Jerome Rothenberg

How to summarise Jerome Rothenberg’s career? From the humble beginnings as a translator of German post-war poetry for City Lights Books in the 1950s to his celebrated 1968 ethnopoetic volume Technicians of the Sacred? From his Deep Image poetry to the compilation of the anthology-assemblage Poems for the Millennium in 2000?

Rothenberg has published over seventy books and pamphlets of poetry. He has assembled, edited, and annotated over ten anthologies of experimental and traditional poetry and performance art and translated an enormous amount of world literature, including Pablo Picasso and Vítezslav Nezval.

There are indeed few poets who could rival is vast and diverse practice.

As Kenneth Rexroth puts it:

 "Jerome Rothenberg is one of the truly contemporary American poets who has returned U.S. poetry to the mainstream of international modern literature. At the same time, he is a true autochthon. Only here and now could have produced him—a swinging orgy of Martin Buber, Marcel Duchamp, Gertrude Stein, and Sitting Bull. No one writing poetry today has dug deeper into the roots of poetry." 

I can only say: read it, listen to it, read some more.

Links:
http://poemsandpoetics.blogspot.co.uk/ (Rothenberg’s blog)
http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/authors/rothenberg/
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/jerome-rothenberg
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/jerome-rothenberg

I found it extremely difficult to write a response to Rothenberg’s work. Particularly the poem included in Hoover’s anthology “Cokboy” is such a monolith that I was completely at a loss. Instead I decided to follow Rothenberg’s footsteps in a different way by choosing to translate a poem from a different language. The below poem is my translation of Alfred Lichtenstein’s expressionist poem “Nebel”.

~ - ~

Fog
by Alfred Lichtenstein

A fog has softly pulled apart the world
as bloodless trees dissolve gently into smoke
and shadows weave where cries were hurled
burning beasts evaporate, expire, choke

The gas lights are nothing more than captured flies
each flickering with foul hope for freedom yet
but in the distance gleaming high in wait still lies
the toxic moon, Nebula fat spider in her net

Yet wicked we who suit this deadly price
with heavy boots crunch this wasteland’s splendid sight
in silence pierce with pallid hellhole eyes
spears thrown again into the bloated night

Paul Violi

Picture by Hidalgo944.

“A poetic reporter and a parodist, always on the alert for the telling encounter, the ripe bit of urban speech, the priceless instance of pop vulgarity” (New York Times) - Paul Violi was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1944 and attended Boston University. Following his return from Peace Corp service in Nigeria, he worked as managing editor of Architectural Forum. He also organised poetry readings at the Museum of Modern Art from 1974 to 1983 and co-founded Swollen Magpie Press. Violi is usually associated with the second generation of New York School poets, known for his poetry of wit and conceptual energy.

As David Lehman, editor of the Oxford Book of American Poetry, said of Violi’s work:

“I picked Violi because of the virtues I have admired all these years: his wit, his ability to find the poetic resonance of non-poetic language, his deadpan, and his ability to get serious ideas across without didactic earnestness. He is, in my view, among our most talented poets.”

Violi is the author of eleven books of poetry. His honours include the John Ciardi Lifetime Achievement Award in Poetry, the Ingram Merrill Foundation Poetry Award, the American Academy of Arts & Letters Morton Dauwen Zabel Award, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts.

He died from cancer in 2011.

Links:
http://www.paulvioli.com/
http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/violi/
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/paul-violi
http://jacketmagazine.com/33/quattrone-violi.shtml (2007 article about Violi)
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/16/books/paul-violi-poet-dies-at-66.html?_r=0 (New York Times Obituary)

My below poem took its inspiration from Violi’s “Index” – a poem mimicking the form of a book’s index. I chose the format of a record track listing for a short poem about the existentialist philosophy of Heidegger.

~ - ~

The Geworfenheit of the Individual into the World
Side A

1. A waltz in the world of the They
2. All consciousness is consciousness of you
3. It’s just another mood (let’s Dasein tonight)
4. Always old enough to die in Messkirch
5. The Turn

Side B

1. Things showing up in the light of our understanding of being
2. Destruktion Instruktion
3. The spirit of disponibilité
4. What to do about worldhood
5. The Thrown-ness Blues

Michael Davidson

Michael Davidson was born in Oakland, California in 1944, and is generally associated with the West Coast Language poetry scene. He is the author of eight books of poetry and has served as Distinguished Professor of Literature at the University of California, San Diego, since 1988.

His poetry often explores “the rift between the world and its representation in language” (Hoover) and thus tends towards the theoretical and self-referential.

However, as the poet CJ Morello says of Davidson’s work in his review of Bleed Through:

"While sometimes upending grammarians and often explicit about the pitfalls of language, a lyric relationship is still often present, if immaterial. […] Language poetry at its best seems to perform a collapse of the rules of its system for a user of the language. Davidson’s work is filled with such moments of open vulnerability before the operations of the various systems."

Davidson who recently became deaf, has also contributed criticism to the fields of disabilities studies and gender studies. His work, Concerto for the Left Hand (2008), explores impacts of disability through various artistic mediums, from literature to visual art and photography.

Links:
http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/authors/davidson/index.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Davidson_(poet)
http://htmlgiant.com/reviews/bleed-through-by-michael-davidson/ (review of his 2013 collection Bleed Through)

My below poem was inspired by Davidson’s witty, self-reflective work in general and refers back to the copy text on a package of blu tack.

~ - ~

Economy pack

1000s of uses. Repositionable without
a stain. The nation’s favourite rhyme
is a great alternative to pins
and tape. Clean, safe and hugely
versatile. You can use iambic pentameter
at home, in your office or
at school for fixing cards and
posters, securing loose items and even
tricky jobs like cleaning dirt from
keyboards or fluff from your heart. The
uses of verse are as unlimited
as your imagination. Keep a collection
of poetry on your desk or
in your kitchen drawer – you never
know when you’ll need it again.

Recommendations and 
suggestions are for
guidance only, as conditions 
of use are completely
beyond our control.

Lyn Hejinian

One of my favourite poets included in Hoover’s anthology is probably Lyn Hejinian. As an important member of the Language writing movement, her work has been pushing the boundaries of experimental and avant-garde poetics since the 1970s.

Texts like her famous 1987 autobiographical long poem “My Life” don’t just question the authority of the writer over the reader in their mosaic of discontinuous sentences, they also draw attention to the complexity and constructedness of narration.

The poet Juliana Spahr commented on Hejinian’s work:

“[It] often demonstrates how poetry is a way of thinking, a way of encountering and constructing the world, one endless utopian moment even as it is full of failures.”

This is also reflected in the way “My Life” is constantly writing and rewriting itself, repeating sections and beginning again. In this way the text suggests the process of remembering as it reassembles pieces of the poet’s biography.

From 1976 to 1984, Hejinian was editor of Tuumba Press, and since 1981 she has been the co-editor of Poetics Journal. She has published over a dozen books of poetry and numerous books of essays as well as two volumes of translations from the Russian poet Arkadii Dragomoshchenko

Her honors include a Writing Fellowship from the California Arts Council, a grant from the Poetry Fund, and a Translation Fellowship (for her Russian translations) from the National Endowment of the Arts. She received the 2000 Academy Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets for distinguished poetic achievement.

Links:
http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/hejinian/
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/lyn-hejinian
http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/lyn-hejinian

My below poem took its inspiration from Hejinian’s “My Life”. But instead of reassembling a life in memories I decided to reassemble an old Greek fable, focussing on its political message and the ripples these kind of ideologies might have in the lives of people today.

~ - ~

Fable

Everyday corn and grain --- The children played hide and seek among the billowing white sheets on the drying green in the back of the houses. Her eyes dancing with laughter again for the first time. “What else can you do?” he smiled wearily. She gave out a sigh of relief when she saw that the brown envelope was just about voter registration and quickly shoved it into the drawer with the takeaway menus and the spare keys. They started calling it “de-inflation” to take away the dread. It was the drawing of a wonky terraced house with a swing in the garden and a smiling sun. An ant passed by, bearing along with great toil an ear of corn he was taking to the nest. The refrigerator’s humming was louder on the nights he wasn’t home.

To the nest --- The queues were worse now than a couple of weeks ago but she had stopped paying attention. They tried to find another “p” in the bowl of soup to spell out “happiness” on a spoon and feed it to the baby. "I am helping to lay up food for the winter," said the ant, "and recommend you to do the same." He came over with a bottle of red but she was too ill to drink any. Rainwater had gathered in a welly one of them must have left out last time they went for a walk. It was hard to keep up with all these changes. Then the grasshopper knew: it is best to prepare for the days of necessity. She wanted so badly to tell him “you know nothing of our lives” but she didn’t want to embarrass the children and the parking ticket was running out.

In that way? --- In a field one summer's day a grasshopper was hopping about, chirping and singing to its heart's content. The Beatles “Lady Madonna” on full blast in the bathroom. They had moved the worn part of the carpet under the dining table just in time before the doorbell rang. "Why not come and chat with me," said the grasshopper, "instead of toiling and moiling in that way?" The handle of the coffee cup had broken off a long time ago. She had circled the day in the calendar. An overflowing ashtray in the morning sun. But the ant went on its way and continued its toil.

The days of necessity --- "Why bother about winter?" said the grasshopper; “we have got plenty of food at present." An ant passed by, bearing along with great toil an ear of corn he was taking to the nest. “You have to understand that these kind of jobs are extremely competitive”, his voice was matter-of-factly. There was a hole in the left pocket of her rain coat. "I am helping to lay up food for the winter," said the ant, "and recommend you to do the same." Someone on telly was talking about social justice but she turned away when the phone began to ring. The brochure advertised a bright and promising future. In a field one summer's day a Grasshopper was hopping about, chirping and singing to its heart's content.

Hopping about, chirping --- When the winter came the grasshopper found itself dying of hunger, while it saw the ants distributing, every day, corn and grain from the stores they had collected in the summer. It felt good to open the windows on this first warm day of spring. An ant passed by, bearing along with great toil an ear of corn he was taking to the nest. They picked flowers in the long grass behind the old factory. In a field one summer's day a grasshopper was hopping about, chirping and singing to its heart's content. “You’re not watching any telly, are you?” she coaxed. But the ant went on its way and continued its toil. Then the grasshopper knew: it is best to prepare for the days of necessity.

And continued its toil --- An ant passed by, bearing along with great toil an ear of corn he was taking to the nest. "Why bother about winter?" said the grasshopper; “we have got plenty of food at present." She waited until no one was watching. "Why not come and chat with me," said the grasshopper, "instead of toiling and moiling in that way?" Then the grasshopper knew: it is best to prepare for the days of necessity. But the ant went on its way and continued its toil. When the winter came the grasshopper found itself dying of hunger, while it saw the ants distributing, every day, corn and grain from the stores they had collected in the summer. She could not stand the way they had started to look at her.

An ant passed by --- "Why bother about winter?" said the grasshopper; “we have got plenty of food at present." On that night they held each other tight. "I am helping to lay up food for the winter," said the ant, "and recommend you to do the same." In a field one summer's day a grasshopper was hopping about, chirping and singing to its heart's content. "Why not come and chat with me," said the grasshopper, "instead of toiling and moiling in that way?" When the winter came the grasshopper found itself dying of hunger, while it saw the ants distributing, every day, corn and grain from the stores they had collected in the summer. An ant passed by, bearing along with great toil an ear of corn he was taking to the nest. Then the grasshopper knew: it is best to prepare for the days of necessity.

Then the grasshopper knew --- In a field one summer's day a grasshopper was hopping about, chirping and singing to its heart's content. An ant passed by, bearing along with great toil an ear of corn he was taking to the nest. "Why not come and chat with me," said the grasshopper, "instead of toiling and moiling in that way?" "I am helping to lay up food for the winter," said the ant, "and recommend you to do the same." "Why bother about winter?" said the grasshopper; “we have got plenty of food at present." But the ant went on its way and continued its toil. When the winter came the grasshopper found itself dying of hunger, while it saw the ants distributing, every day, corn and grain from the stores they had collected in the summer. Then the grasshopper knew: it is best to prepare for the days of necessity.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

image by urbanartcore.eu

As one of the driving forces of the San Francisco Renaissance and the co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers, Lawrence Ferlinghetti is definitely one of the most important figures of the avant-garde poetry movement in the 1950s – a fact which was paid tribute to not least of all in his 2005 Literarian Award for “outstanding service to the American literary community.” Even though Ferlinghetti’s role as a publisher was important for the careers of many Beats including Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Diane diPrima, Michael McClure, and Gary Snyder, he is also an extremely successful poet in his own right. His poetry collection A Coney Island of the Mind has sold more than a million copies since it was first published in 1952 – which makes it the most popular poetry book in the U.S.

As the critic Larry Smith points out in his 1983 book Lawrence Ferlinghetti: Poet-at-Large:

“[Ferlinghetti] writes truly memorable poetry, poems that lodge themselves in the consciousness of the reader and generate awareness and change. And his writing sings, with the sad and comic music of the streets.”

It is particularly jazz music which had a strong influence on Ferlinghetti, as Hoover writes in the anthology:

“[He] has indicated that some of the poems in A Coney Island of the Mind, including the enormously popular “I am Waiting” were “conceived specifically for jazz accompaniment and as such should be considered as spontaneously written ‘oral messages’ rather than as poems written for the printed page.”

Ferlinghetti writes a weekly column for the San Francisco Chronicle. He also continues to operate the City Lights bookstore, and he travels frequently to participate in literary conferences and poetry readings.

Links:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/lawrence-ferlinghetti
http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/lawrence-ferlinghetti
http://www.citylights.com/ferlinghetti/
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/04/lawrence-ferlinghetti-interview-poets (interview)

In response to Ferlinghetti’s understanding of his poetry as ‘oral messages’ designed to be read with jazz music accompaniment, I decided to likewise create a ‘jazz poem’ instead of a written one.

~ - ~

A Virus



Music by Ocean Exposition: Untitled improvisation

George Evans

George Evans’ biography is somewhat different than that of many other poets. Born in 1948 in Pittsburgh, he did not even finish high school and instead joined the US Air Force at the age of eighteen. He served in Vietnam but soon got into trouble for staging anti-war protests. During his service he also received his high school diploma through a GED test. Since the end of the war Evans has then been an outspoken anti-war activist and advocate for the homeless.

Since 1985, Evans has published five collections of poetry both in the US and Great Britain. His honors include writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Lannan Foundation, the California Arts Council, and a Japanese government Monbusho Fellowship for the study of Japanese literature. He lives in San Francisco.

Links:
http://jacket2.org/content/george-evans
http://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/author/george-evans

When I tried to write my own response the Evans’ work, I was struck by the important role his experience of the war seems to have (at least in the poems Hoover included in the anthology). I, of course, have no such experience and any attempt to speak about war therefore seemed futile. Instead I decided to write about the impact the faraway war in Syria has on my life in this peaceful part of the world, i.e. Europe.

~ - ~

red & blue

he was there
when we finally
opened our eyes
to a cold
dawn on a
thursday in early
September as the
tide proceeded to
rub off the
sand salt water
streaming in dark
patches across europe
red & blue

Clayton Eshleman

Clayton Eshleman was born in 1935 in Indianapolis, Indiana, and earned degrees in philosophy and creative writing from Indiana University. After graduation he started travelling extensively, living for several years in Japan and spending time in Mexico. He also frequently travelled to France and his visits to the Dordogne region of France have significantly shaped his poetics. The experience of the Lascaux, Combarelle and Trois Freres caves and their prehistoric paintings led him to adopt a particular mix of myth, psychology, archeology, and surrealism in his poetry.

In World Literature Today Susan Smith Nash says of Eshleman’s work:

“Eshleman’s poems possess a heavy reliance on juxtaposition and the belief that an essential truth may emerge from the dionysiac combining of art, anthropology, poetry, and historical events.” 

In addition to his creative work as a poet, Eshleman is also the main American translator of the Peruvian César Vallejo, and he received the National Book Award in 1979 for his co-translation of Vallejo’s Complete Posthumous Poetry.

The author of more than thirty books, he as published not only numerous collections of poetry but also books of essays, prose and interviews. Eshleman also founded and edited two important literary magazines: Caterpillar which appeared between 1967 and 1973 and Sulfur (1981-2000), which received thirteen National Endowment for the Arts grants.

Today, Eshleman is a professor of English at Eastern Michigan University, and lives in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

Links:
http://www.claytoneshleman.com/
http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/eshleman/
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/clayton-eshleman
http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/clayton-eshleman
http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Eshleman.php

My poem below took its inspiration from Eshleman’s “Note on a Visit to Le Tuc d’Audoubert”. His poetry which weaves together past and present, site and imagination, image and text reminded me of my own 2013 project A Westminster Pilgrim and made me once again consider the connections between architectural sites and their building materials, their past and their present use.

~ - ~

old red sandstone
a thick sequence of rocks in squares around me                  i am
formed more than 350 million years old                       a migrant
the earth’s teenage years maybe                   like this rock i have
built my house from it                     travelled here from far away
and many others all               come to rest now thick deposits of
the way to                        sand and mud 11000 meters deep and
america.                    often stained with red, slowly accumulated.
                                                                                     thrust fault

Frank O'Hara

Frank O’Hara – do I even have to say anything?

The New York Poet. The avant-garde poet. The “urbane, ironic, sometimes genuinely celebratory and often wildly funny” poet (Mark Doty). The poet of immediacy, spontaneity, of everyday American vernacular, of popular culture. The poet of “Personism”. The personality-transcribed-into-text poet (Dan Chiasson) The read-again-and-again-and-again poet. The poet who died too soon.

Links:
http://www.frankohara.org/index.html
http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/frank-ohara
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/frank-ohara
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/ohara/ohara.htm
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/04/07/fast-company New Yorker review of Mark Ford’s “Frank O’Hara: Selected Poems” by Dan Chiasson

My below poem takes its inspiration from O’Hara’s “Personal Poem”. It mixes my own version of an ordinary lunch hour in 2015 with the results from Google’s auto-complete which I got when I typed in the first words of each of O’Hara’s original lines.

~ - ~

personal poem auto-revisited, 2015

now when i get paid my checks be looking like phone numbers 
i have only two emotions careful fear and a tab in the background
an old romance stephen haller for the cosmopolitan feel
a and a bolt company looking at the weather
when i was in french in the N.Y. section kind of hoping I recognise a place
brought me to the fold of god or something from when Axel and I were visiting
help keep your account secure a week last year which feels ages ago now in Glasgow
but now i’m a  dog advert and updating here

i walk through the valley of the shadow of death I scroll through de-saturated reds and burned out
passing the baton of cappuccinos, sourdough bread, and holiday
and it’s like I lose myself in dreaming beaches on Instagram with the occasional selfie but not
the left the melody sample thankfully since that’s sort of embarrassing
do i ever get to be upset effy or at least like early 2014 as Ellen DeGeneres
i’d like to teach the world to sing that shot at the Oscars
and get together send a message to Sylwie who doesn’t take her lunch
leroi and cinzia hair salon until later hungover anyway
shaker the baker an article about Sylvia Plath having used basic as an insult
is .01 statistically significant before Kate Moss or something which I didn’t even know
and the bible tells me so and I try to bear it in mind
times last minute holidays for the next time
a lady awakened when I watch David Bowie’s hairstyle change on a gif
disease butterfly effect and again for thirty seconds
don’t like it i love it Miley Cyrus the other day
we go eat ihop just with different makeup and I wonder if she was
cool but easy things to draw or maybe just referencing someone
we decide who comes to this country before her which is possible because she really is only
henry james shoes and music history is just piling up pretty badly
we don’t wanna go home and I know I certainly don’t envy her instead I just have a
san francisco earthquake glance over my Facebook feed and like some
and walk it out of women’s self-defence classes in the 1930s
i wonder if heaven got a ghetto which Celeste found somewhere although
thinking of moving to australia is in Swedish and the auto-translate doesn’t make sense
and buy a sword but at my desk when I put my phone back into my handbag
back to work  I notice that you are online too

Jessica Hagedorn

Jessica Hagedorn was born in the Philippines and moved to the United States at the age of 14. She spent her teens and early adulthood in San Francisco where her writing was brought to the attention of Kenneth Rexroth who acted as a mentor for the young writer for a number of years. Hagedorn studied theatre at the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco and she works as a successful  playwright, novelist and multimedia artist as well as a poet.

Popular music and the performing arts have also been a strong influence on Hagedorn’s poetry who as Hoover quotes her in the anthology, aims for a kind of poetry which creates an “extravaganza of voices and moving bodies playing instruments that would hypnotize an audience numbed by the pomp and circumstance of academia, forgetting that the origins of poetry are oral and physical.”

As a result, Hagedorn has often chosen to perform her poetry with musicians and from 1975 to 1985 also performed with her own band, the West Coast Gangster Choir.

Hagedorn has taught in the Graduate Playwriting Program at the Yale School Of Drama, and in the MFA Creative Writing Program at NYU and Columbia University. She is the Parsons Family University Professor of Creative Writing and the Director of the MFA Writing Program at LIU Brooklyn.

Links:
http://www.jessicahagedorn.net/
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/g_l/hagedorn/hagedorn.htm
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/jessica-hagedorn

My response to Jessica Hagedorn’s work took its inspiration from her poem “Latin Music in New York”. It plays with my own city’s marketing image of a “City of Music”.

~ - ~

City of Music