December 11, 2013 www.Misterbowlerradio.com celebrates poet Jerome
Rothenberg's 82nd birthday with an on-line broadcast from producer Bent-
Erik Rasmussen's ICMM studios in Svinø, Denmark.
Danny Snelson, U Penn will celebrate by launching the digital version of
Jerry's New Wilderness Letter.
The program features a birthday reading by Jerry from his home in Encinitas,
California and celebrates nearly fifty years of collaborations with composer,
sound artist Charlie Morrow in selected works from the Other Media archive..
The program includes performances, greetings and links to Rothenberg's wide
circle.
It will remain on-line and continue to grow.
(The next Celebration Broadcast will feature Sten Hanson on his birthday
April 15, 2014)
Dear Bent-Erik and Charlie Morrow:
When we took Jerry and Diane to
China in 2002, traveling across half
of China, we have taken many
pictures in places like Dunhuang, in
the Gobi Desert. We read poems
together, he in English, I in
Chinese. In his case, always
bilingual, he in his sonorous English
with me or other Chinese poets
reading his poems in my Chinese
translations. We both wrote poems
about the trip. Here is one of those
of mine that I had translated for
Jerry and read in UCSD in one of
his gatherings.
Best, Wai-lim
Beijing: August Wai-lim Yip
Sandstorms long gone
Sky has yet to find its blue
In the vast turgid air
Like leafless forest trees in the haze
Hard, straight, spearing the sky
Buildings far and near now seen now unseen
Under a steaming lid, netted, knotted, locked and blocked
The whole city sneezes
Black hair gold hair, visitors
Ants crawl over molasses
Caught
Drenched in
Dripping sweats, a thousand ten thousand pound heavy
The Imperial Palace
Golden Dragon cannot spit out its last purple breath
The wings of phaetons all rusted
In the vast turgid air
Sky-reaching tombstones, The Transnational Commerce
Shadows over shadows over shadows of ghosts
Closes in and tightens in rings
A thousand ten thousand pounds of memory
In a cultural center in mid-city
A foreign poet
Calls the name of Poland
Poland, Poland, Poland, Poland
Wavelike sufferings race here from ancient times
A wandering son from overseas
Knots of angst
Swirl into the Conch of Death
Knots of melancholy
Swirl out of the Conch of Death
And then he says:
“
The air all at once was filled with the tenderness of earth,
As if that happy moment had already arrived.
Birds, like bouquets and bouquets of light,
Exploded out from the tree like a fountain.
You ran to embrace it
And suddenly stopped short.
Are you all ready?”
A young poet crippled by reality
Is about to speak only to
Find his throat
Stuffed with balls and balls
Of crumpled paper written all over with his poems
Gruntle-Grottle hardly a voice
In netted, knotted, locked and blocked August Beijing,
August, 2002
Timezone: PST - Pasific standard Time
(Central European Time - CET = + 9 hours)
Program details: click here
10.00 am Birthday program
11.00 am Reading - Jerome Rothenberg
recorded by Tyler Clausen
12.00 am Rothenberg and Morrow
1.00 pm
2.00 pm
3.00 pm
4.00 pm
5.00 pm
6.00 pm
7.00 pm
recorded by Tyler Clausen
8.00 pm Birthday program
9.00 pm
10.00 pm
Persons appearing in the Birthday
program:
Mathew Rothenberg
Charles Bernstein
Steve McCaffery
Åsa Simma
Wai-lim (read by Zeljka Rasmussen)
Gideon D’Arcangelo
Steven Dalachinsky
Julian Cowley
Bob Holman
Michael Heller
Jane Augustine
Jerome Rothenberg
Charles Morrow
Sound and music:
Morrow: Toot and Blink
Morrow/Rothenberg: Birth of Wargod
Drumloops by Peter Erskin
Christopher Williams and Tom Bruckner
Bach: theme from the Goldberg variations
played by Glenn Gould (1955 version)
Classical chinese music: Two fountains
reflecting the moon
Western Wind Vocal Ensemble
Glen Velez
Street
- for Jerry
The street below my window lacks
closure. There is no end to it
in the sense of the end
of a life. People who don’t look
like me are usually walking
in 2s or 3s on up it. Some bicycle
in fair or foul/ the starry wheel on adamantine
pediments invisible to most however much they try
to see it. Even a car rams itself along—louvers like
gills
of a shark. Only stiff and graceless.
Dead shark.
I suspect everyone negotiates a cognitive distance
in themselves,
& talks of the distances they
must endure & have endured to be included “Here,”
recreating the world in a language unlike mine.
Their laughter similar but not the same. (Hear it?) I
approximate their
laughing systems singing systems
fashioned now from clumsy brush-work
they would scorn if they saw it.
(They won’t.)
“…categorical space carried on the tongue
necessary for this speech (act)
to continue to connect with what we say is ‘Out
There’”
where/ a basilisk sleeps on the margins of the
weather,
where/ the old promises wait for the Grand Hand-
Over to Happen.
Still, our perceptions are fallible,
We fall prey to optical illusions. Occasionally we
hallucinate without reason. The precision and
retention of our motor skills may also give us a
false sense of confidence in our abilities: grants us
an illusionary permission to posit imagined
“maps”/machines pulling aluminum boxes into the
sky/ an old woman pushing a cart with squeaky
wheels hawking noodles and apples.
Over there.
No Here.
Maps fade with too much sunlight. The road we
intuit stops (in reality)
beyond that corner (just beyond my sight) where
everyone seems now to be heading
JESSE GLASS
ROTHENBERG ROTHENBERG ROTHENBERG ROTHENBERG ROTHENBERG
Jack and Adele Foley
my mind is stuffed with tablecloths
brought in the imagination
a naked bridegroom hovering above
his naked bride mad rothenberg
thy thermos bottles thy electric fogs
we have lain awake in thy soft arms forever
thy underwear alive with roots o rothenberg
rothenberg rothenberg rothenberg rothenberg rothenberg
let us sail through thy fierce weddings rothenberg
o rothenberg o sweet resourceful rothenberg
have we not tired of thee rothenberg no for thy cheeses
shall stand like kings inside thy doorways
shall throw their arms around thy lintels rothenberg
& begin to rothenberg
…
Is a stranger. Is
ROTHENBERG
A Poultice. One
ROTHENBERG
Catch him. He slips.
ROTHENBERG
He is heavy. One
ROTHENBERG
Is a steward. Is
ROTHENBERG
One steals. One adds numbers.
ROTHENBERG
…
From the skin of a hare
the blood of a black hen
Burn a dove’s feather
Afflict the knees
This is the ring of travel.
This is the yellow cloth.
Take a chain, a hook & the figure of a bird
This is the ring of incest
Its signs are seven.
—& it is said in The Book of Beasts
that the lizard fleeth the privy members of a man
therefore when they see it
they bind ropes from the male to the female
& bow down to rothenberg
& bow down to rothenberg
rothenberg rothenberg rothenberg rothenberg rothenberg
* “poland” replaced by “rothenberg”
…
well you know or don’t you kennet
it’s a rothenberg of the morning
speaking his varses in the grand manner
of the germinating jesus the joycemaster
making the flower here & the mind bender
& oh the tongues he’s telling & the triple tales
& the voices of no masters but his own fancy dances
& I tell you we listen we listen in a glisten
in a daze of days to the shaminacle pinnacle
to what wrought this wonder this waxing this joy and this wellaway
the rothenberg of the morning
Hello All—
&Happiest of Happy Birthday Celebrations to you, Jerry—!
I'm thrilled to send on a link to the 'new' New Wilderness Letter
Reissues thru J2. Please do see here, with my introductory notes:
http://jacket2.org/reissues/nwl
Feel free to distribute this link at will. Let me
know if you see any errors, I can fix immediately
all day.
So delighted to see this work up, &on grand
occasion.
All celebratory cheers,
Danny
love to the BIRTHDAYBOY
xo
Bruce
CAFES Y BARES / DIRECTORIO
TELEFONICO DE LA HABANA
1958
Bruce Andrews
American Bar
Anchor Bar
Apple Bar
Atlantic Bar
Bar Ten Cent
Bar To-day
Bar Turf Club
Boston
Century Bar
Club Pan American
Continental
Detroit
Esquire
Frank
Happy Bar
Hollywood
Home Plate
Johnny Bar Club
Johnny Dream Bar Club
Kid Bar
Mexico Bar Club
Miami Restaurant
New Henry
New York Bar
Pan American Bar Club
Pan American Club
Pennsylvania
Plus Ultra
Polar
Riverside Bar
Rogers Bar
Roosevelt
Royalty
Seventy Two
Shangri-La Club
Sloppy Joe’s
Surf Club
Tally-Ho
Tony’s Club
Tropicana Night Club
Twenty One Club
Wall Street
Willie’s Club
Wonder Bar
A Poem for the Cruel Majority
BY JEROME ROTHENBERG
The cruel majority emerges!
Hail to the cruel majority!
They will punish the poor for being poor.
They will punish the dead for having died.
Nothing can make the dark turn into light
for the cruel majority.
Nothing can make them feel hunger or terror.
If the cruel majority would only cup their ears
the sea would wash over them.
The sea would help them forget their wayward children.
It would weave a lullaby for young & old.
(See the cruel majority with hands cupped to their ears,
one foot is in the water, one foot is on the clouds.)
One man of them is large enough to hold a cloud
between his thumb & middle finger,
to squeeze a drop of sweat from it before he sleeps.
He is a little god but not a poet.
(See how his body heaves.)
The cruel majority love crowds & picnics.
The cruel majority fill up their parks with little flags.
The cruel majority celebrate their birthday.
Hail to the cruel majority again!
The cruel majority weep for their unborn children,
they weep for the children that they will never bear.
The cruel majority are overwhelmed by sorrow.
(Then why are the cruel majority always laughing?
Is it because night has covered up the city's walls?
Because the poor lie hidden in the darkness?
The maimed no longer come to show their wounds?)
Today the cruel majority vote to enlarge the darkness.
They vote for shadows to take the place of ponds
Whatever they vote for they can bring to pass.
The mountains skip like lambs for the cruel majority.
Hail to the cruel majority!
Hail! hail! to the cruel majority!
The mountains skip like lambs, the hills like rams.
The cruel majority tear up the earth for the cruel majority.
Then the cruel majority line up to be buried.
Those who love death will love the cruel majority.
Those who know themselves will know the fear
the cruel majority feel when they look in the mirror.
The cruel majority order the poor to stay poor.
They order the sun to shine only on weekdays.
The god of the cruel majority is hanging from a tree.
Their god's voice is the tree screaming as it bends.
The tree's voice is as quick as lightning as it streaks across the sky.
(If the cruel majority go to sleep inside their shadows,
they will wake to find their beds filled up with glass.)
Hail to the god of the cruel majority!
Hail to the eyes in the head of their screaming god!
Hail to his face in the mirror!
Hail to their faces as they float around him!
Hail to their blood & to his!
Hail to the blood of the poor they need to feed them!
Hail to their world & their god!
Hail & farewell!
Hail & farewell!
Hail & farewell!
Manifesto 1964
William Blake: From The Marriage of Heaven & Hell
“A Little Boy Lost”
Child of an Idumean Night
A Note to Sightings
Sightings V, VI, IX
Conversations 6, 7, 15
Manifesto 1968
From 15 Flower World Variations
O flower fawn
Where is the rotted stick that screeches lying
Ah brother! Look at you
Where are you standing in the wind, dead grasses
Song of a Dead Man
Now the cloud will break
Introduction to A Seneca Journal
Seneca Journal 1: A Poem of Beavers
Old Man Beaver’s Blessing Song
A Seneca Memory
From Poland/1931
The Wedding, opening, in Yiddish
The Wedding, complete
Seneca Indian Women’s Dance Song without words by Richard
Johnny John
A Dada Suite
That Dada Strain
Karawane by Hugo Ball
A Glass Tube Ecstasy, for Hugo Ball
From A Book of Witness
I Come Into the New World
The Case for Memory
A Real Man
From A Book of Concealments
The Times Are Never Right
Oceanside Pier, Among the Fishers
From 50 Caprichos after Goya
The Sleep of Reason
Tight Stockings
All Who Will Fall
A Donkey & a Monkey
The Hell of Thieves from The Seven Hells of the Jigoku Zoshi
Variations on the Hell of Thieves
A Poem of Miracles
Horse Song 13, from The 17 Horse Songs of Frank Michell
Happy birthday program
Produced by Bent-Erik Rasmussen, ICMM
Persons appearing in the Birthday program:
Mathew Rothenberg
Charles Bernstein
Steve McCaffery
Åsa SimmaWai-lim (read by Zeljka Rasmussen)
Gideon D’Arcangelo
Steven Dalachinsky
Julian Cowley
Bob Holman
Michael Heller
Jane Augustine
Jerome Rothenberg
Charles Morrow
Sound and music:
Morrow: Toot and Blink
Morrow/Rothenberg: Birth of Wargod
Drumloops by Peter Erskin
Christopher Williams and Tom Bruckner
J.S.Bach: theme from the Goldberg variations played by Glenn Gould (1955 version)
Classical chinese music: Two fountains reflecting the moon
Western Wind Vocal Ensemble
Glen Velez
Rothenberg Morrow program #1
1.
Now the cloud will break – 5.45
2.
Birth of Wargod – part two – 6.21
3.
Book of Witness – 34.27
4.
Khurbn – 12.09
Rothenberg Morrow program #2
1.
14 stations – 8.39
2.
Paris Elegies – 8.46
3.
A calendar of Messiah – 16.01
4.
Canticle for Brother Sun – 19.04
5.
Poland 1931 – 5.25
Rothenberg Morrow program #3
1.
Retrospective – EAR UP – 1.14.01
Rothenberg Morrow program #4
1.
History of the Jews – 4.30
2.
The Lorca Variations – 7.44
3.
Abulofia – one act opera – 23.20
4.
Horse song – 7.10
5.
In memoriam Jackson mac Law – 18.19
Rothenberg Morrow program #5
1.
J-S-CH-A – 2.30
2.
Ascent of Mount Carmel – 5.55
3.
At the Stone – 49.51
Rothenberg readings recorded by Tyler Clausen
1.
Recording – Dec 7, 2013 – 1.14.05
Tribute no 3 and 4 to Jerome Rothenberg
Recorded by Jack and Adele Foley