonely Gehenna, to ask who chose these spendthrifts of architecture, these markings and commerce, the ornate cornices, spandrels, coffee machines and bottled water?

Amidst findings of anguish and lust, there was an immense betokening of intimacies threaded to the wrong objects.

The flux baffled, engarbled speech.

Yet still, a few stood proudly cut from the mechanics of illumination, their faces written upon by hopes and pains, singular and yet embossed by unplanned beginnings and ends.

They exhibited an uprightness, not of freedom, but rather as though a tree had resisted back against the brutal informing weathers of history, those mournful plenitudes, cares, bents, desires and redeemings.

The objects were now more ghostly, more unaccountable, and thus no longer those things about which banished rhapsodes were entitled to sing.

Meanwhile, the verse’s flatness hinted at a tutelary linguistics, at an awareness of thought's barely inflected swiftness, of substance that left one both free and bereft.

III.

Philosophers proclaimed the mental light as holding this lumina, luxe. But grime smudged against vision, smeared the sense of beauty with the prolix essences of markers.

The light, imageless, bathed real objects, fell across her brow and face, onto contours of small breasts, dark furtive sexual hairs...

Less personal, the light also slatted up the city into longish beam-work, Brownian fonts of godheads, their secondary power a kind of utterance.

IV.

These dream-states implied auroras of flooding radiance, offset the textures of the brickwork, traduced them into penetrant nostalgias of barred and indexed windows, dark homiletics of streets, the coarsened kelps of entanglement.

In spite of an overriding sense of packed and sectored proximities, emotion broke from one’s fears, likewise the reverse, etc., occurring as though in the trued rooms of an abiding, momentous dwelling.

Or as fantasy suggested: a child walked down leafy lanes, embracing a storybook dappling, only to turn a corner, to emerge from the glade and come upon the concrete Behemoth itself.

Therefore that other fealty to the premonition that each word was not the dawn but a nailing sun at noon?

No shadow of ambiguity on the paving stones.

The calculus on the page, the numbers and symbols, the operands and constants, transparencies and theories. Only these thwart an interminable bruising against reason.

Morning's light had never been particularly confirmatory.

VI.

Sun’s faint warmth as yet not fully given over to the day's shape, still enmeshed in night.

Its light arrived and with it the wheeled traffic in the street.

Time, the indulgent parent...

As though the mind were primitive, a forest of deep recurrence in matted leaves and balsams of pine. Memory futile, grasping at technique again.

VII.

And what was writing? A snail's slime down the walkway! Nothing more natural to the creature, he wrote bitterly.

O and by the way, little soul, how is a cognizable world possible?

Is it infarct or comestible?

Only yesterday, the old Printing House Square, buildings torn down, resembled the site of a molar's extraction.

And this month, litter thickens to a matted surface catching about the feet, to ankle-turning slipperiness of compacted color supplements, the musical crackling of styrofoam cups.

But you, you are positively beautiful, done in, or, as the French say, en dishabille.

Not a word for thought in this enjambed paradise of desires.

VIII.

Evil more clear than good, wound more certain than caress--the unloved always recognizable when posed against the loved one who remains unknowable.

Face secreted in mystery, city’s mystery.

What about one who lies athwart a darkness, stamped by incised verities?

Be wary of judgment, best to withhold closure on another.

Attention and skilled action, even these must suffer hesitancy.

It was the only way we could talk about streets and neighborhoods, thinking where they blend or die off or transmute to something else.

The most opaque thing is the body which you peer down at as from a crown.

Thought's pinnacle?

Easy, however, to float off with the wave of a hand, a dream of oneness--her skin and freshets of eye contact, mouth or curves, the secret places.

Thus the ruminations and the trust, estranged valuations, the city coalescing as fragile web, the familiar trickling like an open tap into homelessness.

ON A PHRASE OF MILOSZ'S

He is not disinherited,

for he has not found a home

He has found vertiginous life again, the words

on the way to language dangling possibility,

but also, like the sound of a riff on a riff,

it cannot be resolved. History has mucked this up.

He has no textbook, and must overcompensate,

digging into the memory bank if not for the tune

then for something vibratory on the lower end of the harmonics.

He's bound to be off by at least a half-note--here comes jargon

baby--something like a diss or hiss. Being is

incomplete; only the angels know how to fly homeward.

Yet, once the desperate situation is clarified, he feels

a kind of happiness.

Later, the words were displaced and caught fire, burning syllables

to enunciate the dead mother's name.

(Martha sounding then like "mother")

Wasn't it such echoes that built the city in which he lives,

the cage he paces now like Rilke's panther?

He was not disinherited.

He was not displaced

He is sentimental, hence he can say a phrase like his heart burst

The worst thing is to feel only irony can save

The worst thing is to feel only irony.

WITHIN THE OPEN LANDSCAPES

words for the etchings of Jane Joseph

1. Doesn’t the picture say

no room in this world for anything more?

If you desire to add something,

you must begin again

and make your own world,

including what has been missing

from the very beginning

of the world.

You must make an enormous effort

to leave this world for that one,

something like dying, if not quite.

Each world is so complete,

terror and emptiness

accompany every effort to leave it.

2. Black parts of things

keep the eye centered on the dark.

At least one can see

a bit of upstanding twig

leads to the branch,

leads along the branch

until the branch

foregrounded before flowing water

invites a sojourn past woods and house

along its banks.

Clouds are always on the move,

and suggest the weather’s alterations.

Darks do no more than keep the eye

centered on the dark.

3. When the things of the world

are so carefully depicted

—when we see such things—

surely we surrender a little, giving

ourselves over to the thing seen.

I have heard others speaking

of the tree's treeness

or an object's being.

I have looked,

and each time I experience something

--my own disappearance,

my own failed going-out

to meet the tree,

to meet the object.

Nothing coming back.

4. I can love a picture

but only if it doesn't love me.

I insist on boundaries.

I can hate a picture

without it hating me.

I don't insist on boundaries.

5. The branch of the sycamore

forks two ways,

one limb sort of down

and flat across the paper,

the other making an upthrust

so powerful it begins

to curve back on itself

as though the light was the light

of a nourishing self-regard

and the wide-spaced faint scribble

marks that go near the vertical

were the accidental pleas of space itself

warning against hubris.

6. So many bridges, foot, railway, auto,

each obscured by the surrounding designs,

are mythologies of difficult contact.

Or child’s stories where ogres

are secreted in dark patches under pathways

by which we connect.

7. The daffodil hangs its heavy blossomed head.

Wordsworth has shamed you.

And Eliot made the hyacinth

the flower of rebirth

into death’s blossoming

You are lone upon the heath.

You are between realms,

between cliché and astonishment.

8. And let the picture transform you.

Let this thistle put on its fiery fall color,

and let its bunched tufts

resemble a wrathful deity,

and let the corolla be a necklace

of enlaced skulls, and let homage be paid

by the ground underfoot,

its otherness crushing

ego’s unreasonable hectorings,

and let the mind never rest

in the false nirvana of vegetative happiness,

and let the bumble alight,

thick-dusted with the pollen of awareness.

AUTOBIOGRAPHIA

Weren’t you given a text? To honor the congregation, the organ dulcet,

the cantor’s hum, hymnal of Europe’s East, steps of sound made fugal

but laden with a weariness (joy for another day), history transmogrified

into plaint upon plaint, to be ushered into manhood, to be brought other’s pain.

Early on, the Shekinah gone into exile. Most of that century you saw

not love but power, cruelty, the face which laughs against the sun.

What could you do if you were not steeped in things like the others

but merely walked to buy milk or bread, heaven above, earth below,

to visit the old streets, the elm’s grainy seeds lying across paving stones,

tourists milling and the Atlantic past the bridge brilliant as a sword cut.

Saline, solute, salve, this art burning to base metal. What carries one

who would sing a hymn but eddies of language--never the pure thing--

maelstroms and tidal pools, word-forms, the will hemmed in like an ocean

to its basin, rhymed to the rack of its tides. The word’s ring deflected

in the baffles of the city into space, echo bounced from storefront to tower,

fading toward soundlessness--ear cupped to catch emptiness, translation

to Paradise from which speech fled. Put down this cloth, said the rabbi.

Cover the text and emplace the cap. Live neither in blacks nor whites.

Avert from the scroll rising above the earth, gaze upon limitless blue,

the inventive weaving of clouds. Live straight ahead. Appearance

will be your pain and mentor. Be at the threshold, not at the Ark.

And later, to go back to plucking a word from the weave,

lamé, silver, deep magenta, designs mazed over the fold, lines and margins,

and underneath, as though one sensed through flesh, the delicate structure

of beths and vavs on parchment, the inner and outer of secrets.

Request for Postings

2011-09-01T16:00:00.001-07:00

Once again, I invite innovative poets with national or international reputations to send me information that will help me post their existence on our major PIP (Project for Innovative Poetry) site. You can post for yourself or another poet. Please send a complete and detailed biography (check the site for what we are seeking), plus a complete list of books in the original language (with city, publisher name and date), a list of English language translations (if any have been done), and a selection of 4-6 poems in English, along with a photograph.

If you have questions, please feel free to contact me at my email (douglasmesserli@gmail.com). I will get back to you on your potential posting as soon as possible.

I am eager to include all major, serious poets from around the world. I'll also help to rewrite your bios, etc., but the final decision upon inclusion will be mine.

We have now had over 90,000 visists to our site, many of our visitors being students, young and older, studying or reading poetry.

Douglas Messerli, Publisher

This site is created and maintained by poet and publisher Douglas Messerli, working very much alone. Eventually, I hope to be able to post over 1,200 international poets, but it is a vast project taking a great deal of work each month.
If you would like to contribute to the effort, you might send a financial contribution, however large or small, to the project directly (The PIP Poetry Project or to our Green Integer publishing company through Paypal.) If you email me at douglasmesserli@gmail.com, I can help you to select a payment method. I truly appreciate any help that individuals or organizations can provide.

review-essay "In Order to Be Nothing" on Picabia's I Am a Beautiful Monster by Allan Graubard

2011-09-01T15:41:00.000-07:00

In Order to Be Nothing
by Allan Graubard

Francis Picabia I Am a Beautiful Monster: Poetry, Prose, and Provocation , translated from the Frency by Marc Lowenthal (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Pres, 2007)

Mention the name Francis Picabia today and what do you find? A man from a particularly redolent time blasted with war and mayhem; or, by his own moniker: a painter, poet, pick pocket, alcoholic, imbecile, comedian, failure, provocateur; a fellow whose hand, whether by brush or pen, gave back, and rarely failed to give back, an irreverence derived from the richest wit: a wit, more than not, rooted in disinterest; the kind we have little feel for today as causes burst over us one at a time.

In these circumstances, how to approach Picabia free of the mannerisms he hated but which fill our cultural ghettoes – all this marketing, buying and selling -- which, in the end, is little more than a defanging mechanism? Well, the question remains.

Or is it best to leave that where it lays and talk, talk till talk fills the air, drowning out much else, save how to grasp what’s available and, better yet, how to keep it. Are the horizons you felt or might have felt, glimmering there because they were yours and yours alone, simply passé? And culture, the kind of culture we conflate with sophistication (these films, that art, this music, those dances, and so on; an endless parade paid for the price of a ticket): Is all that so different from when Picabia ignited a nascent Dada with mechanical drawings done to perfect a state of boredom? Or is boredom also passé because there’s too much of it; boredom, that is, not what it reveals?

And is it enough to say that finally we have Picabia in English: the poems, aphorisms, manifestos, letters, screenplays, asides, and all the rest he wrote to sustain a sensibility, as his friend, Andre Breton, put it in 1922: “at the highest rung on the ladder of creation.”

Picabia, without whom Dada never could have evolved as it did, stands alone. He is Picabia; “a desperate case,” as Jean Arp described him, with that scent of umor that burns when you touch it. And what of Appollinaire, so much in Picabia’s debt “for having been the first to wind up the mechanism which set in motion that power of surprise which…dashes all expectation,” as Breton relates. Duchamp played with equal finesse, of course. Aragon and Tzara, before their politics led them astray, sheep to the moral slaughterhouse, also found in Picabia an exceptional presence, with enough trumps to evade consecration. Closer to us there’s Guy Debord, who certainly put Picabia to use. And someone yet unknown who’ll take a cue from the words Picabia left, witness to the world he faced.

“I disguise myself
as a man
in order to be nothing.”

“A man’s mouth is an unconscious sexual organ.”

“A dangerous and enticing wind of nihilism
pursued us with incredible exhilaration.”

Even automatic writing, commonly cited as Breton and Souppault’s triumph in Magnetic Fields, becomes for Picabia a vehement means of avoiding poetic values some time prior. There is little doubt that the surrealist use of automatism is also a response to, and refusal of, its Dada face, which Picabia did so much to mold.

What happens to Picabia as Dada deflates, and he waves good-bye with surrealism in the wings, is another aspect of the man. That he sustains through the cinema, with Hans Richter, in Entr’acte, and all but publicly drops poetry for a decade and more while producing paintings that seduce, then as now, is all the more reason to read him.

Picabia’s first writings find their public in 391, the magazine he publishes in Barcelona, Zurich, New York and Paris, before and through Dada. His initial collection of poems, Fifty-Two Mirrors, appears in 1917; the title derived from Nietzsche, a perennial source till Picabia dies in 1953. Effervescence, eroticism, cubism and attack collide here with exuberance. In the poem, “Smile,” he tells us this:

“to try to reflect
On my indecent gibberish
Is not a monk’s duty
Genitals in hand”

And in “Feet” there’s a glimpse of what’s to come:

“I’m afraid
Your fingers tremble
And the smell of broken glass
Near the table the obese pipe
Smokes
Like a crack in the
Superterrestrial brain”

Poems and Drawings of a Daughter Born without a Mother follows in 1918; the title referring to a machine drawing of Picabia’s three years earlier. Several events interweave here: an affair with Germaine Everling, his recovery from opium addiction, a neurasthenic crisis, WWI, and fascination with sexual scandal. Perhaps the translator, Marc Lowenthal, is correct in assuming that the meta-metaphor, in mechanico-sexual terms, is an “Immaculate Copulation” – the woman who can copulate without conceiving, and does so to repletion. Wherever such reflections may lead, this is poetry on the cusp of revelation -- an irreducible distillate of present life. The machine drawings that accompany the poems also carry a similar sense: Current Views in Love Machine, Dragonfly, Hermaphroditism, Impatience Art, Pointless Machines, Narcotic.

From Picabia’s next book, The Mortician’s Athlete (November 1918), composed of poems joined together into five Cantos, the stage unfolds, contorts, spurts wings and wild weeds, as he writes:

“Music reflects the external
reality of the guide hungry for horror.”

“in one of my invisible
and unique daydreams”

“The eyes of sleepwalkers
are scented
with the madness
of centrifugal
magnetization”

Other books and poems in Dada magazines foliate. “American Spit,” (in Dada No. 3, Zurich), whispers that the “The mechanical domino stomach of fog potbellies/gossips at a dust run…”

Purring Poetry, at 843 lines, also from 1918, combusts a vertiginous meander through patinas of excusable boredom and daring insouciance, styled with fables of sexual conquest. In the end, it makes mince meat of the poem as a fulcrum for subjective transmutation and raises another, “Isotropic” possibility: A poem without beginning or end, which presents equal to any angle of reading, and for which signification, by losing its habitual logic, gains an irrepressible farcical liberty, there at the edge of the world.

Between 1919-1921 Dada launches against the cultural bulwarks and Thoughts Without Language appears. This is not a book without words but rather a book whose author has left literary culture behind, or believes he has, which is almost as good. He writes what he wishes when he wishes on “a whirling stage/for scenery” where “beautiful courtesans under the avalanche/of ambitions” seek “astonished love.” Nor does Picabia forgo what he finds in the street, evoking Daumier strewn with car dust:

“a poor wretch released from prison
walks in silence along the ditch
of bohemian pipe dreams”

Books, manifestations, manifestos, broadsides, scandals and performances -- Paris Dada in its heyday, with beauty on the chopping block along with political revolutionaries, gallery owners, stock market traders, military goons, mothers, marriage – the lot.

Then, in 1920, it’s Jesus Christ Rastaquouere, Picabia’s most important text in eight brief chapters. I cannot recommend this novel “novel” more, and will refer to it in years to come in the same way I refer to Lautremont and Rimbaud; for the spice of inspiration, laughter, mystification and adventure: the roads blown wide open for anyone wanting to leap; a true marvel and, in its way, the Dada equivalent to the surrealist Paysan Paris that will follow in several years, but with Paris transformed into an inscape of touché ripostes to stupidity, manners, morals, hyperbole and political amnesia.

Where else does Picabia tell us that, as far as religion is concerned: “One should take communion with chewing gum. That way God will strengthen the jaws.”

Or, as far as artists are concerned: “The world is divided into two categories…failures and those unknown.”

Or that masturbation is pleasure, pure and simple.

Or that “Politicians grow on the human dunghill”

Or that “The Five-Minute Interval” is a premiere text on mad love, with its Sadean glee still shunting through me...

By 1923 everything is in flux, with Dada a memory first framed by Picabia the previous year. In Litterature, the last magazine edited by Breton prior to the surrealist manifesto, Picabia illustrates covers and publishes poems. When he “lights his cigarette,” it is chance that makes him hungry, waiting, as he does, at a “door” to the “bottom of the earth.” From general to attendant, Picabia has kept his ear to the ground, charting hoof prints of the approaching storm, which carries within it marvelous lightning strikes. But by 1924, he wishes Breton luck and then, some time later, leaves Paris. The collective experiment is over.

In1939-1940, Picabia re-emerges with two collections: Poems of Dingalari and Thalassa in the Desert. The former is poignant enough, at least in terms of the kind of “melancholy lyricism” Picabia so much disrupted as Dada flourished, but which now has become his. From the latter comes the title to the present book of translations: “I am a beautiful monster/ who shares his secrets with the wind.” The accent is lighter here, as images of love and desire tip the scales in favor of hope as war advances to crush it.

Chi-Lo-Sa, which translates from the Italian as “Who knows?” is Picabia’s last major work, published in an edition of 100 copies in 1950. This lengthy collage of passages from Nietzsche’s The Gay Science, subtly or clearly detourned, is spliced with Picabia’s own poems, some quite charming and erotic, others more contestive. More intriguing is the author’s assumption of a mask, whether speaking through an echo of Nietzsche or as a woman in love. The theatrical device carries the point quite well and makes of this book something unique.

Here, then, is Francis Picabia, in his own texts for his own time. It is not our time but times have a way of shadowing each other and, now and then, of picking up the pace, locking arms and dancing.

But remember: “All beliefs are bald ideas.”

I can hear that music…

Can you?

January 20, 2008
New York
Copyright (c) 2011 by Allan Graubard

Seyhan Erözçelik's death

2011-08-25T15:14:00.000-07:00

I am sad to report that Seyhan Erözçelik , the significant Turkish poet died today, at the age of 49. He was still writing important new poetry.

Seyhan Erözçelik [Turkey]
1962-2011

Born on March 13, 1962 in Bartin, a town in the Black Sea region of Turkey, Seyhan Erözçelik studied psychology at Boğaziçi University and oriental languages at Istanbul University. In 1986 he co-founded the Șiir Ati (Poetry Horse) publishing house which published over forty titles in the 1980s. He is a member of the Turkish Pen Center and Writer's Syndicate of Turkey. He lived in Istanbul.

For an announcement of his death, click here:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2011/08/seyhan-erozcelik-1962-2011/

interview-review, "Conversational Critic, Talking Poet David Antin" by Robert Pincus

2011-08-10T15:03:00.000-07:00

For an interview-review of David Antin by Robert Pincus in the San Diego Reader, click below:
http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2011/aug/10/feature-talking-poet-david-antin/#.TkPoU2oYuVA.facebook

Kenneth Rexroth reading "Married Blues" with a jazz combo

2011-08-10T14:10:00.000-07:00

For an audio, with jazz combo, with Kenneth Rexroth reading "Married Blues," click here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01Krt-T3UTs

Ezra Pound interviewed by Pier Paolo Pasolini

2011-08-10T13:24:00.000-07:00

To hear Pier Paolo Pasolini interview Ezra Pound in Italian (1967), click below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrwIbjwbT0o&feature=related

essay on T. S. Eliot, "The Avant Garde," by Marjorie Perloff

2011-08-10T12:20:00.000-07:00

essay on T. S. Eliot, "The Avant Garde," by Marjorie Perloff
http://greeninteger.com/pdfs/perloff-eliot-and-the-avant-garde.pdf

another essay on "Avant-Garde Eliot" by Marjorie Perloff

2011-08-10T12:00:00.001-07:00

For an essay, "Avant-Garde Eliot" by Marjorie Perloff, click here:
http://greeninteger.com/pdfs/messerli-avant-garde-eliot.pdf

Kenneth Rexroth interviewed by Jerome Rothenberg and David Antin at the Five Spot

2011-08-10T12:00:00.000-07:00

For an interview with Jerome Rothenberg and David Antin with poet Kenneth Rexroth at the Five Spot in New York, click below:
http://poemsandpoetics.blogspot.com/2011/08/jerome-rothenberg-david-antin-first.html

THE BLACK MOUNTAIN POETS

2011-08-10T09:27:00.000-07:00

THE BLACK MOUNTAIN POETS

Begun in 1933 as an experimental school based on the principles of John Dewey, Black Mountain College, located in rural North Carolina, quickly attracted a large number of artists, dancers, writers, musicians, and other avant-gardists, including figures such as Josef Albers, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Buckminster Fuller, Walter Gropius and Charles Olson. The College also invited numerous important figures for guest lectures, Albert Einstein, Clement Greenberg, and William Carlos Williams, among them.

In 1950 Charles Olson became the College Rector, the same year he published his seminal essay, "Projective Verse," which called for an "open field" composition opposed to traditional, more closed forms. For Olson poetry was to be based on the line, and the line represented a unit of breath, an utterance that lead from "one perception immediately directly [leading] to a further perception."

The essay, highly influential, became a kind of manifesto for the poets and students he had gathered around him at the College. These poets included Larry Eigner, Robert Duncan, Ed Dorn, Paul Blackburn, Hilda Morley, John Wieners, Denise Levertov, Jonathan Williams, and Robert Creeley, the latter who taught at the College and edited for two years its Black Mountain Review, before moving to San Francisco, when the College closed in 1957.

Other poets associated with this broadly-based group, included Paul Blackburn, Paul Carroll, William Bronk, Cid Corman, Joel Oppenheimer, Theodore Enslin, Ebbe Borregard, Russell Edson, M. C. Richards, and Michael Rumaker, some of whom did not attend the College but were influenced, nonetheless, by the poetry and Olson's viewpoints. Indeed, numerous other poets, including Beat writers such as Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, and other figures such as Gary Synder, Michael McClure, and Philip Whalen were also influenced in their poetry and poetics.

The "group" has had wide influence over the years, not only for American poets such as the "Language" writers, but has effected British poets such as Tom Raworth, J. H. Prynne, and others.

There have been numerous books on Black Mountain College and the Black Mountain Poets, including:

Steven Carter, Bearing Across: Studies in Science and Literature (Oxford, England: International Scholars Publications, 1999); Fielding Dawson, The Black Mountain Book, a New Edition (Rocky Mount, North Carolina: North Carolina Wesleyan College Press, 1991); Edward Halsey Foster, Understanding the Black Mountain Poets (Columbia, South Carolina, 1995); Melvin Lane, ed. Black Mountain College: An Anthology of Personal Accounts (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1990); and Sherman Paul, Olson's Push: Origin, Black Mountain and Recent American Poetry (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978). Martin Duberman's Black Mountain: An Exploration in Community (New York: Dutton, 1972) explores the wider implications of the College.

—Douglas Messerli

For a site devoted to The Black Mountain Poets, click here:
http://copof10.umwblogs.org/multimedia-rpt-list/black-mountain-poets/

For an audio of Robert Creeley discussing Black Mountain College and his relationship to it, click here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2011/07/new-audio-of-robert-creeley-discussing-black-mountain-college/

Syrian-born poet Adonis on President Assad of Syria

2011-08-09T14:48:00.000-07:00

Syrian-born poet Adonis asks Syrian President Assad to step down, click here:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2011/08/adonis-asks-syrian-president-to-step-down/

John Wieners, a video of his last public reading

2011-08-09T12:35:00.000-07:00

For a video of the last public reading of John Wieners, click here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=tlXltkRaKCI#at=69

Faiz Ahmad Faiz

2011-08-09T10:48:00.000-07:00

Faiz Ahmad Faiz (b. British India/Pakistan)
1911-1984

Faiz Ahmad Faiz was born in Kala Kader, a village in Sialkot, Punjab in what was then British India in 1911. His father was Sultan Mohammad Khan and his mother, the Sultan's youngest wife, Fatima.

Faiz was sent, as is standard in a Muslim family, to the Masjid or mosque for religious studies at an early age. Later he attended the Scotch Mission School for an academic education, and then transferred to Murray College, Punjab for an intermediate education. Among his influential teachers there were Yousuf Saleem Chisti, who taught Urdu, and Shams-ul-Ullamah Syed Mir Hasan, the professor of Arabic.

Faiz acquired a M.A. at the Government College in Lahore in English Literature, and then attended the Oriental College, also in Lahore, to obtain an M.A. in Arabic Literature.

In 1936 Faiz created a branch of the Progressive Writers' Movement in Punjab, serving as Secretary, and editor of its monthly magazine, Mahnama. The year before he became a lecturer in English at M. A. O. College in Amritsar, and soon after at Hailey College of Commerce in Lahore.

Faiz briefly joined the British Indian Army, and was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in 1944. Three years later he resigned his post, returning to Lahore to become the first chief editor of the Pakistan Times.

Faiz had joined the Communist party early in his career, and throughout the 1950s and 1960s he worked at promoting the cause of Communism in Pakistan. His involvement with the military headed by Major General Akbar Khan, who attempted to overthrow the Pakistani government, led to his imprisonment and a sentence of death. He was released four years later.

In 1959, he was appointed as the Secretary for the Pakistan Arts Council, working in that position until 1962, spending much of his time abroad, particularly in London.

Returning from London in 1964, Faiz settled in Karachi, where he was appointed Principal at Abdullah Haroon College. Later, he continued his career in journalism, working as editor at the Pakistan Times and the weekly Lail-o-Nihar. The 1965 war between India and Pakistan brought him to the Department of Information, but the bloodshed in the separation of Bangladesh from Pakistan distressed him, and he wrote several poems of distress.

With the overthrow of Bhutto, Faiz went into into exile, where worked as an editor for the magazine Lotus in Moscow, London, and Beirut, returning to Pakistan finally in 1982.

Faiz's major contribution, however, was his poetry, which is seen my many as the most notable modernist poetry in Urdu. Among his major works are Naqsh-e-Faryadi (1943), Dast-e-Saba (1952), Zindan-Nama (1956), Mere Dil Mere Musafir, and Sar-e-Wadi-e-Sina, all of these books collected in Nuskha Haa-e-Wafa.

Faiz also translated numerous works from English Russian, Balochi, and other languages. The poet also wrote several plays.

In 1963, Faiz received the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet Union. His work was also nominated several times for the Nobel Literature Prize. In 1990 he was posthumously awarded Pakistan's highest civilian award, Nishan-e-Imtiaz.

Faiz died on November 20, 1984 in Lahore, at the age of 73.

BOOKS OF POETRY (selected list)

Naqsh-e faryadi (1943); Dast-e saba (1952); Zindan nama (1956); Mizan (1964); Dest-i tah-yi sang (Lahore: Maktabah-yi Korvān, 1965); Harf harf (1965); Sar-e vadi-ye sina (1971); Mat¯a`-i lauh o qalam (Karachi: Maktab-i Dānīvāl, 1973); Rat di rat (1975); Intikh¯ab-i Pay¯am-i Mashriq : manz¯um Urd¯u tarjumah (1977); Sham-e shahri-yaran (1978); Mere dil, mere musafir (1980)

ENGLISH LANGUAGE TRANSLATIONS
Poems, trans. by V.G. Kiernan (1962); Poems by Faiz, trans. by V. G. Kiernan (1971); Selected Poems of Faiz in English (Karachi: Pakistan Publishing House, 1984); The True Subject: Selected Poems of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, trans. Naomi Lazard (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1988); The Unicorn and the Dancing Girl, trans. by Daud Kamal (Ahmedabad: Allied Publishers, 1988); The Rebel's Silhouette, trans. Agha Shahid Ali (1991); Poems of Faiz Ahmad Faiz: A Poet of the Third World (New Delhi: M. D. Publications, 1995); Selected Poems of Faiz Ahmad Faiz (New Delhi/New York: Viking, 1995)

For a good selection of Faiz's poems, click below:
http://public.wsu.edu/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_2/faiz.html

For a large selection of audios and other information, go here:
http://www.faiz.com/

For a more substantial biography of Faiz, click here:
http://www.dawn.com/2011/02/17/faiz-ahmed-faiz-life-and-poetry.html

Tom Raworth's book Eternal Sections

2011-08-09T09:37:00.000-07:00

For the complete text of Tom Raworth's Eternal Sections as originally published
by Sun & Moon Press, click below:
http://greeninteger.com/pdfs/raworth-eternal-sections.pdf

Antonio Gamoneda

2011-08-09T09:28:00.000-07:00

Antonio Gamoneda [Spain]
1931

Born on May 30, 1931 in Oviedo, Asturias, Spain, Antonio Gamoneda's father was a modernist poet who had published only one book Otra más alta vida (1919). By the time Antonio was four, his father had died and he and his mother moved to the working-class district of León. The Spanish Civil War created difficult times for them, and the horror and misery of those years is reflected in Gamoneda's dark poetry. The schools were closed, and the young boy taught himself to read by reading his own father's book.

Gamoneda was sent to a Augustinian Fathers religious school in 1941, dropping out two years later. At the early age of 14 he began work as a messenger in the Banco de Comercio, continuing his self-education, remaining at the back as an employee for twenty-four years.

It was at the bank that Gamoneda grew more and more in opposition to Franco's dictatorship, publishing his first book of poems, Sublevación inmóvil (Motionless revolt) in 1960. The book, breaking with the traditions of Spanish poetry of the time, was a runner-up for the Adonais prize.

In 1969 Gamoneda was appointed to head the cultural services of the Diputación Provincial de León, and the next hear became the head of the León State collection of poetry, where he attempted to promote progressive culture under Franco's harsh strictures. Consequently, Gamoneda was deprived of official status until readmitted by court order. During these years, absent from the poetry world, the writer worked for various cultural magazines.

With the death of Franco and the period of Spanish culture described as the transición, Gamoneda began writing again, expressing the crisises he had experienced. Descripción de la mentira (A Description of the Lie) was followed by several books before he produced some of his major works, including Lápidas (Tombstones) of 1987, Edad (Age) of 1987, Libro del Frio (Book of the Cold) (1992), and Arden las pédidas (Losses are Burning) (2003).

In 2006 Gamoneda was awarded the Reina Sofia Awaard and the Cervantes Prize, the highest award in Spanish literature.

The poet has written numerous collections of essays, and his poetry has been translated widely.

BOOKS OF POETRY

Sublevación inmóvil (Madrid: Rialp, 1960); Descripción de la mentira (León, Spain: Diputación Provincial, col. County, 1977; reprinted in Salamanca: Castile and Leon, col. Barrio de Maravillas, 1986; and Madrid: Abada Editores, 2003); León de la mirada (León, Spain: Espadaña, 1979); Tauromaquia y destino [with drawings by Juan Barjola] (León, Spain: Retablo, 1980); Blues castellano (Gijón Noega, 1982), reprinted Barcelona: Plaza y Janes, 1999, and Madrid: Bartleby, 2007); Lápidas (Madrid: Trieste, 1986); Edad (Madrid: Chair, 198); Libro del frio (Madrid: Siruela, 1992); Mortal 1936 (Merida: Asamblea de Extremadura, 1994); El vigilante de la nieve (Lanzorote, Spain: Fundación César Manrique, 1995); Libro de los venenos: corrupción y fábula del Libro Sexto de Pedacio Dioscóides y Andrés de Laguna, acerca de los venenos mortiferos y de las fieras que arrojan de si ponzoña (Madrid: Ediciones Siruela, 1995); Arden las pédidas (Barcelona: Tusquets, 2003); Cecilia (Lanzarote, Spain: Fundación César Manrique, 2004); Reescritura (Madrid: Abada, 2004); Esta luz 1947-2004 (Barcelona: Galaxia Gutenberg/Círculo de Lectores, 2004); Extravío en la luz (Madrid: Casariego, 2009)

ENGLISH LANGUAGE TRANSLATIONS

Gravestones, trans. by Donald Wellman (New Orleans: University of New Orleans Press, 2009)

from Lápidas

THERE'S no wellbeing, there's no rest. The dark animal arrives in the midst of winds and there is a pile of men marked with the numbers of misfortune. There is no wellbeing, there is no rest. A black roaring grows and you weave the saddest fibers (under an incessant sun, in a bowl of lament, in the mauve root of augury) and sleepless mothers, those who inhabit cells of lightning, pass their gaze over a forest of stones.

Do birds so groan? All is blood soaked. Deaf at the source of the music, ought I to insist anymore? There is vigilance in the gardens placed between my spirit and the precision of the spies. There is watching in the churches.

Beware of calcination and incest; I say, beware of your very self, Spain.

(Song of the Spies)

—Translated from the Spanish by Donald Wellman

English language translation copyright ©2009. Reprinted from Gravestones (New Orleans: University of New Orleans Press, 2009)

For wide selection of Gamoneda's poetry in English, click here:
http://spain.poetryinternationalweb.org/piw_cms/cms/cms_module/index.php?obj_id=17183

For an interview with Gamoneda, click below:
http://www.kaurab.com/english/interviews/gamoneda.html

Mark Wallace

2011-08-09T08:14:00.000-07:00

Mark Wallace [USA]
1962

Mark Wallace was born in 1962 in Princeton, New Jersey and grew up in the Washington, D.C. area. Between the ages of 8 and 17, with his father and brother he drove across the United States to Southern California on camping trips every summer, once going by way of Mexico City and once by way of Lake Banff, and he has spent time in all 48 of US mainland states.

The numerous bad jobs he has worked since the age of 15 are distinguished not by working class physical labor but by the low paid tedium of the contemporary world’s bureaucratic nightmare.

He received his Ph.D. from the State University at Buffalo with his dissertation The Gothic Universe in the Fiction of Paul Bowles and William Burroughs. He worked at Buffalo as a student assistant to Charles Bernstein on "The Wednesdays At Four Plus" reading series.

Since 1995 he has been running literary events, first in Washington, D.C., where he lived until 2005, and most recently at California State University San Marcos, where he currently teaches.

He is the author of three books of fiction, four books of poetry, a mixed genre work, and numerous chapbooks. Temporary Worker Rides A Subway won the 2002 Gertrude Stein Poetry Award and was published by Green Integer. His most recent fictions include Walking Dreams: Selected Early Tales and The Quarry and The Lot (both BlazeVox Books).

Wallace has been a contributing co-editor to several literary magazines, Poetic Briefs, Situation, and Submodern Fiction. His critical articles and reviews have appeared in numerous publications, and he has co-edited two essay collections, Telling It Slant: Avant Garde Poetics of the 1990s, and A Poetics of Criticism.

Much of his work involves questioning and undermining conventional distinctions between literary genres. The dynamics of terror and fear have remained central to most of it, as has the sense that much of what passes for literary and cultural knowledge is really just unexamined prejudice.

BOOKS OF POETRY

Three Rengas [with Joseph Battaglia and Keith Eckert] (Binghamton, New York: Triangle Press, 1988); Renga By Mail [with Joseph Battaglia and Keith Eckert] (Binghamton, New York: Triangle Press, 1989); The Cold and the Simple, A Blues (Binghamton, New York: Triangle Press, 1989); Shapes [with Joseph Battaglia and Keith Eckert] (Binghamton, New York: Triangle Press, 1990); By These Tokens (Binghamton, New York: Triangle Press, 1990); Complications from Standing in a Circle (Buffalo, New York: Leave Books, 1993); The Sponge Has Holes (Buffalo: New York: Tailspin Press, 1994); Every Day Is Most of My Time (Norman, Oklahoma: Texture Press, 1994); The Lawless Man (Los Angeles: Upper Limit Music, 1996); Building from White Buildings (Elmwood, Connecticut: Abacus, 1996); Sonnets of a Penny-A-Liner (Washington, DC: Buck Downs Books, 1996); In Case of Damage to Life, Limb, or This Elevator (Morris, Minnesota: Standing Stones Press, 1996); The Haunted Baronet (Washington, DC: Primitive Publications, 1996); Nothing Happened, and Besides I Wasn't There (Washington, DC: Edge Books, 1997); My Christmas Poem (New York: Poetry New York, 1998); Refiguring Foil (Elmwood, Connecticut: Abacus, 1998); Haze: Essays, Poems, Prose (Washington, DC: Edge Books, 2004); Temporary Worker Rides a Subway (Los Angeles: Green Integer, 2004); Felonies of Illusion (Washington, DC: Edge Books, 2008);

from Temporary Worker Rides a Subway

The basic act is for any
trial and sentence, rooftop, bus
we wouldn't have never been
no stop, take top tax dollar shirt show
a passing glance arrested hardware
nor if or couldn't been, bend bare
bleached banner, a certain fancy never mind,
social critic brand name bonanza,
distribute if one as if one, court of out,
calibrate emotional bloodletting, sincere fish
if ever as to ever to, and too,
the man you took you took to be me
simply put the sale was fantastic
third show from the left, no sun from a stone,
bureaucratic barn burning, don't call,
we'll call care or carnage care, deepening
against as putt if any pull, paradise pander
love calculate, intrepid shortchange,
prospect of making you sick
won't have grenades in my garden
genre, simply say say simply, simply,
here's no money sucker, perhaps upon agenda
mean no say when saying no, reference
mistake swordplay, institutional apartment
appears as appears, bolster surrogate slaphouse,
if he didn't stinky cheese, recall
speaking of speech, future water dam in damn
videotape instruction, terrible termination,
I loves what not in such or when,
prove it prove it prove it prove it

_________
Copyright ©2004 by Mark Wallace. Reprinted from Temporary Worker Rides a Subway (Los Angeles: Green Integer, 2004)

For the poem, "Prediction" by Mark Wallace, click below:
http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/future-poem-mark-wallace/

For another small selection of Wallace poems, click here:
http://elevenelevenjournal.com/issue%2010%20finished%20pages/Poetry/mark_wallace.html

For PennSound's selection of readings and videos of Mark Wallace, hit below:
http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Wallace-Mark.php

For a conversation with Mark Wallace, click here:
http://kaurab.tripod.com/poetry_peripherals/mark_wallace.html

book by Giuseppe Steiner Drawn States of Mind

2011-08-08T11:59:00.000-07:00

To view Drawn States of Mind, a book by the Italian Futurist writer Giuseppe Steiner, click below:
http://greeninteger.com/pdfs/steiner-drawn-states-of-mind.pdf

Itō Hiromi

2011-08-08T10:33:00.000-07:00

Itō Hiromi [Japan/lives also in USA]
1955

Born in Tokyo in 1955, Itō Hiromi is one of the most noted contemporary Japanese women writers, having received numerous literary prizes.

Itō first became known in the 1980s for collections of poetry centering on subjects such as sexuality, pregnancy, the erotic desires of females, and other issues, presenting her material in narrative voices that provide the texts with a dramatic urgency. Among her works from this period were Princess (1979), Oume (Green Plumes, 1982), and Territory-Ron 1 & 2 (On Territory, 1985 and 1987).

Itō also wrote numerous essays on women's issues, many of which, bearing names such Good Breasts, Bad Breasts; Tummy, Cheek, Bottom and What Did You Eat?, became famous in Japan.

The poet had been fascinated with Native American poetry since her earliest writings, and in 1990 met the American poet Jerome Rothenberg, visiting Japan, who had been a major force in re-examining Native American poetry. At Rothernberg's invitation, Itō began making regular trips to the US, finally separating from her Japanese husband, the literary scholar Masahiko Nishi, and marrying the British artist Harold Cohen. The couple now lives in Encinitas, California, with Itō traveling back and forth between their home and Japan.

More recently, Itō wrote several novellas, being nominated for an winning several prizes in Japan, including the Noma Literary Prize for New Writers, the Takami Jun Prize, and the Hagiwara Sakutarō Prize.

In Japan she is the translator of Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat.

BOOKS OF POETRY

Kusaki no Sora (Tokyo: Atelier Publishing Planning, 1978); Princess (Tokyo: Shiyosha, 1979); Collected Poems of Hiromi Itō: New Generation Poets Series (Tokyo: Shichosha, 1980); Oume (Tokyo: 1982); Territory-Ron 2 (Tokyo: Shichosa, 1985); Territory-Ron [co-written with Nobuyoshi Araki] (Tokyo: Shichosha, 1987); Collected Poems of Hiromi Itō: Contemporary Poetry Series (Tokyo: Shichosha, 1988); Noro to Saniwa [co-written with Chizuko Ueno] (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1991); Watashi wa Anjuhimeko de aru (Tokyo: Shichosha, 1993); Te, Ashi, Niku, Karada [co-written with Miyako Ishiuchi] (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo, 1995); Kawara Arekusa (Tokyo: Shichosa, 2005)

ENGLISH LANGUAGE TRANSLATIONS

Killing Kanoko: Selected Poems of Hiromi Itō, trans. by Jeffrey Angles (Notre Dame, Indiana: Action Books, 2009)

For a selection of poems translated into English by Itō, click here:
http://www.poetryinternational.org/piw_cms/cms/cms_module/index.php?obj_id=7833

For two new poems by Itō Hiromi, click below:
http://poemsandpoetics.blogspot.com/2011/08/hiromi-ito-two-poems-fathers-uterus-or.html

For a review of Killing Kanoko and a video of the poet reading in English, click here:
http://htmlgiant.com/random/killing-kanoko-by-hiromi-ito/

Gellu Naum

2011-08-08T10:20:00.000-07:00

Naum and Victor Brauner, c. 1935

Gellu Naum [Romania]
1915-2001

Gellu Naum was born in Bucharest, August 1, 1915, the son of romantic poet Andrei Naum (who died in combat at the Battle of Marasesti, WWI) and his wife Maria. In 1933, he began studying philosophy in Bucharest and, in 1938, left to continue his studies at the University of Paris. While completing his doctoral degree (with a dissertation on the French philosopher Peter Abelard, known for his romantic poetry and letters), Naum became the central figure in an expatriate group of Romanians.

In 1935 Naum made an important new friend and mentor. The poet recalled: “One day, as I was walking on Sarindari Street, I came across an exhibition by Victor Brauner. At that time I did not know anything about Brauner, who kept on painting while living in extreme poverty. And I entered that exhibition hall as if destiny attracted me. I found a very nice young man, who asked me if I liked what I saw. And I told him I liked it a lot; that I wanted to write just like he painted. When he asked me what I was writing, I told him I was writing poems. We never parted since.”

A year later, Naum published his first book. Incendiary Traveler, accompanied by Brauner illustrations, who then introduced him to André Breton and the Paris surrealist group. Naum later befriended artists Jacques Herold and Paul Paun, who both went on to illustrate some 20 books by him.

In 1941, while on the Orient Express traveling from Paris to Bucharest, Naum—together with Gherasim Luca, Dolfi Trost and others—organized a Romanian Surrealist group. Over the next five years in Bucharest that group evolved into a veritable movement with manifestoes, magazines, books, exhibitions and other publications. At war’s end Luca, Trost, Virgil Teodorescu, Sasha Pana, Jules Perahim, Jacques Herold, Lucian Boz, Constantin Nisipeanu, Sesto Pals and others, all active in Romanian surrealism, were swiftly banned by the Communist authorities.

By 1947, Naum’s book, The White of the Bone, was rejected by censors, and for the next 20 years Naum was permitted only to write in the approved style, “socialist realism,” praising the leaders of communism (e.g., "Poem about our youth," 1960). He was also permitted to write children’s books (e.g., The Book of Apolodor) and sometimes published Romanian translations of works in French by Gerard de Nerval, Denis Diderot, Samuel Beckett, Rene Char, Jacques Prevert, Franz Kafka, Victor Hugo and even Jules Verne.

After 1967, Naum resumed publishing Surrealist poetry books, leaving us a unique look at the subconscious in more than 40 books, among them, My Tired Father (translated into English by Green Integer in 1999), The Other Side, and The Animal-Tree. His surreal novel Zenobia was published in 1985 and, in 1995, was translated into English by James Brook and Sasha Vlad for Northwestern University Press. His wife, the artist Lygia (Alexandrescu) Naum, was the inspiration and main character of the story.

In 1979 Naum published a collection of works for the theater, Insula. Ceasornicăria Taus. Poate Elenora. To read Ceasornicăria Taus (The Taus Watch Repair Shop), click here: http://ustheater.blogspot.com/2011/08/gellu-naum-taus-watch-repair-shop.html

Although Naum was this writer’s “reluctant” mentor, he visited me in New York, summer 1985 (together with his wife), where we did a bilingual poetry reading with a circle of poets and artists that included the late Ira Cohen, Timothy Baum, and Liuba Ristic on sitar. It was a unique and historic Surrealist event.

Naum received numerous international and national awards for his work, including the 1999 European Prize for Poetry and a nomination for the Nobel Prize. Much of his work, however, remains in need of translating and editing into English.

—Valery Oisteanu

BOOKS OF POETRY

Drumeţul incendiar [with art by Victor Brauner] (Bucharest: 1936); Vasco de Gama (Bucharest: Rotativa, 1940); Culoarul somnului [with art by Victor Vrauner] (Bucharest, 1944); Spectrul longevităţuul 122 de cadavre [in collaboration with Virgil Teodorescu] (Bucharest: Colecţia suprarealistă, 1945); Athanor (Burcharest: Editura pentru Literatură, 1968); Copacul-animal (Bucharest: Editura Eminescu, 1971); Tatăl meu obosit (Bucharest: Editura Cartea Românească, 1972); Descrierea turnului (Bucharest: Editura Albatros, 1975); Partea cealaltă (Burcharest: Editura Cartea Românească , 1980); Malul albastru (Bucharest: Editura Cartea Românească, 1990); Faţa şi suprafaţa urmat de Malul albastru (1989-1993 (Buchaarest: Editura Litera, 1994; Focul negru (Burcharest: Editura Eminescu, 1995); Sora fântână (Editura Eminescu, 1995);
Ascet la baraca de tir (Bucharest: Editura Fundaţiei Culturale Române, 2000)

ENGLISH LANGUAGE TRANSLATIONS

My Tired Father / Pohem, trans. by James Brook, with an interview between Brook and Naum (Los Angeles: Green Integer, 1999); Apollodor, Book One, trans. by M. A. Christi (on line, 2009)

For the Gellu Naum website, with Apollodor, biography, and other materials, click below:
http://www.gellunaum.ro/en/index-en.htm

For a short film on Gellu Naum, "Voluntary Blindness," click here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvmnxTj0q4M

For Naum reading a poem in Romanian, click here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXytTGiHxxw&feature=related

From My Tired Father

My tired father used the thought-gaze

He hit something solid with a pole and turned to me with a triumphant air

In fact everything was limited to a sort of exorcism of fear Only the crossing to the other side of the gesture was important

I had heard of the terrible storms there and I had come to know them

I made identical gestures the dial had no numbers and the sun shone somewhere very low

Weeping I asked for something to drunk My wife mentioned Abend Oh if only we weren't at this moment above the masts in his barrel she sighed There he is and there he should stay I said

And if he sails in a barrel he'll be in a fine spot

Around the same time someone decided to dedicate his life to science (potassium sodium aluminum)

On the other side two groups of three executed identical but inverse movements The second part corresponded to the first The third part excluded any countertendency and became a product

A ball rolled on the floor thus transporting itself into a completely separate category

Everything upset cried out

Between the two (parallel) walls only one man still practiced the old demonstrative functions

Space was a kind of sequential panel on which I could apply anything at all

On waking I had a pulse just as blind and obscure

White the intelligent students acquired sound knowledge within the framework of a demanding program

The language of sets was integrated in small doses

The pendulum's oscillation on which I had meditated a long time showed me furthermore that there were many distinct bodies that in blending neither disturb nor exclude one another They were in some very distance places

A young woman appointed professor in a gigantic school resolved to lover her students

A photographer left his wife and felt compelled to accept the invitation of a priest retired to the south The priest succeeded in reconciling the separate couple

A man was stretched out next to his wife The ceiling reproduced the include of the roof

A yellow spot seemed to emerge from its own absence

—Translated from the Romanian by James Brook

To buy a copy of the book, My Tired Father, click below:
http://www.greeninteger.com/book.cfm?-My-Tired-Father-Pohem-Gellu-Naum-&BookID=26

____
English language translation copyright ©1999 by James Brook. Reprinted from My Tired Father/Pohem (Los Angeles: Green Integer, 1999).

Gale Nelson

2011-08-08T08:03:00.000-07:00

Gale Nelson [USA]
1961

Born in Los Angeles in 1961, Gale Nelson moved to Rhode Island in 1986, where he has taught at Trinity Repertory Conservatory and Brown University. At Brown he is the Assistant Director of the Program to Literary Arts.

Nelson is married to fiction writer Lori Baker.

Editor of paradigm press, Nelson began publishing his poetry in the early 1990s with stare decisis (1991), Little Brass Pump (1992), and The Mystic Cypher (1993). To date he has published eight books and chapbooks, the most recent being This Is What Happens When Talk Ends (2011), a work of 8 sets of 8 poems that each follow the vowel pattern of a particular passage Shakespeare. These works to not contain the playwrights "content," but try to build toward their own coherence. The sets are not presented in linear succession, but arranged in a chess patter, the earliest surviving knight's circuit, attributed to al-Adli ar-Rumi of Baghdad, presumed to date from 840 AD.

Nelson's work has also appeared in the anthologies 49 + 1: Nouveaux poètes américains and The Joy of Phonetics and Accents.

David Harrison Horton has described Nelson's poems as "....a landscape of structures and variables, carefully recording instances in which language enjambs to the point of crisis and consigns itself to an altered path. Nelson flashes in and out of poetic modes that he is able to rein in from the brink of cacophony and craft into an engaging series of poems."

BOOKS OF POETRY

stare decisis (Providence, Rhode Island, 1991); Little Brass Pump (Buffalo, New York: Leave Books, 1992); The Mystic Cypher (Norman, Oklahoma: Texture Chapbooks, 1993); Spectral Angel (Sausalito, California: Duration Press, 1999); In It (Providence, Rhode Island: paradigm, 2000); Intersecting Mr. Sams (Providence, Rhode Island: paradigm, 2000); ceteris paribus (Providence, Rhode Island, 2000); greek myth in eggcup relief (Providence, Rhode Island, 2001); This Is What Happens When Talk Ends (Providence, Rhode Island: Burning Deck, 2011)

For a selection of three poems, click here:
http://www.chax.org/eoagh/issuefive/nelson.html

For a suite of poems by Gale Nelson, click below:
http://www.coconutpoetry.org/nelsong1.html

╬Winner of the PIP Gertrude Stein Awards for Innovative Poetry in English
2009-2010

Heart’s Evolving Signal Swelling

Foisted picket honors summit’s slope
as cleft cot binds our plumes in dung’s gloom.
All shapes could draw clouds, stub books, cut off fumes
nicely, yet spell no blood spent on least-juiced
orange. Lotus blooms, but digits coin fortunes. Any
pout quiets laugh’s tug on tongue,
courts pleasant quarters stolen even in
frost’s dusty spell. Sausage folded in duty’s heft causes
infiltrated salad doom in spite of
candor’s fine tact. Bottom’s up this vast beer bent,
sopping enough frothed cask but ale’s last mine.
Ease this liar’s cascade,
pose affinity’s louche vanity on last sudden
sun-lit branch. Cannot panel-long joists bend in?
No. Patter’s tooth-bust jag casts mood’s dull gloom. Limb’s mask
is daft as tumbles fall, and anyone yet tamed
postures poem’s stanza of dancing
in wrack’s cant. Tundra binds tonsils and igloo strips into
treacled home. Saucers mixed in, saucers
yet no cups in this blessed top shelf. Friends
spill nothing, break in on dare. That’s parsed but
an agony. Spare my trauma my siphon’s blade
and float past teaching’s flame.
Infighting, berating ill friend’s long relapse,
can’t we stop being dolts? Can all madness blind me,
upset or agonize? Must
that be all? Moisten not the lost lip,
carry ever on the fiendish aloof bent, alone.
Obscene candid yelps plead my insect’s cold heart
in vast desert’s blinded gloom, yet valiant bids
shall cancel either because of tether’s crawl.
Tonnage ingraining supply, ingots fadge only luck’s
tumble. Who enlists predicts eased plan
of entombed career talents in
inexact falls. Telescoped star shards twine those
cavities parsed as fluted straws, but
stains can suddenly place sampled lances on cup’s
dim clamor. Sugar beets grow between cusps,
and out above this fancy land,
closer stars bend in neutered shame.
Bid me no succor, honor just these saddened chromes

_____
Copyright ©2009 by Gale Nelson. Reprinted from EOAGH, no. 5 (2009).

review-essay on Susan Howe, "Keeping History a Secret" by Douglas Messerli

2011-08-06T10:03:00.000-07:00

KEEPING HISTORY A SECRET
by Douglas Messerli

Susan Howe Secret History of the Dividing Line (New York: Telephone Books, 1978)

In 1976 The Western Borders (Tuumba Press) introduced its readers to the curious wordscapes of Susan Howe, a writer who, in her unusual blend of poetic and narrative elements—a combination that Jonathan Culler has perceptively described as a rapidly emerging “non-genre”—both confused and intrigued. Like that of the “language poets” (Bruce Andrews, Charles Bernstein, Ray DiPalma, Ron Silliman, Barrett Watten, and others), Howe’s work often focused on language wrenched from the context of the sentence, phrase, even the word itself, and arranged in somewhat unusual typographical configurations on the page. Yet, in antipathy to “language” concerns, the language of The Western Borders, fragmented though it was, moved always in the direction of narrative, towards legend, dream and myth. Now, in The Secret History of the Dividing Line, Howe not only demonstrates that she has not abandoned this seeming contradiction, but that it is at the very heart of her eccentric vision.

I describe Howe’s work as “eccentric,” not because it is particularly peculiar or odd, but rather because, in the best sense of that word, her concerns are “out of the ordinary,” in fact, are extraordinary. Howe is one of a special breed of authors (I can think of only one other contemporary writer, Bernadette Mayer) who thoroughly explore the terrain between utterance and gesture, between word and act, that narrow gap, as she puts it in Secret History, between “salvages or savages.”

Indeed, Howe’s work suggests the world as actualized is a savage one; man in motion is a terrible pagan, battling, plundering, raping his way through history like the Vikings. Accordingly, any chronicle of man inevitably is filled with terror. Man is a warrior, thus his history is always a tale of war; as Howe writes, “I know the war-whoop in each dusty narrative.” Story-telling, then, becomes an act of recreating its horror.

I search the house
hunting out people for trial
. . . . . . . . . . . .

Needles fell in strands
Daggers like puppets scissored the sky

Millions faced north
the Emperor’s last Conscription
the year One.

Some craned away
some used their elbows for meat
families knocking their heads together
and thanking the Gods outloud.

Even in sleep mankind moves through its dreams, in Howe’s imagination, as “troops of marble messengers,” “half grotesque, half magical,” enchanted speaking beasts, “acting out roles.”

Simultaneously, however, Howe implies that he very language that evokes this horrific vision, the very words that chronicle man’s mad actions, are also his salvation, a potential salvage. With man’s enchantment, with his amazing ability to record his own actions in speech, comes the gift of creation, which, in turn, momentarily stops that flow of meaningless acts through time and space. “Our law,” Howe observes, resides in “vocables/of shape or sound.” Hence, language must be recognized as a thing apart from nature, as separate from man’s headlong rush into chaos. For Howe, just as for the “language” poets, “words need always be torn away from the “icy tremors of abstraction,” for their old associations, and brought to life instead as objects, as things existing in reality in their own right. If language is to have any power, a word must be recognized as a thing, as “an object set up to indicate a boundary or position,” a “MARK/border/bulwark....” Only then can the word be used to heal the devastation like an “anecdote.”

Accordingly, the narratives of Secret History are purposely attenuated; the history is kept a arm’s length, even thwarted. History must be kept a secret; it cannot be permitted to dominate, for that would be to abandon the work to chaos, to the mere recounting of man’s terrifying inhuman acts. At times in Secret History it is almost as if the teller of the tale has been metamorphosed into a stammering, absent-minded historian, as the tale, once present, fortuitously is lost to the sound of human speech:

O
where ere
he He A

ere I were
wher

father father

O it is the old old

myth
. . . . . .

As Howe has put it in a more recent poem (in Hawk-Wind, no. 2 [1979], 19), “the real plot was invisible.”

On the other hand, Howe recognizes that she must be careful always to walk a fine line between story and speech. If she is to continue to explore that dividing line between chaos and order, she cannot afford to give up the tale. To do so would be to see man as a debilitated schizophrenic, as a creature doomed to act in one way and to think (for to speak is to think) in another. Moreover, Howe recognizes language as an object can be a dangerous thing to a creature in such continual motion; the mark, order, bulwark can suddenly become a boundary, impaling the animal “in a netting of fences.” The two, she indicates, must always be superimposed: language existing in its own space, necessarily must coexist. “The Fortunate Islands,” Howe perceived in The Western Borders, “are in The Sea of Darkness.”

Such a controlled tension invariably results in a certain degree of coyness; and behind that there even may be a kind of fear of permitting the artist his full range as both actor and creator. Yet, one is reminded in this of the painfully brilliant fictions of Jane Bowles, a writer who, like Howe, attempted to describe those subtle relationships between act and speech; the tensions such as those inherent in works by writers such as Howe and Bowles stem less from fear than from these authors’ commitment to their art, their absolute belief in language and in its ability both to repeat and make new reality. One can ask no more of any writer. That Susan Howe has so incredibly combined the tasks of both remembering and creating is an added reward for her readers.

College Park, Maryland, 1980
Reprinted from American Book Review, II, no. 6 (September-October 1980).

Susan Howe

2011-08-06T09:52:00.000-07:00

from thorow

Susan Howe [USA]
1937

Born in Boston in 1937, Susan Howe grew up in Cambridge. Her mother, Mary Manning, of Irish birth, had written plays for and acted with the famed Abbey Theatre. Manning had close relationships with many of the noted Irish authors, including Samuel Beckett, and later would write the screenplay for Mary Ellen Bute's brilliant film, Passages from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake.

Her father, Mark DeWolfe Howe, was a professor at Harvard Law School, and her sister is the noted American poet and fiction writer Fanny Howe.

Susan graduated from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 1961, marrying the painter Harvey Quaytman, a marriage which produced a daughter, the artist R. H. Quaytman. The relationship ended in divorce.

Howe married sculptor David von Schlegell, living with him until his death in 1992. Together they had a son, Mark von Schlegell, now a writer.

Her third husband, Peter Hewitt Hare, a philosopher and Professor at the University of Buffalo, died in 2008.

Although Howe began as a artist, in the mid 1970s she turned to poetry, producing a series of small books, Hinge Picture, Secret History of the Dividing Line, The Western Borders, and Cabbage Gardens among them. These works, as well as her later mature writing, were steeped in history and used a somewhat fragmented language, often taken from older literary texts, to create new semiotic possibilities. Although her work perhaps has more resonance with the Objectivists and the continuation of Black Mountain writers, Howe's work was also admired by the "Language" poets, and poems of hers appeared early on in Douglas Messerli's anthology "Language" Poetries (1987) and Ron Silliman's In the American Tree anthology (1986). Her work has also been included in other contexts in Messerli's From the Other Side of the Century: A New American Poetry 1960-1990 (1994) and Paul Hoover's Postmodern American Poetry (1994).

In 1990 Sun & Moon Press combined three earlier texts, Pythagorean Silence (1982), Defenestration of Prague (1983), and The Liberties (1983) together in The Europe of Trusts, one of the most beloved of Howe's publications.

Since the 1990s Howe has continued to produce exquisitely deconstructed historical and mythical texts in order to reveal hitherto unknown perspectives of the present and past.

Another one of Howe's most popular works has been her personal biographical study of the poet Emily Dickinson, My Emily Dickinson, first published in 1985, and reissued in 2007. She also wrote a book of critical studies, The Birth-mark: Unsettling the Wilderness in American Literary History (1993). Howe was a professor of literature at New York State University, Buffalo.

Howe's work has continued to be highly influential on American poetry and has drawn a wide range of readers. In 2011 she won the prestigious Bollingen Prize in American Poetry, and in 2008 she was the Anna-Maria Kellen Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin.

BOOKS OF POETRY

The End of Art (1974); Hinge Picture (New York: Telephone Books, 1974); Chanting at the Crystal Sea (Boston: Fire Exit, 1975); Secret History of the Dividing Line (New York: Telephone Books, 1978); The Western Borders (Willits, California: Tuumba, 1979); Cabbage Gardens (Chicago: Fathom Press, 1979); The Liberties (Guilford, Connecticut: Loon Books, 1980); Pythagorean Silence (New York: Montemora Foundation, 1982); Defenestration of Prague (New York: Kulchur, 1983); Incloser (Santa Fe: Weaselsleeves, 1985); Heliopathy (1986); Articulation of Sound Forms in Time (Awede Press, 1987); A Bibliography of the King's Book, or Eikon Basilike (Providence, Rhode Island: Paradigm Press, 1989); The Europe of Trusts (Los Angeles: Sun & Moon Press, 1990/ reprinted New York: New Directions, 2002); Singularities (Hanover, New Hampshire: Wesleyan University Press, 1990); Silence Wager Stories (Providence, Rhode Island: Paradigm Press, 1992); The Nonconformist's Memorial (New York: New Directions, 1993); Frame Structures (New York: New Directions, 1996); Pierce-Arrow (New York: New Directions, 1999); Bed Hangings I [with Susan Bee] (New York: Granary Books, 2001); Bed Hangings II [with Susan Bee] (New York: Granary Books,2002); Kidnapped (Clonemel, Ireland: Coracle, 2002); The Midnight (New York: New Directions, 2003); Souls of the Labadie Tract (New York: New Directions, 2007); THAT THIS [with photograms by James Welling] (New York: New Directions, 2010)

For poetry from Cabbage Gardens, click here:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/172011

For a selection from The Blibliography of the King's Book, or Eikon Basilike, click below:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/172013

For "Incloser," click here:
http://pmc.iath.virginia.edu/text-only/issue.191/howe.191

For a large selection of audio readings by Susan Howe, click here to reach PennSound:
http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Howe.php

essay on Susan Howe, "Poetry as History Revised: Susan Howe's 'Scaattering As Behavior Toward Risk,'" by Ming-Qian Ma

2011-08-06T09:34:00.000-07:00

For as essay on Susan Howe,"Poetry as History Revised:
Susan Howe's 'Scattering As Behavior Toward Risk'" by Ming-Qian Ma, click here:
http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/howe/howe_ma.html

essay on Susan Howe, "WHOWE: On Susan Howe" by Rachel Blau DuPlessis

2011-08-06T09:31:00.000-07:00

For an essay on Susan Howe, "WHOWE: On Susan Howe" by Rachel Blau DuPlessis,
click here:
http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/howe/howe_duplessis.html

essay on Susan Howe and Ron Silliman, "Language Poetry and the Lyric Subject" by Marjorie Perloff

2011-08-06T09:29:00.001-07:00

For an essay on Susan Howe and Ron Silliman, "Language Poetry and the Lyric Subject: Ron Silliman's Albany, Susan Howe's Buffalo" by Marjorie Perloff, click below:
http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/authors/perloff/langpo.html

Turgut Uyar

2011-08-06T07:40:00.000-07:00

Turgut Uyar [Turkey]
1927-1985

Born in Ankara on August 4, 1927, Turgut Uyar began his adult life at the Konya Military School, were for several years he served as staff officer. During this period he began to write poetry, publishing Arz-i Hall in 1949. His first book already shows the influence of several poets of the Garip writers, including Orhan Veli. The poet is often described as belonging to the "second new" stage of the Garip group.

When he resigned his commission in 1958, Uyar went to work at the Cellulose and Paper Consortium in Ankara. During these years Uyar developed a friendship with Turkish poet Cemal Süreya.

Uyar's book, Tütünler Islak (Wet Tobacco), won the Seven Hills Prize for Poetry, a prestigious award in Turkey.

Uyar died in Istanbul in 1985.

BOOKS OF POETRY

Arz-ı Hal (1949); Türkiyem (1952-1963); Dünyanın En Güzel Arabistanı (1959); Tütünler Islak (1962); Her Pazartesi (1968); Divan (1970); Toplandılar (1974); Toplu Şiir (1981); Kayayı Delen İncir (1982); Dün Yok mu (1984); Büyük Saat (1984)

ENGLISH LANGUAGE TRANSLATIONS

selections in Feyyaz Kayacan Fergar, ed. Modern Turkish Poetry (Ware, England: The Rockinham Press, 1992); selection in Murat Nemet-Nejat, ed. and trans., EDA: An Anthology of Contemporary Turkish Poetry (Jersey City, New Jersey: Talisman House, 2004); selections in George Messo, ed. and trans., İkinci Yeni: The Turkish Avant-Garde (unpublished)

For a selection of English language translations by Uyar, click below:
http://www.turkishpoetry.net/turgutuyar.htm

One Day, Early in the Morning…

Say I knock at the door one day, early morning,
Wake you from your sleep:
And yet, fog still lingers on the Golden Horn.
There’s the echo of ferry horns.
Twilight everywhere,
The bridge is still up.
Say I knock at the door early one morning…

My journey has been long
The train passed over iron bridges at night.
Villages in the middle of nowhere with five or ten houses.
Telegraph poles all along the route
Running to keep up with us.

Suppose I sang songs from the window,
Woke up, dozed off, woke up again.
My ticket, third class
Poorer than poor.
Say I couldn’t buy that meerschaum necklace
So I bought you a basket of apples instead…

Haydarpaşa open your arms we might have said
The ferry glittering at the pier
Air a little cold
Sea smelling of fish and tar
Say I crossed from the bridge to the other shore in a rowing boat,
Climbed our hill in a single breath…

Say I knock at the door early one morning,
- Who’s that? You’d ask in a sleepy voice.
Your hair ruffled, and heavy-eyed.
Who knows how beautiful you’d look my love,
If I knock at the door one morning,
Wake you from your sleep
And yet, fog still lingers on the Golden Horn.
There’s the squeal of factory whistles.

—Translated from the Turkish by George Messo

Evening Dream

Far off ships are passing now
My heart is scattered all over the decks.
Lightened nights, lute sounds, cheese and bread
I’ve neither ticket nor money nor friend
My heart tremors as I look around
- Turgut wake up, wake up poor one
This is Terme.

Lorries are passing over Terme bridge,
Workmen talk three here, five there
A night begins, half black, half red
I light my cigarette and return home…
- Sail on, ships, sail on
Give greetings to wherever you go
Some day far from all worries
I’ll come too…

—Translated from the Turkish by George Messo

Night with Deer

But there was nothing frightening there
Only everything was made of nylon
And when we died we died in thousands against the sun
But before we found the night with deer
We were all afraid like children.

You should all know the night with deer
In far off forests wild and green
Sun sinking under its weight at the asphalt’s end
Redeeming us all from time

First we dug into the earth
Then vanished
From gladiators and wild toothed beasts
From giant cities
Staying hidden and fighting
We saved the night with deer

Yes we were alone but we had hope
If we saw three houses we took it for a city
If we saw three pigeons Mexico came to mind
Evenings we loved to walk the streets
And we loved the way women waited for their husbands
Later we’d drink wine red or white
Whether we knew it or not it was because of the night with deer

—Translated from the Turkish by George Messo

English language translation copyright ©2011 by George Messo, reprinted from the unpublished manuscript, İkinci Yeni: The Turkish Avant-Garde

F. T. Marinetti and others "Futurist Synthesis of the War"

2011-08-05T11:25:00.001-07:00

For a manifesto-poem by F. T. Marinetti and other Futurists, "Futurist
Synthesis of the War," click here:

http://greeninteger.com/pdfs/marinetti-futurist-synthesis-of-the-war.pdf

Pierre Martory

2011-08-05T08:56:00.000-07:00

Pierre Martory [France]
1920-1998

Pierre Martory was born in Bayonne, France, on December 1, 1920, of a Basque mother and French father who was an army officer. He spent much of his childhood in Morocco, where his father was posted, and returned there often as an adult. After passing his baccalauréat he enrolled at the École des Sciences Politiques in Paris in the fall of 1939, but was forced to flee the Nazi army in June 1940. He joined the French army and was shipped to North Africa, where he ended up fighting alongside the Allied forces in what had become the Free French Army. After the war he held a number of jobs, first at the unlikely-sounding Biarritz American University, then as an airlines clerk in Bordeaux and Paris, as assistant to the anthropologist Marcel Griaule, reporter at Le Monde Diplomatique, and finally as arts editor of Paris Match, where he remained for twenty-five years. He died in October 1998.

His novel Phébus ou le beau Mariage was published by Denoël in 1953 to respectable reviews (a second competed novel, Un jeune Homme attachant, remains unpublished). Meanwhile he wrote poetry almost constantly throughout his life, publishing only a few poems in little magazines when he was briefly part of a group of poets (including Hubert Juin and Pierre-Jean Oswald) who met regularly at a café on the Ile St. Louis to read their work aloud to each other.

As his executor, I have been classifying his papers, beginning with a school copybook containing more than one thousand lines of poetry written in Tunisia during the war. Of the poems translated here [that selection does not appear], "Music" is dated 1948. The others are from a typed manuscript titled "La Lyre d'Aloès," which appears to date from the early 1950s. It is dedicated to a friend, Simone Bitterly, with the line "en attendant une édition sérieuse"—until there is a real edition. A handwritten note from the publisher Seghers is inserted in the manuscript. Dated simply "Tuesday," it announced the acceptance of six of the poems for publication, but adds, "Unfortunately we can't give you a date—perhaps in a month, two months, or six months." This seems to have been typical of his dealings with French publishers.

He has had better luck in America. Poems of his have appeared in Poetry, New Yorker, American Poetry Review, and a number of smaller publications. A collection, Every Question but One, was published in 1989 by Ground Water Press. Sheep Meadow Press has published two collections: The Landscape Is Behind the Door, translated by me, and Veilleur de Jours, in French.

—John Ashbery

Copyright ©2002 by John Ashbery
photograph copyright by John Ashbery

BOOKS OF POETRY

Veilleur de Jours (Riverdale-on-Hudson, New York: Sheep Meadow Press, 1997)

ENGLISH LANGUAGE TRANSLATIONS

Every Question but One (Hudson, New York: Groudwater Press, 1990); The Landscape Is Behind the Door, trans. by John Ashbery (Riverdale-on-Hudson, New York: Sheep Meadow Press, 1994); The Landscapist: Selected Poems, trans. by John Ashbery (Riverdale-on-Hudson, New York: Sheep Meadow Press, 2008)

For a selection of five poems in English, press here:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/pierre-martory

For another selection of poems in English, click below:
http://germspot.blogspot.com/2005/04/pierre-martory-p4.html

For an audio interview between Ashbery and Michael Silverblatt on Ashbery's early days in
Paris and his friendship with Martory, click here:
http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/bw/bw090521john_ashbery

Jüri Talvet

2011-08-05T08:01:00.000-07:00

Jüri Talvet [Estonia]
1945

Jüri Talvet was born in Pänu, Estonia on December 17, 1945. He received his MA degree from the University of Tartu in English philology in 1972, and went on to take his PhD at Leningrad (St. Petersburg) University in 1981 on Western European Literature.

In 1974 he taught literary history at the University of Tartu, and after receiving his PhD he went on to become the Professor and Chair of Comparative Literature at Tartu. He has also chaired the Estonian Association of Comparative Literature, and is the editor of Interlitteraria, a annual journal of comparative literature.

Talvet has also translated Spanish language works, including by authors Francisco de Quevedo and Gabriel García Márquez, into Estonian.

He has travelled and lectured widely, speaking of Estonian literature in Cuba, Mexico, Nicaragua, Spain, Finland, Norway, Belgium, Poland, Sweden, the US, Canada and the Netherlands.

His first book of poetry, Äratused (Awakenings) appeared in 1981, followed by six books over the years since, including Ambur ja karje, Hinge kulg ja kliima üllatused, Unest, lumest, and, most recently, Silmad peksavad une seinu (Eyes Beat the Walls of Sleep). In 1997 he was awarded highest poetry honor, the Juhan Liiv Prize.

With the American H. L Hix, Talvet has edited and translated a volume of Liiv's poetry in English The Mind Would Bear No Better. A book-length essay by Talvet, A Call for Cultural Symbiosis (Guernica), and two books of poetry have been translated into English. Tavet has had his work translated into several other languages as well.

He and his wife and three children live in Tartu.

BOOKS OF POETRY

Äratused (Tallinn: Eesti Raamat, 1981) Ambur ja karje (Tallinn: Eesti Raamat, 1986) Hinge kulg ja kliima üllatused(Tallinn: Eesti Raamat, 1990) Eesti eleegia ja teisi luuletusi (Tallinn: Kupar, 1997) Kas sul viinamarju ka on? (Tartu: Ilmamaa, 2001) Unest, lumest (Tartu: Ilmamaa, 2005) Silmad peksavad une seinu (Tartu, Ilmamaa, 2008)

ENGLISH LANGUAGE TRANSLATIONS

Estonian Elegy. Selected Poems, trans. by H. L. Hix (Toronto: Guernica, 2008); Of Snow, Of Soul, trans. by H. L. Hix (Toronto: Guernica, 2010)

For an English-language translation of "Underwater Vilnius," click here:
http://www.festivaldepoesiademedellin.org/pub.php/en/Revista/ultimas_ediciones/81_82/talvet.html

For a larger selection of Talvet's poetry in English (his home page), click below:
http://talvet.edicypages.com/

For a video of Talvet reading his poetry in Spanish at the International Poetry Festival in
Medellín, click here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btWdNxjNIH8

F. T. Marinetti "Technical Manifesto of Futurist Literature"

2011-08-05T07:23:00.000-07:00

To read F. T. Marinetti's "Technical Manifesto of Futurist Literature" click below:
http://greeninteger.com/pdfs/marinetti-technical-manifesto-of-futurist-literature.pdf

book by Djuna Barnes The Book of Repulsive Women

2011-08-05T07:12:00.001-07:00

Below is another Green Integer/PIP on-line poetry publication,
The Book of Repulsive Women by Djuna Barnes.
http://greeninteger.com/pdfs/barnes-book-of-repulsive-women.pdf

Nuno Júdice

2011-08-05T07:00:00.000-07:00

Nuno Júdice [Portugal]
1949

Born in Mexilhoeira Grande, Portugal on April 29, 1949, Nuno Júdice graduated in Romance Philology at the University of Lisbon. He received his PhD at the Universidade Nova (New University) in 1989, where is now professor.

From 1997 to 2004 Júdice served as cultural attaché for Portugal in Paris. He has also served as advisor to the Instituto Camões.

The author has written numerous books of fiction (beginning with Última Palavra: "Sim" /Last word: "Yes") in 1977. He has also published plays and literary criticism. But he is best known as a poet, with 30 books of poetry to date.

His first volume was A Noção de Poema (The Notion of a Poem) in 1972, followed, that same year with O Pavão Sonoro (The Sound of Peacocks). In 1985 he received the PEN Award for Lira de Liquen (Lichen Lyre), and in 1994 he was awarded the Portuguese Association of Writers award for Meditação sobre Ruinas (Meditation on Ruins). The book was also a finalist for the European literary prize, Aristeion. He published a volume of collected poems in 2001.

Júdice also edited the literary magazine, Tabacaria (The Tobacconist).

Translator Richard Zenith writes of Júdice's poetry: We find, lightly embedded in his verses, a profound theoretical reflection on life and on individual lives – lives he has perhaps lived, or dreamt, or witnessed. Some of the poems read like parables or allegories, but what do the symbols mean? Maybe they don’t mean anything, and maybe that doesn’t matter. Júdice’s poetry is a journey through memories, visions, real and imagined experiences, ideas and hypotheses, without any hope – or concern – to arrive at a conclusion."

BOOKS OF POETRY

A Noção de Poema (Lisbon: Publicações Dom Quixote, 1972); O Pavão Sonoro (1972); Crítica Doméstica dos Paralelipipedos (Lisbon: Publicações Dom Quixote, 1973); As Inumeráveis Águas (Lisbon: Assírio & Alvim, 1974); O Mecanismo Romântico da Fragmentação (Porto: Inova, 1975); Nos Braços da Exigua Luz (1976); O Corte na Ênfase (Oporto: Inova, 1978); O Voo de Igitur num Copo de Dados (Lisbon: & etc., 1981); A Partiha Dos mitos (1982); Lira de Líquen (Lisbon: Rolim, 1985); A Condescendência do Ser (Lisbon: Quetzal, 1988); Enumeração de Sombras (Lisbon: Quetzal, 1989); As Regras da Perspectiva (Lisbon: Quetzal, 1990); Uma Sequêde Outubro (1991); Obra Poética 1972-1985 (1991); Um Canto na Espessura do Tempo (Lisbon: Quetzal, 1992); Meditação sobre Ruínas (Lisbon: Quetzal, 1995); O Movimento do Mundo (Lisbon: Quetzal, 1996); Poems em Voz Alta (1996); A Fonte da Vida (Lisbon: Quetzal, 1997); Raptos (1998); Teoria Geral do Sentimento (Lisbon: Quetzal, 1999); Poesia Reunida (1967-2000) (Lisbon: Publicações Dom Quixote, 2000); Cartografia de Emoções (Lisbon: Publicações Dom Quixote, 2001); O Estado dos Campos (Lisbon: Publicações Dom Quixote, 2003); Geometria variável (Lisbon: Publicações Dom Quixote, 2005); As coisas mais simples (2006); A Matéria do Poema (2008); O Breve Sentimento do Eterno (2008); Guia de Conceitos Básicos (Lisbon: Publicações Dom Quixote, 2010)

For a selection of English language translations of Júdice's poetry, click below:
http://www.poetryinternational.org/piw_cms/cms/cms_module/index.php?obj_id=4654

For a video of Júdice reading from his poetry in Portuguese, click here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jHhHAqMgf8

poem by Charles Bernstein "Recalculating"

2011-08-04T12:59:00.001-07:00

For a new poem by Charles Bernstein, "Recalculating" from the on-line
magazine Conjunctions, click below:
http://www.conjunctions.com/justout.htm

Carlos Marzal

2011-08-04T10:52:00.001-07:00

Carlos Marzal [Spain]
1961

Born in Valencia, Spain in 1961, Carlos Marzal received his college degree in Hispanic Philology from the University of Valencia. For ten years he has edited the journal Quites (Remove).

His first book of poetry, El último de la fiesta (The Last of the Party), was published in 1987, and Marzal has published several volumes since, the fourth volume, Metales pesados (Heavy Metals) winning the Critics Award of Spanish poetry. In 2003 he won the Antonio Machado Poetry Award, and in 2004 the XVI International Poetry Prize.

Marzal's poetry has been grouped with the la poesía de la experiencia "group" (poetry of experience) of the 1980s and 1990s, along with writers such as Luis García Montero, Felipe Benítez Reyes and Vicente Gallego.

The poet has also published a novel Los reinos de la casualidad in 2005 and critical writing.

Marzal continues to reside in Valencia.

BOOKS OF POETRY

El último de la fiesta (Valencia: Renacimiento, 1987); La vida de frontera (Valencia: Renacimiento, 1991); Los países nocturnos (Barcelona: Tusquets, 1996); Metales pesados (Barcelona: Tusquets, 2001); Poesía a contratiempo (ed. by Andrés Neuman) (Maillot Amarillo, 2002); Sin porqué ni adónde (ed. Francisco Díaz de Castro) (Valencia: Renacimiento, 2003); Fuera de mí (XVI Premio de Poesía Fundación Loewe; Visor, 2004); El corazón perplejo (Barcelona: Tusquets, 2005).

ENGLISH LANGUAGE TRANSLATION

No Other North: Selected Recent Poems of Carlos Marzal, trans. by Nathaniel Perry (in manuscript)

For a reading and performance by Carlos Marzal in Spanish, click here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4rbTFz66LY

Emblem on the Wind

In this blink of history,
a history which isn't even a blink
in the pages of the astral calendar;
with the strange chisel of language,
language which just barely suggets
a way of feeling the world;
I want to leave a prive emblem written
on the wind, one which requires no further emphasis:
Your love has ennobled all that exists
Your love, which embodies
the entire testimony of love, your language,
the clear blinkthrough which you see
our shared home in the calendar.
Your love, which in itself suggests
the best way to feel the world,
a just emblem
with which love is written on the wind,
and the wind passes through history.

—Translated from the Spanish by Nathaniel Perry

(from Metales pesados, 2001)

O Bird, My Fright, My Fear

O bird, my fright, my fear,
wandering nightingale of shadows,
leave off your migrations for a moment,
abandon your motiveless errancies,
turn your wings in the inhospitable air
and alter your course towards the country
of permanent clear-sightedness,
that fatal landscape where there'll be no excuse
for your endless insomnia.

O bird, my fear, my fright,
delicate nightingale of my unease,
glide gracefully over the dun-colored world,
and alight on the single brach
a tree has reserved for you.

You haven't forgotte, delirious crow,
with you awful knowledge of reallity,
that to lives is a weak illusion,
a phantom incandescence snuffed out in the night.
You haven't forgotten, inconsolable bird,
that the sun will blink out and the universe
will be a tundra, frozen, unaware that it is
a tundra, with no memory of the sun or its failing,
no crow, no bird in inconsolable flight.

For this, O melancholy bird,
I want you now to sing a senseless song,
and for your tiny trill to ring out
in a moment of eternal purity,
like an act of absolute grace—
for your warbling to be a prayer
to the coming god of chaos,
a hymn composed on behalf of oblivion,
a rapture of casual splendor
that will carry over the farthest hills
that will celebrate, in perfect scandal,
the frozen ruins of the future.

If you can do that, I will forgive your wanderings,
warm creature of anguish,
nightingale of my vagabond soul,
O crow, my scarce, my fright,
O bird of fear.

—Translated from the Spanish by Nathaniel Perry

(from Metales pesados, 2001)

English language translations copyright ©2011 by Nathaniel Perry. Reprinted from his unpublished manuscript No Other North: Selected Recent Poems of Carlos Marzal

Claude Gauvreau

2011-08-04T09:28:00.000-07:00

Claude Gauvreau [Canada]
1925-1971

Claude Gauvreau was born in Montréal on August 19, 1925. As a young man he attended the Collège Ste-Marie, focusing on classical studies, followed by his studies of philosophy at the Université de Montréal, where he graduated with a B.A.

Gauvreau made his literary début at the early age of thirteen, writing and producing the play Ma vacation.

Later, through his brother Pierre, who attended l'École des beaux-arts, he became friendly with the painter Paul-Émile Borduas, who introduced him to modernist movements such as Dadaism, Surrealism, and Automatism, and through whom he met most of the major figures in the Montreal art community. He co-signed Borduas's famous manifesto, Refus global (Total Refusal), and wrote on the theoretical aspects of Automatism for the general public.

During this period Gauvreau wrote poetry that would not be published until much later in his life. The poems, ‘Entrailles’ were finally heard in the 1956 play Sur fil métamorphose. Étal mixte, composed in 1950, was published in 1968. Only Brochuges, which he worked on during the summer of 1954, was published early, in 1957. The poems of these volumes break word order, and dismember syntactical structures as language moves into phonic sounds, screams, and howls.

In 1947 Gauvreau wrote his first adult play, Bien-être, performed with another work at the Montreal Repertory Theatre. The actress in that play as Muriel Guilbault, with whom Gauvreau fell deeply in love. La jeune fille et la lune and Les grappes lucides followed in 1959, both at l'École des beaux-arts.

The suicide of Guilbault unhinged Gauvreau, and over the next eight years Gauvreau was institutionalized ten times, continuing to write radio plays and working on a novel, Beauté baroque (1952), about the life of Guilbault.

In 1956, Gauvreau wrote La charge de l'orignal épormyable, a work many believe is his dramatic masterwork. The play was not performed until 1970 at the Theatre du Gesu in Montréal. Others might argue for Les Oranges son vertes, a play performed at Théâtre du Nouveau Monde in 1972.

The year before, on July 7, 1971, Gauvreau fell to his death from the roof of his apartment, which some claimed was a suicide; the coroner ruled the death accidental.

Gauvreau's works, involving a deconstruction of language far before the deconstructionists began their writings, were deemed by some directors as impossible to perform, but today all of his work stands as a testament to his experimentation.

BOOKS OF POETRY AND RELATED TEXTS

Sur fil metamorphose (Montréal: Erta, 1956); Brochuges (Montréal: Editions Feu-Antonin, 1957); Etal mixte (Montréal: Editions d'Orphee, 1968 / published as Etal mixte et autres poemes, 1948-1970 (Montréal: Hexagone, 1993); Oeuvres creatices completes (Montréal: Parti Pris, 1977)

ENGLISH LANGUAGE TRANSLATIONS

Entrails, ed. by Ray Ellenwood (Toronto: Coach House Press, 1981)

For a reading from 1970 by Gauvreau in French, click below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5g5lXcFIwd0

For a reading in French of Gauvreau's work by Nathalie Lessard, click here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmRGRI6K_iw&feature=related

The Oval Mayonnaise and the Back of the Medieval Choir

Yum Yum Yum Yum Yum Yum Yum Yum Yum Yum Yum
Yum Yum Yum Yum Yum Yum Yum Yum Yum Yum Yum
Tiou—tiutiu—Panpan la falette
Breachclout—bobo
Agaïante ipluche
Mutton-chops masturbating on the two cheeks of the English lord
Lord lard
Heuh-Hi-Heu-ouh.
My clarent qeen and my clette clavete
Above and beyond the down of the market
Above and yeond the livestock of the golden-hayed dawn
My canonical chippyon straightened out hard as a bugle-band
drum-major
Allas
Cri-Crin-Cric-Crin-Cric-Crin-Cric
At Potsdam the lark
What will scandalize everyone does not scandalize me
And some hay stacks
And some square bricks
The most substanific marrow
Agazzi Afraguiz as monte-to
The green pendulum There is nothing but Lèzomo
Contumating

CURTAIN

—Translated from the French by Ray Ellenwood

The Priest's Dice-Box

The Green Die: [misplaced by his master in the pantcuff of the stagemanager of a burlesque theatre]

The perfect of the folding screen escapes the soda of humiliating flavours. A rip, Sebastien, that's what it is.

What is this golden perfume, paragraph or wing or turret of flounder, that circles like a bicycle without handlebars or an alcoholic without braces? Braces or garter, it goes without saying. Blue braces with canary stocking. The garter's stocking, it goes without saying. Or the handle of a slender knife stuffed with ostrich plumes, cormorant ashes, moiré of albatross. I will walk in the tepidity of the chestnut, I mean the sidewalk of July, the dawn of sprightly grimaces, head on the lace pillow, between the mobile tight and the harlequin's pompon. cybilline and ashymass, I will watch the cigarette butts and the days of dresses fall amid salandasque sprinklings. Intimate clarity and phosphorescent crispness. I will decoutinate the bag, gathering up the priesthood of the shamrock and the golden key of the handsomecharness in the languid aroma of umbels.

I shall walk alert and figurative on the concrete flower beds, a sidewalk explorer, anguished forager of the daily street.

Halt of Stop or tin for preserves. The ingredient coffee box forcefully twisted outside the garbage can of wallflowers. Charming garbagecan, ethereal garbagecan, garbagecan with wings like a lily of the valley, garbagecan stretched out lengthwise, contracted in the arabasquist. I walk beside a garbagecan holding its hand, a garbagecan so transparent. I worry my friend with his fraternal enigma. I grip on and I clutch, you hang on too, the moon with head razor, I hold on and I walk, brushing the dews of light with a rainy stole, silence, mutated orison, silence creaks in the garbagecan where the chemist created vacuum.

Nothingness is wearing his new shoes, the oiled soles crack, the pulleys creak.

While scree stuffs the candid nightmares.

They, the nightmares, the candid ones, the chubbies, are happy with a rubber foot pretending to pestle in a plump chocolate cookie.

No, certainly not, the melodramas feed on a more compact tension when they greedily deglutition.

Stackers of tension, look, with lard perches and violencing brass fingers.

Soiled chimerical shockingly brass.

The garbagecan drifts and the cigarettes emigrate in a wind of blue blood. The stable aristocrat cuts out a silhouette of marble or of biscuit mixed into the stone on the kimono-climated decor which ejaculates taciturn black and sexual lemon. The atmospheric pink dust powders the pallid flesh which shakes rhythmically like metaphysical fat, rips with its senile teeth at the green taffeta furrow and the fleecy coat-of-arms. The humouristic and brainless rope mows down the oblique oily breath, Without a cry from Akdebar. But the Emperor Joudi rips apart the candelabra's appeasement like a pregnant sow.

Pig-headedly violaceous, and another teutonic song about existences in contraband. In solemn contraband. In contraband harnessed, hung to age and haggled over. And highly spiced with acutual. Egréoudouanel of the princely train with diamonds set in whipped cream, in sorbet with pitted cherries. The calm of the tartar barges, of the bridled interjections. Eye of almond, whisper of the city, here are the strung-out eyes, the eyes elonted in mint, here are the eyes soldered with marshmallow to the prosperity of rods, here is the frosted gleam sworn to mascara. The murmur of winds from the open sea, of animal wells.

Dam-Dam-Dregla-guam.

And when the workers holiday spreads for a wide, I will sing, I will sing, I will sing.

Relaxation and fluorous brick.

CURTAIN

—Translated from the French by Ray Ellenwood

English language translation copyright ©1981 by Ray Ellenwood. Reprinted from Entrails (Toronto: Coach House Press, 1981)

Eva Gerlach

2011-08-04T07:50:00.000-07:00

Eva Gerlach [Netherlands]
1948

Born in 1948, Eva Gerlach writes poetry for adults and children. Her first collection, Verder geen leed (No Further Distress) appeared in 1979, and since then she has written over sixteen collections, published primarily by Arbeiderspers in Amsterdam.

In 1989, she won the "Zilveren Griffel" for children's writing, after the publication of Hee meneer Eland (Hey Mr. Moose). In 2000 she was awarded the P.C. Hooft-prijs for her entire oeuvre, the jury writing of her poetry: "Everything starts moving, becomes ambiguous, gets a new meaning."

The Foundation for the Production and Translation of Dutch Literature has described Gerlach's writing: "Gerlach's poems, in their often dark way, are concerned with the themes that have concerned poets in all ages: transience, loss, the human condition. Avoiding any tendency towards the dramatic display or literary effect, she writes about the mysterious, invisible forces that goven our lives, about the thought 'that in presence lives a truth / greater than just that / of the address.'"

Gerlach's work has helped to move Dutch poetry in a direction different from the major post-war concerns—irony, therapeutic impact and linguistic autonomy—representing a writing that is modest, unsentimental, and yet penetrating of human emotions and motives.

BOOKS OF POETRY (adult works only)

Verder geen leed (Amsterdam: De Arbeiderspers, 1979); Een kopstaand beeld (Amsterdam: De Arbeiderspers, 1983); Dochter (Amsterdam: De Arbeiderspers, 1984); Domicilie (Amsterdam: De Arbeiderspers, 1987): De kracht van verlamming (Amsterdam: De Arbeiderspers, 1988); In een bocht van de zee (Amsterdam: De Arbeiderspers, 1990); Wat zoekraakt (Amsterdam: De Arbeiderspers, 1994); Alles is werkelijk hier [with photographs by Vojta Dukát] (Amsterdam: De Arbeiderspers, 1997); Niets bestendiger (Amsterdam: De Arbeiderspers, 1998); Voorlopig verblijf, gedichten 1979-1990 (Amsterdam: De Arbeiderspers, 1999); Solstitium [with illustrations by Marianne Aartsen] (Landgraff: Herik, 2000); De invulbare ruimte (Amsterdam: De Arbeiderspers, 2000); Daar ligt het (Amsterdam/Rotterdam: De Arbeiderspers/Poetry International, 2003); Jaagpad [with illustrations by Marianne Aartsen] (Maastricht: Glance-aside, 2003); Een bed van mensenvlees (Amsterdam: De Arbeiderspers, 2003); Situaties (Amsterdam: De Arbeiderspers, 2006)

For a selection of poems by Eva Gerlach, press here:
http://www.poetryinternational.org/piw_cms/cms/cms_module/index.php?obj_id=8148

Vocabulary

This is your eye. This is the sun. This tugging
cold, draught from a window left ajar.
This is water that fits you like a glove

This is the kettle singing on the stove
above the four knobs that control the gas.
Here you've the breadknife in its board's long groove.

All of these things you need to keep a grasp of.
Today, or soon, they say will make their sense.

—Translated from the Dutch by John Irons

(from Een kopstaand beeld, 1983)

Dry-Shod

I rushed through water, slipped and fell.
Legs to yourself someone said, deep
asleep beside me, sleep, don't shove. Slept
and rushed. No water anywhere.
Slipped, fell, He beside me
woke up, helped me to my feet,
brushed down my clothes. Better he said
to just run off. Not rush like that.

—Translated from the Dutch by John Irons

(from In een bocht van de zee, 1990)

Man Alive

He's there then outside, a fly lands on his tongue and
he spits it out, sees if it's living, allows it
to dry in his hand, with his stick touches all of the
mulberry tree's yellow leaves, each one in turn,
they fall to his fee. And the crow
does not leave him.
You want him, he's never again that man out there,

you've only just seen him and yet: at no time before
so perfectly framed in the light, man a-
live, all you know of him touches now
all that you see of him, there in the crook
of the question-mark mulberry tree
standing briefly translucent,

how you see him, his whole face
uplifted, the triangle under his chin, with the throat
most vulnerable, the skin there
now taut—never yours in this way, except when
inside you perhaps, forgotten—you want him, rap
on the window, he sees you, the fly he
throws up from his hand and upward it flies.

—Translated from the Dutch by John Irons

(from Situaties, 2006)

English language translations copyright (c)2007 by John Irons

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For an essay-memoir on Barbara Guest "The Countess of Berkeley" by Douglas Messerli,
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http://jacketmagazine.com/29/messerli-guest.html

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For an essay on Gertrude Stein "The Making of Tender Buttons: Gertrude Stein's Subject,
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http://jacket2.org/article/making-tender-buttons