“unlimited the last delusion”
reading last night at Poets House by Jerome Rothenberg
who surprisingly enough has a blog here
borrowing my title from a poem of his featured there and in the book
Rothenberg read extensively from the introduction to the third volume of Poems for the Millennium
Of course I bought it and enjoyed revisiting his words today; I needn’t have taken notes
He also performed vivid and memorable renditions of the Navajo Night Chant, the owl piece by Longfellow, “Urine” as well as the Kubla Khan poem by Coleridge, some of the dark Discobolos poem by Edward Lear, and a poem by Emily Dickinson that left me feeling frozen with awe. And more. It was a combination of bedtime story, incantation, lecture, incitation, exorcism, and rapture.
Noticeable in the audience, ponytailed men, stroking the backs of their female companions, large-eyed, long-nosed, with pert haircuts or hats; perhaps they were mimicking the gesture of Goethe, who “softly beat out the measure of hexameters, fingering along her spine.”
New York in this area: sleek, stainless, sterilized
Huge empty lobbies, low lit, behind towering walls of glass
Inside many large bouquets featuring curly willow and chrysanthemums
Along the dark waters of the Hudson, restless, oily
random ideas:
a poetry of poetry readings
a Yin anthology
free download:
Rothenberg’s The Jigoku Zoshi Hells: A Book of Variations