POEMS for the MILLENNIUM
The University of California Book of Modern & Postmodern Poetry
Volume Two From Postwar to Millennium
Edited by Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris
University of California Press Berkeley Los Angeles London CONTENTS
Introduction i
Thanks and Acknowledgments 19
PRELUDE In the Dark
Charles Olson La Preface 23
Paul Celan A Death Fugue 24
Anna Akhmatova from Poem without a Hero: Epilogue 25
Toge Sankichi from Poems of the Atomic Bomb: Dying 29
Rene Depestre Season of Anger 31
Ingeborg Bachmann The Time Allotted 3 2
Antonin Artaud from To Have Done with the Judgment of God 33 CONTINUITIES
Gertrude Stein from The Mother of Us All: Concluding Aria 41
Wallace Stevens Not Ideas about the Thing but the Thing Itself 41
James Joyce from Finnegans Wake 42
William Carlos Williams from Paterson, Book Three 43
Ezra Pound Canto 116 47
H. D. from Hermetic Definition: Red Rose and a Beggar (1-9) 49
Hugh MacDiarmid The Glass of Pure Water 54
Andre Breton from Ode to Charles Fourier 57
Henri Michaux from Saisir 5 9
Louis Zukofsky from "A" 12 60
Pablo Neruda from The Heights ofMacchu Picchu 64
Gunnar Ekelof from Molna Elegy 66
Muriel Rukeyser The Speed of Darkness 70
Aime Cesaire from /, Laminaria 73
Contents A FIRST GALLERY
Marie Luise Kaschnitz My Ground 79 Who Would Have Thought It 79
Vladimir Holan from A Night with Hamlet 82
Samuel Beckett Imagination Dead Imagine 86
George Oppen Psalm 89 Myth of the Blaze 90
Yannis Ritsos The Meaning of Simplicity 92 Naked Face 93 Erotica XII 94 from 3 X 111 Tristychs 95
Charles Olson "my memory is .. ." 97 "Peloria ..." 97 The Moon Is the Number 18 97 Maximus, from Dogtown-II 99 "Added to ..." 101
Edmond Jabes from The Book of Questions "The Jew answers every question with another question" 103 The Book of the Living 104 "Have you seen how a word is born and dies?" 107
John Cage [Epigraph] "If there were a part of life dark enough . . ." 108 from Song Books: Solo for Voice 17 Song with Electronics (Relevant) 108 Two Mesostics re Merce Cunningham no from Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse) 196j in
Contents THE VIENNA GROUP
H. C. Artmann [Untitled] 117 "an optician has a glass heart" 118
Friederike Ma/rocker Ostia Will Receive You 120
Ernst Jandl Chanson 121 Calypso 121 Preliminary Studies for the Frankfurt Readings 1984 122
Gerhard Riihm Flower Piece 124 A Few Things 124
Konrad Bayer from The Philosopher's Stone 125 The White and the Black Bones: 126
Nicanor Parra The Individual's Soliloquy 127
Octavio Paz from Blanco 131
Bert Schierbeek The Sun: Day 135 The Animal Has Drawn a Human 136
Robert Duncan Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow 138 At the Loom Passages 2 139 In Blood's Domaine 142
Yoshioka Minoru Pilgrimage 144
Paul Celan Breathcrystal 148
Mohammed Dib from Formulaires . 155
xiv Contents Amos Tutuola from My Life in the Bush of Ghosts: Television-handed Ghostess 158
Helmut Heissenbiittel Didactic Poem on the Nature of History, A.D.1954 160 Combination II 161 from Textbook 10 162
Jackson Mac Low Asymmetry 205 165 from The Pronouns —A Collection of 40 Dances — for the Dancers 165 3rd Light Poem: For Spencer, Beate, & Sebastian Hoist— 12 June 1962 166 Pieces o'Six—II 167
Pier Paolo Pasolini from A Desperate Vitality 171
Vasko Popa Burning Shewolf 177
THE TAMMUZI POETS
Yusufal-Khal Cain the Immortal 183 The Wayfarers 184
Badr Shakir al-Sayyab The River and Death 185
Adonis from A Desire Moving through the Maps of the Material 187
Muhammad al-Maghut Executioner of Flowers 196
Unsi al-Hajj The Charlatan 199
Contents Denise Levertov The Jacob's Ladder 201 Age of Terror 201
Yehuda Amichai National Thoughts 204 Elegy 204 Near the Wall of a House 205
Friederike Mayrocker "the spirit of '76 " 206
Emmett Williams from The Red Chair (for three voices) 210 from The Ultimate Poem 213
Robin Blaser Image-Nation 22 (in memoriam 217
Ernesto Cardenal In xochitl in cuicatl ^ 221
Rosario Castellanos Two Meditations 226 Two Poems 227
Claude Gauvreau Trustful Fatigue and Reality 230 The Leg of Mutton Createur 230
COBRA
Asger Jorn, with Christian Dotremont from Word-Pictures 236
Christian Dotremont Logogramme 237 Some Lapland Views 238
Karel Appel Mad Talk 239
Gerrit Kouwenaar Elba 240 4 Variations On 241
xvi Contents Lucebert Rousseau le Douanier 243 9000 Jackals Swimming to Boston 243
Pierre Alechinsky Ad Miro • 245
Hugo Claus The Tollund Man 246
Ian Hamilton Finlay from Heroic Emblems (with Ron Costley 8c Stephen Bann) 250 from Images from the Arcadian Dream Garden 252 The Garden Temple 256
Ingeborg Bachmann Curriculum Vitae 257
Paul Blackburn Phone Call to Rutherford 261 At the Well 261 The Net of Place 264
Robert Creeley The Whip 266 Anger 267
Rene Depestre from A Rainbow for the Christian West: Three Loas Cap'tain Zombi 273 Baron-Samedi 275 Chango 276
Allen Ginsberg [Epigraph] "I saw the best minds ..." 278 Mescaline 278 Krai Majales 280
Robert Filliou, per George Brecht from 14 Songs and 1 Riddle 283
Contents xvii Frank O'Hara The Day Lady Died 289 Homosexuality 290 Ode: Salute to the French Negro Poets 290
John Ashbery from Flow Chart 292
Larry Eigner "explanation / tangent things" 297 Winter (January / February 1978) 297 "ah, so, yes" 299 [Three Poems 1989] 300
CONCRETE POETRY
Eugen Gomringer Two Poems mist /mountain / butterfly 304 hang and swinging hang and swinging 304
Ian Hamilton Finlay Poster Poem 306
Emmett Williams Like Attracts Like 307
Seiichi NTkuni Rain 308
Use Gamier & Pierre Gamier Extension 2: Soleil 309
Seiichi NTkuni & Pierre Gamier from Poemes franco-japonais 310
Haroldo de Campos from Transient Servitude 311
Augusto de Campos Eye for Eye 316
Karl Young Bookforms 317
xviii Contents Armand Schwerner from The Tablets 3 20
Anne Sexton from The Jesus Papers 326
Bernard Heidsieck from Derviche I Le Robert: The Letter "K" 331
Joyce Mansour In the Gloom on the Left 334 Going and Coming of Sequins 335
Nathaniel Tarn from Lyrics for the Bride of God 338
Hannah Weiner Two Code Poems from the International Code of Signals 342 from Clairvoyant Journal 344 Sand 345
Edward Dorn from Gunslinger I 346
Adrienne Rich The Ninth Symphony of Beethoven Understood at Last as a Sexual Message 351 The Phenomenology of Anger 352
Chinua Achebe Bull and Egret 357 We Laughed at Him 359
SOME "BEAT" POETS
William S. Burroughs Fear and the Monkey 3 64
Jack Kerouac from Mexico City Blues: 211th Chorus 365
Bob Kaufman I AM A CAMERA 366 "All those ships that never sailed" 3 66 January 30,1976: Message to Myself 367
Contents xix Allen Ginsberg America 368
Gregory Corso The Mad Yak Transformation 8c Escape
Michael McClure from Ghost Tantras 374 A Small Secret Book 375 Diane di Prima Prophetissa 377 Studies in Light 379
Kamau Brathwaite Stone 381
Michel Deguy "O great apposition of the world" 386 "You will be astonished" 386 "This lady and her beautiful window" 387 To Forget the Image 387
Amelia Rosselli Letter to Her Brother 390 from Martial Variations 390 Dialogue with the Dead 392 Gary Snyder What You Should Know to Be a Poet 395 from Myths & Texts first shaman song 396 this poem is for bear 397 The Hump-backed Flute Player 398
THE ART OF THE MANIFESTO
Paul Celan from The Meridian Speech 408
Contents Charles Olson THREE STATEMENTS from The Present Is Prologue 409 A Plan for a Curriculum of the Soul 410 The Resistance 412
John Cage from Lecture on Nothing 413
Edouard Glissant from Earth 416
Situationist International (Guy Debord, et al.) from All the King's Men 417
Amiri Baraka Black Dada Nihilismus 420
Adrienne Rich from When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision 422
Nicanor Parra Test 423
George Maciunas A Manifesto for Fluxus 425
Bob Cobbing A Statement on Sound Poetry 1969 426
Henri Chopin from Poesie Sonore 427
Steve McCaffery from Text-Sound, Energy and Performance 427
Dick Higgins Intermedia Chart 428
Denis Roche from Le Mecrit: Struggle and Erasure 429
Edward Sanders from Investigative Poetry 430
Julian Beck the state will be served even by poets 432
Contents xx! Rachel Blau DuPlessis from Otherhow: Feminist Poetics, Modernism, the Av ant-Garde 433
Carolee Schneemann Interior Scroll 436
Ishmael Reed from Neo-HooDoo Manifesto 440
Adonis from Preface 441
Sujata Bhatt from Search for My Tongue 443
Charles Bernstein from Artifice of Absorption 446
Diane di Prima from Rant 449
Preamble & Statement for a Council on Counterpoetics 451
A SECOND GALLERY
Tchicaya U Tam'si The Treasure 457
Jerome Rothenberg That Dada Strain 465 from Khurbn 466 The Lorca Variations (XXVIII) 471
Paavo Haavikko from The Winter Palace The First Poem 473 The Second Poem 475
Tomas Transtromer The Gallery 477
Ece Ayhan To Trace from Hebrew 482 The Nigger in a Photograph 482 Geranium and the Child 483
xx ii Contents SOME ORAL POETS
Maria Sabina from The Midnight Velada 487
Andrew Peynetsa The Shumeekuli 490
Eduardo Calderon Raising the Mediating Center and the Field of Evil with the Twenty-Five Thousand Accounts and the Chant of the Ancients 495
Robert Johnson Hellhound on My Trail 499
Komi Ekpe Abuse Poems: For Kodzo &c Others 500
Miss Queenie (Imogene Elizabeth Kennedy) One Day 502
Tom Waits Swordfishtrombone 504
After Dizzy Gillespie Sabla y Blu 505
Jacques Roubaud from Some Thing Black: Section V 507
David Antin Endangered Nouns 513
Andrei Voznesensky Look back into the Future 519 On the Metamorphoses Brought about by Emotion: The Rebellion of the Eyes 519 The Genealogy of Crosses 5 20
Amiri Baraka Numbers, Letters 522 Das Kapital 524
Contents xxiii Ted Berrigan People of the Future 526 from The Sonnets 526
Inger Christensen Alphabet 9, 10 530
Sarah Kirsch "The wels a fish that lives on the bottom" 535 "In an airplane I'm supposed to" 536 Pandora's Box 537 from Kite-Flying Mornings 537 Call 537 Renting a Room 538
POSTWAR JAPANESE POETRY The Arechi & After
Tamura Ryuichi My Imperialism
Tanikawa Shuntaro from With Silence My Companion 543 Cycle of Months (Menstruation) 543 OokaMakoto "Marilyn" 544
Shiraishi Kazuko The Man Root 547
Yoshimasu Gozo Pulling in the Reins 549 Osiris, the God of Stone 55O
Fujii Sadakazu from Where Is Japanese Poetry? Wolf S52- Small Dream 553
I to Hirorni Near Kitami Station on the Odakyu Line 555
Clayton Eshleman Our Lady of the Three-Pronged Devil 558
xxiv Contents Robert Kelly Ode to Language 562 The Man Who Loved White Chocolate - 563
Rosmarie Waldrop Feverish Propositions 568 from A Key into the Language of America 570
Alejandra Pizarnik Paths of the Mirror 572
Jayne Cortez Nighttrains 576
Kenneth Irby FOUR POEMS "I met the Angel Sus on the Skin Bridge" 579 "slowly the old stone building walls downtown dissolve" 579 [trash] 580 from [three sets of three] 581
J. H. Prynne from Wound Response Of Movement towards a Natural Place 583 Landing Area 584 Chromatin 585 Melanin 585 An Evening Walk 586
Rochelle Owens Dedication 588 I Am the Babe of Joseph Stalin's Daughter 589 from W. C. Fields in French Light 590
Monique Wittig from The Lesbian Body 595
Takahashi Mutsuo Monkey-Eaters 598 from Self-Portraits Myself in the Disguise of an Ancient Queen 598 Myself with a Glory Hole 599
Anne-Marie Albiach Winter Voyage 601
Contents NEO-AVANGUARDIA
Edoardo Sanguineti The Last Stroll: Homage to Pascoli 608
Giulia Niccolai From the Novissimi 610
Nanni Balestrini from The Instinct of Self-Preservation 613 Tape Mark 614
Antonio Porta To Open 615
Adriano Spatola The Risk of Abstraction 617 The Poem Stalin 618
Susan Howe from Pythagorean Silence 620 Scattering as Behavior toward Risk 621
Tom Phillips from A Humument 626 from Six of Hearts: Songs for Mary Wiegold 629
David Meltzer from HerolLil: The Third Shell 630
Diane Wakoski George Washington and the Loss of His Teeth 63 5 The Ice Eagle 636
Tom Raworth Lion Lion 640 Jungle Book 640 Bolivia: Another End of Ace 640
Elke Erb Text and Commentary 644
Malay Roy Choudhury Stark Electric Jesus 649
xxvi Contents Goran Sonnevi "Demon colors, dark" 652 A Child Is Not a Knife 654
Clark Coolidge from The Crystal Text 657 from Baffling Means (with Philip Guston) 660
SOME"LANGUAGE"POETS
Lyn Hejinian from My Life 664
Ron Silliman from Ketjak 665
Bob Perelman China 667
Rae Armantrout Native 669
Barrett Watten Complete Thought I-XXV 670
Bruce Andrews "Zero Tolerance" 673 AKA 673
Charles Bernstein Of Time and the Line 674 Outrigger 675
Carla Harryman Not-France 677
Pierre Guyotat from Tales ofSamora Machel 680
Mohammed Khair-Eddine Refusal to Inter 683 Barbarian 685
Contents xxvii Simon Ortiz From an Interview 687 The Wisconsin Horse 688 Final Solution: Jobs, Leaving 691
Lyn Hejinian Oxota, Book 2 692
Mahmoud Darwish from Memory for Forgetfulness 698
John Taggart Monk 703 Slow Song for Mark Rothko 704
Quincy Troupe Avalanche 708
Nicole Brassard iromThe Barbizon 712
Michael Palmer hom Sun 718 Sun 720
Allen Fisher Conga 723 Continental Walk 725
bp Nichol a sequence of poems from The Martyrology 7 728
Charles Stein A Parmenides Machine 733
Alice Notley from Desamere J^,J
Anne Waldman lovis XIX: Why That's a Blade Can Float 745
xxviii Contents THE MISTY POETS
Bei Dao The Answer 753 The August Sleepwalker 754 "He opens wide a third eye ..." 755
Duo Duo When People Rise from Cheese, Statement #1 756 North Sea 756
Mang Ke from ApeHerd 758
Shu Ting The Mirror 762
Yang Lian Crocodile 1-15 763
Gu Cheng A Generation 766 from The Bulin File 766
Pierre Joris from Winnetou Old 770
Arkadii Dragomoschenko A Sentimental Elegy 774
Nathaniel Mackey Song of the Andoumboulou: 15 778
Habib Tengour from Empedocles' Sandal 783
Leslie Scalapino Instead of an Animal 789
Cecilia Vicuna Five Notebooks for Exit Art 792
Will Alexander Albania 8c the Death of Enver Hoxha 798
Contents xxix Victor Hernandez Cruz Caminando 804 Mesa Blanca 804
Coral Bracho On Contact Opens Its Indigo Pit 807 On the Facets: The Flashing 809
Nina Iskrenko Isn't She Not a Bird 813 Polystylistics 814
TOWARD A CYBERPOETICS The Poem in the Machine
First Collage: The Poem in the Machine 817
Marcel Duchamp Rotative Demi-Sphere (Precision Optics) with Pun 819 Abraham Lincoln Gillespie from Readie-Soundpiece (for Bob Brown's Reading Machine) 820
Steve McCaffery from Carnival the First Panel: 1967-70 822
Bernard Heidsieck horn Canal Street 823
Jackson Mac Low 34th Merzgedicht in Memoriam Kurt Schwitters 825
Jim Rosenberg Two Intergrams 826
John Cayley from (Reveal Code): Indra's Net VIII 827
Second Collage: Toward a Cyberpoetics 829
Maggie O'Sullivan Narrative Charm for Ibbotroyd 830 from Doubtless: "The Dancer-" 831
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha from Dictee: Elitere Lyric Poetry 836
xxx Contents POSTLUDES At the Turning
Robert Duncan After a Long Illness 847
Pierre Joris Fin-de-Siecle Identikit 849
Jerome Rothenberg Prologomena to a Poetics 853
Credits 857
Index of Authors 869
Contents xxxi