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

Robert Kelly

Robert Kelly is often considered the founder of the Deep Image movement. He was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1935 and attended the City College of the City University of New York and Columbia University before starting to work as editor for the literary magazines Trobar and Chelsea Review. Although his work has mostly been associated with the tradition of Pound, Olson and Williams, he himself feels his influences are much broader, including

“Coleridge. Baudelaire. Pound. Apollinaire. Virgil. Aeschylus. Dante. Chaucer. Shakespeare. Dryden. Lorca. Rilke. Hölderlin. Stevens. Stein. Duncan. Olson. Williams. Blackburn.” 

The Poetry Foundation says of Kelly’s work:

“[His] free-verse poetry, both spare in language and wide-ranging in its attention, is often engaged with the intimacy of audience: the connection forged between individuals looking outward together.”

In addition to his more than fifty volumes of poetry, Kelly has also written several volumes of short fiction, essays, and manifestos. He has received an Award for Distinction from the National Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Kelly still serves as Asher B. Edelman Professor of Literature and Co-Director of the Program in Written Arts at Bard College, where he has taught since 1961.


Links:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/robert-kelly
http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/robert-kelly
http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/authors/kelly/



My below poem took its starting point from a line in Kelly’s “A Woman with Flaxen Hair in Norfolk Heard”.

~ - ~


Removal

planning to move into the country
it isn’t the city anywhere else
leaving behind
( alphabetical order )
a) ngelic vitamin water
b) read of superior quality priced like insensitivity
c) hronic repeat
d) ry guilt easily resolved in three measures
e) lephant rooms: various locations available now for viewing
f) oxtons, foxes, faeces (E5 domesticated)
g) rowth always vertical always going non-monetary for you of course
h) ome
i) onic order
j) azz nights of wuthering rain mirrored in wet cobble stone
k) indness in limits in limited air fluctuation below
l) ove by the riverbank flashlights
m) inted tears
n) ational import
o) ysters sealed in plastic sleeves hermetic
p) rinces/princess
q) ueens
r) idicule lifestyle
s) leepless airport flight corridor flights
t) ailored women
u) topian gossip
v) erse ventricular
w) hitmanian bridges at odd intervals non-musical still busking
x) ray populous press
y) ardstick hipster anguish
z) ephyr summer tunes on your smartphone on that night when we climbed to the roof

Jack Spicer

“My vocabulary did this to me” – supposedly the last words of Jack Spicer as he died in 1965 at the age of 40. They brilliantly illuminate his relentless passion for language and poetry.

It is hard to pin down Spicer’s work to a particular school or movement. While oral poetic practice played an important role in his work – not least in his belief in poetry as a form of magic or supernatural dictation – his poems however also show a tendency toward Deep Image, and his later work, with its particular emphasis on linguistics, seem to be close to the practice of the Language poets. One of his most outstanding ideas was his notion of “poetry as dictation”. In his understanding, the poet was able to act as a kind “radio” which could collect transmissions from the “invisible world" – a notion which set him apart from many other poets as it rejected the idea of poetry as an expression of a poet’s voice and will.

His influence on many poets of subsequent generations is certainly evident – not least for his involvement in the creation of the Six Gallery in San Francisco, the scene of the famous reading in October 1955 that featured the first public performance of Allen Ginsberg’s "Howl" and helped launch the Beat movement. Yet his legacy is controversial. As Christopher W. Alexander notes in his introduction to Jacket #7, Spicer is popularly cast in a variety of ways from post-identity theoretician to a pre-structural post-structuralist, from an ideological critic of his time to a superstitious basket case.  But the lyric beauty and formal inventiveness of his work has continued to draw people in, even after his death, making him – as the Poetry Foundation phrased it: “a towering figure in American poetry”.

Links:
http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/jack-spicer
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/jack-spicer
http://jacketmagazine.com/07/index.shtml (Jack Spicer Special)
http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/spicer/
http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Spicer.html

~ - ~

pick ed a part by grammar

the in fluence of one un on happy

of one less on hope

of one a d on shame

un reflect ed might go un notice d

might drown in every day

how do you do nice ities

yet to dig to the root

spade fast psycho logy

freud in morph eme s

soft cushion un seat ed

pick ed a part by grammar

occasion al

worth while

day d d cushion by al a a   /   a a al by cushion d d day

ed drown do do dig   /   dig do do drown ed

fluence fast every eme ed ed    /    ed ed eme every fast fluence

in in how hope happy grammar go freud    /    freud go grammar happy hope how in in

might logy less ities in      /      in ities less logy might

of occasion notice nice morph might          /           might morph nice notice occasion of

one on on on of of             /             of of on on on one

pick part one one      /      one one part pick

seat s root reflect pscho       /      psycho reflect root s seat

the the spade soft shame    /    shame soft spade the the

un un un un to to        /        to to un un un un

worth while     /    while worth

you yet   /   yet you

Diane Wakoski

Diane Wakoski is often associated with the Deep Image movement yet her creative career goes far beyond the boundaries of this particular school of poetry. As Paul Hoover points out, the label is connected mostly to her early years as a poet in which she created stunning surrealist pieces like “Blue Monday” (which was the inspiration for my own response). But her style has changed somewhat since then, moving from dreamlike abstraction to a more narrative style. Her very personal and direct pieces might remind of the Beats or Confessionals and often looks at the unpleasant and painful parts of people’s lives. The Poetry Foundation quotes Peter Schjeldahl saying about Wakoski’s poems in the New York Times Book Review:

"[They] are professionally supple and clear . . . but their pervasive unpleasantness makes her popularity rather surprising. One can only conclude that a number of people are angry enough at life to enjoy the sentimental and desolating resentment with which she writes about it." 

I am definitely one of those people who share her rage. – Although not in this poem, for once I actually wrote a happy one.

Links:

http://dwakoski.com/

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/diane-wakoski

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diane_Wakoski

~ - ~

In Mint Condition

Ocean green ocean of soft

cushion moss morning leaf

a dream’s citrusy taste still tingling

lingering tender rest breast fingertip

traces on apple sheets

He holds me

in mint condition

aquamarine at the bottom of my spine

through every fibre I shimmer emerald

taking luscious sips of flavoursome chartreuse

breathing pine

with callow sun light caught in the eastern window

my leaves turn

my roots stretch eager and deep

I am sheltered delicate flesh in avocado sheathing

He my forester

his rake untangling my twisted blades

caressing my shoulders

pulling patiently my miserable weeds

in my meadows he opens the sky

on a morning of malachite

my jade in the palm shivering

in mint condition

only in his light